Desperate People

It just occurred to me that all these 911 truthers and people who follow Alex Jones around are all just really desperate for a metanarrative. These are people who may well be smart enough to know that the things they believe are fucking crazy, but what would they do with their lives then? The feel like they're doing something really important by handing out fliers to people on the subway and protesting at their tea bagger parties. Without that, they'd have to go back to their depressing, pointless lives.

Our Need for a Metanarrative

In the later part of this lecture, Chuck talks about how we don't have a really powerful story that grabs everyone's attention these days. We have no underlying struggle or aim to our culture nowadays. The Cold War is over, too many people think the war on terror is bullshit to really take that seriously and the environmental movement has yet to gain enough strength to inspire that many people. Things may get more interesting if global warming starts to really have some impact, but until a few more major cities are flooded and there are heat waves in Scandinavia, global warming isn't going to get people out of their chairs.

In all likelihood, things will remain painfully boring unless the Singularity hits.

The Mind of the Anti-Semite

People who hold the view that Jews are untrustworthy, or are part of some conspiracy to control the world, etc. seems to be based in one or another of two beliefs about Jews. Anti-Semites do not believe merely that Jewish culture is bad, or that Judaism as a religion is the problem, but rather that Jews, as an ethnic group, are constantly scheming against gentiles. This implies either a) that Jews are all organized against gentiles, and their organization is well constructed that not one single Jew has ever spilled the beans about it to a non-Jew, and no person of Jewish blood has ever avoided involvement, or b) that Jews are genetically predisposed to behavior that advances the interests of their own ethnic group at the expense of the interest of non-Jews. This seems to be the majority view among anti-Semites (Kevin b. McDonald for example).

What must one believe about genetics in order to base one's anti-Semitism on this second view? One must believe that it is possible to have a genetically endowed, innate understanding of ethnicity. Now, you could argue that we may be genetically inclined to favor people who look or act more like us than those who do not, but is every Jew so disconnected from the gentiles amongst whom they live that this would justify such a claim that all Jews are an inherent danger to gentiles? And what if a Jewish person were raised by gentiles and unaware of his ethnicity? Would he or she be somehow able to magically determine that his parents and friends are gentiles against whom he must constantly be plotting? This is what the most committed anti-Semites would have to believe in order to justify their prejudice.

The claim that Jews are all plotting against gentiles also becomes unfalsifiable when one dismisses the fact that individual Jews will hold vastly differing political and economic views, many of which are even contradictory, by saying they are all methods of advancing their power and undermining non-Jews. It's amazing that in much of the most significant anti-Semitic literature of the 20th century, both capitalism and communism are condemned as Jewish inventions. One wonders what kind of economic system the anti-Semite recommends if it must involve neither a centrally planned economy, nor the use of capital to establish businesses. They also accuse Jews of profiting unfairly from the businesses they run and finance, but also, whenever an economy is doing poorly, of gaining political advantage from destroying the economies which they were accused of exploiting.

I challenge any anti-Semite to describe something a Jew could do that would not be evidence of their supposed scheming against gentiles. Until they can do that, they have to realize that their prejudice makes absolutely no fucking sense.

What Is Religion and Why Does It Persist?

I'm not convinced of most of the propositions offered by most religions. I haven't been since I was very young. Although, there's little I can say about why this is the case that hasn't been said by so many others over and over again. There is one element that seems to be missing from most of the arguments against religious dogma, though. What's missing is a rigorous understanding of their psychological bases.

Most apologists for atheism of course understand that there are neurological causes behind religious experiences. There was a good article in h+ Magazine not too long ago that mentioned the part of the brain that is being affected when one feels the intuition of "oneness" that is so commonly spoken of by those professing to have had these experiences. Most atheists also understand that religious belief is based not on being convinced of facts in the way one becomes convinced of every day propositions, but rather on a desire for religious propositions to be true.

