Just Kidding

What follows is just a little bit of a rant about the way a certain phrase is being used lately.

I get more than a little irritated when people misuse and abuse language. Here’s an example that I’ve seen happen a few times a week for the last several months and even been the unwitting victim of the exchange quite a few times too.

Person A, “Hey I’ll trade you that watch for this used popsicle stick.”


Person B, “No way!”


Person A, “Yeah I was just kidding.”

The watch and the popsicle are just examples. Substitute the watch with anything of value and the popsicle stick for anything of substantially less value or no value at all. The conversation typically takes this form. Person A proposes a very lopsided deal. Once rejected A then attempts to camouflage the scam as if it was just a joke. My irritation comes at the use of the phrase “just kidding”. I wonder if B had accepted the deal would A have accepted the watch. If so, then was A really kidding? I think not. In every situation I’ve seen A was completely serious and would have followed through with the lopsided deal if B had accepted. So they were not kidding. They only chose to claim that they were kidding once they had been caught. “Just kidding” seems to be used as a poor substitute for “I’m sorry to have even proposed such a lopsided deal. Please forgive me.”

I recently had somebody propose a deal to me that was very much not in my favor and opened me up to some serious liability. I promptly declined the offer. They followed by saying, “I don’t blame you. If I were you I wouldn’t have done it either.” Really? They openly confessed that they knew the deal was not fair but they followed through with it anyway.

Yeah I know this is kinda petty. I just find it irritating. Whether you call it The Golden Rule, Kant ‘s Categorical Imperative or any of the other names that it goes by treat others the way you would like to be treated. If you would accept the deal if it went in your favor then you were not “just kidding” you were being manipulative. And if you wouldn’t accept the deal if it was offered to you then don’t offer a deal that you know is unfair.

That’s Not Fair

So last week Victoria was reading aloud a news article about some of the budget cut that the state is implementing for Georgia schools. Some of the cuts I agree with and others I think are really cutting to deep in the wrong areas. Anyway, not to get off track on a political discussion, one of the budget cuts called for cancelling a certain test that is currently required in 2nd grade. I think this is a good thing. I just feel that we have too much testing in order to qualify for federal moneys, etc, and not nearly enough teaching. Apparently the state agrees and felt that this test really wasn’t needed.
Well as Victoria was reading this article to me my 6th grader, upon hearing that her sibling will not have to take this 2nd grade test exclaimed, “That is so unfair!”. Hmm. This got me thinking. Why did she feel this way? So I asked her. Did she think the test was meaningful? No. Did she herself benefit from the test? No. Then why did she think it was unfair? After a little discussion I discovered that she thought the change was actually for the better but she was upset that they hadn’t done it while she was in 2nd grade.
I wonder how many times we have continued a tradition, a ritual, or anything that we didn’t like when we went through it just because we think it would be unfair for us to have to do something that those coming behind us didn’t have to do. How often do we put our kids through things just because that’s the way we had to do it? I wonder how deep this mindset penetrates our society. Last year Victoria read a book that had Chinese foot binding as a major theme. I wonder how many of these women did these to their daughters just because they felt it would be unfair for them to not go through it after they had. I wonder if there were any salve owners in the south who felt that slavery was wrong but that it would be unfair for them to try to work without them. I could go on but I think you get the point.
I’ve given my kids the “walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways” argument several times. When I do it I hope they are taking away from it that I think it’s cool that they have access to cell phones, the internet, and other modern conveniences. They should be thankful that they have all of these things. I sure hope they don’t think that I’m crying foul. Yes, I wish that I’d have had some of the benefits as a kid that they have now. But I would hate for them to think that I’m putting them through something that I disagree with just because I had to do it.

One of my Favorite MLK Jr. Quotes

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Picking Cotton

In 1984 Jennifer Thompson was raped. She spent one hour with her rapist’s face just inches from her own. She made a concerted effort to study her rapist’s face and learn every detail about him. If she lived through the night she wanted to be able to lock this guy up forever. And that is exactly what she did. However after being in jail for eleven years DNA proved that the man she had locked up without any physical evidence, just based on her description, did not commit the rape. Picking Cotton is this story

I’ve always been suspect of human memory, particular when it comes to our justice system. I’ve had personal experiences where my own memory did not line up with other facts. I know that how I remember the incident could not have been the case but somehow my recollection of the events has been altered. My experiences are completely trivial when compared to the eleven years that one man, Ronald Cotton, spent in prison for something that he did not do.

Since his release Cotton and Thompson have become very active in educating police systems at how to avoid the mistakes that happened in their case.

