Slate: Martha Nussbaum's From Disgust to Humanity

Dahlia Lithwick writes on Slate about an intriguing argument made by Martha Nussbaum, a prominent law and philosophy professor at the University of Chicago:

[She] explains that much of the political rhetoric around denying equal rights to gay Americans is rooted in the language of disgust. Their activities are depicted as "vile and revolting," threatening to "contaminate and defile" the rest of us. Looked at starkly, she argues, much of the anti-gay argument is bound up in feces and saliva, germs, contagion and blood.

The philosophical question for Nussbaum is whether disgust of this sort is a "reliable guide to lawmaking." She cites Leon Kass, head of the President's Council on Bioethics in the George W. Bush administration, who has argued that it is; that visceral public disgust contains a "wisdom" that lies beneath rational argument. Then she proceeds to annihilate that argument by offering example after example of discarded disgust-based policies, from India's denigration of its "untouchables" to the Nazi view of Jews, to a legally sanctioned regime of separate swimming pools and water fountains in the Jim Crow South. Time and again, Nussbaum argues, societies have been able to move beyond their own politics of disgust to what she calls "the politics of humanity," once they have finally managed to see others as fully human, with human aspirations and desires.

...

Perhaps the most radical aspect of Nussbaum's work, however, is her prescription for moving past the politics of disgust to the politics of humanity. This will be a familiar call to anyone who listened to President Obama last spring, as he described the qualities he seeks in a jurist. Nussbaum calls for "imagination" and "empathy," for respect and the willingness to listen to new narratives. In effect, this is a moral call to walk in the other guy's moccasins before we call him revolting. She observes that this "capacity for generous and flexible engagement with the sufferings and hopes of other people" was described by Adam Smith (of all people) back in the 18th century, even though it is derided as unmoored, mushy-headed, and even dangerous today. In Nussbaum's formulation, imagination and empathy are essential to overcoming the childish biases that allow us to use our legal machinery to turn others into subhumans.

I'd highly recommend reading the entire article.

Newsweek: Ricky Martin, Coming Out and the Health of Nations

Julia Baird, writing for Newsweek, uses the World Values Survey to argue that richer nations which have moved towards "self-expressive" or "emancipative" values tend to be both happier and more accepting of homosexuality than nations which are still oriented towards "survival" values. Of course, it isn't only wealth that produces self-expressive or emancipative values. And there are certainly a lot of folks in the OECD countries who are oriented towards survival values who would not value Martin's ability to come out.

NYT Bloggingheads: Mental Bandwidth Scarcity and Poverty

The New York Times Bloggingheads video section has a fascinating conversation between two economists on the effects of poverty on psychology. Basically, poor people have scarcer mental resources, as well as physical resources, to devote to raising their children well.

Caltech: Your brain on income inequality

Groundbreaking research at Caltech University has found, using functional MRI scans, that our brains respond to income inequality:

Specifically, the team found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. The surprising thing? This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person's head, rather than the poor person's.

...

It's long been known that we humans don't like inequality, especially when it comes to money. Tell two people working the same job that their salaries are different, and there's going to be trouble, notes John O'Doherty, professor of psychology at Caltech, Thomas N. Mitchell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, and the principal investigator on the Nature paper.

But what was unknown was just how hardwired that dislike really is. "In this study, we're starting to get an idea of where this inequality aversion comes from," he says. "It's not just the application of a social rule or convention; there's really something about the basic processing of rewards in the brain that reflects these considerations."

The brain processes "rewards"—things like food, money, and even pleasant music, which create positive responses in the body—in areas such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and ventral striatum.

In a series of experiments, former Caltech postdoctoral scholar Elizabeth Tricomi (now an assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers University)—along with O'Doherty, Camerer, and Antonio Rangel, associate professor of economics at Caltech—watched how the VMPFC and ventral striatum reacted in 40 volunteers who were presented with a series of potential money-transfer scenarios while lying in an fMRI machine.

For instance, a participant might be told that he could be given $50 while another person could be given $20; in a second scenario, the student might have a potential gain of only $5 and the other person, $50. The fMRI images allowed the researchers to see how each volunteer's brain responded to each proposed money allocation.

But there was a twist. Before the imaging began, each participant in a pair was randomly assigned to one of two conditions: One participant was given what the researchers called "a large monetary endowment" ($50) at the beginning of the experiment; the other participant started from scratch, with no money in his or her pocket.

As it turned out, the way the volunteers—or, to be more precise, the reward centers in the volunteers' brains—reacted to the various scenarios depended strongly upon whether they started the experiment with a financial advantage over their peers.

"People who started out poor had a stronger brain reaction to things that gave them money, and essentially no reaction to money going to another person," Camerer says. "By itself, that wasn't too surprising."

What was surprising was the other side of the coin. "In the experiment, people who started out rich had a stronger reaction to other people getting money than to themselves getting money," Camerer explains. "In other words, their brains liked it when others got money more than they liked it when they themselves got money."

"We now know that these areas are not just self-interested," adds O'Doherty. "They don't exclusively respond to the rewards that one gets as an individual, but also respond to the prospect of other individuals obtaining a reward."

What was especially interesting about the finding, he says, is that the brain responds "very differently to rewards obtained by others under conditions of disadvantageous inequality versus advantageous inequality. It shows that the basic reward structures in the human brain are sensitive to even subtle differences in social context."

This, O'Doherty notes, is somewhat contrary to the prevailing views about human nature. "As a psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist who works on reward and motivation, I very much view the brain as a device designed to maximize one's own self interest," says O'Doherty. "The fact that these basic brain structures appear to be so readily modulated in response to rewards obtained by others highlights the idea that even the basic reward structures in the human brain are not purely self-oriented."

Camerer, too, found the results thought provoking. "We economists have a widespread view that most people are basically self-interested, and won't try to help other people," he says. "But if that were true, you wouldn't see these sort of reactions to other people getting money."

The researchers say more information is needed to find out how this drives actual behavior.

WSJ - Toyota: A Crisis Made in Japan

Jeff Kingston of the Wall Street Journal attributes Toyota's latest spate of errors to a cultural failing. An excerpt:

Japanese firms often seek to cover up or fudge the facts and the people communicating with the media and public often do not have the information they need to do their job. The absence of a structure to quickly get accurate information to top management hampers an accurate and adequate response. That leaves management unprepared to deal with media questioning and conveys an image of stonewalling and indifference.

There is a cultural element to this penchant for mismanaging crisis. The shame and embarrassment of owning up to product defects in a nation obsessed with craftsmanship and quality raises the bar on disclosure and assuming responsibility. And a high-status company like Toyota has much to lose since its corporate face is at stake. The shame of producing defective cars is supposed to be other firms' problems, not Toyota's, and the ongoing PR disaster reveals just how unprepared the company is for crisis management and how embarrassed it is. In addition, employees' identities are closely tied to their company's image, and loyalty to the firm overrides concerns about consumers.

There is also a culture of deference inside corporations that makes it hard for those lower in the hierarchy to question their superiors or inform them about problems. The focus on consensus and group is an asset in building teamwork, but also can make it hard to challenge what has been decided or designed. Such cultural inclinations are not unknown elsewhere around the world, but they are exceptionally powerful within Japanese corporate culture and constitute significant impediments to averting and responding to a crisis.

