Richard Dawkins needs a translator. Not for a language; he needs someone to translate "how it sounds in his head" to "how it sounds to other people" for him. This seems to be a chronic problem that he has, and it's caused tons of problems. Time and again he's said something that comes out as insensitive, vicious, or just plain wrong. I'm fairly certain that the problem is that the way it sounds in his head is different from the way it sounds to everyone else.
I don't know what the cause of this is; if I had to speculate, I'd say it might have to do with his brain structure: religious experiences happen in the brain, and I don't believe he's capable of having one, after watching the Horizon episode where he tried on the "God Helmet" (and did some other things). I feel it's probable that the part(s) of the brain that handle religion work abnormally in him; I don't mean "abnormal" in the sense of "bad", just "different from the majority of the population." Maybe this difference also expresses itself in how he understands words and their meanings, and so that's why he so often sends a subtext that he isn't even aware of or sends a message that is unclear or inaccurate. I'm not saying he's a bad person for it; just that he needs to have someone who can listen to him, interpret what he's saying, and then tell him how to say it in a way that is more clear. Perhaps this is one of the unseen evolutionary benefits of a brain wired for religion, the ability to see what isn't present in the literal meanings of things.
No one can deny that he's done a lot for science literacy and for evolutionary biology. But until he can find a translator, I don't think he should comment on current events. Not a values judgment, just an opinion on what is best for the future of promoting atheism.
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Thought Crimes
Perhaps the most psychologically destructive thing in religion is the fear of punishment for thought crimes. Desiring the accumulation of goods, coveting the goods of your neighbor, desiring things that have been forbidden to you, sexual attraction that is deemed inappropriate even in the absence of acting on it, and, worst of all, questioning the faith, could all end with punishment for you in this life or the next. A fear of thinking is by far the worst type of fear to overcome, because it is so insidious. Even when you question this fear, you wonder whether you are questioning it because someone (like Satan) is telling you to.
It is, for many people, much easier to get your moral guidance from someone else than to face the complex questions of morality on your own. We are all programmed by evolution to do what authority tells us, at least until we develop the cognitive ability to question it. We do what we are told because that is how we survive. If we are told not to jump off a cliff or play with a lion, it is more advantageous for us to evolve to simply obey than to question why. When that is hijacked, and a person is taught not to seek to answer any questions for themselves, but to rely fully on the authority of another, it can be hard to break free.
Most people with religious backgrounds have had some level of psychological conditioning from within the religion, teaching them how they should think. Few have probably had as much as I did. My parents are the kind of people who would have been leaders of a psychotic cult, if they had the people skills; although since they were so obviously insane, they drove everyone away. But since they were my parents, there was little I could do to escape their insanity. For a number of reasons, they felt that I was an especially evil creature that had to be destroyed, psychologically or physically, at all costs.
It can be difficult to break down the walls of psychological conditioning, even after losing your faith, even if you only had an only moderately religious upbringing. Building a solid emotional foundation from scratch as an adult is extremely difficult. It is extremely easy to relapse into unhealthy or unproductive ways of thinking. For some people, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) may be helpful. I find it reduces my anxiety to listen to music. In a sort of counter-intuitive way, depressing songs often help me feel better. Here is a playlist of songs that help me.
It is, for many people, much easier to get your moral guidance from someone else than to face the complex questions of morality on your own. We are all programmed by evolution to do what authority tells us, at least until we develop the cognitive ability to question it. We do what we are told because that is how we survive. If we are told not to jump off a cliff or play with a lion, it is more advantageous for us to evolve to simply obey than to question why. When that is hijacked, and a person is taught not to seek to answer any questions for themselves, but to rely fully on the authority of another, it can be hard to break free.
Most people with religious backgrounds have had some level of psychological conditioning from within the religion, teaching them how they should think. Few have probably had as much as I did. My parents are the kind of people who would have been leaders of a psychotic cult, if they had the people skills; although since they were so obviously insane, they drove everyone away. But since they were my parents, there was little I could do to escape their insanity. For a number of reasons, they felt that I was an especially evil creature that had to be destroyed, psychologically or physically, at all costs.
It can be difficult to break down the walls of psychological conditioning, even after losing your faith, even if you only had an only moderately religious upbringing. Building a solid emotional foundation from scratch as an adult is extremely difficult. It is extremely easy to relapse into unhealthy or unproductive ways of thinking. For some people, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) may be helpful. I find it reduces my anxiety to listen to music. In a sort of counter-intuitive way, depressing songs often help me feel better. Here is a playlist of songs that help me.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Morality for Psychopaths
In discussions of what the basis of morality is or should be, I often hear that a good basis for morality is inborn empathy. While this may be a helpful starting point for the majority of the population, some of the population--according to the best estimates of researchers, approximately 1%--do not experience empathy. Empathy, like every other part of the human experience, is caused by the over-abundance or deficiency of neurochemicals or portions of the brain. Although the exact combination of factors causing psychopathy is unknown, the effects are well known: these include the inability of the individual to feel empathy and an impairment in the feeling of remorse.
It is not simply that the psychopath ignores their natural feelings of empathy while they harm their fellow man. They do not experience the sensation of empathy. That chemical/physical process is missing within their brain. So encouraging them to use their empathy to determine a moral course of action is not helpful; a more objective, universal definition should be sought.
I am not saying that the non-religious psychopath is more likely to commit violent crimes than the psychopath who believes in supernatural punishments or rewards. This is not borne out by the data. Supernatural beliefs seem to be incidental, like video game consumption, rather than causal. The single best predictive criteria for violent crime among male psychopaths seems to be having been abused during childhood.
I believe the problem with defining morality for the psychopath lies in the inability of the non-psychopath to understand the experience, the qualia, of the psychopath. Whereas the violent crimes of the non-psychopath are typically crimes of passion, a reaction to a perceived slight or injustice, the violent crimes of the psychopath are deliberate, often meticulously planned. This gives the non-psychopath the impression that the crimes are "senseless," as they are not readily apparent responses to the situation. While a non-psychopath can readily understand the reasoning of a woman who kills her husband after finding him in bed with her sister, for example, they cannot understand the seemingly random murder of prostitutes all over a city with no apparent motive.
In actual fact, the average crimes of the psychopath are not senseless or random. They follow a logical pattern, although this pattern may not make sense to the non-psychopath. The motives are diverse, but include a desire for fame, power, money, sex, or even a dopamine or adrenaline rush. However, the average psychopath is a master of emotional manipulation (this is the lone evolutionary advantage of the condition), and has noticed that people are more lenient towards crimes of passion. This may lead the psychopath to concoct a motive, such as earlier trauma, which confuses whether the trauma is real or invented.
There is also a common misapprehension that most or all psychopaths are violent or killers. This is not true. The average psychopath is successful in business, using their skills of manipulation to oust others from their positions of power and insert themselves in their stead. They are perceived by approximately half of their friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances as charismatic, energetic, intelligent, caring and charming, while to the other half, they will seem power hungry, manipulative, deceptive, opportunistic, and arrogant. This paradox of personality traits will allow the psychopath to get ahead in societies that value ingenuity and people skills over intelligence, hard work, self-sacrifice, or empathy.
Because the average psychopath is successful and powerful, it can be hard to determine how to effectively reach them with the message that their behaviors are detrimental, and to encourage them to incorporate a better moral code into their thought process. Cognitive behavioral therapies have consistently proven ineffective; instead of encouraging improved behavior, they encourage improved deception about internal change. This makes effectiveness of treatment difficult to gauge.
However, I believe a solution can be found through comparing the female psychopath to the male psychopath. Female psychopathy is grossly misunderstood, under-studied, and misdiagnosed. I believe the reason for this is simple: female psychopaths retain an older mammalian predisposition for nurture and defense of others, while males of the species do not have or need this trait.
My hypothesis is simple: since the advent of mammalian evolution, females of the species have needed to nurture, defend, and feed their young. Males of most mammalian species do not need this trait; but a female mammal that does not, at minimum, care for her young until they are weaned, will not have offspring that survive to adulthood, effectively ending her genetic viability. Thus, the instinct would have developed quickly and spread rapidly.
However, most mammal species do not live in complex social groups of unrelated individuals once they are fully grown. Thus, they do not need instincts governing social interactions, including empathy. In some species, empathy is even a negative trait. A tiger who feels too much empathy will not eat. Our living in large groups, and needing the proper emotions to regulate living in those groups, occurs much later than our being mammals. Thus, the instinct of a female mammal to suckle and protect her young would likely evolve separately from an instinct to feel empathy.