Reading this book was not easy. Sections will and should make you very uncomfortable. The serious miscarriage of justice that happened is not to be taken lightly. Cotton and Thompson’s story will have you squirming in your seats the next time you watch a cop show and they lock somebody up just based on witness identification. Or worse, the next time you hear of a death row inmate being denied a stay of execution and his conviction is based on even less than Ronald Cotton’s conviction.

Far from being bitter about the loss of so much of his adult life Cotton recognized that he and Thompson were victims of the same man, the real rapist Bobby Poole. Their story is one of the most heart warming tales of forgiveness that I have ever read. It will have you questioning a lot of your preconceptions about, justice, memory and what it truly means to forgive.

My Point Exactly

Ender's Game: a Review

As a family we just finished reading “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card. I was very apprehensive about reading it with the kids because of the quite serious theme, especially near the end. Not surprisingly Rachel has been having a very hard time with it. I remember being disturbed by the book when I first read it in High School. I shared my concerns with my father who encouraged me to continue on and read “Speaker for the Dead”. The sequel does redeem many of the seriously unethical aspects of the first book, but on its own I cannot recommend that anybody read “Ender’s Game”.
Lately I’ve been reading several book s on psychology, decision making, ethics and philosophy. It’s with this extra education that I was even more disgusted by “Ender’s Game”. If you haven’t read the book and don’t want any spoilers, stop reading now.
In the first Chapter the government has intentionally bred a child to be the commander of the next army. They even violated local laws in order to allow the child to be born. Not only did this child have little to no choice about his future, this is just the tip of the iceberg for the ends-justifies-the-means mentality that influences every single action of the government as it pertains to Ender.
At an age when he can still show you how old he is with his fingers Ender is intentionally put into situations where he is forced to defend himself. Eventually he even is forced to kill. He is also praised for not stopping when the threat is simply gone, but to continue until he completely destroys his enemy. In the most brutal scene he continues to attack a fellow student after he is knocked unconscious. As if allowing this wasn’t unethical enough Ender’s handlers told him that his victims were merely transferred and concealed the true horror of his actions from him.
All this was foreshadowing for the last few chapters. There Ender is deceived again, this time into destroying an entire species. Again the full scope of his actions was held from him. He was told that the war he was fighting was just a game. They encouraged him to be unethical and to not play by any rules. By his own admission he cheated. He just wanted to end the game. They weren’t real. He was encouraged to believe that the enemy was teachers and that’s the only game he was trying to win. Had he known the full scope of his actions he likely would have responded differently.
The really disturbing part of the last chapters came when you realize that the war was over before he had attacked. The buggers were trying to apologize for their mistaken invasion but simply didn’t know how to communicate with us. Victoria and I even speculated that the second attack, which was a complete victory for the humans, was even a peace offering to make them feel victorious and not pursue the issue any further. Had they not encouraged totally destruction as the only definition of victory there would have been no further conflict.
So why am I getting so upset about this? It’s only fiction, right? Unfortunately we live in a world where far too many people believe that once you’ve defined and enemy the only thing left is too destroy them. We live in a world were decent people will succumb to situational evil and commit unspeakable atrocities. We’ve sacrificed American values and liberty in the name of victory and didn’t even give diplomacy a fair chance. Our leaders define political opinions as if there were only patriots and terrorists and nothing in between. We post hoc justify all of this as if the actions themselves are proof of their efficacy. Just because we destroyed a counties ability to wage war doesn’t prove that they were planning an attack. We have manipulated congress, the public and the media with false information to support going to war. Etc. etc. etc. The parallels from this book are far too many for me to simply dismiss it as fiction.
Card has had numerous calls from Hollywood to turn this book into a movie. I confess that I think the training at the battle school would make for good action scenes. I am just very concerned that those scenes would be the only take-away and the overwhelming horror of his childhood would be lost.
We’re going to read “Speaker for the Dead” next. It’s a much better book for exactly the opposite reasons that I disliked “Ender’s Game”. Ender is allowed to think. He doesn’t rush to judgment. He has a conscience and diplomacy is encouraged. But most of all he understands what he is doing and why. It makes him a much better leader and a better human being. I think Rachel will be able to sleep a little better once we finish it.

