Political issues – Page 27

The ability (and inability) to judge character

You would think that after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution as social beings, we humans would be pretty good at judging the character and intentions of other humans. The sociobiologist E.O. Wilson has written, for example, that we humans constantly study other humans and that this explains our insatiable demand for stories, or why we love to gossip. Even our pets are very good at perceiving our intentions.

And yet a sizable chunk of the American population is dangerously bad at judging character. Not only that, this sizable chunk of the population all too often sees deranged and narcissistic people as political and religious leaders and sends them money by the millions and hundreds of millions of dollars. This is one of the most frightening and unpredictable facts of American politics. I am not terribly concerned about sexual peccadillos, except for the extreme hypocrisy of all-too-many preachers. Private sexual peccadillos don’t get us into wars or prey on the poor so that preachers and millionaires can ride around in jets and avoid paying taxes.

Can the ability to judge character be tested? Are there ways of impartially establishing who is good at judging character and who is not?

As early as 1929, MacMillan published Studies in the Nature of Character: General methods and Results by some academics from Columbia University. Since then, a good bit of research has been published on how good we are (or are not) at judging the character of others. How is this research done?

The basic method, as far as I can tell from my own admittedly limited research, is to go to a group of people who know each other and to ask those people to predict how others will perform on “personal inventory” tests. There are many such personality tests that clinicians use, for example the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Then you compare people’s predictions with other people’s actual performance on the tests and look for statistically significant correlations.

What are some of the factors that correlate with being a good judge, or a poor judge, of character? Here are some of the candidates, with a rough description of what researchers have found:

• Age: Though children improve in their ability to judge character between the ages of 3 and 14, there is no evidence that older people get better at judging character.

• Sex: There no convincing evidence that men or women are better at judging character.

• Family background: This area has not been well studied, but so far there is no evidence that family background matters much.

• Intelligence: Now we’re getting somewhere. Smart people are indeed better at judging the character of others. Smart people also, unsurprisingly, are better at judging the intelligence of others.

• Training in psychology: This is murky, but it may well be true that trained psychologists are no better than the rest of us at judging character.

• Sensitivity and artistic ability: There is pretty good evidence that artistic and sensitive people are better judges of character. People with literary abilities may be particularly good at judging character.

• Emotional stability: The evidence here is scant, though it is pretty clear that people who are excessively anxious, troubled by obsessions, etc., are poorer judges of character.

• Social skill and popularity: Though good social skills seem to help people judge character, those who are the best judges of character tend to be capable of a kind of scientific social detachment. For example, physicists may be better judges of character than psychologists. Poor judges of character are more socially oriented than better judges. It may follow (though I did not find any specific research) that introverts are better judges of character than extraverts.

And finally:

• Good character: People of good character are probably better equipped to judge the character of others. It’s important to keep in mind a famous statement by Gordon Allport:

As a rule, people cannot comprehend others who are more complex and subtle than they. The single-track mind has little feeling for the conflicts of a versatile mind. People who prefer simplicity of design and have no taste for the complex in their aesthetic judgments are not as good judges as those with a more complex cognitive style and tastes.

Unfortunately I could not easily find any research that looked for correlations between religiosity and the ability to judge character. But insofar as I myself am able to judge the character of others (feel free to judge me!), I would have to say that evangelical, salvation-oriented religious types are among the very worst judges of character. As for why people send millions of dollars to preachers like Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart, it helps to remember that half the population have IQs of under 100 and live pretty hard lives. Getting money and votes out of people who are not so smart and not doing very well is now a think-tank science — the smart studying the not-so-smart so as to take political and economic advantage of them. Unfortunately, that may be the No. 1 key to American politics at present.

A White House Christmas card

It would appear that being a county chair for the President’s party gets you a White House Christmas card. It will make a nice trophy. It’s funny, but some people are selling them on eBay. There’s no way I’d do that.