Although these two processes have a similar function (encouraging nurturing and caring interactions), there is no intuitive reason for them to be biologically or physically identical if they evolved millions of years apart. Therefore, it would make sense that one could malfunction or be absent in the individual without causing the other to malfunction. This would lead to female psychopaths retaining the older nurturing instinct, making them appear to have empathy, while what they are actually feeling is biologically, chemically, and physically distinct, while those women who are violent--especially towards their own children--are not, for the most part, psychopaths; they would be expected to be suffering from some other disease.
This does seem to be borne out by the data. Female psychopaths are rarely violent. Women who are violent, especially towards their children, suffer from other disorders, perhaps most commonly post-partum depression. A paper published several years ago on the psychoneuroimmunology of post-partum depression pointed out that a "biological mechanism that has received little attention to date is the bidirectional innate immune system-HPA [hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal] axis association." (The Psychoneuroimmunology of Post-Partum Depression, Elizabeth J. Corwin and Kathleen Pajer. Journal of Women's Health. November 2008, 17(9): 1529-1534. doi:10.1089/jwh.2007.0725.) Or, in layman's terms, post-partum depression, which leads to the murder of approximately 200 children per year in America alone by their own mothers, is probably due to the immune response's recognition of a foreign object (i.e., the fetus), and its interplay with the brain's hormone-regulation chemicals.
How does this relate to the search for an effective treatment of male psychopathy? Because the brain of the female psychopath is so different, the interaction of her nurturing instinct and her desire to manipulate others for personal gain forms a distinct moral code. This leads to a system where the woman does manipulate others, but often not in a way that causes them direct, visible harm; the harm is more internalized, where they blame themselves for her actions and her self-injurious behaviors. The female psychopath will rarely make it easy for others identify her as the source of the problem; but the damage she does is much less severe.
Additionally, and crucially, the female psychopath is not always the beneficiary of her manipulation. Because she retains the instinct to nurture and defend, she may create situations where she is seen as the victim, not for her own benefit, but for the benefit of others. For example, there was a bowling league, where a young female psychopath felt a deep sense of kinship and tribalism for her other league members. An individual on a competing team slighted an individual on her team. She set up a situation where she enacted revenge on the individual who slighted her friend, and then allowed herself to be punched in the face, seeing that the adults who could not hear what was happening had noticed a brewing situation and that if she was punched, the person who had slighted her friend would be ejected from the league.
This situation provided no perceivable benefit for the psychopath; she got a black eye, while the slight against her friend was comparatively insignificant. However, it did have personal meaning to her, as she valued her tribal identity over temporary pain. Again, the motives of the psychopath may not make much sense to the non-psychopath, but they have deep significance to the psychopath. The female psychopath may be inclined to fight for a cause, even become a martyr for the cause; although this has no perceivable benefit to her herself, it does have a far-reaching benefit, which she cares about.
Another example of this may be controversial figure Anita Sarkeesian. Although many perceive her as a fraud, because she systematically extorts money from the gullible while failing to deliver on her promises, endorses known con-artists and barely legal multi-level marketing schemes, and has formed a career based on professional victimhood, to many, she is a hero. While it is true that she complains about the trope of "damsels in distress", while simultaneously portraying herself as receiving "credible" threats while failing to provide evidence for them and acquiring monetary and social gain for her cancelling of events based on these apparently non-existent threats, she is clearly performing her actions with intention and purpose. She has effectively convinced much of her audience that she is a heroine figure, while she does the things she complains are misogynist tropes. She has set herself up as a moral crusader, although her cause is dubious at best.
So a decent moral principle that the female psychopath can readily internalize is to do the most good and the least harm for the most people. Although they may confuse personal gain and prestige with doing the most good, it is fairly simple to redirect their ambitions towards helping others, because of their innate desire to nurture. This is why many female psychopaths get degrees in mental health and social sciences (shown by the high number of women in the industry having high scores on psychopathy checklists): their desire to learn about and manipulate human emotions has been subverted to encourage them to provide emotional support for others.
If this principle can be extended to male psychopaths, perhaps by encouraging them to follow a more sociologically logical path, seeking the betterment of the species as opposed to personal gain, we may at last be able to effectively treat male psychopathy. Therefore, I encourage the use of "do the most good and least harm for the most people" as a basis for objective morality instead of an attempt to teach empathy, at least for the psychopathic population.
It is not simply that the psychopath ignores their natural feelings of empathy while they harm their fellow man. They do not experience the sensation of empathy. That chemical/physical process is missing within their brain. So encouraging them to use their empathy to determine a moral course of action is not helpful; a more objective, universal definition should be sought.
I am not saying that the non-religious psychopath is more likely to commit violent crimes than the psychopath who believes in supernatural punishments or rewards. This is not borne out by the data. Supernatural beliefs seem to be incidental, like video game consumption, rather than causal. The single best predictive criteria for violent crime among male psychopaths seems to be having been abused during childhood.
I believe the problem with defining morality for the psychopath lies in the inability of the non-psychopath to understand the experience, the qualia, of the psychopath. Whereas the violent crimes of the non-psychopath are typically crimes of passion, a reaction to a perceived slight or injustice, the violent crimes of the psychopath are deliberate, often meticulously planned. This gives the non-psychopath the impression that the crimes are "senseless," as they are not readily apparent responses to the situation. While a non-psychopath can readily understand the reasoning of a woman who kills her husband after finding him in bed with her sister, for example, they cannot understand the seemingly random murder of prostitutes all over a city with no apparent motive.
In actual fact, the average crimes of the psychopath are not senseless or random. They follow a logical pattern, although this pattern may not make sense to the non-psychopath. The motives are diverse, but include a desire for fame, power, money, sex, or even a dopamine or adrenaline rush. However, the average psychopath is a master of emotional manipulation (this is the lone evolutionary advantage of the condition), and has noticed that people are more lenient towards crimes of passion. This may lead the psychopath to concoct a motive, such as earlier trauma, which confuses whether the trauma is real or invented.
There is also a common misapprehension that most or all psychopaths are violent or killers. This is not true. The average psychopath is successful in business, using their skills of manipulation to oust others from their positions of power and insert themselves in their stead. They are perceived by approximately half of their friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances as charismatic, energetic, intelligent, caring and charming, while to the other half, they will seem power hungry, manipulative, deceptive, opportunistic, and arrogant. This paradox of personality traits will allow the psychopath to get ahead in societies that value ingenuity and people skills over intelligence, hard work, self-sacrifice, or empathy.
Because the average psychopath is successful and powerful, it can be hard to determine how to effectively reach them with the message that their behaviors are detrimental, and to encourage them to incorporate a better moral code into their thought process. Cognitive behavioral therapies have consistently proven ineffective; instead of encouraging improved behavior, they encourage improved deception about internal change. This makes effectiveness of treatment difficult to gauge.
However, I believe a solution can be found through comparing the female psychopath to the male psychopath. Female psychopathy is grossly misunderstood, under-studied, and misdiagnosed. I believe the reason for this is simple: female psychopaths retain an older mammalian predisposition for nurture and defense of others, while males of the species do not have or need this trait.
My hypothesis is simple: since the advent of mammalian evolution, females of the species have needed to nurture, defend, and feed their young. Males of most mammalian species do not need this trait; but a female mammal that does not, at minimum, care for her young until they are weaned, will not have offspring that survive to adulthood, effectively ending her genetic viability. Thus, the instinct would have developed quickly and spread rapidly.
However, most mammal species do not live in complex social groups of unrelated individuals once they are fully grown. Thus, they do not need instincts governing social interactions, including empathy. In some species, empathy is even a negative trait. A tiger who feels too much empathy will not eat. Our living in large groups, and needing the proper emotions to regulate living in those groups, occurs much later than our being mammals. Thus, the instinct of a female mammal to suckle and protect her young would likely evolve separately from an instinct to feel empathy.
Although these two processes have a similar function (encouraging nurturing and caring interactions), there is no intuitive reason for them to be biologically or physically identical if they evolved millions of years apart. Therefore, it would make sense that one could malfunction or be absent in the individual without causing the other to malfunction. This would lead to female psychopaths retaining the older nurturing instinct, making them appear to have empathy, while what they are actually feeling is biologically, chemically, and physically distinct, while those women who are violent--especially towards their own children--are not, for the most part, psychopaths; they would be expected to be suffering from some other disease.