Blackwater

The latest book I've finished reading is Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill.
In the last decade the U.S. has increasingly been using private contractors to assist in its efforts to wage war. The spin that is given from Washington is that the contractors are just "providing security" and not actually involved in combat. Scahill clearly documents that these "contractors" are indeed involved in combat and in some cases even commanding enlisted members of the U.S. military.
The most disturbing fact about Blackwater is that they believe themselves to be above any law. They are quick to point out that as contractors they are not subject to the military justice system. They symultaniously claim that since the Pentagon counts them among the U.S total force that makes them immune from any civilian prosecution in the counties they operate, including the U.S.. So who do they answer too? They see themselves as above any laws besides their own company policies.
Scahill goes in depth into the leadership and history of Blackwater. The U.S. has officially claimed that the war in Iraq is a war against terrorism and not a religous war. This point seems to have escaped the leadership of Blackwater. Many of them are members of the Knights of Malta who still believe that the crusades are continuing and they claim to be gaurdians of the Christian hold lands in the Middle East.
The book was very scary. I found the book to be very well researched and I agree with most of the conclusions he has reached.
A few criticisms of the book:
Scahill's style is a little polarizing. He uses politically charged buzz words like "neo-con" frequently. That's surely his right, however his bias probably causes some folks who would have otherwise read it to put it down. A few of Scahill's conclusions were based on circumstaial evidence. He discloses this openly, but I question the ethics of including the conclusions at all without direct evidence.
I actually found much of the book to be rather repetative. Scahill seemed to have written several paragraphs to describe certian organizations, like the Knights of Malta and then inserted the same paragraphs all throughout the book whenever those organizations were mentioned. The result was that each chapter read as if they were separate stand alone articles and not one continuous book.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who is concerned about the details of how the U.S. is fighting the war on terror. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the the U.S. presence in Iraq. This book will have you seriously questioning the decision to fight this war with civilian mercinaries.

How To Break a Terrorist

The latest book I’ve read is How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq by Matthew Alexander and John Bruning.

In the wake of the Abu Ghraib abuses, this story follows the actions of one interrogator in Iraq and his attempts to convert his fellow ‘gators to new methods that use compassion, understanding of their culture and religion to find common ground. Although his methods met with some resistance from the top as well as his peers, ultimately his methods are allowed to speak for themselves. While other other ‘gators are have no success with the traditional “fear and control” methods Alexander is able to build trust and provide valuable leads. He was able to get high level Al Qaeda leaders to sell out their superiors and ultimately Al Zarqawi for little more than an extra blanket and a paperback copy of a Harry Potter book.

This is the first book I’ve read that had large black marks through several paragraphs. Some of the information was sensitive to national security and was deleted by the Department of Defense. Originally the book had substantially more sections deleted by the DoD, but the author successfully sued to have those sections remain since he could show that all that information was also available from public domain sources.

One of the most interesting point to me was how few truly dedicated Al Qaeda leaders he actually found. Most of his peers used the phrase “Kool-Aid drinking Al Qaeda” to describe those who had truly forsaken all other ties including family to join the cause. By assuming that each detainee held these values the other ‘gators created an artificial barrier that they felt they had to tear down before they could get any other information from them. In actually this wall did not exist. Most would provide information to Alexander after he just explained to them that they both just wanted and Iraq where families could live in peace. The only true “Kool-Aid drinker” he found was a cocky 12-year old boy whose arrogance and desire to impress his captors provider valuable information. In the process of name dropping to show how high up he was in the organization he ultimately betrayed them. It’s both sad and comforting that this was the only “Kool-Aid drinker” Alexander found. Comforting because it shows how few are truly convinced that Al Qaeda is right. Sad because it shows how delusional the next generation may become.

One chapter of this book details how Alexander was forced to apologize to a family that was detained accidentally. His methods allow for and even demand that such efforts take place. By not automatically treating them as criminals and sticking to his philosophy of respect he was able to leave these law abiding Iraqis with a hand shack and a thank you. They even thanked and blessed him. Because in spite of the error they knew that he was honestly searching for a peaceful Iraq. If other chapters don’t convince you that we should be treating detainees with respect this one will.

If you believe that the ends justifies the means you won’t enjoy this book. If you think Al Qaeda was in Iraq before 2003 you won’t enjoy this book. If you think that harsh interrogation techniques like stress positions and water-boarding are effective and moral you will not enjoy reading this book. If you think that in order to fight and enemy you have to act like that enemy, and if you believe that dehumanizing your enemy will result in anything positive at all then you should avoid reading this book. Because in How to Break a Terrorist the author effectively demonstrates how simply treating a detainee with respect and building on things that we have in common is moral and effective, especially compared to the fear and control techniques used by others.