The just world hypothesis

The Yoda fountain in the Presidio of San Francisco, a place that I used to frequently visit

When you’re writing a novel, you never know what line of research you might get pulled into. Writing Oratorio in Ursa Major required that I think a great deal about justice. I’ve posted previously on this subject in “A little moral reasoning,” about Cecil the lion, and “Should we tolerate the intolerant.” One of the questions that interests me is why we tend to be so bad at moral reasoning and how much harm that does in the world.

Just recently at a meeting of the Walnut Cove town board, I heard a bitter old fundamentalist preacher haranguing the board about its prayer policy, saying that atheists have no moral foundation. How strange, to think that a species that can produce a Mozart or an Einstein is unable to grapple with the principles of moral philosophy without referring to ossified old texts.

Just a couple of weeks ago, there were stories in the media about research (also here) showing that the children of religious families are meaner and less altruistic than the children of non-religious families. This obviously is the opposite of what religionists would have us believe.

But religion certainly is not the only factor that distorts thinking. The just world hypothesis is another big one. It might be better to call it the just world fallacy.

It was the social psychologist Melvin J. Lerner who came up with the term, based on research going back to the 1960s. It boils down to a cognitive bias toward thinking that people deserve what they get and get what they deserve. It is particularly damaging to the social fabric when people believe that some people deserve misfortune because they somehow brought it on themselves.

For example, the Republican Party — and many religious people — believe that poor people are poor because they’re lazy, or there’s something wrong with their culture. The flip side of that is believing that rich people possess some kind of virtue that makes them deserve to be rich.

The writer Barbara Ehrenreich has written some popular books that touch on the just world fallacy — for example, Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America.

In a YouTube video of a reading she gave at the Harvard book store, she talks about how preachers of prosperity doctrine such as Joel Osteen teach their poor followers mantras such as, “I admire rich people, I bless rich people, I love rich people, and I am going to be one, too.” According to this theology, “God wants to prosper you.”

It follows that, if you’re poor, it’s your own fault. You’re crossways with God. And, if you’re rich, you’ve pleased God and God is “prospering” you. Many rich people seem to believe that. Lots of essays and op-eds have been written about rich people strutting as though they’re the masters of the universe, automatically deserving of our deference and respect.

But the just world fallacy is not by any means limited to Republicans and religious charlatans such as Joel Osteen. New Age types buy into it, too. Having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for years, this type of magical thinking is everywhere: “Do what you love, and the money will come … You control your destiny.” Think of self-help books such as, How to Get the Love You Want in 48 Hours. Everywhere there is the idea that you always get what you attract to yourself, that your thoughts and attitude have some sort of magical power to reshape the universe according to your desire. To be “negative” is to open the door to the devil. We’re told to avoid “negative” people, because their attitude is holding them back, and it’s contagious.

The concept of karma, actually, in Buddhism and Hinduism is a codification of the just world hypothesis. It helps sustain the Indian caste system.

I don’t know about you, but I hate seeing people get what they don’t deserve when so many people don’t get what they do deserve. Just-world doctrine would say that my attitude must be condemned as envy. Lerner’s big concern about the just world hypothesis is that it blinds us to the real sources of inequality and injustice and stands in our way of being motivated to do what we can to achieve greater justice.

It happens that John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice, has a good bit to say about envy. He acknowledges, of course, that envy in many circumstances can be toxic to the social environment. But Rawls describes a type of envy that he calls justifiable envy — envy of goods that some people acquire (and that others are deprived of) because of unjust or unequal social arrangements:

Yet sometimes the circumstances evoking envy are so compelling that given human beings as they are no one can reasonably be asked to overcome his rancorous feelings. A person’s lesser position as measured by the index of objective primary goods may be so great as to wound his self-respect; and given his situation, we may sympathize with his sense of loss. Indeed, we can resent being made envious, for society may permit such large disparities in these goods that under existing social conditions these differences cannot help but cause a loss of self-esteem. For those suffering this hurt, envious feelings are not irrational; the satisfaction of their rancor would make them better off.