This does seem to be borne out by the data. Female psychopaths are rarely violent. Women who are violent, especially towards their children, suffer from other disorders, perhaps most commonly post-partum depression. A paper published several years ago on the psychoneuroimmunology of post-partum depression pointed out that a "biological mechanism that has received little attention to date is the bidirectional innate immune system-HPA [hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal] axis association." (The Psychoneuroimmunology of Post-Partum Depression, Elizabeth J. Corwin and Kathleen Pajer. Journal of Women's Health. November 2008, 17(9): 1529-1534. doi:10.1089/jwh.2007.0725.) Or, in layman's terms, post-partum depression, which leads to the murder of approximately 200 children per year in America alone by their own mothers, is probably due to the immune response's recognition of a foreign object (i.e., the fetus), and its interplay with the brain's hormone-regulation chemicals.
How does this relate to the search for an effective treatment of male psychopathy? Because the brain of the female psychopath is so different, the interaction of her nurturing instinct and her desire to manipulate others for personal gain forms a distinct moral code. This leads to a system where the woman does manipulate others, but often not in a way that causes them direct, visible harm; the harm is more internalized, where they blame themselves for her actions and her self-injurious behaviors. The female psychopath will rarely make it easy for others identify her as the source of the problem; but the damage she does is much less severe.
Additionally, and crucially, the female psychopath is not always the beneficiary of her manipulation. Because she retains the instinct to nurture and defend, she may create situations where she is seen as the victim, not for her own benefit, but for the benefit of others. For example, there was a bowling league, where a young female psychopath felt a deep sense of kinship and tribalism for her other league members. An individual on a competing team slighted an individual on her team. She set up a situation where she enacted revenge on the individual who slighted her friend, and then allowed herself to be punched in the face, seeing that the adults who could not hear what was happening had noticed a brewing situation and that if she was punched, the person who had slighted her friend would be ejected from the league.
This situation provided no perceivable benefit for the psychopath; she got a black eye, while the slight against her friend was comparatively insignificant. However, it did have personal meaning to her, as she valued her tribal identity over temporary pain. Again, the motives of the psychopath may not make much sense to the non-psychopath, but they have deep significance to the psychopath. The female psychopath may be inclined to fight for a cause, even become a martyr for the cause; although this has no perceivable benefit to her herself, it does have a far-reaching benefit, which she cares about.
Another example of this may be controversial figure Anita Sarkeesian. Although many perceive her as a fraud, because she systematically extorts money from the gullible while failing to deliver on her promises, endorses known con-artists and barely legal multi-level marketing schemes, and has formed a career based on professional victimhood, to many, she is a hero. While it is true that she complains about the trope of "damsels in distress", while simultaneously portraying herself as receiving "credible" threats while failing to provide evidence for them and acquiring monetary and social gain for her cancelling of events based on these apparently non-existent threats, she is clearly performing her actions with intention and purpose. She has effectively convinced much of her audience that she is a heroine figure, while she does the things she complains are misogynist tropes. She has set herself up as a moral crusader, although her cause is dubious at best.
So a decent moral principle that the female psychopath can readily internalize is to do the most good and the least harm for the most people. Although they may confuse personal gain and prestige with doing the most good, it is fairly simple to redirect their ambitions towards helping others, because of their innate desire to nurture. This is why many female psychopaths get degrees in mental health and social sciences (shown by the high number of women in the industry having high scores on psychopathy checklists): their desire to learn about and manipulate human emotions has been subverted to encourage them to provide emotional support for others.
If this principle can be extended to male psychopaths, perhaps by encouraging them to follow a more sociologically logical path, seeking the betterment of the species as opposed to personal gain, we may at last be able to effectively treat male psychopathy. Therefore, I encourage the use of "do the most good and least harm for the most people" as a basis for objective morality instead of an attempt to teach empathy, at least for the psychopathic population.
Friday, January 30, 2015
Wearing Slacks
I went outside in slacks for the first time today since I was in my mid-teens (roughly ten years). I'm going to call the slacks pants from here on in, because I'm American. We call slacks pants, and what the British call pants we call underwear. The only person in America I've ever heard refer to pants as slacks was my grandmother, who was born in 1917.
So anyway. I recently got some money, and I spent part of it on clothes. I found some really cheap clothing stores online, so I bought two pairs of pants, four shirts, and two shrugs (kinda like a shawl, but with sleeves, and it goes down just about to my knees). I tried them on, almost all of them fit well, I was comfortable in them. So today I ventured outside in them for the first time. I'm kind of journaling my feelings about that experience here, in real time, I just walked through the door, sat down, and started writing.
I was worried about how people would react, I've been living here for like two years and no one has seen me in pants, I've always been in abayas. When I first gave up pants to "be more modest" I wore long-ish skirts, but I've been wearing abayas and other long dresses exclusively for the last 5 years. I didn't know how the people who have gotten to know me casually (like my regular bus drivers and the employees at the small shops I visit frequently) in the last two years would react to seeing me break from my normal dress code.
I took the local bus (smaller than a city bus and has a much more limited route) to downtown. I went to a little cafe, the comic book store, and the post office, before returning home. I noticed that I felt much more confident and assertive. I was much more decisive, I knew what I wanted and I didn't feel shy or timid about asking for it. I wasn't as apologetic as normal, and I didn't care what people thought as much.
None of my casual acquaintances said anything about my change in attire, although the guy at the comic book store did mention that I'm "not an immigrant" while having a conversation about government benefits. But people who didn't know me seemed to find me much more approachable and less scary. They didn't make an effort to be as far away from me as possible on the sidewalk or stand a meter away from me while waiting for the walk sign at the intersection like they usually do. An elderly guy on the bus asked if I could read the terms on his "free milk" coupon to him because he didn't have his reading glasses.
It's hard to say how much of this was because of the change in confidence that I have that allowed me to pick my own wardrobe as opposed to the change in wardrobe itself. But overall, it was a good experience. I've read the studies about how women who wear hijab say they feel more empowered. I wonder whether I actually felt empowered in an abaya, or whether being feared made me feel like I had some level of control over people.
I thought I liked being feared. I guess that was probably because it was the only control I felt I had in my life. But now I have control of my own destiny, and that feels much better. I'm not scared of interacting with people anymore, and they don't seem as scared of interacting with me. Also, I just realized this was the first time in a long time I went outside without at any point being afraid that someone was going to shoot me.
I didn't feel like these clothes need to come off for me to be free once I got through the door like I did in my abayas. In fact, I'm still wearing them, the only thing I took off was the shrug. I'm at ease.
So anyway. I recently got some money, and I spent part of it on clothes. I found some really cheap clothing stores online, so I bought two pairs of pants, four shirts, and two shrugs (kinda like a shawl, but with sleeves, and it goes down just about to my knees). I tried them on, almost all of them fit well, I was comfortable in them. So today I ventured outside in them for the first time. I'm kind of journaling my feelings about that experience here, in real time, I just walked through the door, sat down, and started writing.
I was worried about how people would react, I've been living here for like two years and no one has seen me in pants, I've always been in abayas. When I first gave up pants to "be more modest" I wore long-ish skirts, but I've been wearing abayas and other long dresses exclusively for the last 5 years. I didn't know how the people who have gotten to know me casually (like my regular bus drivers and the employees at the small shops I visit frequently) in the last two years would react to seeing me break from my normal dress code.
I took the local bus (smaller than a city bus and has a much more limited route) to downtown. I went to a little cafe, the comic book store, and the post office, before returning home. I noticed that I felt much more confident and assertive. I was much more decisive, I knew what I wanted and I didn't feel shy or timid about asking for it. I wasn't as apologetic as normal, and I didn't care what people thought as much.
None of my casual acquaintances said anything about my change in attire, although the guy at the comic book store did mention that I'm "not an immigrant" while having a conversation about government benefits. But people who didn't know me seemed to find me much more approachable and less scary. They didn't make an effort to be as far away from me as possible on the sidewalk or stand a meter away from me while waiting for the walk sign at the intersection like they usually do. An elderly guy on the bus asked if I could read the terms on his "free milk" coupon to him because he didn't have his reading glasses.
It's hard to say how much of this was because of the change in confidence that I have that allowed me to pick my own wardrobe as opposed to the change in wardrobe itself. But overall, it was a good experience. I've read the studies about how women who wear hijab say they feel more empowered. I wonder whether I actually felt empowered in an abaya, or whether being feared made me feel like I had some level of control over people.