This crisis offers an opportunity to reform Toyota's corporate culture and improve quality assurance. This can be done by becoming more focused on the customer, using two-way flow of information and feedback; improving corporate governance by appointing independent outside directors; and making risk management more than an afterthought. It is not too late to turn the situation around, but this means shedding the constraints of a fusty corporate culture and wowing customers with a recall and above-and-beyond after-sales service and care. Yet early signs are that Toyota is no longer the nimble company that took the world by storm over the past half-century.

When Mr. Toyoda took the helm in mid-2009 he was unable to express a reassuring sense of how he would deal with his company's problems of overcapacity as well as the need to diversify away from reliance on the U.S. market and build its presence in China, India and Brazil. A string of successes, most notably the Prius, may have made the juggernaut a bit complacent, losing the edge that helped it surge since the 1970s by being ahead of the curve on fuel efficiency and top of the class on reliability. Regaining that edge and repositioning the company to tap into growing markets promises to be a difficult transition.

The Japan Inc. model of cooperative and collusive relations between the business and the government delivered the economic miracle, but has run out of steam. Japan's Lost Decade of the 1990s is entering its third decade, discrediting the powers that be.

I am hesitant to ascribe all failings solely to cultural issues, but Kingston is on the money in this case. While not all Western organizations are as open as they should be, Asian cultures should certainly learn to be more open.

Change.org: Sex Trafficking is High Around U.S. Military BAses Abroad

Change.org has a good article that has some bearing on the Okinawa base quarrel.


Serving in the United States military is about honor, dignity, and strength. So it makes sense that the U.S. military would make visiting brothels and having sex with women and kids forced into a prostitution a big no-no for American soldiers, right? On paper, establishments that sell sex are off-limits for men (and women) in uniform. But in practice, sex trafficking flourishes near U.S. military bases. Should U.S. soldiers be abusing people in another country while protecting people in this one?
Of all the countries where an American military presence attracts prostitution, both voluntary and forced, South Korea may feel the effects most acutely. U.S. troops have been stationed in South Korea since 1945, and the brothels around the U.S. military bases have been there just as long. In 2004, the Pentagon drafted a policy to reduce the sex trafficking growing wherever American soldiers, sailors, and airmen were stationed, with specific attention to South Korea. Under that policy, military personnel caught visiting a brothel or "massage parlour" could be subject to court martial. However, there is very little information available about how often that sanction is enforced.

There is evidence, however, that the policy has not worked in reducing demand for prostitution, evidenced by the continuing high levels of prostitution and human trafficking near U.S. military bases. The U.S. military has finally begun to make some clubs and bars known to traffic women or sell children off-limits to service members, but one report indicates that only 4 out of 25 such places in the area have been listed as off-limits. The South Korean government, too, has been cracking down on sex trafficking in the past few years. However, the areas surrounding the U.S. military base have been exempted from the crackdown by the Korean government. So brothels around U.S. military bases are falling through the cracks of both U.S. government and Korean government policy.

If government policy is in place and sex trafficking is still going on, then what can be done to prevent it? The Pentagon took a good first step in putting a policy in place to prevent American military uniforms from showing up at brothels where women and children are forced into prostitution. However, they need to do more. Specifically, they need to enforce that policy, including against officers, whose indiscretions are sometimes ignored. They also need to work to change the culture in the military that views women as sexual objects. Addressing the latter will not only make a difference in the amount of sex trafficking around bases, but also the sexual harassment, rape, and assault of women serving in the military.

Men Can Stop Rape has a great campaign called "Our Strength is Not for Hurting," which focuses on equating masculinity and strength with respect for women. They have a similar campaign aimed specifically at military personnel. This would be a great starting point for the U.S. military to truly tackle the demand for sex trafficking which exists around their bases.

Matthews Investments: In China's Shoes

Matthews Investments is an investing firm that specializes in East and Southeast Asia. I'm not endorsing their funds. However, their chairman, Mark Headley, wrote a very interesting article on China. I believe his insights into China's national psychology are more or less on the money and am posting them here:


In the evolution of global trade and finance, China’s relative increase in almost every level of economic statistic over the last 30 years is one of the defining events of our times. Yet, in many ways, China is still a poor country with a per capita annual income of roughly US$3,000 versus about US$40,000 for the U.S. When pressured to address vital issues such as terms of trade, human rights and the environment, China constantly refers to its own internal challenges, external grievances and long road to development.

Many developed countries are increasingly frustrated with China’s unwillingness to “play by the rules.” China seems to want the full benefits of access and membership to the global system while maintaining unfair advantages. The currency issue is the most obvious source of friction for many developed and developing countries alike struggling to maintain jobs. China has frustrated the world a great deal in the past 30 years and generally has paid little or no price for its obstinacy. Access to China’s potentially huge domestic markets is one of the obvious reasons that other countries complain but seem to do little. No one wants to be China’s “least favored” trading partner.

But tensions are rising and the need for major adjustments is slowly becoming inevitable. So why does China behave the way it does and how do we, as citizens of the world’s most powerful nation, work with China?
Some months ago I made a crude attempt to describe China’s psychology to a large group of professional U.S. investors. I had precisely two minutes, so on a whim I decided to lay out an alternative history of the U.S. with the hope of giving the audience some understanding of China’s domestic identity. So, forgive the vast revisionism and crude reductionism, and please consider what our national attitudes and debates might resemble if the U.S. had gone through something like the Chinese experience.

A Revisionist’s History
Imagine if the U.S. had lost the War of 1812 against the British. Instead of a messy end to a sideline for the then mighty British Empire, the U.K. established total domination in key American cities. The War ends with Manhattan transferred to the British in perpetuity. Some 50 years later, they demand and receive Long Island on a 99-year lease. Backed by British power, other European nations demand their allotted piece of our coastal cities and economy. Imagine if this outrage to a nation’s sovereignty ended only 13 years ago with a formal handover ceremony—the Union Jack finally replaced by the Stars and Stripes in Times Square.

China and Britain went to war in 1839, largely because China objected to the vast opium imports devastating its domestic population. China’s forces were utterly defeated and Hong Kong was later demanded as a national territory of Britain. In a series of treaties, China was stripped of much of the ability to manage its own terms of trade. This set the tone for all future colonial depredations along China’s coast with European nations, and later Japan, demanding the right to virtually run their own private states within Chinese territory for much of the next 100 years. The demise of China’s 2,000-year-old imperial system can be significantly attributed to this ruthless attack on its sovereignty. Certainly, any hope of a smooth movement to democracy was greatly diminished. India did have the advantage (if it can be called that) of total British domination in forming its democracy. China, on the other hand, fell back after years of devastation on an imperial model dressed in Marxist robes.
Imagine if the U.S. Civil War, so etched in our national psyche, had not lasted four years and cost less than 1 million lives, but rather lasted over 15 years and resulted in losses 20 times what we actually suffered. Imagine if Washington, D.C., not Richmond, Virginia was the capital of the Confederacy for almost two decades.

China’s little known Taiping Rebellion lasted from 1850 to 1864. It was launched by a Cantonese farmer who interpreted the Christian teachings he was exposed to by the new Western presence to mean that he was the younger brother of Jesus. Vast armies fought battle after battle, and at least 20 million people died. The Taiping were finally slaughtered after ruling much of central China from the southern city of Nanjing. The Qing Dynasty was left even further weakened in its ongoing battle with colonial powers. Anyone who wonders why Chinese authorities are so paranoid about Christian activity or other spiritual organizations, like the Falun Gong, should study this history.

