More on Beliefs

It is a simple concept and so many seem to unable to wrap their minds around it. Human beings deserve a certain basic level of dignity and respect. Beliefs have no feelings and, in the public marketplace of ideas, they are not automatically entitled to respect. Ideas/beliefs may accrue respect as evidence mounts showing them to be good ideas. However, at all times, ideas and beliefs are, and rightly should be, subject to criticism and questioning. I would argue it is more than a point, it is the point.

It is not even that subtle of an argument. In most situations, when encountering a human being, assume they are deserving of basic kindness. If their are ideas are hateful or stupid, feel free to ignore those ideas or challenge them as conditions permit. While challenging ideas, make every reasonable effort to maintain the previously mentioned human dignity. If your efforts fall upon deaf ears remove yourself from that person's company. This should take care of 99.9% of the situations one usually encounters.

Wash, Rinse, repeat.

Check this article:
Sour puss curmudgeon wants to say something relevant...

My response:
Frankly my take on Mr. Giuliani is, he and his antiquated arguments are all but irrelevant at this point. That said, some of his points though crude or insensitive are not entirely without merit. His problem is, largely because he's an ideologue, he comes from an angry moralist position and he does not advance thoughtful solutions. He wants to make it very simple so we can all put it in a box and go on our way.

Here is another consideration that may be more informative. What if he and his ideas are not the biggest problem?

I largely align with Progressives. However, the sad truth is, many of the very people I consider to be "on my team" are engaged in the same kind of bumperstickerization of the issues. (Yup, I made up that word and I really like it.) They are, to a sobering degree, like Giuliani and his ilk. I know what you are thinking. He cant mean that. Oh, but I do, I really do. Far too many Progressives want to make it all so simple. On one hand we rightly want to deconstruct the rhetoric of the Conservatives but do not especially want to question the prepackaged answers of other liberals. Because when one is on the side of tolerance and puppies and rainbows, everything that comes out of ones mouth must smell like roses. Well, news flash. Being liberal does not exempt us from thinking and questioning. It is way too simple to say the other guys are wrong. Progressives seem to have the idea that the problem with Conservatives is: they are hateful, they are racist, they are intolerant, they are wrong-headed. While it is true that some of these things apply to some conservatives, they are not the really bad bits. Huh? Sure those are not endearing positions. However, even the fraction of Conservatives who are racist, hateful, intolerant, or wrong-headed can change. They can become better versions of themselves.

It turns out, the worst thing about the Conservative arguments is exactly the same as the worst thing about the Progressive arguments. And what is that, pray tell? The idea that the arguments should not be questioned. Go ahead, dwell on that a moment. It's worth your time. The pathway that leads people (on either side) to become better versions of themselves always starts with questioning. And what does it end with? If you do it right, it does not end. Questions lead to answers which, in turn, lead to more questions and so on. Wash, rinse, repeat. Questions, answers, more questions.

So, yes. People like Mr. Giuliani do not necessarily bring out our best nature but it does not mean they are automatically wrong about everything. And, it is our job to put forth our best nature. This would include, but not be limited to, keeping an open mind when listening to those with whom we disagree and continuing to question. Everything. Question everything. Really, everything.

Prejudice, Race, and Science

I thought if might be helpful to provide a link for those who have not had occasion to read as much about the so-called "race" issue (or as I prefer, the prejudice issue). According to the scholar Duana Fullwilley and most others in the field of genetics research, "There is no genetic basis for race.”

To put it another way, the ideas we hold about race are human inventions. We made this up to explain things as best we could with scant knowledge. This can be a bit tricky to wrap ones head around as most of us have grown up in a society that has programmed us to believe the exact opposite.