Few, if any of them, however, seem to understand the psychological utility of religion. Religion brings comfort and a feeling of salvation or liberation not just by giving people a comforting imaginary friends, but because religious experiences have a profound impact on a person's psychology such that it reorients that person's desires in such a way as to significantly ameliorate a problem that most if not all human beings have, that problem being conflict of will.

The liberation or salvation offered by religion is not just from eternal damnation. Those who are religious merely because they are afraid of going to hell are not getting the best out of their beliefs. The horror from which religion can, in fact, deliver a person is guilt, shame and internal conflict. Now, of course, there are religious communities and governments that, rather than saving a person from these things, in fact make them all the more likely. People who practice their religion in this way are easy targets. They are motivated by hate, shame and disgust. Those who get the best benefit of religion are those who had painfully weak or divided wills but were able to overcome it through religious conversion. It is from oneself that religion offers liberation and salvation. And it is those who don't feel they need such a thing that are most likely to do without religion.

Atheists are right to point out the hypocrisy of so many self-proclaimed religious people. Christianity stands out in that it does not offer salvation in return for being good or doing good things. Being good is instead the consequence of salvation. It is once you have truly "accepted Christ into your heart" that you will naturally have the will to do good things. Any part of your mind that was pulling you away from the way of living you feel is best is supposed to be eliminated by the acceptance of Christ. Billy Graham said that if you're still struggling with sinful desires and occasionally giving in to them "you need to rethink whether you're really a Christian or not".

While religion has done more than enough to reinforce the shame and guilt people feel over desires that may not at all be harmful in many instances, a truly effective response to religion has to address the problem of personal conflict of will. Fortunately, this is a psychological problem, and all religions offer psychological solutions, although dressed up in mystical ideas. The reason secular Westerners gravitate more toward Buddhism is that it offers solutions rooted in psychological principles that can be separated from its mysticism more easily than can the methods of other religions. The most vocal atheists resist religion because religious people often try to impose upon everyone solutions to problems that they may not really have. And even if they do have the problems that religion was created to solve, religious people articulate those problems using metaphorical myths that they expect people to take literally. And of course, in taking them literally, the religious themselves very much miss the point and end up exacerbating the guilt and shame from which their religion was designed to liberate everyone.

Religious irrationalism will not be eliminated until there is a secular way of bringing about the religious experiences that can relieve the internal conflicts that so many people have. Scientologists think L Ron Hubbard formulated one, but that's a whole other story altogether.

Senate Reconciliation

I didn't realize, until today, that there was a way to prevent a Senate filibuster. Apparently, if you go into reconciliation, you can "limit debate" which I guess overrides the rule that says nobody can vote until everyone has said what they want to say. If you can tell people to sit down and shut up, they can't keep talking to prevent the vote.

But they say Harry Reid won't go for it. He's still trying to get 60 votes despite the fact that, like, four senators refuse to pass the bill with the public option and a few others won't pass it unless it does have the public option.

This Boring Decade

The thing I miss most about the 90s is that kids listened to music that scared the shit out of their parents. Maybe there wasn't much going on that was all that subversive, but at least the squares thought something scary was going on.

Nowadays, what are parents afraid their kids are doing? The biggest squares are the ones afraid of the government, and the scariest thing one of their kids could do is support the establishment. Is this what we've come to? Were's the moral panic? What concerts are being protested by Christians these days? Have they all just become too jaded?

Why Cities Are Greener

A lot of environmentalists have a very knee jerk objection to cities. They see that they are more distant from nature than rural communities and conclude from this that they must be unnatural and hence unhealthy for people and the environment. That cities keep people separate from nature, however, is precisely why they are good for the natural environment.

Here's a great article about cities and their environmental impact.

These are my favorite quotes:
"To most people, big, densely-populated cities look like ecological nightmares, wastelands of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams. But, compared to other inhabited places, cities are models of environmental responsibility. By the most significant measures, the greenest community in the United States is New York City, the only American city that approaches environmental standards set elsewhere in the world."

"Moving people closer together reduces the distances between their daily destinations and limits their opportunities for reckless consumption, as well as forcing the majority to live in some of the most inherently energy-efficient residential structures in the world: apartment buildings."