Deception as Policy

“All war is deception” Sun Tzu

A few months ago I blogged about the dangers of constant violent imagery. Once you start down the road of comparing your situation to a battle, a war or even a campaign you start to behave as if winning the “battle” and surviving long enough to ultimately win the “war” are the only real goal. Truth and accountability seem to be the first casualty to this type of twisted, ends justifies the means logic.
Eight years ago a candidate for President promised to end this type of permanent campaign. He promised to take politics out of the driver’s seat and make actually governing his primary focus. He promised to reach across the aisle and actually make the changes and corrections to the government that those who put him in office expected.
Somewhere along the way President Bush lost his focus. Changing the culture in Washington took a back seat and he began playing by the same rules as the rest of them. Granted, Bush did not create the concept of the permanent campaign. But he did take it to new levels.
Sun Tzu and most military leaders since would tend to agree that deception is necessary in war. Unfortunately, our President and the rest of his advisors felt that it was okay to use deceptive tactics, that may be permissible during a war, to deceive the Congress and ultimately the American people into going into war in the first place.

Scott McClellan’s book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception gives a first hand perspective of the events that lead to the Bush White House loosing the ethical higher ground that they had promised to bring to Washington. McClellan puts much of the blame on Libby, Rove and Cheney. He doesn’t seem to think that they shared the President’s vision of changing the culture.

McClellan portrays President Bush not as the villain, as some conservative pundits have claimed, but as an honest decent man who, for one reason or another, just didn’t stand up and do things the way he had promised to, the way they should have been done.
I admire McClellan’s dedication and conviction to the truth and a better government.

“I don’t believe the path to better democracy is served by exaggerated claims, distorted partisan attacks, or unsupported accusations of bad faith. Neither of our leading political parties is a repository of evil, and the vast majority of leaders on both sides of the aisle and at all levels of government are decent, well-meaning, and hard-working citizens who love our country and want to do the right thing. In diagnosing the problems we suffer from and the kinds of changes we need to make, I think it’s crucial to cling to truth, even when it is more nuanced, complex, and ambiguous than the extreme partisans on either side may choose to believe.” (p.309)

What Happened

With raising my kids I find that they will frequently come to me and tattle on one another. Sometimes these little information sessions start of with the attitude of "I was just sitting in my room, alone, minding my own business when so-and-so just came up and smacked me on the head with a stick." In those situations I rarely take the comments at face value and look for a deeper cause to the problem described. Every now and then I get a more honest and apologetic form of tattling. "Dad, so-and-so and I were sword fighting and I accidentally hit him a little harder than I meant to. I tried to apologize, but he just whacked me over the head with a stick." Granted this still may not be the whole truth but it's likely a whole lot closer to the truth than the "minding my own business" line. So I tend to be more sympathetic when I get a response that acknowledges at least some complicity in the problem than when they just seem to get defensive.

Earlier this week I started reading What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception by former Press Secretary Scott McClellan. I was prepared to have McClellan start off with the attitude of "there I was, in the White House, minding my own business..." If that had been the case I would likely not have continued reading past the preface. But that's not what happened. McClellan started of with the apology. He acknowledge that he was either indirectly or directly complicit in many of the criticisms that he was preparing to detail. Rather than simply attack his former boss as the bad guy, on the contrary he still paints the President as a good man who just got hung up in the culture of Washington. Rather than change Washington as he had promised in his campaign the whole administration just went about playing the game the way everybody else in the beltway was playing it. McClellan's cathartic, honest approach has me really studying this book that I honestly had not intended to give more than a cursory scan.

Last year I read a couple books that detailed the steps that people will take to isolate themselves from the decisions that they make. Mistakes Were Made But Not by Me and the Lucifer Effect both described how we use cognitive dissonance to convince ourselves that what we did was right. I'm only in the first couple chapters of McClellan's book and I'm already noticing some startling similarities between the behaviors of the detailed by McClellan and the examples in these other books. I don't believe that the Bush administration intended to do anything unethical. I just think that their "ends justifies the means" strategies got out of hand. When we start to excuse flaws in our own behavior what we wouldn't accept from others we leave the moral high ground and start walking along the steeper slopes of unethical and immoral behavior.

Hypocrisy

John Ashcroft is now defending the use of water-boarding. Does he realize that by defending the use of water-boarding by Americans he looses the moral authority to criticize water-boarding of Americans? I thought this was supposed to be a war against terror. Oh the hypocrisy...