Many social movements including the Civil Rights movement have been at least partly driven by justifiable envy for undeserved goods and privileges that some have and others don’t have (and — admit it — can’t get no matter how hard they try). And note Rawls’ references to self-respect and self-esteem. Not only are we blind to ways in which people are deprived of goods and privileges that others take for granted, we also put down the have-nots. We believe in the inferiority of the have-nots and expect them to believe in their own inferiority. They are children of a lesser God, creatures of a separate (and not equal) moral universe. Some will be crushed; it’s just too much for them. Among the stronger, sooner or later, rebellion is guaranteed, even if it’s a lonely rebellion of one.

In the world as it really is, most of us will never be rich. Sometimes what goes around does not come around. Sometimes what comes around is not what is fair and just. This is one reason we love stories — stories are a compensation for an unjust world. Stories (this is especially true of science fiction) are a vehicle for trying out ideas about how things might be otherwise.

In fiction and in stories, the just world hypothesis usually applies. In the end, protagonists get their heart’s desire, but not until they have striven and suffered to get it — not until they deserve it or have defeated the forces that stood in their way. And at the end of the story, bad actors get the punishment they deserve. I realize that there are dissident or experimental forms of fiction in which the just world hypothesis does not apply, but in “classical” form storytelling, the just world hypothesis applies. The justice we find in stories serves as an escape from, and a compensation for, our inability to write the story of our own lives however we please. Yoda was right about the Force, but only because Yoda lives in a story.

There is a substantial body of academic research and literature on justice and the social psychology of justice. Lerner’s books, for reasons I have not been able to figure out, are very expensive. As far as I can tell, though, this material is scattered and is often behind paywalls. Though Barbara Ehrenreich’s books have helped bring the just-world fallacy to our attention, I’m afraid the world is still waiting for a popular book that pulls all this research together and shows how it affects our world.

An environmental victory

This is another of my photo essays on grassroots environmental activism.

For three and a half years, ever since a Tea Party takeover of the legislature has tried to fast-track fracking and off-shore oil drilling into North Carolina, a tenacious little organization called No Fracking in Stokes has fought to keep fracking out of Stokes County. To corporations and urban outsiders, Stokes County looks like a poor county with a backward population that would be just perfect for an environmental sacrifice zone — a good place for fracking, toxic waste dumps, and stuff that nobody else will put up with.

Those of us who actually live here beg to differ. To us, Stokes County is a place of unspoiled Vermont-like beauty in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We have a river (the Dan River), our own mountain range (the Saura range), and the most popular state park in North Carolina (Hanging Rock State Park). Our economic roots are agriculture and tourism. The old cash crop of tobacco no longer brings in much money here. Manufacturing is long gone. We desperately need to revive our economy with forms of economic development that take advantage of, rather than ruin, our rural landscape and way of life.

Last night, the all-Republican board of county commissioners unanimously approved a three-year moratorium on fracking in Stokes County. This is the strongest action against fracking that the board can take under North Carolina law, because the pro-fracking legislature has done everything possible to tie the hands of, and to intimidate, local governments. This was a conservative county board telling its own party in the state capital to keep its money-grubbing hands off our county.

Though this issue has certainly caused turmoil in Stokes County these past three years, in the end the fracking issue has united this county as never before. You haven’t lived until you’ve witnessed a room full of people of all political stripes, including left-wing liberals like me, not to mention a large turnout from the African-American community, giving a standing ovation to a Republican board.

At the local level, the system still works.

Should we tolerate the intolerant? (updated)

Kim Davis, an elected county clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky, according to news reports, is continuing to deny marriage licenses today, despite an order by the U.S. Supreme Court that she cannot refuse to do so.

She believes that she is defending her religious liberty and that her religious liberty trumps not only the law, but also the rights of the people in Rowan County, Kentucky, to acquire marriage licenses in accord with the law and their own religious beliefs. “This searing act of validation would forever echo in her conscience,” her lawyers told the Supreme Court. According to the New York Times, she is in her office this morning with the door and blinds closed.

First of all, let’s pull away the mask. Anyone who believes that Ms. Davis’ conscience is kind and conscientious is greatly deceived. She is a hateful, hypocritical (married four times) and intolerant person. She is being used by, and financed by, other hateful and intolerant people for political purposes. After this is resolved, keep an eye on what she does. Michael Savage predicts that she will become well-off and popular on the right-wing lecture circuit.