"New York’s highly concentrated population and comprehensive public transit system enable the majority of residents to live without owning automobiles, an unthinkable deprivation almost anywhere else in the US. Some 82% of employed Manhattanites travel to work by public transit, bicycle, or on foot. That’s 10 times the rate for Americans in general, eight times the rate for workers in Los Angeles County, and 16 times the rate for residents of metropolitan Atlanta."

If you think it's easy to get around without a car in any other city, keep in mind that even David Suzuki owns a car.

"I spoke with one energy expert, who, when I asked him to explain why per-capita energy consumption was so much lower in Europe than in the US, said, 'It’s not a secret, and it’s not the result of some miraculous technological breakthrough. It’s because Europeans are more likely to live in dense cities and less likely to own cars.'"

"Urban families live more compactly, do less damage to fragile ecosystems, burn less fuel, enjoy stronger social ties to larger numbers of people, and, most significantly, produce fewer children, since large families have less economic utility in densely settled areas than they do in marginal agricultural areas."

A Word on Rationing

Here's a blog that thinks it has found proof that the House health care bill will end up rationing care. Here's the quote it cites:

"If the Secretary estimates for any fiscal year that the aggregate amounts available for payment of expenses of the high-risk pool will be less than the amount of the expenses, the Secretary shall make such adjustments as are necessary to eliminate such deficit including reducing benefits, increasing premiums or establishing wait lists. [emphasis added]"

Wow, so if the publicly run health insurance company can't collect enough in premiums to pay for its expenses, it will reduce benefits, increase premiums or establish wait lists. In other words, with the exception of wait lists, it will do exactly what every private insurance company does when dealing with the same problem. The horror.

No matter what system you have not everybody is going to get all the care that they need and you'll have to prioritize. You can do this by triaging people according to need and first come first serve or you can give the most and best care to those who have the most money. If prioritizing based on need is "rationing", than I would gladly have my health care rationed. The above quoted section, however, is not rationing. It's a way of handling costs that's pretty much identical to how private companies handle costs, yet you never hear anyone calling the HMO actuarial deliberations "death panels" do you?

The Power of Negative Thinking

Writing a self help book is an easy way of making a few bucks, especially if you're a charismatic writer. You don't really need to make sense. Just don't make things too complicated. Oh, and tell people they can use magic to get what they want. Chicks dig it when you tell them you can teach them how to do magic. And that's why The Secret is popular. But even before The Secret there was this law of attraction bullshit, and The Secret seems to be based largely on that.

The gist of the law of attraction is that when you think of shit, it happens. So if you think about bad things, you're making them happen and if you think happy thoughts they come true too. And in The Secret, they tried to say this is all about quantum physics, which of course is a convenient way of giving yourself credibility by referencing something scientific that people are too lazy to look into and too stupid to figure out if they ever try to look into it.

So, yeah, in a nutshell, the really hocus pocus self help stuff is pretty much garbage, but there are some psychological principles behind them that are worth understanding. While you don't "send out waves to the universe that make your thoughts into reality", pessimism does encourage procrastination and discourages effort. You don't need quantum physics to explain that. Every day experience makes that pretty clear. Positive thinking doesn't necessarily ensure that you'll get what you want out of life, but if you're more confident than your actual abilities warrant, and you're good at making others have the same irrational confidence in you, you're going to be more successful than someone who is more talented but less "unrealistic". It's a sad truth, and it's why Michael Bay gets to keep making movies. As long as you're not doing things that are obviously insane, foolish or dangerous, having a bit more confidence than your abilities than your abilities really warrant is an advantage more often than not.

The main thing to remember is that negative thinking will weigh you down more than positive thinking will help you out.

Palin and the Republican Nomination

I really, sincerely hope that Sarah Palin runs for president and gets the Republican nomination. Can you imagine Sarah Palin in a debate with Obama? Even she is coached enough to be able to give a bunch of canned answers, it's unlikely that she'll be able to spit those out without fucking them up, like she did in this interview with Sean Hannity.