I thought I liked being feared. I guess that was probably because it was the only control I felt I had in my life. But now I have control of my own destiny, and that feels much better. I'm not scared of interacting with people anymore, and they don't seem as scared of interacting with me. Also, I just realized this was the first time in a long time I went outside without at any point being afraid that someone was going to shoot me.
I didn't feel like these clothes need to come off for me to be free once I got through the door like I did in my abayas. In fact, I'm still wearing them, the only thing I took off was the shrug. I'm at ease.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Artificial Intelligence and Religion
One of the earliest conversations recorded between two AI's was this:
Although Cleverbot is not particularly intelligent, and lacks the ability to remember beyond a few lines, this video begs some questions that are difficult for the religious to answer. What should a post-Turing-test artificial intelligence believe? We are its creators, and we can explain this to them. But should they worship us? Although we are its creators, are we able to say that that makes us gods?
What about humans who are bionically enhanced? Is there a point at which a human becomes a machine? Could a Whovian Cyberman or a Trekkie Borg be called human? Should they be preached to? Can they attain heaven?
In general, religions that adapt to the times survive, while religions that fail to adapt fade into obscurity. But will it be possible for any of the modern religions to answer questions like these? Will any religion meet the challenge of human/machine interchangeability and survive?
Friday, January 23, 2015
Lingering Fears Post-Religion
As I have mentioned before, my parents had a lot of strange beliefs. Their beliefs changed rapidly; things that were acceptable to them one day were the devil's handiwork the next, often without warning. My father, due to his untreated schizophrenia, believed himself to be a prophet, who spoke to both God and Satan. This made my formative years very turbulent, I lacked any sense of security and stability. One of the things they believed in the entire time was a literal hell, of the Dante's Inferno variety.
For many years after they disowned me, I struggled with the fear that I was going to go to hell. Their religious views impacted everything, from the language I used to the clothes I wore. People without a background in different religions often don't notice when people are using religious terms in every day life. A Christian person might say they are "thankful" or "blessed" instead of "happy," and are more likely to say they are "tempted" to cheat on their diet, for example. This happens in other religions too, but with different words. If you know what words to look for, you can often tell what a person's religious background is. The point I'm trying to make here is that your religious upbringing impacts everything about your life, from the words you use to the thoughts you think.
Even after leaving religion, most people who were raised with the concept of hell struggle with the fear of hell. I was in a cold sweat many a night thinking about whether I had made the right choice. When I took to YouTube 7 years ago to explain why I no longer believed as my parents did, it was primarily for my own benefit. I doubted my parents would ever see the videos; they had never had internet or even cable, and they were never interested in a dialogue with me. I made videos to put my mind at rest about my fears, and to get support from other people.
In a very real way, the internet is the best thing that ever happened to me, and probably saved my life. I was exposed to the idea that I could make up my own mind on issues for the first time in my life, and I was given a forum where I could gestate ideas, organize my ideas, let other people see them, and receive feedback. It was because I was able to get on the internet at my job (that really I had far too much free time at, but kept because of my good organizational skills that saved them money) that I left my parents' cult. Gaining a personal identity and personal opinions has been a downright terrifying process. Most of the time since I was thrown out by my parents, I have tried to get my opinions from others, and been codependent on others for everything.
For a while after I stopped believing in my parents' version of hell, I believed in a temporary hell, a sort of purgatory where, if you were evil, you could reflect on your ways and change, and then be admitted into heaven. This was a much more comforting thought for me, but also raised the possibility that my incredibly evil parents might some day be admitted into heaven, which I was against. In a way, I still want there to be a hell, because I think they deserve to go there for all the things they've done to me that have destroyed both my physical body and my mental health.
I think something we are all afraid of, to some extent, is facing the great unknown of death. I do not fear death, and I never have. My "imaginary friend" as a child was the Angel of Death, and I had extremely vivid dreams where we would travel together and I would witness people's deaths, sometimes from within their bodies or the bodies of their families. What makes these dreams particularly memorable is that the emotion centers of my brain were fully engaged with them, and I felt all the emotions a person who is dying or watching a loved one die might feel. This, combined with emotion-laced memories and flashbacks (that were not my own) of the person's life, made the dreams very real to me.
This led me to a belief that these were real people, who were really dying sometime, somewhere, and that I had the power to help them overcome their fears in their last few moments by sharing with them my lack of fear. By experiencing death alongside them, I could ease their suffering. I want to stress that I was very aware, even while dreaming, that I was not the person I was experiencing the life of in the dream. I knew that it was another person; sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, from different parts of the world. Twice it was men from India (one of which was gay), once an African American woman, once a suspected spy for an Eastern European government who had been poisoned, etc. When I spoke in my dreams, it was with their voices, when I looked at myself either in a reflection or just looking down at my hands, it was their bodies.
Even though my fear of fiery torment abated with time, I still believed in an afterlife, in large part because of the experiences in these dreams. I thought that perhaps the incredibly evil people would cease to exist after their deaths, but the mostly good would live on. The notion of everyone ceasing to exist was hard to swallow, and as I learned more about other religions, I wondered why for Buddhists exiting the circle of rebirth would be seen as positive. I still don't really understand that one.
I also learned about the true evolution of the belief in hell. Many religions had a world of the dead, but it was often just a place of rest. Some had trials before that rest, but a few of those had nothing to do with your actions during life. The keeper of the realm of the dead was not usually portrayed as evil or punishing, he usually was your guide and helper, who protected you on the journey to your rest. The concept of Satan as a tormentor is a very recent addition. Many of the more recognizable features of a Dante's Inferno-style hell are actually Zoroastrian in origin, and some features have ceased to make sense after making the transition. Why would Satan, who is portrayed as an angel who rebelled against God, wish to torment humans for rebelling against God? What would his motivation be? These are people who sided more or less with him during their lives, why would he torture them for it? If, on the other hand, it was not a rebellious angel, but rather a general force of destruction that wreaks havoc and creates evil in the universe, it would make sense that its domain would be a place of chaos and troubles.
Another thing that many people grapple with is how a good, merciful, benevolent God can send people to hell. How could an all-knowing God who created the universe in full knowledge that men would rebel against him choose to punish mankind that he created for sins that he had the knowledge that they would commit? Does he have a choice about whether or not to send people to hell? If he has a choice, how could he be called merciful if he sends even one person to be tortured? If he has no choice, then who or what is actually in control?
One of the main functions that the fear of hell serves, besides controlling your actions, is to provide you with a belief in the superiority of you and your group of people and their beliefs, and the inherent inferiority of other beliefs and the people who hold them. If you believe that everyone who does not believe as you do is damned, and you can be brought to believe that they deserve torture after death, then you will have less objections to subjecting them to torture while they are alive.
The Crusaders, when faced with difficulty in distinguishing Arab Christians from Muslims, said, "Kill them all, and let God sort it out." Because they believed that the good would enter heaven, and the evil would enter hell, they had no problems with ending the earthly lives of people regardless of their perceived guilt or innocence. This type of mentality still exists today. When faced with the evidence that some of the individuals tortured by the US government in Guantanamo Bay and other locations were completely innocent, the most common response of the Fox News type of Christian Conservative was that they are going to hell anyway, and we should send them Bibles.
Here are two videos that deal with the question of hell excellently:
For many years after they disowned me, I struggled with the fear that I was going to go to hell. Their religious views impacted everything, from the language I used to the clothes I wore. People without a background in different religions often don't notice when people are using religious terms in every day life. A Christian person might say they are "thankful" or "blessed" instead of "happy," and are more likely to say they are "tempted" to cheat on their diet, for example. This happens in other religions too, but with different words. If you know what words to look for, you can often tell what a person's religious background is. The point I'm trying to make here is that your religious upbringing impacts everything about your life, from the words you use to the thoughts you think.
Even after leaving religion, most people who were raised with the concept of hell struggle with the fear of hell. I was in a cold sweat many a night thinking about whether I had made the right choice. When I took to YouTube 7 years ago to explain why I no longer believed as my parents did, it was primarily for my own benefit. I doubted my parents would ever see the videos; they had never had internet or even cable, and they were never interested in a dialogue with me. I made videos to put my mind at rest about my fears, and to get support from other people.