Imagine if the Japanese Imperial Navy had successfully captured Hawaii following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. This setback allowed Axis forces to capture much of the East (or West) Coast (take your pick) and hold that territory through eight years of brutal warfare. Military and civilian causalities in the tens of millions resulted. Many of America’s major coastal cities are left devastated. We are saved by the U.S.S.R’s defeat of Germany and Japan.

China, desperately weakened by its ongoing civil war between the Nationalists and Communist forces, faced direct Japanese hostilities in mid-1937. A bitterly divided country fought the Japanese in battle after battle until Japan’s final collapse in 1945. China fought approximately two-fifths of all Japanese forces in World War II, perhaps keeping Japan from successfully invading Australia and holding Southeast Asia against the Allied counter-attack.

Imagine if the radical left successfully captured power during the turmoil of the 1960s, and decided the best way to move the U.S. forward was to close virtually every school, college and university in the country for almost a decade. An entire decade’s worth of students received little or no education and floated through our society, terribly handicapped, ever since. Many of our most precious national monuments and historical artifacts were destroyed in the name of the new order.

China’s Cultural Revolution was unleashed by Chairman Mao Zedong as a political move to distract the population from the horror of the Great Leap Forward, a failed economic plan that resulted in mass starvation. The Cultural Revolution inflicted such chaos and brutality on an already tortured nation that it is hard to grasp. There remains in China a generation—who are roughly 50 to 60 years old today—that received little education. Being educated in the Soviet Union saved, and indoctrinated, a handful of the elite who run China today.

China’s View of the World
Each of the hypothetical examples above is flawed in any number of ways, but may give some insight into how the Chinese and its leaders view the world. The experiences in the U.S. that truly compare to what has happened to China in the last couple of centuries might resemble the genocide of Native Americans and the slavery of African Americans. Until the last 20 years, America’s worst decade in the last 200 years would be far preferable to China’s best decade.

Imperial collapse, foreign invasion and civil war have typified China’s modern experience. So when China behaves brutally, petulantly and, so often, reactively, this is largely a product of historical trauma of the highest order—a proud and ancient nation brought to its knees by both internal and external strife. Mao’s final madness was a terrible gift to a nation that is searching for a new path but remains distrustful of foreign nations and obsessed with internal stability.

When we look today to solve complex issues such as China’s fixed currency system, there are several implications:

China, its government and its citizenry, value stability very highly. So anything that threatens stability, whether that is a floating exchange rate (which devastated richer neighbors in the Asian Financial Crisis) or freedom for Tibet, will be treated with immense caution. China’s citizens seem to have accepted Deng Xioaping’s proposal, made in the shadow of the Tiananmen Square protests, of encouraging economic freedom while not tolerating challenges to the power and ideology of the state. The Communist Party has allowed a major degree of economic freedom, unleashing a market economy, while forcefully putting off political freedom to some distant future resolution. This is a deal that the vast majority of Chinese have embraced, at least while the economy is flourishing.

China will respond very negatively to harsh foreign pressure. Threats and insults in foreign negotiations, while often playing well to any nation’s domestic audience, are unlikely to do anything but encourage Chinese intransigency. China’s government does not dare to appear weak before its own population and feels time is on its side in most areas of friction. China sees negotiating with the West as a 300-year continuum, and it is playing the game very seriously with a huge commitment to winning a few rounds after so many losses.

China, as a nation, is a developing economy, with all the associated cultural baggage such terms imply in a post-colonial world. But unlike most such nations, China sees itself as a resurgent great power with the tools required to meet the West and Japan on an even playing field for the first time in the modern age. No other nation is in a comparable position of returning to greatness with a very large chip on the shoulder. This will make negotiations difficult and, at times, virtually impossible.

China’s industrial development, export success and rising domestic market give it a very strong hand in global negotiations. Today, we are literally in China’s shoes, or at least our children are. Any trade war would devastate our economy at least as much as China’s. Not to mention the many implications of China’s holdings of U.S. dollars. The potential of China’s market—where car sales have now exceeded those in the U.S., there are more cell phone users than European Union citizens, and more Internet connections than people in North America—keeps every nation rightfully nervous about being excluded. A fear China has used very effectively.

This is not an argument for handling China differently than other nations. Most developing countries have similar histories of colonial outrages and profound domestic trouble. But to attempt to understand China, one must recognize that a country that has been the Rome and Greece of Asia for over 2,000 years, rightfully, has great pride—just as we do. Its citizens know this history well. Sadly, we rarely know much about our own history let alone China’s deep and complex story.
I write this piece to warn against the simplistic notions about China that permeate our media, and to challenge the powerful special interests that want to paint China as a nation to be attacked, not vigorously debated. We face a long and very challenging dialogue with China, and I believe knowledge is an infinitely better negotiating tool than crude propaganda and simplistic nationalism.

Am I really saying China should be handled differently? No, just intelligently.

For More on China, I Recommend:

“The Search for Modern China,” by Jonathan Spence (The definitive history of modern China by our greatest living China scholar; “God’s Chinese Son,” Spence’s book on The Taiping is also an interesting read)
“China at the Center: 300 Years of Foreign Policy” by Mark Mancall
“The Tiananmen Papers,” edited by Liang Zhang, Andrew Nathan, Perry Link and Orville Schell (A fascinating view into the Chinese leadership’s mind)
“One Billion Customers,” by James McGregor
“Asia, America and the Transformation of Geopolitics,” by William Overholt

Washington Post: Credit Unions Launch a Lottery and Everyone Hits the Jackpot

Amy Stuhldreher of the New America Foundation writes for the Washington Post.

Highland Park, Mich., is the last place you'd expect to find more people saving money these days. One-third of the residents live below the poverty line, and everyone sees the blight of vacant homes, abandoned furniture and dumped tires. It seems like a ridiculous place to launch an experiment to turn nonsavers into regular savers.

But eight Michigan credit unions, including one in Highland Park, have helped build people's savings by doing something radical: acting less like financial institutions and more like the lottery.

Bank deposits don't get people's hearts pumping, but scratch-off tickets do. The average American household snaps up about $500 annually in lottery tickets, whose appeal is especially strong among those with lower incomes. Some estimates suggest that more than 80 percent of lottery revenue comes from households making less than $50,000 a year -- the very people who have the hardest time saving. In fact, 38 percent of people earning less than $25,000 a year think the lottery is the most practical way they'll accumulate a few hundred thousand dollars in their lifetimes, according to the Consumer Federation of America.

To redirect that money, the credit unions explored how they could blend the excitement of the lottery with the certainty of socking away cash. After all, both are about pursuing aspirations. (One is just a much more fun way to do it.) In January 2009, the credit unions declared that for every $25 someone saved, the saver would earn an entry into a drawing for a $100,000 prize one year later. At the same time, they gave out monthly prizes of up to $100. The credit unions also hoped to attract new members and expand their deposit bases. So as part of the program, people could join a credit union and open an account to bid for the prize at the same time.

Many doubted that "Save to Win" would work anywhere, let alone in Michigan, the land of double-digit unemployment. Even though the national savings rate has ticked up recently, too many Americans lack the financial cushion to survive even a minor emergency. A recent survey by market research firm TNS Global and a group of Ivy League academics asked: If you had to come up with $2,000 over the next month, could you do it? Only 25 percent of respondents were sure they could. And 48 percent were either uncertain or very uncertain that they could.

