In-Sight Publishing

2022-04-22

Peter Gajdics on “The Inheritance of Shame” and Conversion Therapy

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/08

Peter Gajdics is an award-winning writer whose essays, short memoir and poetry have appeared in Maclean’s, The Advocate, The Gay and Lesbian Review/Worldwide, New York Tyrant, Brevity, and Cosmonauts Avenue, among others. His first book, The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir, published in May 2017, tells the story of his six-year journey through, and eventual recovery from, a form of “conversion therapy” in British Columbia, Canada. The Inheritance of Shame is the winner of the Silver Medal in LGBT Nonfiction from The Independent Publisher Book Awards, and was also nominated for The Publishing Triangle Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction. Peter lives in Vancouver, Canada. Here we talk about his life and views, and book.

Gajdics and I spoke on The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir in order to open the conversation. In recollection of the contents of the text, Gajdics talked about the six years spent in a form of so-called “conversion therapy.” It was a grueling and long process for him because he eventually sued the psychiatrist for malpractice as well. Not something to wish on members of the sexual orientation and gender identity minorities community.

Gajdics stated, “Told over a period of decades, the book explores universal themes like childhood trauma, oppression, and intergenerational pain, and juxtaposes the story of my years in this “therapy” and its aftereffects with my parents’ own traumatic histories—my mother’s years in a communist concentration camp in post World War II Yugoslavia, and my father’s upbringing as an orphan in war-torn Hungary.”

He continued to speak on the reason and timing for the writing of the book at the time of the closing of the lawsuit in 2003. He stated that the writing helped him stay alive and to resist the silencing effects of the shame that the childhood sexual abuse brought on him. He also talked about the lie repeated in the public even now; that the abuse in childhood made him gay, which seems insulting, absurd, and factually incorrect on the psychological science of abuse and trauma.

“Eventually, I wrote to mine my own history and understand, to the best of my ability, what had brought me to that doctor’s doorstep, why I’d stayed for six long years, and what, if anything, I had learned. By about 2012,” Gajdics explained, “as conversion therapy began appearing in the media after California became the first world-wide jurisdiction to ban the discredited practice, I wrote as a political act—to try and prevent the recurrence of similar forms of torture.”

The conversation leads into the work of issues relevant about homosexuality and the inner workings of conversion therapy as a system, professional network, and purported therapy. Gajdics said that as he grew up Roman Catholic; he remembered the denouncements of homosexuality by the Roman Catholic priests in the sermons on Sunday. At the age of 6, he was sexually abused by a stranger and learn the sexual abuse ’caused’ the homosexuality.

“By the time I started to develop sexual feelings for other males, the fear that this abuse had created my desires was unrelenting. My father had Anglicized the pronunciation of his surname, Gajdics, after immigrating to Canada in the 1950’s, and so I also grew up pronouncing my surname “Gay-dicks” (instead of its proper Hungarian pronunciation, “Guy-ditch”), which of course resulted in all sorts of ridicule from my classmates,” Gajdics stated.

The name was one in which he could escape. The sense of “gay” was not one of being comfortable as is and with the same wellbeing expected within the average of the rest of the population. The gay felt by Gajdics, based on the messages from the media and culture and religion, was the gay being something bad and caused by abuse. It, from my interpretation, made the homosexuality associated with abuse and so a reaction to trauma, almost like a sickness in same-sex desire.

Gajdcics lamented, “All of this amounted to one incredible nightmare as a child. And all of these factors—the fear around my name and the belief that abuse had “caused” me to become who I was—contributed to the reasons for ending up in this “therapy,” though I could never have clearly articulated any of this at the time. On some level I wanted to not be myself, to undo the effects of abuse, to escape the torment of what I thought it meant to be gay, to not be my own name.”

The homosexuality as a problem of the self, the fundamental sense of one’s identity especially found – in part – in sexuality and sexual orientation, and, therefore, something demonized from the outside and then internalized as something at root wrong with himself. He notes the continuous battles against the onslaught, whether from the external world/the culture or the internal dynamics inculcated through repetitive ignorant messaging, against the “currents of shame and invisibility.”

“Our fight really is to stay alive, to retain our humanity, to resist the dehumanizing effects of oppression in its myriad incarnations,” Gajdics opined, “With respect to the “inner workings of conversion therapy”—I think that all of these treatments begin with some version of the same lie, which says that being gay or homosexual is a disease or immortal, a deviation, and must by “cured” in some way.”