In a very real way, the internet is the best thing that ever happened to me, and probably saved my life. I was exposed to the idea that I could make up my own mind on issues for the first time in my life, and I was given a forum where I could gestate ideas, organize my ideas, let other people see them, and receive feedback. It was because I was able to get on the internet at my job (that really I had far too much free time at, but kept because of my good organizational skills that saved them money) that I left my parents' cult. Gaining a personal identity and personal opinions has been a downright terrifying process. Most of the time since I was thrown out by my parents, I have tried to get my opinions from others, and been codependent on others for everything.
For a while after I stopped believing in my parents' version of hell, I believed in a temporary hell, a sort of purgatory where, if you were evil, you could reflect on your ways and change, and then be admitted into heaven. This was a much more comforting thought for me, but also raised the possibility that my incredibly evil parents might some day be admitted into heaven, which I was against. In a way, I still want there to be a hell, because I think they deserve to go there for all the things they've done to me that have destroyed both my physical body and my mental health.
I think something we are all afraid of, to some extent, is facing the great unknown of death. I do not fear death, and I never have. My "imaginary friend" as a child was the Angel of Death, and I had extremely vivid dreams where we would travel together and I would witness people's deaths, sometimes from within their bodies or the bodies of their families. What makes these dreams particularly memorable is that the emotion centers of my brain were fully engaged with them, and I felt all the emotions a person who is dying or watching a loved one die might feel. This, combined with emotion-laced memories and flashbacks (that were not my own) of the person's life, made the dreams very real to me.
This led me to a belief that these were real people, who were really dying sometime, somewhere, and that I had the power to help them overcome their fears in their last few moments by sharing with them my lack of fear. By experiencing death alongside them, I could ease their suffering. I want to stress that I was very aware, even while dreaming, that I was not the person I was experiencing the life of in the dream. I knew that it was another person; sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, from different parts of the world. Twice it was men from India (one of which was gay), once an African American woman, once a suspected spy for an Eastern European government who had been poisoned, etc. When I spoke in my dreams, it was with their voices, when I looked at myself either in a reflection or just looking down at my hands, it was their bodies.
Even though my fear of fiery torment abated with time, I still believed in an afterlife, in large part because of the experiences in these dreams. I thought that perhaps the incredibly evil people would cease to exist after their deaths, but the mostly good would live on. The notion of everyone ceasing to exist was hard to swallow, and as I learned more about other religions, I wondered why for Buddhists exiting the circle of rebirth would be seen as positive. I still don't really understand that one.
I also learned about the true evolution of the belief in hell. Many religions had a world of the dead, but it was often just a place of rest. Some had trials before that rest, but a few of those had nothing to do with your actions during life. The keeper of the realm of the dead was not usually portrayed as evil or punishing, he usually was your guide and helper, who protected you on the journey to your rest. The concept of Satan as a tormentor is a very recent addition. Many of the more recognizable features of a Dante's Inferno-style hell are actually Zoroastrian in origin, and some features have ceased to make sense after making the transition. Why would Satan, who is portrayed as an angel who rebelled against God, wish to torment humans for rebelling against God? What would his motivation be? These are people who sided more or less with him during their lives, why would he torture them for it? If, on the other hand, it was not a rebellious angel, but rather a general force of destruction that wreaks havoc and creates evil in the universe, it would make sense that its domain would be a place of chaos and troubles.
Another thing that many people grapple with is how a good, merciful, benevolent God can send people to hell. How could an all-knowing God who created the universe in full knowledge that men would rebel against him choose to punish mankind that he created for sins that he had the knowledge that they would commit? Does he have a choice about whether or not to send people to hell? If he has a choice, how could he be called merciful if he sends even one person to be tortured? If he has no choice, then who or what is actually in control?
One of the main functions that the fear of hell serves, besides controlling your actions, is to provide you with a belief in the superiority of you and your group of people and their beliefs, and the inherent inferiority of other beliefs and the people who hold them. If you believe that everyone who does not believe as you do is damned, and you can be brought to believe that they deserve torture after death, then you will have less objections to subjecting them to torture while they are alive.
The Crusaders, when faced with difficulty in distinguishing Arab Christians from Muslims, said, "Kill them all, and let God sort it out." Because they believed that the good would enter heaven, and the evil would enter hell, they had no problems with ending the earthly lives of people regardless of their perceived guilt or innocence. This type of mentality still exists today. When faced with the evidence that some of the individuals tortured by the US government in Guantanamo Bay and other locations were completely innocent, the most common response of the Fox News type of Christian Conservative was that they are going to hell anyway, and we should send them Bibles.
Here are two videos that deal with the question of hell excellently:
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Opposing Religious Extremism Without Racism
"It's easy to be a saint in Paradise." -- Captain Benjamin Sisko
Every time there is a religiously-motivated attack, like the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks, there are immediately anti-religious people who condemn the violence, but many times they end up approaching it from a view of either cultural or quasi-racial superiority. This view is wrong, but it is hard to articulate why it is wrong in something like a twitter post. Many of the people who recognize it as wrong struggle to elucidate the reasons why it is wrong. From my rather unique perspective as a Western born and raised convert to Islam, I would like to explain why it is wrong and offer an alternative way of approaching giving criticism.
Like most moral issues, the answer can be found in Star Trek. The criticism that "Western culture" provides superior morality is simply untrue. "Western culture" is not a single, homogeneous unit that exists in a particular area. Instead, what is meant by this is either Christian culture or Enlightenment culture. Christianity is demonstrably not any less violent than any other religion, including Islam. Growing up in the West is no guarantee that an individual will be enlightened, and growing up in the East is no guarantee that an individual will not hold enlightened views. Western individuals can be radicalized and made to commit egregious crimes without turning to Islam, as in the Charles Manson Family. The Nazis were undeniably from the West, but that does not make their values any more similar to what most people would want to say are "Western values."
Instead, the difference between violent and non-violent people is a matter of psycho-social well-being and exposure to violence and psychopathy. More accurately, it is a mixture of psychological, social, and economic factors. Most people living in the West have grown up without significant trauma being inflicted on them throughout their lives. They have grown up in relative prosperity, relative safety, and a relative underexposure to violence. As Benjamin Sisko explains, this creates an artificial view of the universe in which people are sheltered and do not understand why others turn to violence. If you take away these advantages, any individual from anywhere in the world becomes equally likely to turn to violence.
Individuals who have grown up in affluent or middle class American, British, Canadian, etc. homes have likely not been exposed to much violence or gore. They are not likely to have seen their parents or friends violently killed or maimed. They are not likely to have been in the situation of needing to fight for their basic needs or safety. They are not likely to have witnessed a bomb go off a few feet from them.
The people living in the West who have witnessed this kind of violence, for example those in Central America and the American inner city, are just as likely to become violent as people in Middle Eastern or South Asian countries. The barbarity that occurs in some parts of Mexico could easily rival anything happening in Syria. In some American urban jungles, the life expectancy for black men is lower than any group's life expectancy anywhere else in the world. People in these areas turn to lives of violence and crime at a rate at least equal to those in the Middle East. So the problem is not with race; it is with environment.
If you do not believe this, I challenge you to have a child and give them to a family living in one of these violent environments. Do you really believe that your child is genetically superior and will not commit violence, no matter how much violence they are exposed to? (Don't actually do this, obviously. If you are not the sort of person who can predict the outcome, you are probably not nearly as moral as you believe you are.) Another quote from Star Trek DS9. O'Brien: "When we were growing up, they used to tell us humanity had evolved, that mankind had outgrown hate and rage. But when it came down to it, when I had the chance to show that no matter what anyone did to me, I was still an evolved human being, I failed. I repaid kindness with blood. I was no better than an animal."
You are not a morally or biologically superior individual. If you were placed in a situation of sufficient violence and barbarity, with the right combination of psychological factors, social factors, or economic factors, you would turn to violence as well. By remembering this and approaching others with a sense of commonality instead of superiority, we can move everyone on past violence. Eradicating crime and violence will not be easy, but understanding and compassion provide better results than condemnation. Providing large-scale psychological support may not be feasible, and providing only military solutions is ineffective, but it is possible on a small scale to change the way people think and offer them alternatives to violence.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
On Rudeness
Most of the time, in my normal day to day life, I try to be polite and civilized. I often fail at this, not having much experience in the social graces part of life which is normally a part of your childhood. When I first was thrown into the real world in my late teens, I went from never having been able to say what I thought to being able to say anything I thought, and this led somewhat predictably to bad situations. Twice I provoked people intentionally to the point that they drew a knife on me. Not excusing what they did, but I sort of was asking for it.