Yet Save to Win produced stunning results. More than 11,000 Michigan residents opened accounts through the contest, saving $8.6 million throughout 2009. People can open the accounts -- they're like certificates of deposit -- with as little as $25. They need to keep their money in for at least a year and can make deposits as small as $1 as often as they like.

More than half of the participants said they hadn't saved regularly before opening their accounts. About 60 percent admitted they played the lottery during the past six months. And 44 percent earned less than $40,000.

Highland Park's Communicating Arts Credit Union led the charge. It had tried a lot of things to get its members to save, including offering a CD with a whopping 10 percent interest rate, but nothing worked, according to chief executive Hank Hubbard. But 15 percent of its members opened Save to Win accounts, the highest rate among the eight credit unions. "We were very surprised," Hubbard said. "It's a breathtaking penetration rate, especially for a new product and one focused on saving, since that's something our members don't do."

Rhonda Robinson, a sewing machine operator, was one of the credit union members who decided to give it a try. "I'm someone who can't save," she said. "I just want to win the big money." But she stopped buying pizza every Friday and cut out snacks, freeing up $20 that is automatically deducted from her checking account. "It's like scratching off a lotto ticket," she said. "Except then sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. In this case, you always win."

Using lotteries to spur savings is new in the United States, but the model has succeeded in countries from South Africa to Sweden, says Peter Tufano, a professor at Harvard Business School who dreamed up Save to Win after studying foreign examples. Through the Doorways to Dreams Fund, a nonprofit he chairs, Tufano hopes to expand the program. But not everywhere will be as receptive as Michigan. Most states forbid competition with their own lotteries. And regulations make it hard for banks to follow the credit unions' lead. Laws might need to change.

But if Save to Win proved that saving and playing the lottery can go together, maybe the 42 state-run lotteries should get in on the savings game. There are approximately 200,000 locations that sell lottery tickets in this country, compared with 99,000 bank branches. Behavioral economists emphasize that the best way to get people to do something isn't to change behavior, but to redirect an existing behavior. Imagine going to the corner store, picking up a quart of milk and buying a ticket that would let you save $20 while still scratching it off to see if you won big. This isn't a pie-in-the-sky idea, but one that Tufano has been discussing with some the nation's largest lotteries.

Cash-strapped states might worry that offering such a savings lottery would cut into their existing lottery revenue, which helps fund schools and other services. But turning nonsavers into regular ones is just as important. States are slashing their safety nets for families in need. This idea could help families grow their own personal safety nets. Then states would probably have fewer residents who are just one broken-down car or broken bone away from disaster.

I hope financial institutions look closely at Save to Win. Not just at 86-year-old Billie June Smith, the retired day-care supervisor who was beaming as she accepted her grand prize $100,000 check on Thursday, but at the impressive amount that everyone else saved as well.

It's possible to offer consumers what they want while giving them what they need. If the local bank can't help Americans save, maybe the convenience store can.

Anne Stuhldreher is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation.

In response to a commenter on sexual-orientation change efforts

In a previous post, I examined a Minneapolis Star Tribune article that showed that the Catholic Archdiocese of Minneapolis and Saint Paul was promoting programs that attempted to change the sexual orientation of clients, as opposed to helping them control their sexual desires. One commenter said that my criticism was inaccurate, as the APA had allowed such therapy. I disallowed the comment. The APA's stance, once again, is that psychologists should not advise clients that they can change their underlying sexual orientation.

Evidence from case studies does show that some very religious clients who are lesbian, gay or bisexual can successfully control their sexual behavior if they wish - their religious motivations may overcome their sexual orientations. I still hold that this is not advisable, but the APA does recognize that it can happen. It's a legitimate position for the APA to take. However, the commenter clearly does not understand the distinction between sexual orientation and sexual behavior, which is one of the problems that many religious programs have. Again, religious programs that advise LGB people that they can become fully heterosexual are intrinsically flawed and fly in the face of scientific evidence. Mental health professionals who advise their clients that they can become heterosexual should have their licenses revoked, or else see license outside of the APA so that we can easily tell they're a bunch of quacks. That's why I disallowed the comment.

At this point, religious programs that attempt help LGBT people stay celibate are merely ill-advised - they're theologically bad, but they aren't in fundamental and irrevocable conflict with our existing evidence base.

Hate posters

The New York Times has a slideshow of European political posters that incite racial hatred.

Here are two Swiss posters that were used to promote the resolution that banned the building of minarets:



Here's one by the Northern League in Italy, which has been accused of racist rhetoric.

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I don't speak Italian, but with assistance from Babelfish, they're probably saying something like, "They [Native Americans] allowed rapid immigration, and now they live on reservations. Another poster in Lega Nord's Wikipedia article shows Chinese, Arab, African and Roma immigrants pushing a Piedmontese man out of the line for social services.

Anglican conservatives in the US also endorse efforts to change sexual orientation

Jackie Bruchi of Stand Firm has a brief writeup of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality conference in Florida. The Stand Firm crowd represents the dregs of Anglicanism and I will not post Bruchi's writeup. However, her words display the shocking and willful ignorance that some Christian conservatives display towards sexual orientation.

Steven Rattner (the "Car Czar") on the auto bailout

Steven Rattner, one of the people in charge of reforming the Big Three automakers in the US, writes about his experience on CNN Money and in Fortune Magazine. I've excerpted two sections. One shows how groupthink permeated GM. As defined by Wikipedia, groupthink is "a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. Individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of group cohesiveness, as are the advantages of reasonable balance in choice and thought that might normally be obtained by making decisions as a group." A key feature of groupthink is that the group and its members automatically suppress any form of dissent. Groupthink inevitably leads to a bad decision being made at some point.

A second section reveals that Rattner and co might have let Chrysler liquidate if not for the massive unemployment it would cause.

Management has got to go
Everyone knew Detroit's reputation for insular, slow-moving cultures. Even by that low standard, I was shocked by the stunningly poor management that we found, particularly at GM, where we encountered, among other things, perhaps the weakest finance operation any of us had ever seen in a major company.

For example, under the previous administration's loan agreements, Treasury was to approve every GM transaction of more than $100 million that was outside of the normal course. From my first day at Treasury, PowerPoint decks would arrive from GM (we quickly concluded that no decision seemed to be made at GM without one) requesting approvals. We were appalled by the absence of sound analysis provided to justify these expenditures.

The cultural deficiencies were equally stunning. At GM's Renaissance Center headquarters, the top brass were sequestered on the uppermost floor, behind locked and guarded glass doors. Executives housed on that floor had elevator cards that allowed them to descend to their private garage without stopping at any of the intervening floors (no mixing with the drones).

In my relatively few interactions with chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner, I found him to be likable, dedicated, and generally knowledgeable. But Rick set a tone of "friendly arrogance" that seemed to permeate the organization.

Certainly Rick and his team seemed to believe that virtually all of their problems could be laid at the feet of some combination of the financial crisis, oil prices, the yen-dollar exchange rate, and the UAW.

It seemed completely obvious to us that any management team that had burned through $21 billion of cash in a year and another $13 billion in the first quarter of 2009 could not be allowed to continue. Equally important, GM's February viability plan was more "business as usual" and not the aggressive new approach that we felt was essential.