To be clear, nobody in their right mind is denying the existence of prejudice or bad behavior based on the color of a person's skin. Also, no scientist denies cultural differences. What the scientists are telling us is, there are groups of people whose ancestors came primarily from certain areas but this does not make them a distinct group on a genetic level. Our differences merely reflect the fact that people adapted to places with differing conditions, such as levels of solar radiation. Obviously the people whose ancestors came from very sunny places near the equator needed more melanin to protect their skin from an over abundance of sunlight. Also, people in the far north would begin to lack vitamin D if they failed to adapt to the lower light conditions in their region.

For those who are new to this line of thinking, all this may sound like a mere technicality. Nothing could be further from the truth. The evidence now clearly shows there is no foundation to  automatically attribute either positive or negative social traits to groups of people (we once called races of people). Therefore differences in skin color, hair texture, etc. have no deeper meaning. The old expression people's color is only skin deep, turns out to be exactly right.

The implications of this information are huge and will not be absorbed by the general public for some time. However, I feel it is incumbent upon those who do understand, to plant the seeds of this knowledge in a compassionate way. One thing that will help move the change forward is to leave the old language behind. In short, one can’t easily “play the race card” (for good or ill) when people understand there is no race card. I understand this will not be easy. Everywhere we look the old ideas and the old language persist. Often even educated people who really should know better are mired in old habits. My assertion is, we should derive hope from the fact that in my lifetime social convention has changed dramatically. In my youth it was common for many Americans to  openly use slurs against various groups with impunity. We have not made those words disappear but now there is often a social cost to such language. Also, whether it was a result of, or coincidental with, the advancement of civil rights may be debatable but the change is undeniable. 

For myself, I will talk about the struggle. I will talk about tolerance. I will talk about justice. But when I do, I will use terms like prejudice and tolerance, equality and inequality. For me it is not merely semantics. It is not about being a liberal or progressive. These terms are based upon a clearer view of the world made possible by the scholarship of our best and brightest. Furthermore, using these terms will make it more difficult to think of the world in terms of us and them. In the end, there is only us.  The evidence points clearly in one direction. There is only the human race and its members. Each one of those humans is capable of being more or less tolerant, more or less kind, more or less inclusive.

Abused by Race

It might be good to have a look at this first:
The Enlightenment’s ‘Race’ Problem, and Ours

I have been championing this idea for quite awhile now. My efforts are met with a range of responses from bemused stares to outright hostility toward the idea (and occasionally toward me). It seems clear that every time scientists look for "race", they don't find it. There are a number of limitations that inhibit our ability to absorb this fact. One is so obvious that it might be too easily dismissed. We are quite at the mercy of our limited sensory perceptions and the visible differences between humans (skin, hair, facial features, etc.) are very compelling. This tends to ensnare our brains in outmoded thinking. 

The other major difficulty we encounter is a bit more subtle. It relys upon a basic understanding of human psychology/motivation. It is clear to those who look at such things, that historically, one key to survival in humans was and remains our ability and inclination to detect and focus on difference. This includes novelty in our environment as well as our ability to detect "the other". That is to say, those not of our group. When we consider this ability/compulsion, we are right to ask, is it adaptive for survival or an ancient trait that can run amok? In my view, both is the correct answer. 

We all carry the seeds that can produce behaviors we label, "prejudice". We all carry the seeds that can produce behaviors we call "racism". We are all subject to a sense of our own superiority and the resulting behaviors that lead us to act dismissively towards another person or group. Further, I would assert, the single greatest obstacle to our improvement is our seeming inability to honestly confront ourselves. Why? A quirk of human behavior ensures that we most often reserve terms like racism and prejudice for use as verbal bats with which we can strike others for their presumed morally deficient behavior. Not surprisingly, we feel quite uncomfortable when presented with the idea that those same "low urges" reside in us as well. To be fair, many of us have reasoned our way through to a much better place in terms of expressing (or avoiding the expression of) these baser urges. I suggest it is also true that our moral evolution is fragile and requires regular maintenence.