Science Project

My 13-year old son is home-schooled. Last week he started a science experiment of his own design. He decided to test a few of the additives that people put into fresh flowers to make them stay fresh longer. The protocol consisted of filling 4 identical glasses with 8 ounces of water at the same temperature. One glass was left alone as a control. The second glass had 1 tablespoon of sugar added. The next had two aspirins added. And in the last we added one packet of the plant food that came with the flowers. Into each glass we placed one small flower, with the stems cut to the same length. All the glasses we placed in the window sill in the kitchen.
I thought he'd come up with a pretty good protocol and I was looking forward to seeing his results. Well a week went by and all four of the flowers showed no real change. My son was a little upset. He wondered what had gone wrong and wanted to start over rather than write up his conclusions. I took advantage of this teaching moment to explain that he needs to complete his observations and turn in the report. I them explained that this is probably how 99% of all science experiments end. Astronomers don't find new asteroids every time the look into the sky. Research doctors don't see measurable effects of new drugs every day. Even though Aaron's experiment did not product the effect that he wanted he still had learned something. As his experiment was designed ,5 days is not enough time to measure any difference in the effect of the chemicals being tested. Although mundane this is important information that future researchers could use to improve their experiments. Aaron agreed and is currently writing up his conclusions.
Science is sometimes victim to publication bias. Like Aaron they are hesitant to publish studies that don't have dramatic results. Dramatic or not the results are still science and those result should be published. Personally, I think that there is just as much value in a study that says "Acupuncture does not have a measurable effect on pain under controlled tests" is just as valuable as a study that say, "An aspirin a day will lower your chance of a heart attack". Both give me concrete practical data that I can use to live a better life.
I probably took Aaron's report a little more personally than I should have. When I was in High School I worked with my father, a CDC microbiologist, on a science project. I hypothesized that military labs would be less accurate than civilian labs in testing for certain diseases. I took data from all over the world that had already been collected and just analyzed it in a way nobody had thought of before. My dad was really excited for me and even thought that I'd win the science fair. I got an "Honorable Mention". One of the judges said that I should have actually done some of the lab work myself for better marks. Never mind that I had a sample size of several thousand lab tests, she didn't think it was science because I used a computer rather than a test tube. Another said it would have been more impressive if I hadn't disproven my hypothesis. He actually suggested that I should have rewritten my initial hypothesis so it looked I had successfully predicted the result. Not only did I find this suggestion unethical it is not what real science is all about. In the long run I didn't walk away felling like my project was a failure. I learned that there is no statistical difference in the ability of military labs to detect certain diseases or civilian labs' ability to detect the same diseases.
My dad eventually took my report and got it published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a peer reviewed science journal. That meant more to me than the "Honorable Mention" from my science teachers.

Choices

There is a phrase that I hear people use all too frequently that I have serious mixed emotions about. "We are nothing more and nothing less than the sum of our choices."
This has become a mantra for conservative talk show hosts. Neal Boortz uses it frequently to criticize those on welfare and those "looking for a hand out". For the most part I agree with the sentiment when people are indeed victims of their own bad decision making. I have little sympathy for folks who try to separate their decisions from the consequences. If you choose wisely you should expect the consequences of those decisions. Conversely if you make bad decisions you should expect to be rewarded accordingly. To this extent I have been trying to teach my children that they have the freedom to behave as they like. They just need to remember that consequences are just the other end of that decision and they can't be separated.
So I totally agree that our lives are directly affected by our decisions. My problem with the phrase comes with all encompassing and exclusionary tone of "nothing more and nothing less". This I flatly disagree with. Yesterday we heard this from the pulpit from a couple who had just returned from a mission in Spain. Granted he was trying to teach us to make correct decisions. However, as he said that I started looking around the room and one after the other I saw examples of people who were clearly more than the sum of their decisions. There was a man in front of me who is autistic. When did he choose to be autistic? Yet it is clearly part of who he is today. I saw a few little girls who had been adopted from China. When did they choose to be female and Chinese and when did they choose to be adopted? I saw a man who is still recovering from a brain tumor and will likely not return to his former brain function. Again, when did he choose this?
I fear that in their zeal to promote individual responsibility those who make this statement go too far. Denying that there are some things just outside of our control tends to deny that people can be victims. That is simply not true. Rather than blame their situations on their own behavior perhaps we should look to ways to both alleviate their current situation and also teach them how to make better decisions in the first place. In the cases that I've stated here there really was no bad decision in the first place and I see no reason to blame them for their situation.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus started by feeding everybody with the loaves and the fishes. I wonder how many folks would have stayed around to listen if he had just said, "You are nothing more and nothing less than the sum of our choices. The reason you are hungry now is because you decided not to bring any food." Somehow I don't think his message would have been quite as well received.

Religion Going Green

Well it's about time. I've always had a hard time with the attitude that many "Christians" take when it comes to environmental issues. Too often the attitude seems to be that all things will be restored after the second coming. "Well, Jesus is gonna be back soon and He'll take care of the mess we've made." I could never make peace with this attitude. Personally, I felt that going green went hand in hand with the doctrine of stewardship. Well now it appears that the Catholic church and the Southern Baptist Convention are starting to recognize this. For once it's nice to see people taking the admonition to multiply and replenish the Earth and applying it to more than just having children. And this Earth is overdue for a lot of "replenishment".