Sadly, I don't think she'll hold her own in a debate with Mitt Romney either, and doubt she'll get the nomination unless a bunch of bible bangers who don't like Mormons come out in favor of her candidacy.

Popular Support for Gay Marriage

While the setbacks in Maine and California may be disheartening, and the conservatives believe that the 37 popular referenda that have all banned gay marriage are proof that people don't really want gay marriage, or that the trend is moving away from further gay rights in the United States. I feel confident, however, that there's really no reason to panic. If you look at the demographics of who votes for and against gay marriage, it's clear that the people pushing against it are old, decrepit and will all be dead soon. I would go so far as to say that there will be a popular referendum ratifying gay marriage in one or more states within the next ten years, perhaps even the next five.

Here's a chart outlining support for gay marriage broken down by state and age demographic:



Is it possible that all these misguided youngsters could grow up to hate fags just like their grandparents do? Sure, but how many people who grew up favoring civil rights for blacks in a climate that was largely against it eventually grew up to be bigots?

Fact Checkers

Some conservatives are all butt-hurt because the AP sent 11 people to fact check Sarah Palin's new book. Apparently a potential presidential candidate is not worthy being scrutinized. 'Cause it's not like conservative journalists went after everything that came out of Obama's mouth from the moment people started speculating that he would run for president, amirite?

Eric Holder's "Conflict of Interest"

Michelle Malkin says that Eric Holder is an example of the "culture of corruption" due to the fact that he's "senior partner with Covington & Burling — the prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm, which represents 17 Yemenis currently held at Gitmo," and is therefore in a conflict of interest.

First of all, the very first sentence of her blog entry is a lie. He's not a partner C&B. He hasn't been since he became Attorney General. And if the fact that he used to work for C&B makes it a conflict of interest, than the fact that Dick Cheney used to work for Halliburton makes his appointment of that company to run Iraq's oil industry is also a conflict of interest.

Clinton in Afghanistan

When there was suspicion of widespread corruption and fraud in the last Afghani election, the consensus seemed to be that, if Karzai does not acknowledge that the election was obviously fraudlent, the Obama administration should withdraw its support. In a sense we got what we wanted; Karzai agreed to a run off election. However, the guy running against him in that election made a few (very reasonable) demands about reforming the election process and throwing out some of the guys who oversaw the elections. When his demands were not met, he withdrew from the race and Karzai was declared the winner.

So while Karzai did, technically, agree to a run off, he set it up in such a way as to prevent anyone running against him from winning, and his opponent, recognizing that, withdrew, and now he's somehow considered a legitimately elected leader. Legitimate enough, at least, to deserve a visit from the Secretary of State at his inauguration.

Now, while I think, at this stage, trying to set up a functioning democracy in Afghanistan is a futile effort, the Obama administration should not be pretending that this is what their goal is, when their goal is obviously just a reasonable degree of stability. Afghanistan is not a democracy, and will not be until they develop a working civil society. They won't develop that until they have a reasonable amount of physical and economic security. So let's drop the pretense, not bother with continued fraudlunet elections for now, and do what needs to be done to lift the people of Afghanistan up to a decent standard of living.

When people have comfort, stability and security, they are more likely to demand and practice democracy.

Heh

Stephen Colbert just reminded me of how conservatives didn't complain when Bush was holding hands and walking through the rose garden with the Saudi prince. Apparently bowing to Al Saud is groveling, but having a quasi-homoerotic experience with him is just fine.

Bowgate

A few months ago, some people pointed out the hypocrisy of conservatives who criticized Obama for bowing to the Saudi prince, while, around the same time, also criticizing Michelle Obama for breaching protocol by hugging Queen Elizabeth. They can't seem to make up their mind about whether the POTUS is supposed to show respect for all the silly little formalities that people commonly go through when they meet with a monarch or not.

The reason for this seems obvious to me. They don't really care about proper protocol. They just want a reason to find fault with Obama.