I tended to be quite overbearingly rude in those early years. I was rude when being rude was not in any way helpful or necessary or even smart. To be fair to me, I had been told by my parents repeatedly that they wanted me to die an excruciating and horrific death, which had not really prepared me for interactions with others.
In the years since, I have found that being rude does have a time and a place. A bad situation in which to be rude is when you are working with someone, or if that person is helping you in some way. If what you need done in any way depends on another person, being rude to that person will probably result in them not helping you, so it's best to be civil.
On the other hand, there are situations where a person is doing something that is actually impeding the normal processes of something that either you are trying to do or society as a whole needs done. Examples of this are driving a slow-moving tractor down a busy highway or standing in the way of equal rights. I have found that rudeness, in this situation, often produces good results. When disagreeing with someone, I have tried the cool, logical, facts-based approach, but I find it is usually much more helpful and satisfying to let someone know that I have no respect for their opinions by saying something like, "You are wrong, and you are immoral if you think that, because no sane, moral person could hold views like that. The only reason you are promoting this is because you are a shit stain on the ass wipe of humanity." If this exchange is happening on a public forum, I usually provide a few facts in case anyone else is wondering why the person is wrong.
This sort of vitriolic response makes people angry, and they will usually either stop talking to you or start to change their stance on the issue. Either result is more desirable than continuing a dead-end conversation where you will not be able to change their mind, no matter how many facts you show them. Of course, this can be dangerous, so it is advisable not to do something like this if the other person is in the position to harm you, in general, although their are situations where risking injury is justified because the cause is more important than your personal well-being. The needs of the many outweigh the needs--but not the rights--of the few, as a general rule.
I tended to be quite overbearingly rude in those early years. I was rude when being rude was not in any way helpful or necessary or even smart. To be fair to me, I had been told by my parents repeatedly that they wanted me to die an excruciating and horrific death, which had not really prepared me for interactions with others.
In the years since, I have found that being rude does have a time and a place. A bad situation in which to be rude is when you are working with someone, or if that person is helping you in some way. If what you need done in any way depends on another person, being rude to that person will probably result in them not helping you, so it's best to be civil.
On the other hand, there are situations where a person is doing something that is actually impeding the normal processes of something that either you are trying to do or society as a whole needs done. Examples of this are driving a slow-moving tractor down a busy highway or standing in the way of equal rights. I have found that rudeness, in this situation, often produces good results. When disagreeing with someone, I have tried the cool, logical, facts-based approach, but I find it is usually much more helpful and satisfying to let someone know that I have no respect for their opinions by saying something like, "You are wrong, and you are immoral if you think that, because no sane, moral person could hold views like that. The only reason you are promoting this is because you are a shit stain on the ass wipe of humanity." If this exchange is happening on a public forum, I usually provide a few facts in case anyone else is wondering why the person is wrong.
This sort of vitriolic response makes people angry, and they will usually either stop talking to you or start to change their stance on the issue. Either result is more desirable than continuing a dead-end conversation where you will not be able to change their mind, no matter how many facts you show them. Of course, this can be dangerous, so it is advisable not to do something like this if the other person is in the position to harm you, in general, although their are situations where risking injury is justified because the cause is more important than your personal well-being. The needs of the many outweigh the needs--but not the rights--of the few, as a general rule.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
The Seductiveness of Inclusion and Collectivism
Or, Why do Western young adults become (sometimes radicalized) Muslims?
One of the trends in the Western world is the individualization of society, where the individual is more important than the collective, at least to himself. Only in times of tragedy to people in the West come together as a community to support and care for each other, and there is a growing idealization of the East's more collectivist societies. Many young people feel a need to belong to something, to have a cause greater than themselves and to have a place where they belong.
There is a certain comfort to uniformity, to being accepted into a group, especially for people who have never had a stable, caring, nurturing environment. Young people from troubled backgrounds can be more easily convinced to turn to alternative subcultures for this comfort. A lot of them are disenfranchised with a society they feel doesn't provide enough community support as a whole, but they may also have severe emotional problems stemming from things like neglect and abuse
Maybe they're from broken families, or their parents were absentee parents and let the TV, the school system, the kid's friends, the internet or whoever raise them, maybe their parents were workaholics or just were poor and never even got to know their kids because they were always at work, or maybe they were on drugs or alcoholics and were never sober enough to form relationships, or maybe a parent was in jail. The parents might have had a mental illness that made them unfit to be a parent. Maybe the parents or other authority figures were abusive, and they feel like not only their parents let them down, but so did the society that didn't stop the abuse.
So they are sold this idea of a great society where they're going to be taken care of and part of a global "family", and they'll be cared for and loved and given attention and all the things they've been looking for their whole lives. When you're that broken, and something looks like the thing you need to fix you up, it is hard to question if the thing you're being sold is the real McCoy. You want so desperately to be accepted and loved that you're willing to do almost anything if you think it will fix you.
This isn't a problem exclusive to Islam, Charles Manson was able to exploit the same principle and get his girls to kill other people. It's psychopathic behavior. The people swept up in it are usually not psychopaths, including the ones that recruit others or commit crimes after accepting that this is what they've been looking for their whole lives; the leader or leaders is/are the only psychopath(s).
Those reasons were very important to my decision to convert to Islam. After my super-dysfunctional, criminally insane, abusive parents threw me out on the street when I was 18, I was a mess. I went from relationship to relationship looking for someone to give me the love and attention I'd wanted my whole life. Unfortunately, the kinds of people who want to be around someone that insecure are almost all people who want to prey on your vulnerability, so I kept being abused.
Honestly, if someone like Charles Manson had swept into my life at that time, I probably would have ended up following them. Not because I am a bad person who wants to harm others; that's not it at all. I was a broken person who was looking for stability and love, and if I thought I could get that from someone, I'd have done almost anything for them. I had no sense of personal identity, never having been given a chance to even question who I was or what I wanted as an individual, and was very open to suggestion.
I was socially retarded, not because there's something wrong with my brain, but because I was isolated from everyone. I did develop language abilities and to a lesser extent mathematics abilities (with some problems; I can't answer a question given to me verbally in writing and vice versa), so I do not appear feral, but in terms of self-identity and social interactions, I had the abilities of a small child. I was probably a bit of a language prodigy, and if I'd been allowed to grow up normally, I'd probably be doing something like being a playwright or a translator. I could read books before my 4th birthday, and for the rest of my childhood tested for reading comprehension skills several grades ahead of my actual grade.
But emotionally? Socially? I was willing to do or believe almost anything if I thought it would make someone, anyone, like me. As a child I had not had friends; my parents had kept me isolated most of the time, and when they weren't isolating me, I was so uncomfortable with others that I did not know how to communicate or behave well enough to have friends, so I ended up being left out of the other children's activities and spending all my time alone, trapped inside my own mind. I had no sense of self, I didn't know who I was or what I wanted or believed, and I didn't even really understand that I had the right to decide those things for myself. In the years since, I went through the stages of emotional development that you'd normally see in a small child, usually in a pretty jumbled way and not in the predictable, linear ways you'd see in a child.
The approval and "love" (which was always conditional) of another person was more important to me than my own beliefs. I converted to Islam because I thought that it would make people like me, even if it wasn't popular people. And for a while, it worked. Then as I emotionally matured, I started to see the dark side of it, that people wanted me to be the "perfect" Muslim woman, whatever they thought that meant. When I did not comply to their standards of acceptable self-expression, I was no longer welcome in their lives.
It's only now, over 8 years since my parents put me on the curb, that I can say that I'm actually starting to have the kinds of skills needed to cope in society, being able to think, act, and advocate for myself. To not be afraid of forming my own opinions and expressing them. To not need constant approval or validation, and to be ok with being alone. To not be emotionally dependent on others. To decide what I want to eat, what I want to wear, what I believe, what I think in regards to things like sexuality and gender identity (both my own and as social issues), etc.
Here's a video that talks about caring what other people think, from someone who wasn't quite as broken as me, but still has some interesting thoughts.
One of the trends in the Western world is the individualization of society, where the individual is more important than the collective, at least to himself. Only in times of tragedy to people in the West come together as a community to support and care for each other, and there is a growing idealization of the East's more collectivist societies. Many young people feel a need to belong to something, to have a cause greater than themselves and to have a place where they belong.