Speaking up

One of the things that has really been driven home by some of the books that I have read recently is how dangerous inaction can be. Books like The Lucifer Effect and Mistakes Were Made detail many examples of truly evil situations. In many cases these evils were stopped by one person simply having the courage to speak out. The courage of that one then seems to provide support for others who felt the same but simply lacked to courage of that first person. This was one of the main reasons that I chose to speak up at the library board meeting

I’ve always had people express opinions or ideas that I disagree with and until recently I responded as George Bernard Shaw would have, “Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn”. I agree with this to and extent and I frequently make this my practice.

Last year I had to take a business ethics course as part of the continuing training at work. In the course they described a situation where a group of people made an unethical and illegal decision. One member of the group was present but not an active participant. He felt that since he was not directly involved in making the decision, he didn’t sign anything, there was nothing with his name on it etc, that he would not have any legal responsibility. This person ultimately lost his job because of an ethics violation. He actively did nothing wrong. All of the actual crimes were committed by other parties. However since he knew of the activities of the others and failed to report it his inaction became an unethical action.

With this in mind I have been more vigilant than I have in the past by refusing to simply remain silent. When conversations with friends and coworkers start to approach a moral or ethical “line in the sand” I feel duty bound to let them know which side of that line I am on and that they have reached a point beyond which I can no longer follow. Typically these comments are things like, “ya’ll are on your own with that.” or “let’s not go there.” One time the situation got so bad that I even had to pull the nuclear option and say, “I want nothing to do with this decision. I’m hanging up now and I will report this conversation to my superiors and the ethics office.” This particular issue was the most serious of the situations, It involved the safety of technicians, but in all of them I feel that without my input things could have gone entirely the wrong direction.
These examples are more serious business ethical issues and I have no reservations about how I handled them. The tricky part comes with what could be considered by some to be less important situations. What about the following? You find out that a $.10 candy machine is malfunctioning and giving free runts and people are taking advantage of it. Telling jokes with friends and the jokes start heading toward the racial and culturally bigoted types. You’re a passenger in a car and the driver is going 75 mph in 65 mph zone. What do you? If something gets out of control on any of these it’s easy to armchair quarterback and say, “Yeah I wish I’d have told him to slow down a little”, but how do you identify that point before hand. And how do you respond proportionally to the offense? These seem to be the cases where I’m struggling the most.
I have noticed that I tend to be more vocal and stand up for my beliefs when my children are involved than when they aren’t. I think the logic here is that, at least in some of the situations, I‘m not trying to change the minds of any of the active participants in the conversation, but I just don’t want my kids to think that by not speaking up that I somehow agree with what is being said. Even in these situations I feel like I might be responding a little stronger than I need to in order to get the same effect.

So that’s the crux of my dilemma. How do I balance the power of silence with the ethical need to say something to distance myself from the behavior?

"In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. "
Martin Luther King Jr.

"Oppression can only survive through silence."
Carmen de Monteflores

"The cruelest lies are often told in silence."
Robert Louis Stevenson

Self-Justification

It occurred to me that I never got around to finishing my review of Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)

I finished reading this last week and I really enjoyed it. The crux of this book was simply that we need to learn to recognize the self-justifications that we make to try to convince ourselves that the mistakes that we made were not actually mistakes. They go out of the way to not criticize the mistakes themselves. Alone and unjustified a mistake is easily corrected. However, once we start down the path of self justification we tend to make even more mistakes and they in turn create their own self justification.

A friend of mine told me that he actually cited the authors work on his PhD dissertation in economics. A lot of bad economic decisions are made simply because people feel the need to justify the decision once they have invested so much into them. We tend to justify our purchases and speak more favorably once we have committed to them. I know people that have a really hard time saying anything negative about a movie that they’ve just spent $10 and 2 hours watching. The investment in the movie causes them to justify their actions. (Incidentally, I don’t suffer from this particular form of self-justification. I can give you a long list of movies that I not only wish I could get my money back but, I’d like that two hours of my life back and I’d like to have the memory of the movie purged from my neurons. The Star Wars prequels lead this list.)

In the above case he was referring to a monetary or time investment. Sometimes the investment could be much more serious and respectively the self-justification is proportionally higher. High on this list is abusive marriages that stay together because of the kids. What about the current situation in Iraq? Here is a case where the US has spent close to a trillion dollars and cost the lives more American soldiers than the total number of people killed on September 11th. It’s very easy to recognize the self-justification machine at work in our Commander-in-Chief.