Within the context of his own history, he noted that the basic experience of abuse and the shame and subsequent invisibility that came from it; that was further enforced by the work of the psychiatrist. The notion of the abused being the mono-causal phenomena, where the sexual abuse in childhood created the homosexual proclivities and same-sex desires. That is, these were wrong feelings, as they were diagnosed in a clinical way similar to the identification and labeling of a psychological and physical disease, and so needed immediate correction – or, rather, six years of work to be corrected.

Gajdics related, “Every person who ends up on one of these therapies will have their own story, and lie, but I think the premise is always the same—lies are what snare gay people into believing they need to try to become heterosexual, or that causes a parent to send their kids to one of these therapies. A person can build an entire life around a lie—until, of course, the lies come crashing down. Truth is always forcing its way back into our lives—we just have to remain open to it.”

The basis of a lie in a life is quicksand and bound to dry-drown the individual caught in it.

With the numerous years of conversion therapy for Gajdics, he wanted to know the ways in which someone could change themselves in a defunct theory. Although “defunct,” the therapy continues in its widespread use and at times outright ban – to the benefit of the those undergoing it. Many people continue to think the fundamental self can be changed through the conversion therapeutic practices.

However, as with Gajdics case, we can see the fundamental sexual self does not change but, rather, the alteration happens in the sense of wellbeing regarding the sexual identity from positive and comfortable to negative and attributed to false mono-causes. He spoke about the metaphor and the reality or the map and the territory as a fundamental confusion.

“The best way that I’ve been able to explain it all to myself is with metaphor of the map / territory confusion—’A map is not the territory it represents,’ which was first stated by philosopher Alfred Korzybski, even popularized by Deepak Chopra. Practitioners of ‘conversion therapy,’ and many people in these treatments, have confused the map of sexual identity with the territory of desire in that they think that a change to a person’s outer behaviour, their map, will result in a change to their inner self, their territory—but of course, that’s the lie,” Gajdics explained, “If I stand in Paris and call it Rome, really believe that it’s Rome, the place beneath my feet is still the place beneath my feet no matter what I think or call it. I am still standing where I was when it was called Paris. Changing a map will never change a territory, but we can invest years of effort and our firm belief into trying to do just that.”

I wanted to know some more of the internal associations and landscape of self-understanding for Gajdics. He related some of the important belief structures about shame, especially in the lives of the young and gay. However, the shame cannot be solely put into the categorical relationship between self-identity and homosexuality. In that, Gajdics saw a family history with a father as an orphan and even his father’s parents being placed in concentration camps.

He spoke on how oppressed minorities can feel a sense of shame because of being marginalized, teased, and bullied, even outright ridiculed as adults. This can make them internalize the outright sense of being the other in the society, which forms the basis for an unhealthy sense of self and communal identity for the minority populations. This ties into the idea of ostracization and segregations within the larger society based on the “institutionalized hatred and bigotry against said minorities.

“Sexuality overall is still very shame-based within our culture; even under the best of circumstances people’s sexuality is often compartmentalized. While the world is obviously more accepting of gays today, I think there is a danger in thinking that various laws or even increased visibility in the media means that on an individual level all is completely well. I don’t think it is,” Gajdics opined.

He thinks that the political does not by necessity translate into the personal, where the collective force of the “gay identity” is not overly subjective. He notes people continue in their own struggle, in their own way, with shame and guilt. However, Gajdics opined on the media representation of gay men and lesbian women as not necessarily always “honest and healthy.”

Gajdics opined, “Pride has little to do with marching in a parade once a year, or even in having a lot of sex. Quantity is not quality. The locus of attention in a healthy sense of self must start from within, not outside, not in magazines or on television, or else we’re always going to feel disoriented, caught in the eye of a social media storm. We will never “understand” ourselves if we always look to others for the answers about our own identity. “Being gay,” just like “being straight,” is largely illusory, and has little to do with being one’s self.”

As the interview drew to its closing portions, the dialogue continued into the areas of the source of the shame for the homosexual community tied to some of the symptoms of the shame for the individual gay person. Also, and more personalized per person, the idea of the rationalizations for the shame when there is no support network present at the time of the feeling the shame.