For the rest of us, she presents a problem that goes beyond the law. The law is clear. But the attitude that truly conscientious people should take toward the hatreds and intolerant mischief of people like Kim Davis is not so clear.

In a post a few weeks ago, in the matter of Cecil the lion, I mentioned John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, which for decades has been the leading text in the field of moral philosophy. Rawls’ 500-page book includes a section titled “Toleration of the Intolerant.”

“Some political parties in democratic states,” Rawls writes, “hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have the power.” Check. We’ve got that — a Republican party, allied with the Christian right, that is fanatical about the privileges and liberties of the privileged but determined to keep down anyone who would challenge or dilute the privileges of the privileged.

Rawls writes, “Now, to be sure, an intolerant man will say that he acts in good faith and that he does not ask anything for himself that he denies to others. His view, let us suppose, is that he is acting on the principle that God is to be obeyed and the truth accepted by all. This principle is perfectly general and by acting on it he is not making an exception in his own case. As he sees the matter, he is following the correct principle which others reject.”

And yet: “Each person must insist upon an equal right to decide what his religious objections are. He cannot give up this right to another person or institutional authority…. From the fact that God’s intention is to be complied with, it does not follow that any person or institution has the authority to interfere with another’s interpretation of his religious obligations. This religious principle justifies no one in demanding in law or politics a greater liberty for himself….”

In other words, Kim Davis is claiming the right not only to deny people marriage licenses, but also the right to be a religious dictator for the people in her county.

Rawls again:

“Rather, since a just constitution exists, all citizens have a natural duty of justice to uphold it. We are not released from this duty whenever others are disposed to act unjustly…. Knowing the inherent stability of a just constitution, members of a well-ordered society have the confidence to limit the freedom of the intolerant only in the special cases when it is necessary for preserving equal liberty itself.”

I have put the last sentence above in italics because I believe that, setting aside matters of law, that is the moral principle behind the Supreme Court’s ruling — that denying this liberty to Kim Davis is necessary to protect the equal liberty of others.

“The conclusion, then,” writes Rawls, “is that while an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and within reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger…. The liberties of some are not suppressed simply to make possible a greater liberty for others. Justice forbids this sort of reasoning in connection with liberty…. It is the liberty of the intolerant which is to be limited, and this is done for the sake of equal liberty under a just constitution….”

Rawls was writing in 1971, though his book was revised in 1990. Rawls died in 2002. Religionists imagine that no moral framework exists outside religious authority and ancient texts. But most religionists would not know a moral framework even if a modern moral framework saved them from stoning or being burned to death for their own Old Testament crimes.

One of the gross moral flaws and limitations of religions such as Christianity is that they contain no principle for deciding between competing claims other than, ultimately, “I am right and you are wrong, on the authority of the texts.” To make this situation even worse, sects and individuals disagree on the interpretation of the texts, and on what to conveniently ignore in the texts and what to emphasize. They claim liberty for their own arbitrary choices and the end of a stick for everyone else.

As for Kim Davis, I say that she is a common sort — a hateful and vindictive person hiding behind religion. I also say that one of the dangers of religion, and of the authority-loving people who are drawn to it, is that religion tends to produce not good people (though certainly some religious people happen to be good people, not necessarily on account of religion but often in spite of it), but rather that religion tends to produce minds incapable of moral reasoning. Think of Abraham, who was ready to kill his own son because God told him to. As far as I know, the Bible story of Abraham and Isaac is still taught to children to instill the desired concept of unquestioning obedience to authority, and faith.

Take your place, Kim Davis, among the vilest moral imbeciles in American history.

UPDATE

According to news reports today (Sept. 3), a federal judge has ordered Kim Davis to be sent to jail until she complies with the order to issue marriage licenses. While she is in jail, a county judge will issue marriage licenses.

There is an interesting quote in the New York Times story:

“They’re taking rights away from Christians,” Danny Kinder, a 73-year-old retiree from Morehead, said of the courts. “They’ve overstepped their bounds.”