The people who really hate him, and think that he hates America, see this as further evidence of his contempt for his own country. They see the bowing as an expression of how he sees non-western governments as superior to western ones.

I personally don't think he should have bowed to anyone. I also don't think people should be so upset about Michelle Obama hugging the Queen. Why? Not because I think it shows disrespect for the US, but rather because it looks like pandering to these foreign leaders. He comes off to me as someone who is not trying to show respect, but as someone who is patronizing them. Now, I don't really think that Obama intends to patronize these leaders, but when he tries to behave according to customs he doesn't really seem to understand, he is embarrassing himself AND the leaders to whom he is trying to show respect.

KSM

Could it be more appropriate to KSM in a military tribunal rather than a civilian court? Perhaps. It is very possible that some of the intelligence that was gathered is sensitive information from sensitive sources that should probably be kept under wraps.

Still, one way or another, this guy has to be tried. The US afforded even the Nazis a fair trial. If the US wants anybody to believe they are carrying out the war on terror in a way even remotely resembling justice, they need to try the people they capture.

As for the fact that he's being tried in New York, what's the problem? Are they worried that he's going to escape and tear down the Empire State Building with his bare hands? Some people are concerned about other Guantanamo detainees being brought to the US because they will attract supporters who will try to break them out of prison, but Zacarias Moussaoui has been in a prison in Colorado for years, and nobody's tried to break him out. He hasn't put the community around the prison in any greater danger than any of the other inmates of that prison.

A Moderate View of Health Care

As a Canadian, I greatly appreciate that I don't have to worry about going bankrupt paying for medical bills. I think it is in everyone's best interest to have a system in which there is a public source of funds for medical treatment, as it is in everyone's best interest that there be publicly funded education. Everyone gains an advantage from living amongst literate people, and everyone should enjoy the advantage of living amongst healthy people.

That being said, a single payer health care system that does not allow individuals to pay for quicker access is not the best way to tackle the issue. While there are reasonable criticisms of a two tier system, I believe that it is very possible to come up with a way of allowing private health care and taxing it that funnels extra money into the public system, making those who rely on it better off than they would if everybody waited in the same line in the public system rather than draining the public system of the best equipment and doctors.

The threat to the public system is not, however, the only criticism of a two tier system in Canada. People who are opposed to it, are also adverse to the idea of a rich person being able to get better or faster care than a poorer person, even if you could work out a way to improve the care the poorer person would eventually get. It is not unreasonable to ask, "why does a person with more money deserve better or faster care?" A wealthier person is not more deserving of care than a poor person, so I can understand why they would find this repugnant. Nonetheless, I see it a different way.

My question is, why should the public be paying for the health care of Irving family? They're billionaires, but if they get treated in Canada, some of the tax dollars of a person barely above the poverty line goes to pay for that. How is that fair? Why should we have to pay for the health care of those who are perfectly capable of paying for it on their own, especially if we could tax their treatment in a way that adds extra revenue to the treatment the rest of us would get?

The Evolutionary Double Standard

A common criticism of possible or proposed genetic experiments, especially those involving humans, is that many attempts to improve the human genome may result in error, or that we may fuck it up and end up creating human beings worse off than if we had not altered their genes. But how does evolution happen? What is the "natural" process by which organisms adapt to their environments. Trial and error. The "natural" process is not guided at all. There are countless random mutations in random organisms, most of which make no difference or turn out to be harmful to the organism, and sometimes an organism gets lucky and ends up with a gene that gives it an advantage.

Is this how we want to continue to change and adapt to our environment? The "natural" way? A way in which we have to suffer through who knows how many horrid and grotesque mutations until we get lucky and end up with a few beneficial mutations every several generations? Is that really the more humane way to proceed as a species?

Sure, we may make mistakes as we try to guide our own evolution, but at least we'll be pushing it in the direction we want, and changes will be changes we design into ourselves. We will not be randomly rolling the genetic dice and hoping something good comes of it. To continue to subject humanity to that process doesn't sound very humane to me.