Towards the end of the book the authors describe a therapy session they conducted at a management retreat. The participants went around the circle and each was required to tell the biggest mistake that they had made. The only caveat was that they couldn’t say anything at all to justify the mistake. Any kind of face-saving remarks were completely forbidden. It was awkward at first but eventually everybody got the hang of it. After a while they were having so much fun that neighboring classes were coming in to join the fray. I tried this today on a smaller scale at work with a few friends. We had a very similar experience. Gone was the defensiveness and the justification. “This is what I did and wow it was a whopper!” We found that once you take ownership of the mistakes that everything else becomes easier. It’s easier to correct any damage. It’s easier to repair any trust that was lost. And it’s easier to stop the chain of self-justification that inevitable leads to even more mistakes.

The Moral Law

I’ve been giving this post an awful lot of thought lately. It was when my socially conscious 13-year old brought it up that I finally decided it was time to write it down.

For millennia philosophers and theologians have debated that nature of good and evil. Some argue that good is simply that which god desires. Basically because God likes it, it is good and because God dislikes it, it is evil. This is called the divine command theory.
Others ask questions like “Why does God like it?” and “Is there something about this that makes God like it?” the answers to these questions imply that there is something more than just the divine command. I tend to agree with this philosophy. Whether something is good or evil stands on its own. God’s opinion is not necessary to define good or evil. I believe that the converse is true. Good and evil are necessary in order to define God.

Along these lines Aaron was very concerned about some of the news reports he had seen the last couple of weeks. It seems that many people try to require belief in god as a necessity to being a good person-that somehow morality itself cannot exist without a belief in God. It’s easy to see how believing in a direct correlation between moral behavior and a belief in God can cause more than a little consternation. This is the dilemma that Aaron was having. The federal government has just cracked down on several “Christian” ministers around the country for their misuse of funds that we supposed to go to charities and to help the poor. All too often these ministers were using the cash to buy more elaborate homes, cars and planes. If morality and belief are codependant then why does this happen?
On the other hand why do so many atheists have such good hearts and behave so morally and “Christian” to their neighbors? I don’t think Angelina Jolie is very good actress, but I can’t help but admire how she spends her money. When others would just focus on themselves she is making a difference in the lives of children. Yesterday I read that she and Brad have committed to build 150 homes in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans to help rebuild the city. Now I put the question to you in the words of James.

"If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?"

I realize that there are millions of believes who behave morally and unfortunately millions of non-believers who behave immorally or amorally. I only focused on the above examples because they tend to disprove the rule that God is a requirement for moral behavior.
I enjoy the works of C. S. Lewis, but I take issue with Lewis’s constant insistence that the existence of morality proves a higher power that created that morality. Some scientist have even taken the quantum leap and claimed that the existence of morality is all the scientific proof needed to prove that God exists. I believe that morality exists separate from a belief in God. The examples that I’ve given illustrate that one does not necessitate the other.
Perhaps this belief is why I am so comfortable with learning the doctrines of other religions and philosophies. Lately I’ve read several books with serious atheistic themes. I’m much more concerned that I teach my family to live morally than religiously. As long as I can make the two go hand in hand I will continue to do so. I’ve never been in a position where I’ve never had to choose one over the other and I hope I never have to. However, from the real life examples that I have seen, I’d much rather keep company with moral people no matter what their religious beliefs.

Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)