Dear clueless, deranged, and insufferable Christians: You are overstepping your bounds. Your rights to discriminate end where other people’s legal and religious rights begin.

A little moral reasoning

Photo by Wildlife Conservation Unit

As the outrage swelled around the cruel and meaningless death of Cecil the lion, the memes intended to shame people started showing up on Facebook. The Black Lives Matter movement, anti-abortionists, veterans — everybody got in on the memes and op-eds. The theme was always the same: What is wrong with you that you show more concern over one dead lion than [insert cause here].

On Facebook and in letters to editors, I often am shocked by people’s apparent inability to handle even basic moral reasoning and by their inability to detect fallacy.

As for those of us who felt rage over the killing of Cecil, are we so small and limited in the range of our moral concerns that we can be concerned about only one thing at a time? Can we not be concerned about both Cecil and about veterans who are going without medical care? Is it written somewhere that concern for the welfare of animals must somehow be deferred until perfect justice for all human beings is achieved? Who has the right to try to shame us for our lesser concerns while claiming — narcissistically, I would say — that their cause trumps all other causes? Instead, why don’t we divvy up all the deserving causes and each of us choose the causes we’ll focus on according to our own experiences and passions?

I prefer the term moral philosophy, though one can also call it ethics. Moral philosophy has changed a great deal over the centuries as our understanding of justice has changed and evolved to become more inclusive. Probably the most prominent text at present in the field of moral philosophy is John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. The book is a very demanding read, but it’s well worth it.

There is a preacher in this county who constantly writes letters to the editor scolding those of us who don’t share his black and white, Augustinian, hell fire and damnation notions of morality. In a letter just last week in which he raged against marriage equality, he wrote: “If truth can change, it’s lie — it’s false!”

Horse shit. King Solomon had 700 wives. David had eight. “One man one woman” actually was a pagan innovation and did not originate with Abrahamic religions such as Christianity. Christianity picked it up from the pagan Romans. So what changed? If you pointed out to this local preacher these small factoids from the Bible he thumps to assert that he is always right, his authoritarian mind simply would not be able to see a contradiction. Cognitive dissonance would shut him down. He sees moral reasoning as a slippery slope to hell and instead clings to his blacks and whites.

Is the life of one lion worth more when there aren’t many lions left, as opposed to the time when the African jungles were full of lions? Does it matter how and why a lion dies? Are the lives of human beings worth less when there are 7 billion of us rather than 300 million? Does it matter how and why human beings die? Is the life of an obnoxious and cruel dentist from Minnesota worth less than the life of a Princess Diana? Are the lives of any two human beings worth more than the lives of the last two lions on earth? Would the world be a better place if the life of Cecil the lion could be exchanged for that damned dentist?

I’m not necessarily taking a position on any of these things. I’m just saying that they’re worth thinking about. And I refuse to be shamed by those who seem to think that it’s shameful to care about animals before humanity’s problems are all solved. If that were the case, neither our wild animals nor the billions of animals kept on factory farms will have a chance, ever.

Faces of the First Amendment

My camera is one of the most important political tools I have. Whether it’s a political campaign or organizing for environmental groups, photos are important, especially on social media.

I find photos of public meetings strangely moving. Sometimes they capture the spirit of a Rockwell painting. I’m thinking, of course, of Rockwell’s “The Four Freedoms.” Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are the bedrock of our American democracy.

These photos were taken at a commissioners’ meeting last night. A coalition of environmental groups and plain unaffiliated citizens pleaded with the Stokes County commissioners to draft and approve an ordinance protecting the county from fracking and coal ash. Here’s a link to a news story on what the meeting was about.

On the one hand, this was a heartwarming outpouring of love for our county and concern for our rural way of life. Black people and white people, conservatives and liberals, are working together in this county like they never have before. But I also am a cold-blooded political operative. This event was organized. Back in May, environmental activists had politely asked the commissioners for an ordinance. They crudely blew us off. This was payback. Note the attitude of one of the commissioners in the last photo. It’s the classic attitude of an authoritarian who’d rather not be bothered with the people — at least when the people disagree with him.