In a mid-March meeting with Rick, I explored his feelings about his team and then tried to work the conversation around to himself. "I'm not planning to stay until I'm 65 but I think I've got at least a few years left in me," said Wagoner, 56. "But I told the last administration that if my leaving would be helpful to saving General Motors, I'm prepared to do it." He added that neither he nor his board thought that was a good idea.

I left my conversation with Rick at that. The next day, I met with Rick's deputy, Fritz Henderson. Another GM lifer (and son of a GM lifer), Fritz conveyed more energy and openness to change. The question for us was whether GM would be better off with Fritz or with an outsider, as Ford (F, Fortune 500) had done in bringing in Boeing executive Alan Mulally. While nervous about whether Fritz could bring the change GM desperately needed, I was considerably more nervous about the likelihood of recruiting a thoroughbred CEO in the midst of the turmoil.

Meanwhile, if ever a board of directors needed shuffling, it was GM's, which had been utterly docile in the face of mounting evidence of looming disaster. We decided to recommend to Tim, Larry, and ultimately the President a package that would include replacing Rick with Fritz as interim CEO, changing at least half of the board, and making an outside director chairman (which should be universal).

A close call on Chrysler
While we had separate teams working on Chrysler and GM from the start, the first and toughest decision that we faced was what to do with Chrysler.

Badly run after Daimler bought it in 1998, Chrysler had been sold nine years later at the peak of private equity mania to Cerberus Capital Management. Larded up with debt, hollowed out by years of mismanagement, Chrysler under Cerberus never had a chance. We marveled, for example, that Chrysler did not have a single car that was recommended by Consumer Reports.

The question for us -- and ultimately, the President -- was whether any restructuring could save Chrysler.

Back and forth the debate went in Larry's small office in the West Wing. Our working team was joined by Diana and other administration economists. Gene Sperling, a Michigan native, argued eloquently and passionately for standing by America's heartland.

Austan Goolsbee, a fearless former University of Chicago economist who had been with Obama since the beginning of his campaign, led the charge against Chrysler, marshaling strong factual arguments. One was that letting Chrysler go would give a needed boost to GM (and also to Ford), since most buyers of Chrysler's strongest products -- trucks, minivans, and Jeeps -- probably would turn instead to the other Detroit automakers.

Harry maintained that a Chrysler liquidation could potentially add billions of dollars a year to GM's operating income in a normal sales environment, vastly increasing the value of the company.

The group was torn (at one point the vote was four to four) and so were Tim, Larry, and I. We intuited that from a theoretical point of view, the correct decision could well be to let Chrysler go. But this was not an academic exercise.

Repeatedly, Larry asked us for probabilities -- what did we think the chances would be of Chrysler making it for two years? For five years? Indefinitely? Pressed by Larry, I came down 51-49 in favor of helping. Comfortable that Chrysler could survive, Larry asked us to recast Austan's analysis into an assessment of the employment effects of a Chrysler liquidation.

We were all shocked to realize that when the collateral damage of a Chrysler shutdown was factored in (like lost jobs at dealers and suppliers), the short-term effect of a Chrysler shutdown could be 300,000 more unemployed, similar to what was lost across the entire economy in the month of July. And with the memory of Lehman's collapse still fresh, we imagined the potential for other systemic risk. That cemented matters for Larry and me.

Yet Chrysler's cupboard was bare. We did not believe we could underwrite its viability without a strong corporate partner, so we turned our attention to that single possibility, an overture from Fiat.

The Italian carmaker had been brought back from near disaster a few years earlier by its own new management team, led by Sergio Marchionne. Raised in Canada, rarely seen in anything but a black sweater, and with an insatiable appetite for the media, Sergio was relatively new to the auto industry but possessed a drive to win that was alien to the traditional Detroit culture. Fiat also brought its advanced products to the table -- small, stylish cars and fuel-sipping engines.

As our March 31 deadline approached, we got ready to brief the President. For the prior six weeks, Tim and Larry had been using their daily briefings of the President to keep him posted on our progress. And we had sent in a couple of lengthy memos for his evening reading stack, which indicated that the only decision over which his advisers were divided was whether to save Chrysler.

In our meeting in the Oval Office on March 26, Larry began to lay out the issues, only to be interrupted after a few minutes by the President, who said "Larry, I've read the memo," signaling that he wanted to dive into the decision items. Quickly, the question of whether to save Chrysler dominated the discussion.

As we went back and forth over Chrysler, the President himself seemed as torn as Larry and I had been. Suddenly, he realized that Austan Goolsbee, unofficial spokesman for the opposition, was not in the room. "Where's Goolsbee?" the President asked. A few minutes later, Austan joined the conversation. But the President had only about 20 minutes available before his assistant, Katie Johnson, came in with a note urging him to move on to his next appointment. "This is too important to try to decide in a rush," the President told us. "We need to get together again later."

For that early-evening session, we convened in the windowless Roosevelt Room, the only real conference room in the West Wing. Larry asked me to begin by summarizing the consequences of refusing aid to Chrysler, and from there the conversation took off. The group was sobered by my assessment that given the early stage of the Fiat discussions, there was only a fifty-fifty chance of reaching an acceptable agreement.

The President's political advisers were as torn as his task force: Polls universally showed the public strongly opposed to the auto bailouts. At the same time, the advisers recognized the severe economic and political consequences of a Chrysler shutdown across broad swaths of the industrial Midwest. We were dazzled that chief of staff Rahm Emanuel -- a former congressional leader -- could identify from memory the representatives in whose districts the large Chrysler facilities lay.

After about an hour, the President asked for any final comments and then said, "I've decided. I'm prepared to support Chrysler if we can get the Fiat alliance done on terms that make sense to us." And we were thrilled when the President said, "I want you to be tough, and I want you to be commercial."

With that, the meeting dispersed. The recommendation to ask GM's Rick Wagoner to step aside had received barely a mention. New to business meetings with Presidents, I found Obama's style consistent with his "No drama Obama" image and on a par with the best CEOs I had spent time with. He was cordial without being effusive and decisive when his advisers were divided.

Soulforce: Daniel Gonzales promotes anti-heterosexism conference in response to NARTH meeting

The Guardian: Gay-friendly congregations can provide a nurturing spiritual community

Rabbi Hillel Athias-Robles writes a very moving story in the Guardian, a UK newspaper. It references a recent decision by the US American Psychological Association to recommend to psychotherapists not to tell clients that they can change their sexual orientation. The APA did also recommend that for some clients, religion was more important than sexuality, and for these folks, celibacy is a valid option.


Last week the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution stating that mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy. It recognised that many of the clients wanting such a change were those whose religious beliefs conflicted with their sexual orientation. Among its suggestions, it proposed that therapists discuss with their religious gay and lesbian clients the possibility of joining gay-friendly congregations.

Reading this evoked memories of my journey from religious repression to religious liberation, from ultra-Orthodox Judaism, which condemns homosexuality, to its Liberal counterpart, which celebrates it.

As a young teen, I began practising – along with my family – ultra-Orthodox Judaism, which was teeming with laws. Cardinal among the prohibitions was one from Leviticus 18:22: "Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman, it is an abomination." This made my life untenable. As much as I tried to abide by every commandment, my efforts were insufficient. I knew that I was gay and that made me an abomination.

At 17 I moved to Jerusalem to study in a yeshiva, a seminary devoted to the study of the Torah. I naively hoped that by cloistering myself with sacred texts I would be miraculously purged of my deviation. Reality crushed my buoyancy – my attraction towards men intensified.

