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.
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