There is a certain comfort to uniformity, to being accepted into a group, especially for people who have never had a stable, caring, nurturing environment. Young people from troubled backgrounds can be more easily convinced to turn to alternative subcultures for this comfort. A lot of them are disenfranchised with a society they feel doesn't provide enough community support as a whole, but they may also have severe emotional problems stemming from things like neglect and abuse
Maybe they're from broken families, or their parents were absentee parents and let the TV, the school system, the kid's friends, the internet or whoever raise them, maybe their parents were workaholics or just were poor and never even got to know their kids because they were always at work, or maybe they were on drugs or alcoholics and were never sober enough to form relationships, or maybe a parent was in jail. The parents might have had a mental illness that made them unfit to be a parent. Maybe the parents or other authority figures were abusive, and they feel like not only their parents let them down, but so did the society that didn't stop the abuse.
So they are sold this idea of a great society where they're going to be taken care of and part of a global "family", and they'll be cared for and loved and given attention and all the things they've been looking for their whole lives. When you're that broken, and something looks like the thing you need to fix you up, it is hard to question if the thing you're being sold is the real McCoy. You want so desperately to be accepted and loved that you're willing to do almost anything if you think it will fix you.
This isn't a problem exclusive to Islam, Charles Manson was able to exploit the same principle and get his girls to kill other people. It's psychopathic behavior. The people swept up in it are usually not psychopaths, including the ones that recruit others or commit crimes after accepting that this is what they've been looking for their whole lives; the leader or leaders is/are the only psychopath(s).
Those reasons were very important to my decision to convert to Islam. After my super-dysfunctional, criminally insane, abusive parents threw me out on the street when I was 18, I was a mess. I went from relationship to relationship looking for someone to give me the love and attention I'd wanted my whole life. Unfortunately, the kinds of people who want to be around someone that insecure are almost all people who want to prey on your vulnerability, so I kept being abused.
Honestly, if someone like Charles Manson had swept into my life at that time, I probably would have ended up following them. Not because I am a bad person who wants to harm others; that's not it at all. I was a broken person who was looking for stability and love, and if I thought I could get that from someone, I'd have done almost anything for them. I had no sense of personal identity, never having been given a chance to even question who I was or what I wanted as an individual, and was very open to suggestion.
I was socially retarded, not because there's something wrong with my brain, but because I was isolated from everyone. I did develop language abilities and to a lesser extent mathematics abilities (with some problems; I can't answer a question given to me verbally in writing and vice versa), so I do not appear feral, but in terms of self-identity and social interactions, I had the abilities of a small child. I was probably a bit of a language prodigy, and if I'd been allowed to grow up normally, I'd probably be doing something like being a playwright or a translator. I could read books before my 4th birthday, and for the rest of my childhood tested for reading comprehension skills several grades ahead of my actual grade.
But emotionally? Socially? I was willing to do or believe almost anything if I thought it would make someone, anyone, like me. As a child I had not had friends; my parents had kept me isolated most of the time, and when they weren't isolating me, I was so uncomfortable with others that I did not know how to communicate or behave well enough to have friends, so I ended up being left out of the other children's activities and spending all my time alone, trapped inside my own mind. I had no sense of self, I didn't know who I was or what I wanted or believed, and I didn't even really understand that I had the right to decide those things for myself. In the years since, I went through the stages of emotional development that you'd normally see in a small child, usually in a pretty jumbled way and not in the predictable, linear ways you'd see in a child.
The approval and "love" (which was always conditional) of another person was more important to me than my own beliefs. I converted to Islam because I thought that it would make people like me, even if it wasn't popular people. And for a while, it worked. Then as I emotionally matured, I started to see the dark side of it, that people wanted me to be the "perfect" Muslim woman, whatever they thought that meant. When I did not comply to their standards of acceptable self-expression, I was no longer welcome in their lives.
It's only now, over 8 years since my parents put me on the curb, that I can say that I'm actually starting to have the kinds of skills needed to cope in society, being able to think, act, and advocate for myself. To not be afraid of forming my own opinions and expressing them. To not need constant approval or validation, and to be ok with being alone. To not be emotionally dependent on others. To decide what I want to eat, what I want to wear, what I believe, what I think in regards to things like sexuality and gender identity (both my own and as social issues), etc.
Here's a video that talks about caring what other people think, from someone who wasn't quite as broken as me, but still has some interesting thoughts.
Psychic Phenomenon
Although I would like to say with conviction that I don't believe in anything supernatural, there is one thing in particular that I find difficult to understand, and that is my personal experiences with psychic phenomenon, so I would like to discuss my experiences here and see if anyone could give me feedback on what may actually be going on.
From time to time throughout my life, I have had psychic-seeming experiences where I have known something that it should not have been humanly possible to know. Some of these things I can explain to myself by saying that it's some sort of Derren Brown/Sherlock Holmes observation of something everyone COULD see, but doesn't, even if this involves something humans are not consciously aware of such as changes in hormone levels.
Examples of this category include correctly identifying the winner of each presidential campaign since 1992 months in advance, knowing the gender of unborn children, correctly spotting that a family member was having an affair, and knowing that an individual promoting the Muslim Student Association at my school was gay before being told that by my gay friend.
With the presidential campaigns, it is possible that I subconsciously picked up on something, such as charisma or confidence, that would lead others to vote for the individual, and extrapolated on that that the individual would win. With the babies, we do not yet know all the changes that are produced in a woman's body while pregnant, for example it was recently discovered that the fetus' blood mixes with the mother's, and it is possible that there is a pheromone or something that allows some minor percentage of the population to know the gender of the baby.
The moment I knew my aunt was having an affair was when my grandmother called my mother to berate my mother for being fat and to tell her that her sister had lost a lot of weight. I instantly knew she was having an affair, and then questioned what would make me say that, and realized that she'd been married for over 15 years and nothing special had happened recently in her marriage that she might want to get into shape for. A few weeks later she ran away with another man. Similarly, it is possible that I picked up on some cue imperceptible to the conscious mind from the young man at the MSA booth, perhaps a brief facial expression, that allowed me to identify him as gay.
Others could be explained as self-fulfilling prophesies, such as the time I had a strong conviction that the softball team I was playing on was going to win a game. Although I was a piss-poor player, I was the person who completed the action that won the game, and this was probably at least in part because of my confidence that my team was going to win.
Similar to this was my prediction to my father that if he enrolled me in a school for 9th grade, his mother would fall ill, there would be a large snow storm, and he would pull me out of the school midway through the term. His mother was in her late 80's, so her falling ill was not something that should have by itself been surprising, and would have likely happened in any given year. Large snow storms are not uncommon on the northern eastern seaboard of America, where I lived, so again, this would have been somewhat likely to have happened in any year.
By telling my father he would pull me out of the school, I set up the situation where there was an expectation that the teachers and principal would end up treating me unfairly, and a heightened awareness to the faults of people I knew were not good people. This probably also effected my behavior towards the school staff. which may have partially resulted in their poor behavior towards me.
However, some things continue to confuse me. When I was a young pre-teen, I was sexually abused. Following some instances of abuse, I experienced two phantom pregnancies. I had some of the physical symptoms of pregnancy, and as I stated earlier, I knew the genders of the babies. The first was a girl, and I decided to name her Judith. The second was a boy, and I named him Sylvanus. I sang to my phantom fetuses, and I had a very specific song that I sang, from the movie "The Prince of Egypt", about a river carrying them to safety. I mentally willed my children to go to France, where I have extended family, in the hopes that they would be able to live normal lives there.
This sort of semi-psychotic relationship with a non-existent child would not in itself be spectacular, and could easily be explained as a dissociative identity style invention of a fictional individual, had it not been for the fact that I went to the UK many years later and stayed with a French family with two children, named Judith and Sylvanus. I had not known this family, or the friends who had arranged for me to stay with them, at the time of the phantom pregnancies. Intrigued, a few hours after having met the children, I started humming the song I sang to my phantom babies. They both started to cry.
If I had only met a child named Judith, I would have been able to accept that although it is a somewhat uncommon name, it is popular enough that any two people could have separately come to the decision to name a child that. I could probably have even convinced myself that if it had been just Sylvanus. But to see both of them, as siblings, being on holiday from the same country I willed my children to, seems so astronomically improbable that I have trouble wrapping my head around it.