I tried to exhaust all possible means for my rehabilitation – crying, praying, fasting. When all this failed, I heard of a support group for Orthodox men struggling with homosexuality.

At the group, we were told that homosexuality was a pathology called SSA – Same-Sex Attraction. We were sick. In our meetings, and also during my private sessions with the therapist, it was said that we could only find fulfilment by marrying a woman. We needed to convert to heterosexuality, and could achieve this by adopting masculine traits and gender-appropriate attitudes, like engaging in team sports or hanging out with the "lads".

With time, I began to feel increasingly pressured to wed, to be fruitful and multiply. This way I would channel my sexual energies and be "cured". At 21, I went through an arranged marriage. I was engaged within less than a week of meeting my bride-to-be, and we moved to Amsterdam and then to London.

Naturally, all those promises were in vain – and at the expense of an innocent girl. Over the years, my secret began riving at me from my entrails. I was sick of deceiving my wife and myself. I told her the truth. Shortly thereafter she left me, taking our three daughters to Argentina. The pain I put all of them through is an albatross I will carry on my shoulders for ever.

After my ordeal, I burst out of the closet and considered renouncing my faith. I nonetheless came to realise I needed spirituality. Just as I couldn't repress my sexuality, I couldn't repress my spiritual self either. I needed an alternate source of meaning.

With trepidation I approached the headquarters of Liberal Judaism in London, a movement founded on the principles of egalitarianism and inclusivity, which conducts same-sex commitment ceremonies. The movement extended to me its unconditional support.Having been ordained as a rabbi, I joined Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue and it felt like coming home. I now have a partner and have reached a level of happiness I never dreamed possible.

There are many other movements across the faith spectrum which fully embrace their LGBT members. Transitioning from a conservative religion to an inclusive one is not easy. Yet the bliss felt by being at peace with oneself and being welcomed into an accepting community outweighs the cost. If you take the leap, there will be many to catch you. Trust me, I was there.

Hillel Athias-Robles is assistant rabbi of the Northwood & Pinner Liberal Synagogue

NYT Op Ed: How Words Could End a War

A New York Times op ed by an anthropology professor argues that symbolic gestures, such as Hamas recognizing Israel's right to exist or Israel apologizing for the displacement of civilians in the 1948 war, can have huge effects on the willingness of adversaries to compromise. Professor Atran argues that these symbolic gestures are more likely to bring peace than offers of material rewards - something that Western negotiators have so far failed to realize.


AS diplomats stitch together a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, the most depressing feature of the conflict is the sense that future fighting is inevitable. Rational calculation suggests that neither side can win these wars. The thousands of lives and billions of dollars sacrificed in fighting demonstrate the advantages of peace and coexistence; yet still both sides opt to fight.

This small territory is the world’s great symbolic knot. “Palestine is the mother of all problems” is a common refrain among people we have interviewed across the Muslim world: from Middle Eastern leaders to fighters in the remote island jungles of Indonesia; from Islamist senators in Pakistan to volunteers for martyrdom on the move from Morocco to Iraq.

Some analysts see this as a testament to the essentially religious nature of the conflict. But research we recently undertook suggests a way to go beyond that. For there is a moral logic to seemingly intractable religious and cultural disputes. These conflicts cannot be reduced to secular calculations of interest but must be dealt with on their own terms, a logic very different from the marketplace or realpolitik.

Across the world, people believe that devotion to sacred or core values that incorporate moral beliefs — like the welfare of family and country, or commitment to religion and honor — are, or ought to be, absolute and inviolable. Our studies, carried out with the support of the National Science Foundation and the Defense Department, suggest that people will reject material compensation for dropping their commitment to sacred values and will defend those values regardless of the costs.

In our research, we surveyed nearly 4,000 Palestinians and Israelis from 2004 to 2008, questioning citizens across the political spectrum including refugees, supporters of Hamas and Israeli settlers in the West Bank. We asked them to react to hypothetical but realistic compromises in which their side would be required to give away something it valued in return for a lasting peace.

All those surveyed responded to the same set of deals. First they would be given a straight-up offer in which each side would make difficult concessions in exchange for peace; next they were given a scenario in which their side was granted an additional material incentive; and last came a proposal in which the other side agreed to a symbolic sacrifice of one of its sacred values.

For example, a typical set of trade-offs offered to a Palestinian might begin with this premise: Suppose the United Nations organized a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians under which Palestinians would be required to give up their right to return to their homes in Israel and there would be two states, a Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Second, we would sweeten the pot: in return, Western nations would give the Palestinian state $10 billion a year for 100 years. Then the symbolic concession: For its part, Israel would officially apologize for the displacement of civilians in the 1948 war

Indeed, across the political spectrum, almost everyone we surveyed rejected the initial solutions we offered — ideas that are accepted as common sense among most Westerners, like simply trading land for peace or accepting shared sovereignty over Jerusalem. Why the opposition to trade-offs for peace?

Many of the respondents insisted that the values involved were sacred to them. For example, nearly half the Israeli settlers we surveyed said they would not consider trading any land in the West Bank — territory they believe was granted them by God — in exchange for peace. More than half the Palestinians considered full sovereignty over Jerusalem in the same light, and more than four-fifths felt that the “right of return” was a sacred value, too.

As for sweetening the pot, in general the greater the monetary incentive involved in the deal, the greater the disgust from respondents. Israelis and Palestinians alike often reacted as though we had asked them to sell their children. This strongly implies that using the standard approaches of “business-like negotiations” favored by Western diplomats will only backfire.

Many Westerners seem to ignore these clearly expressed “irrational” preferences, because in a sensible world they ought not to exist. Diplomats hope that peace and concrete progress on material and quality-of-life matters (electricity, water, agriculture, the economy and so on) will eventually make people forget the more heartfelt issues. But this is only a recipe for another Hundred Years’ War — progress on everyday material matters will simply heighten attention on value-laden issues of “who we are and want to be.”

Fortunately, our work also offers hints of another, more optimistic course.

Absolutists who violently rejected offers of money or peace for sacred land were considerably more inclined to accept deals that involved their enemies making symbolic but difficult gestures. For example, Palestinian hard-liners were more willing to consider recognizing the right of Israel to exist if the Israelis simply offered an official apology for Palestinian suffering in the 1948 war. Similarly, Israeli respondents said they could live with a partition of Jerusalem and borders very close to those that existed before the 1967 war if Hamas and the other major Palestinian groups explicitly recognized Israel’s right to exist.

Remarkably, our survey results were mirrored by our discussions with political leaders from both sides. For example, Mousa Abu Marzook (the deputy chairman of Hamas) said no when we proposed a trade-off for peace without granting a right of return. He became angry when we added in the idea of substantial American aid for rebuilding: “No, we do not sell ourselves for any amount.”

But when we mentioned a potential Israeli apology for 1948, he brightened: “Yes, an apology is important, as a beginning. It’s not enough because our houses and land were taken away from us and something has to be done about that.” His response suggested that progress on sacred values might open the way for negotiations on material issues, rather than the reverse.

We got a similar reaction from Benjamin Netanyahu, the hard-line former Israeli prime minister. We asked him whether he would seriously consider accepting a two-state solution following the 1967 borders if all major Palestinian factions, including Hamas, were to recognize the right of the Jewish people to an independent state in the region. He answered, “O.K., but the Palestinians would have to show that they sincerely mean it, change their textbooks and anti-Semitic characterizations.”