There is, at minimum, one more constraint on reaching a more perfect assessment of ourselves. This requires a very brief (I promise) bit of history. As a citizen enmeshed in the milieu of American culture in the twenty first century, one might be forgiven for inferring that the "victims" of racism/predudice/etc. are people "of color". For those so deluded, allow me to suggest reading some history. One would be hard pressed to explain to an Irish immigrant to America during the last bit of the nineteenth century that she could not possibly be an object of prejudice due to her pale skin color. Likewise, one would also find frustration explaining to an African tribesperson residing in one area of that continent that she could not be a victim of prejudice or hatred by a tribesperson living in an adjacent area, because the persons inflicting injury were of similar skin tone to hers. Try telling Chinese people that Japanese people could never have treated them in a barbaric manner because, after all, the Japanese are also Asian. In short, I would suggest that there is no place one could visit on planet earth where there are no abusers nor victims. If this behavior is a condition of "race", it would be the "human race".

With the history out of the way, I feel compelled to give some thought to the practicalities of our current circumstances. In all our "philosophizing" it is important to keep sight of the fact that many injustices and injuries have been done and continue to be done. No person in his right mind denies that acts ranging from rude to vile and heinous are part of our history and our present. With that said, I would assert it is always better to call a thing what it truly is and face it in the most rational way possible. Why is the name so important? There is a longer answer but, for this moment, suffice to say that if we start with an incorrect premise our efforts to change/solve/better our position is compromised from the start. Also, if I suggested that a person in the abuser "role" had a stake in keeping the status quo, most would consider it a statement of the obvious. However, if I suggested the person in the vicitm role also has a stake in the status quo, that is judged as tantamount to siding with the abuser. I want to suggest this is not the case. To be clear, I do not imagine the victim is hoping for their pain, humiliation, etc. to continue. I am only postulating their resistance to changing the "roles" of the participants and therefore the "rules" of the game. Why?

Imagine if you were totally unfamiliar with sexual assault and the related wisdom that is now commonly understood from listening to our news outlets. Now imagine if I told you that after a sexual assault, a woman often questions her own behavior and blames herself in some way or begins experience a shattered self-worth, as though she deserved what happened to her.  Many of us would intuitively grasp this type of reaction. Why? Almost all of us have found ourselves assuming blame for some random tragedy that has befallen us. We ping pong back and forth in our minds. One minute we are convinced that we are blameless and a bad thing simply happened to us. The next moment we are equally convinced that if we had just done something different we could have or should have sidestepped the event. When something bad happens, we've all that the feeling that somehow this has happened to us because we were not good enough, smart enough, quick enough, strong enough. Also, if it were not sufficient to blame ourselves, we often worry that others at looking at us with blame in their eyes. We just "know" what they are thinking. "How could you let that happen? Are you not good enough, smart enough, strong enough to have prevented this?" In short order, we find ourselves on a path from a loss of self-respect to an imagined loss of communal respect. In other words, the victim blames himself and it is mentally consistent to believe that others are doing the same. Any psychologist will attest that this can easily become a viscious downward spiral of self-doubt, blame, depression, and worse.

It is my assertion that similar thought processes take place in persons abused by, what we have in the past termed, racism and prejudice? Further, given the inherent nature of human psychology, the anger and outrage that naturally results from being abused, appears justifiable only if everyone remains in his "role". From the perspective of the victim- I need to see myself as a victim to be outraged by my victimization. My anger seems internally jusitifiable only so long as my victimizer also remains in his "role". 

Note: Referring to hurtful hateful actions as racism, prejudice, or something else entirely does not excuse bad behavior. A change in terminology will not erase the resultant physical/mental scars of bad treatment. The point here is simply getting our terms and motivations assigned properly, such that we can look for an appropriate way forward.

We are all potentially the abused and the abuser. If we feel sobered and/or horrified by this realization, it's because we should. 

*The journey of a thousand miles does not begin with the first step. 

*It begins by knowing where you are.