“We Shall Not Be Moved”

There had been rumors of civil disobedience and disorder, so Stokes County officialdom was braced for that last night ahead of the meeting of the Walnut Cove town board. But, in the end, what the board got was a seriously serious tongue-lashing, followed by a packed house (plus 30 or 40 others standing outside and looking in the windows) singing “We Shall Not Be Moved.” Then everyone walked out.

The reason for the board’s tongue-lashing was its vote a month ago to hasten fracking in North Carolina by allowing the State of North Carolina (at taxpayer expense) to do core-sample drilling on town property, not far from a huge coal ash impoundment at Duke Energy’s Belews Creek Steam Station.

Here’s a link to a story in the Winston-Salem Journal.

Exploratory drilling — it’s come to that

Today a big truck belonging to Patterson Exploration Services rolled into the little town of Walnut Cove, five days earlier than expected. The truck is a drilling rig that will drill a core-sample hole 1,750 deep to look for the presence of frackable gas. This is at taxpayer expense. The core sample was mandated by the right-wing N.C. General Assembly, now a puppet to corporate influences such as ALEC and banking money out of Charlotte.

The people here feel like they’ve been hit by shock and awe. It might as well be 1968, with Soviet tanks rolling into Prague.

There will be another public meeting Tuesday evening, at which we’ll learn what the people’s next move is going to be.

Here is a link to the story in the Winston-Salem Journal.

I sense something historic here

The Rev. Dr. William Barber II at Rising Star Baptist Church in Walnut Cove

North Carolina government has been taken over by right-wing politicians who have been hastily enacting the billionaire agenda — lower taxes for the rich, higher taxes for working people, the worst voter suppression laws in the nation, the privatization of education at the expense of the public schools, refusal to expand Medicaid simply to spite the president, cuts to unemployment insurance, the fast-tracking of fracking, and eagerness for oil drilling off North Carolina’s fragile coast. The chief source of resistance ought to be the state Democratic Party, but the state Democratic Party has been missing in action, largely because of exceptionally lousy leadership and debilitating scandals.

The NAACP rose to the challenge. The Moral Monday events in Raleigh have irritated and embarrassed state government every step of the way. The mastermind of Moral Monday and the president of the North Carolina NAACP is the Rev. Dr. William Barber. In the first two years of Moral Monday, not much was said about environmental issues. But now the NAACP has come out swinging on the matter of environmental justice. One of the catalysts was a deal between the state of North Carolina and the little town of Walnut Cove (in Stokes County) to do a core-sample drilling on town property to assess how much frackable gas might be down there. The site of this drilling is only a couple of miles from a large and dangerous coal ash impoundment owned by Duke Energy (at the Belews Creek Steam Station). It’s also near the Dan River, less than 20 miles upstream from a coal ash spill into the river last year. The coal ash impoundment and the core-drilling site are right on the edge of black neighborhoods.

Last night, the Rev. Barber spoke in Walnut Cove. Actually, it was a sermon, in a small black church nearly full, half with black people and half with white. His sermon was about why taking care of the land and water is a moral issue. I have never heard anything like it. We white people were stunned, because we’re well aware of how some religious people find support for the exploitation of nature and “dominionism” in scripture. But the Rev. Barber found quite the opposite, drawing mostly from Genesis and Zechariah.

Those of us who have been down in the grass roots for the last three years, locally fighting fracking, feel as though the cavalry have ridden in. It’s not just that the NAACP may file suits under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. It’s also that no one is better at focusing attention on injustice than the NAACP, or better at organizing people. And frankly, those of us who have been working locally, more or less alone, managed to make our cry for help heard. I suppose it depends on what happens next. But it feels historic to have the NAACP’s most charismatic leader here in our little county. And I think it’s likely that right-wingers won’t control the state of North Carolina for long. They have overplayed their hand and exceeded their mandate, and lots of people including some Republicans are not very happy about it.

This was historic in 1978. To my knowledge, no African-American has run for political office in Stokes County since then. We are working on that.