Making these sorts of wholly intangible “symbolic” concessions, like an apology or recognition of a right to exist, simply doesn’t compute on any utilitarian calculus. And yet the science says they may be the best way to start cutting the knot.

Freedom = happiness

Earlier, I posted a slideshow of the world's happiest countries, as listed by the World Values Survey conducted at the University of Leicester in the UK.

Businessweek has another article on the survey.

It's Not Just About Money

Generally, a rising global sense of freedom in the last quarter-century has eclipsed the contribution of pure economic development to happiness, he says. This is especially evident in developed countries with stable economies, where the freedom of choice gained through wealth has made people happier—not necessarily the wealth itself.

What's more, "there are diminishing returns to economic progress," Inglehart says. In poorer countries, happiness can be linked to solidarity among tight-knit communities, religious conviction, and patriotism, which probably explains the happiness of some relatively poor Latin American countries, he says.

Social tolerance is another important factor in how happy a country rates itself. Over the last quarter-century, growing gender equality and acceptance of minorities and homosexuals has played a major role in those European countries found to be the most content. No. 7-ranked Switzerland, for instance, has elected two women as head of state in the last 10 years, while No. 4-ranked Iceland has recently passed laws guaranteeing virtually all the same rights to gay couples that married couples enjoy. "The less threatened people feel, the more tolerant they are," says Inglehart. Tolerance simply has a rippling effect that makes people happier.
Gratitude Improves Attitude

While Inglehart does not profess to know the true secrets of happiness, he says that this most recent study has made the picture a bit clearer. In his opinion, benevolence and expressions of gratitude appear to be subtle but powerful ways to bring happiness into one's life and to extend it. Religion and solidarity in the community play a big role in this, he says, but any positive belief system can help. "Latin America seems to understand this," he says.

"In the old days I would have told you to work hard and save your money," says Inglehart. "It's different today. I just haven't nailed it down yet."

This offers a whole lot of important lessons for many people.

Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain

From LA Times, requires subscription. The gist is that there are structural brain differences in "left-wing" and "right-wing" brains; a better term would be authoritarian vs non-authoritarian brains. This does not mean that people are born this way; our brains could develop differently depending on how we are conditioned.

Even in humdrum nonpolitical decisions, liberals and conservatives literally think differently, researchers show

By Denise Gellene, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 10, 2007
Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

In a simple experiment reported todayin the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

The results show "there are two cognitive styles -- a liberal style and a conservative style," said UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who was not connected to the latest research.

Participants were college students whose politics ranged from "very liberal" to "very conservative." They were instructed to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W.

M appeared four times more frequently than W, conditioning participants to press a key in knee-jerk fashion whenever they saw a letter.

Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M.

Researchers got the same results when they repeated the experiment in reverse, asking another set of participants to tap when a W appeared.

Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said the results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity."

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a "flip-flopper" for changing his mind about the conflict.

Based on the results, he said, liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.

"There is ample data from the history of science showing that social and political liberals indeed do tend to support major revolutions in science," said Sulloway, who has written about the history of science and has studied behavioral differences between conservatives and liberals.

Lead author David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University, cautioned that the study looked at a narrow range of human behavior and that it would be a mistake to conclude that one political orientation was better. The tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing depending on the situation, he said.

Political orientation, he noted, occurs along a spectrum, and positions on specific issues, such as taxes, are influenced by many factors, including education and wealth. Some liberals oppose higher taxes and some conservatives favor abortion rights.

Why do we hate?

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:28, NRSV

"O Mankind, we created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and made you in to tribes and nations so that you may know each other (not that you despise each other). Verily, the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is he who is most righteous of you." (Al-Quran, Chapter 49, Verse 13)

"And amongst his signs is the creation of heaven and the earth, and variation in your language and colours; Verily, in there are signs for those who know" (Al-Quran, Chapter 30, Verse 22)

It's pretty clear to me that God considers racial discrimination to be forbidden. I originally wanted to say racial prejudice, but I have stated before that we are all racists, or racists in recovery. So, if you're in recovery from racism, God is happy.

However, not all people realize that they need to start a recovery program. Why do we hate people of other races?

In social psychology, the realistic group conflict theory states that when resources are limited (or perceived to be so), groups that are competing for that limited resource will come into conflict, which will breed prejudice and discrimination. In America today, undocumented immigrants are perceived to be taking American jobs and driving down American wages. In Vincent Chin's time, Japanese automakers were perceived as taking market share from American companies, and thus placing American jobs at risk.

In social psychology, the prescription to prevent or heal conflict is to get both groups to work cooperatively, towards a common goal, as equals. In real life, these solutions can be hard to come by. However, I believe that integrating the American armed forces was one such situation. Once they stopped forming all-Black units, White and African-Americans had to fight against a common enemy. In Vietnam, racial hatred was transferred to the Vietnamese, but attitudes within the Army did improve, relative to the past.

As to the immigration situation, I have said several times before that all those who are not full-blood Native Americans (ie, almost everyone in America) are immigrants, or descended from immigrants. Immigrants have given this country a vibrant culture. Chinese immigrants built the railroads. Japanese cars are made in America by Americans(not to mention that some of the Big 3 American automakers outsource to Mexico). Mexican and other Latino immigrants have, like the other immigrant groups, contributed in their own myriad ways ... one particular person who springs to mind is Edward James Olmos, an accomplished actor (currently starring as William Adama on Battlestar Galactica), and activist on behalf of the Latino community (among other things, he got arrested during protests in Puerto Rico over the US Navy using the island of Vieques as a bombing range).

DOD survey shows ethical struggle in war

ARLINGTON, Va. — Fewer than half of soldiers and Marines polled in Iraq would report a buddy for unethical behavior, according to a combat mental health study released Friday by the Defense Department.

The latest Mental Health Advisory Team survey queried 1,320 soldiers and 447 Marines anonymously from August to October 2006, the fourth in a series of studies since 2003 to assess the mental health and well-being of deployed forces.

It is the first time the survey has included Marines and the first to ask questions concerning combat ethics, Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command and acting Army surgeon general, told Pentagon reporters during a Friday press briefing.

Ethics questions were included while the study was under way at the request of Army Gen. George Casey, then-commander of Multi-National Forces — Iraq, according to Rear Adm. Richard Jeffries, Medical Officer of the Marine Corps, who also attended the briefing.

Just 47 percent of soldiers and 38 percent of the Marines participating believe that noncombatants should be treated with “dignity and respect,” according to the report.

One servicemember in 10 admitted to hitting or kicking a civilian, or destroying noncombatant property without justification.

More than one-third also felt that torture should be allowed to save the life of a fellow soldier or Marine in the survey, which is dated Nov. 17, 2006, but was not publicly released until Friday.

Asked about her concerns over the reluctance of soldiers to report their buddies for crimes, and apparent willingness to see torture used against enemies, Pollock said, “these men and women are seeing their friends injured. These thoughts are natural.”

What is important, Pollock said, is that “they’re not acting on these thoughts.”

In the survey, 62 percent of soldiers and 66 percent of Marines reported knowing someone who had been seriously injured or killed, or that a member of their team had become a combat casualty.

The researchers passed out anonymous questionnaires and conducted interviews with focus groups among troops involved in combat operations, said Army Col. Carl Castro, Mental Health Advisory Team-IV team leader.