Frequently I'll hear a book review on NPR or I'll hear somebody reference a good book so I'll just go to library website and request the book. Sometimes in the process of reading one book my interest will be sparked in another. I just wait until the library sends me the email that the book is ready and I go pick it up off of the hold shelf. In this process I frequently forget how I found out about the book in the first place. Such is the case with my current book. Due to the similar themes, if I had to guess I'd suspect it was referenced in The Lucifer Effect.
Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) details the process that we all take to distance ourselves from our mistakes. Like The Lucifer Effect it is an eye opening book. I'm about half way through and I've been really impressed with it so far. The book doesn't criticize people for being human. In fact most of the analysis in the book starts after the mistake has been made. If we own up to and speak about it in the active voice we are on our way to starting to correct the problem.
One part that I thought was very eye opening was an FMRI study on the brain activity of people as they were told different pieces of information that agreed with and some that went contrary to what the subject already believed. As long as the statements being read to the subject supported their existing beliefs their brain activity showed normal activity in the logical areas and the emotional areas of the brain. When they are read a statement that is dissonant to their beliefs the logic areas shut down and their emotional areas spike. In a very real sense they have shown that the fight or flight reflex by its very nature is illogical and based on emotion. Once they are again told statements that they agree with the logic area begins to function normally again. I've witnessed this personally on many occasions. When I've pointed out someone else's inconsistency they have lit into me with a strong emotional tirade.
Just as with Zimbardo's book, so far this book has shown me the value of being intellectually honest and consistent in you opinions. For me this has not been much of a problem. I've never felt the need to follow the herd. I'm perfectly fine with being the only one who believes quite the same as I do. I can see how someone who proudly touts their political affiliation would have a hard time making internal peace with decisions made by they candidate that went contrary to their personal philosophy.
One story that they tell about overcoming this cognitive dissonance came from conservative columnist William Saphire. I normally haven't been too impressed with Saphire's opinions. However, in this story Saphire takes the moral high ground in order to avoid his internal dissonance. Such actions should be admired. They are very rare, especially in politics. Saphire was a very vocal opponent of the Clintons and he was extremely critical of Hillary violating the law and refusing to turn over the Rose law firm's billing records. Saphire criticized her distain for "the rule of law" on many occasions. So several years later when Dick Cheney was being evasive about his energy policy records Saphire had a dilemma. He could support his man or bite the bullet and do the intellectually honest approach and criticize Cheney for the same reason he criticized Hillary. Such standing on principle is very rare in the political arena.
The thing that I enjoy most about these types of books is that they give real, practical advice as to how to avoid the behavior that they describe. Actually putting it into practice is, of course, much harder. I'm looking forward to reading the rest.

Still More on Situational Evil

I'm still reading the Lucifer Effect. It's not exactly the type of book you'd want to skim or just give a rough read. I've been reading a library copy but I think I may go buy a hard copy. I'm having to resist the urge to highlight and make notes in the margin.
As I read I'm becoming increasingly aware of the "situational" forces that work around me. Zimbardo describes several situations where otherwise good people refused to speak up when their own morality was telling them they should. Instead they relied on the judgment of their supposed superiors to make the moral decision for them. If I've learned anything from this book it's that my own silent refusal to respond can and most likely is interpreted as agreement. I've found that since this fact is front and center in my mind that I am increasingly intolerant of immoral and unethical comments. When friends, family members or coworkers make comments that I find morally repugnant I used to lean towards just ignoring them. However, I have since become aware that this passive attitude is only marginally different than an endorsement of their comments.
I've never been good at confrontations. I'm doing my best to figure out how to balance these two conflicting forces inside me. At what point is okay to say "I don't agree and I want no part of this conversation"? And when I do respond is my response proportional to the initial comment? In the past I think I've waited far too long before I made my voice hear and then I respond too strongly. I fear that now I may be reacting to strongly too fast. Be patient with me as I wrestle with this dilemma. I'm working to find a balance that with accomplish both goals, not alienate everybody around me, and yet let them know that there are certain moral and ethical bounds that I will not cross.

I've been especially surprised at the comments I've heard from family and friends about the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
"Well if wearing women’s underwear on you head is torture there are a lot of fraternities that should be shut down too."
"They were just using these Muslims weird beliefs against them." Etc etc.
(I debated posting sevarla of the Abu Ghraib images that were clearly much worse than frat house hazing. I decided against it. if your interested just do a google image search for Abu Ghraib and your see more than you wanted.)
The analogy to a frat house is common one but the two situations are very different on a number of major ways. In a frat house the 'victims' are there because they want to be and are trying to do thing to get into the organization. In Abu Ghraib the victims were prisoners who did not want to be there and wanted to get out of this prison. This twisted "frat house" analogy only holds water if we ignore the conditions of servitude and the desires of the victims. Without these two conditions what's the difference between rape and consensual sex? There is none.
As far as the comment about using their beliefs against them goes, I agree. But it's also worth noting that the guards were also making these prisoners do things that went against their own moral beliefs. That is where they violated not only the morality of the prisoners but their own as well. I don't think it's going out on a limb to say that these soldiers would not want to have the same actions forced upon them.
Most of the comments I've heard defending the guards actions come from people who have done little to no research into what they actually did. Many of the sexually explicit images never made it on the broadcast news. And all too frequently people are just waiting for their talk radio spin doctors to tell them how to believe. So I'm not really surprised that I've heard the "frat house" analogy from more than one source. They all got it from Rush Limbaugh.
I don't believe that we have to behave like a terrorist in order to defend ourselves against them. Zimbardo's book is forcing me to become more vocal in my opposition to the situational forces around me. As he points out it isn't easy to stand up for your personal morality. But I believe that by remaining silent on these issues I become part of the system that is influencing others to do evil things.

Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.
Friedrich Nietzsche