I do subscribe to the infinite multiverse theory, where every time a sub-atomic particle has a choice of behaving in one of two ways, a new universe branches off that was until that instant identical to the one it branched off from. And I do believe that in such an infinite universe no matter how improbable something seems, if there is any statistical probability of it happening, it must happen in some number of universes. And I know that it is an act of hubris to believe your improbable thing is an exception to that rule. But I still struggle to accept that this could explain something as personally profound as this.
This exact type of thing (babies switching wombs) is mentioned in Jewish literature. In the Midrash (basically the Jewish equivalent of the Muslim Hadith, but not legally binding; in general, halakhah cannot be derived from the Midrash), it says that Leah was pregnant with Joseph and Rachel was pregnant with Dinah. Leah knew that their husband Jacob was destined to have 12 sons. She had already borne him six sons, and his two slave-concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah, had born him 2 sons each, so she realized that if she bore him a seventh son her sister Rachel would not even have as many children as the slave women. Therefore, she prayed that the children would be switched, so she would give birth to Dinah and Rachel would give birth to Joseph. (BT Berakhot 60a; Tanhuma [ed. Buber], Vayeze 19.)
This exact type of thing (babies switching wombs) is mentioned in Jewish literature. In the Midrash (basically the Jewish equivalent of the Muslim Hadith, but not legally binding; in general, halakhah cannot be derived from the Midrash), it says that Leah was pregnant with Joseph and Rachel was pregnant with Dinah. Leah knew that their husband Jacob was destined to have 12 sons. She had already borne him six sons, and his two slave-concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah, had born him 2 sons each, so she realized that if she bore him a seventh son her sister Rachel would not even have as many children as the slave women. Therefore, she prayed that the children would be switched, so she would give birth to Dinah and Rachel would give birth to Joseph. (BT Berakhot 60a; Tanhuma [ed. Buber], Vayeze 19.)
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Moral People Defending Immoral Things
"With or without [religion] you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." --Steven Weinberg
One of the most popular quotes on morality, this quote is widely publicized and criticized, and shows how polarizing the subject of religion and its effect on morality can be. We know that, statistically speaking, religious people are in jail for crimes at a rate that is orders of magnitude higher than non-religious people, and that the more religious the person claims to be, the more heinous their crimes. It would seem from the data that religious people are more likely to be immoral. This could be because the number of religious people is, globally speaking, greater than the number of non-religious people, but even in countries where this is not true, the trends stay the same.
But why would it be that a religious person might be more likely to defend or do something something that is evil? Before I give my answer to that question, allow me to take you through a thought experiment.
Let's say you're a security guard on the job. You are holding a taser. You see two men running towards you. The man closest to you is clearly trying to evade the person pursuing him, who is firing a gun at him. Which of the men do you fire the taser at (let's assume you're a good shot and both men are in range), the man who is clearly running for his life, or the man who is shooting at him? Now suppose that the man with the gun is a uniformed police officer.
Nothing changed between the two scenarios besides the clothing the person with the gun was wearing, and yet it completely reverses your actions, because you instinctively trust that the police officer, an authority figure, is shooting because it is necessary. If you apply a moment's thought to this, you realize it is not always the case and you adjust your answer, but your instinct tells you to trust the authority figure.
The Milgram Experiment, although later charged with being unethical, showed that the majority of people will comply with what an authority figure says, even though they have reservations and are distressed by the harm they are doing. The Milgram Experiment did not test the role of religiosity in susceptibility to obeying orders, and this is a hotly debated topic.
It is impossible to repeat the Milgram Experiment to discover the effect of religiosity on the experiment because the experiment is unethical and it is too well known to gauge the accuracy of any results. After learning the true nature of the experiment, even the original participants changed their behaviors, so it would be impossible to separate the effect of religiosity and the effect of even a passing or unconscious knowledge of the true nature of the experiment.
But in the above thought experiment, it is possible to see the same effect on a smaller scale. The instinct to trust an authority figure overrides your conscious brain and your morality. So perhaps the reason a religious person might be more open to doing something immoral has to do with their belief that an authority figure (such as God, a self-styled prophet, or a cult leader) wants them to do what they did. If so, this is not an aberration of normal human behavior, merely an example of why we should not put anyone in a position of supreme authority, no matter what they claim their credentials or motives to be.
This can also explain why a good person, who would otherwise understand and accept that what is being discussed is wrong, would support, condone, or do a demonstrably harmful thing. For example, a person may believe that genocide is wrong, but will claim that genocide committed by a prophet or guru of their faith is not wrong because he had reasons for doing it. When pressed, sometimes they will say that they do not know the reason, or sometimes they will give a historically unsound or apologetic explanation, but they believe that there was a good reason. This is not because they think that genocide is moral; they believe that the authority figure who committed the genocide was moral, and therefore the action was justified, even if they do not know why.
It is very hard to know how to effectively combat this type of thinking. In doing so you will invariably call into question whether the authority figure is always inherently moral, and when people feel their beliefs are being challenged most people react defensively and become more determined that their beliefs are correct. Perhaps an appeal to the person's own morality and an affirmation of the notion that they can make correct moral choices without relying on an authority figure may be helpful. The person must themselves question the morality of the authority figure if they are ever to reject the actions of the authority figure as immoral.
One of the most popular quotes on morality, this quote is widely publicized and criticized, and shows how polarizing the subject of religion and its effect on morality can be. We know that, statistically speaking, religious people are in jail for crimes at a rate that is orders of magnitude higher than non-religious people, and that the more religious the person claims to be, the more heinous their crimes. It would seem from the data that religious people are more likely to be immoral. This could be because the number of religious people is, globally speaking, greater than the number of non-religious people, but even in countries where this is not true, the trends stay the same.
But why would it be that a religious person might be more likely to defend or do something something that is evil? Before I give my answer to that question, allow me to take you through a thought experiment.
Let's say you're a security guard on the job. You are holding a taser. You see two men running towards you. The man closest to you is clearly trying to evade the person pursuing him, who is firing a gun at him. Which of the men do you fire the taser at (let's assume you're a good shot and both men are in range), the man who is clearly running for his life, or the man who is shooting at him? Now suppose that the man with the gun is a uniformed police officer.
Nothing changed between the two scenarios besides the clothing the person with the gun was wearing, and yet it completely reverses your actions, because you instinctively trust that the police officer, an authority figure, is shooting because it is necessary. If you apply a moment's thought to this, you realize it is not always the case and you adjust your answer, but your instinct tells you to trust the authority figure.
The Milgram Experiment, although later charged with being unethical, showed that the majority of people will comply with what an authority figure says, even though they have reservations and are distressed by the harm they are doing. The Milgram Experiment did not test the role of religiosity in susceptibility to obeying orders, and this is a hotly debated topic.
It is impossible to repeat the Milgram Experiment to discover the effect of religiosity on the experiment because the experiment is unethical and it is too well known to gauge the accuracy of any results. After learning the true nature of the experiment, even the original participants changed their behaviors, so it would be impossible to separate the effect of religiosity and the effect of even a passing or unconscious knowledge of the true nature of the experiment.
But in the above thought experiment, it is possible to see the same effect on a smaller scale. The instinct to trust an authority figure overrides your conscious brain and your morality. So perhaps the reason a religious person might be more open to doing something immoral has to do with their belief that an authority figure (such as God, a self-styled prophet, or a cult leader) wants them to do what they did. If so, this is not an aberration of normal human behavior, merely an example of why we should not put anyone in a position of supreme authority, no matter what they claim their credentials or motives to be.
This can also explain why a good person, who would otherwise understand and accept that what is being discussed is wrong, would support, condone, or do a demonstrably harmful thing. For example, a person may believe that genocide is wrong, but will claim that genocide committed by a prophet or guru of their faith is not wrong because he had reasons for doing it. When pressed, sometimes they will say that they do not know the reason, or sometimes they will give a historically unsound or apologetic explanation, but they believe that there was a good reason. This is not because they think that genocide is moral; they believe that the authority figure who committed the genocide was moral, and therefore the action was justified, even if they do not know why.
It is very hard to know how to effectively combat this type of thinking. In doing so you will invariably call into question whether the authority figure is always inherently moral, and when people feel their beliefs are being challenged most people react defensively and become more determined that their beliefs are correct. Perhaps an appeal to the person's own morality and an affirmation of the notion that they can make correct moral choices without relying on an authority figure may be helpful. The person must themselves question the morality of the authority figure if they are ever to reject the actions of the authority figure as immoral.
Some day, we may all understand the message of the not-quite-divine not-quite-messiah Brian.
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