The more frequently servicemembers are deployed, and the longer they stay on the battlefield, the more likely they are to report losing not only their moral compass, but their mental well-being, researchers found.

The survey found that one-third of troops in combat report feelings of anxiety, depression and stress.

“But not all [servicemembers] are at equal risk,” Pollock said. “Length of combat tours is the main determinant” for whether or not a servicemember will suffer from mental health issues.

Soldiers who deployed for more than six months, or had deployed multiple times, were more likely to screen positive for a mental health issue than other soldiers.

Because Marines typically deploy for just seven months compared to the Army’s yearlong tours, soldiers report experiencing mental health problems at a higher rate, Pollock said.

“The Army is spread thin,” and shorter deployments aren’t an option at this point, Pollock said.

In fact, the Army recently announced that all combat tours in the Middle East will be extended from one year to 15 months.

Pollock said that that decision was made in part to address the report’s recommendation to extend at-home “dwell time,” so soldiers can recover between combat tours.

As part of their recommendations, the survey’s researchers said soldiers should remain at home base for 18 to 36 months to recover from the stress of the battle.

The Army’s current goal, with the 15- month deployments in place, is for active- duty troops to have a one-year break between deployments.

Deployment length was directly linked to morale problems in the Army, according to the report.

“Soldier morale was lower than Marine morale,” Pollock said.

Political psychology, Christianity, and bigotry

I've taken a swipe at my religion yesterday, so I might as well go for broke. I spoke of how some memes basically encourage mindless obedience to Biblical and/or church authority, lack of empathy, wilful ignorance as to the lives of out-groups, and hostility towards them. I'm going to bring in a couple of concepts from political and personality psychology to elaborate my case. Thanks to David Winter, my political psych professor at the University of Michigan, and Veronica Benet-Martinez, my personality psych prof at the same institution. This article might get a bit technical, and might not make a lot of sense to anyone who hasn't studied psychology or another social science. If so, just forget about it and concentrate on the last article.

A construct is a mental structure, a "way in which some things are construed as being alike and yet different from others" (Kelly, cited in David Winter's textbook). They are like adjectives that describe the nouns of our experience: people, places, things. Some constructs are preemptive or constellatory. A preemptive construct, when applied, precludes all others. For example, all those gays want is to screw like rabbits. Nothing else about them matters, just the sex. A constellatory construct is one that, when applied, requires specific others to be applied. So, if all those gays want is to screw like rabbits, they must be out to destroy the family, discredit Christianity, etc. In contrast, some constructs are permeable or open. They can easily accomodate or incorporate new experiences. For example, we might say that the LGBT community has a broad, non-conformist expression of gender. That would validate the fact that some gay men are very masculine, and some are very feminine.

Cognitive complexity is a measurable variable. The more complex a person's constructs, the more permeable and the less constellatory or preemptive. They are more likely to be able to see things from multiple points of view. It was first scored by someone named Bieri, who obviously had nothing better to do with his time. He calculated the degree of overlap across constructs in his subjects' writing; two constructs overlap if they are applied in the same way to a group of persons or role titles. The more overlap, the less cognitive complexity.

This is the part where I hope it gets more intelligible to laypeople (and, frankly, to myself). People who are higher in cognitive complexity attend to a wider range of information, especially that which doesn't fit their previous stereotypes or violates familiar rules or schemas. Our ideologies can guide us, but they can also blind us. For example, I had been told that homosexuality was a choice; if I had hung on to that construct, I would have ignored the fact that many of the gay people I met felt that it was a far more complex issue than simply being a choice. In fact, I would have avoided gay people entirely. For world leaders, low-complexity leaders tend to advocate their own foreign policy goals (sound familiar?). High-complexity leaders are more likely to cooperate. Leaders that displayed higher complexity during foreign policy crises were more likely to resolve them peacefully - think the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Integrative complexity is the ability to integrate multiple perspectives, whereas cognitive complexity involves mainly differentiation.

A study was done on Robert Lee, the famous and probably best Confederate general during the US Civil War; he outranked most of his Union opponents significantly in integrative complexity, and when he did so, he defeated them in battle. He outranked Meade somewhat in integrative complexity at the battle of Gettysburg, but lost the battle. The Confederates were outnumbered in the battle, and Lee ordered an infantry assault against Union positions on Cemetery Ridge. The preceding artillery barrage was ineffective, and 12,500 of the Confederation's best troops advanced against a dug-in enemy over open ground with predictable results. I'm no military historian, but a lot of things obviously went wrong with the assault. Perhaps Lee felt he had no choice. In any case, he lost at Gettysburg, and his integrative complexity took a dive. It has been shown that integrative complexity will go down under stress. He suffered several subsequent losses. After the war, his cognitive complexity recovered to its previously high levels.

In modern times, President George Bush is actually a man of average intelligence. However, his integrative complexity is low. From an article posted in Political Psychology, and referenced below:

"...he scores particularly unimpressively for “openness to experience, a cognitive proclivity that encompasses unusual receptiveness to fantasy, aesthetics, actions, ideas and values. In the general population this factor is positively associated with intelligence”.

Bush’s openness score of zero — compared with 82 for Clinton and John F Kennedy, 95 for Abraham Lincoln and 99.1 for Thomas Jefferson — “placed him at the very bottom of US presidents”.

This assessment can only be considered tentative because of lack of available evidence on a sitting president, but it is corroborated by a measure of Bush’s “integrative complexity”. Simonton says: “Low scorers on integrative complexity can only see things from a single perspective — their own.”

Bush’s score, he says, is comparable to “extremist Islamic fundamentalists in the Taliban and Al-Qaeda leadership"

So, Bush isn't actually an idiot in terms of IQ ... but he is an idiot in terms of cognitive and integrative compexity. This does not bode well for Iraq, Iran, Israel/Palestine or North Korea. And I bet you some of that low complexity is exacerbated by the memes he has inherited from his branch of Evangelical Christianity have not helped at all. Had he come across a minister who preached a more complex version of Christianity, he might have turned out different. That having been said, people can only change if they want to, and he might very well have sought out churches whose ministers would not challenge him so much.

Integrative complexity is not necessarily a good thing. Let's say someone steps into the room, draws a pistol, and is about to fire. If I take the time to consider the fact that his homeland was invaded by Americans troops and his family was killed by a misguided cruise missile, and wonder what sort of response is appropriate, I will already have been shot. If I am not a pacifist, I should either run or attempt to disarm him. If I am, I should either run or allow myself to be shot. The time to think about these things, however, is before, not during. During the debate on slavery during the American Civil War, moderate leaders scored high on integrative complexity, but interestingly enough, abolitionists and slavery advocates both scored low. Perhaps the abolitionists scored high when they were considering whether slavery was justifiable or not. But, once they made their decision, there was no time to be nice. One criticism levelled at Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, is that in being too broad minded, he has been too accomodating to the conservatives at the expense of the liberals, and that he has turned back on his previous support of gays in the church.

I wrote this to reinforce the point that clergy and laypeople have important roles to play in broadening the experience of their fellow believers who may not yet have had "stretching" experiences, like Jesus had with the Syro-Phoenecian woman. Or, like Jesus' audience when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan - did you notice that it was the Samaritan, the unclean one, reaching out to the Jew in the story, and not the other way around? It will take some doing, but if we help broaden each other's minds, we will make this world a better place.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg

http://www.idealgovernment.com/index.php/weblog/1019/