“Shame is definitely sourced in various places, including the family and its history, society, various religions, and each is always fighting for attention within one person’s life. It can take an enormous act of will to resist these invaders and to exert one’s own sense of self, free from shame and self-harm. For me in my own youth, shame manifested in the form of eating disorders, unsafe and sometimes compulsive sexual behaviour, and also of course depression and despair, thoughts of suicide,” Gajdics explained.

There can be a sense of hopelessness connected to zero feeling of agency and purpose. Gajdics considers this something coming from a multitude of factors outside of the individual homosexual rather than from the inside or something innate. Shame contains a certain dishonesty while maintaining an internal logic; he described how the sense of feeling shame in living a lie and self-destructing by living through the guise of the falsehood.

Gajdics said, “The danger is that some behaviour, which is founded in shame, can end up feeling seductive and pleasurable. Pain can often feel like pleasure. I would like to say that reaching out for help or finding community is the easy answer, but I know this is not always possible, or easy, and sometimes we don’t always know that we even need help. I look at my own life and there were years where I felt righteous in my own self-destructiveness.”

He relayed the personal life knowledge. That it took time; Gajdics needed to learn some life lessons. The writing down of his experiences and opinions, and thoughts and feelings in turn, probably saved his life from a negative spiral that can come as a consequence of shame, guilt, pain, trauma, and abuse. He notes the writing down was an important aspect of internalizing and then seeing things outside of himself, where the reflection permitted the re-framing of the trauma and then the ability to get a new source of power in a renewed identity: “…who I was and what I wasn’t—that I could not find in another person.”

The final question for this particular interview focused on the nature of homosexuality and then the popular conceptualizations of it. In particular, the pluses and minuses in the representation or the benevolent prejudices and the malevolent biases portrayed through the media and culture. When he reflected on the idea of the “nature of homosexuality,” he posed the idea of the nature of heterosexuality because one cannot exist without the other in a mutual interdependent definition.

“In this sense, I think we are really therefore talking about “the nature of sexuality.” Sexuality hasn’t always been divided into this kind of binary, and while language and definitions can give voice to the marginalized, in this case I think they are often used as instruments of lies—beneath the lies of “conversion therapy,” for example, homosexuality and heterosexuality are often used not descriptors of erotic desire, but of mutable identities; “change” is not genetic but taxonomically societal,” Gajdics stated.

He also made the observation that the discovery of someone as gay or coming out as homosexual is something that is still a news item. Gajdics thinks this explains a lot about how the culture views homosexuality and where the social context sits at the moment.

That is, “…there’s still a sense of scandal, or sleaze, compartmentalization, around all of it.”

For the range provided in the question about the “benevolent prejudices and malevolent biases,” Gajdics talked about the stereotypes that do seem rather benign with the gay community universally liking musicals, similar to the stereotype of straight men loving football en masse. He looked to the past for a malevolent stereotype in the “gay disease” of AIDs, where it was seen as something of the homosexual community alone.

Gajdics concluded, “…it was founded on the lie that said “we” are somehow separate and different from “you”—and we’re not. We are all one. Blood runs through us all. Lies like these result in millions of deaths.”

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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

2022-04-22

Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and Equality

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/07

For the equality of the sexes in Canada, there not only needs to be a movement for the realization of those rights but also for the definitions and delineations of them too.

With some of the prior acts and statements, and the work described of the commission, before in the country, we can then move into the areas of the discussion relevant for the implementation of the rights. The movements provide the basis for the legal foundations. Those bases in law then move to provide some fundamentals in the areas of implementation with awareness of individual rights among the public.

Through the awareness and the speak out of the relevant organizations including the commission on issues of fundamental human rights in Canada, we can then create a steady recognition and respect for human rights in the culture. This becomes important for the maintenance of a modern society founded on democratic values. Because, in a manner of thinking, the respect and recognition of all Canadians’ human rights, we find the basic placement of every person equal to every other in dignity and value within the society regarding rights; although, of course, every person with equal rights does not translate into every person with equality ability, motivation, talent, and so on.

The organizations used for referrals from the commission in Canada for some human rights complaints are the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. The tribunal functions to “protect individuals from discrimination.” Within the statements provided in some prior writing about the Canadian Human Rights Commission, we have the fundamental rights to equality, opportunity, treatment, and a workplace free from discrimination.

As these were explored in some earlier writings, the four stipulations do not need much further extensive discussion other than the protection of individuals throughout the country – men and women – makes for a more just, fair, and equal society and means that the equality provided through the commission is integral to the decades and decades of efforts intended for further equality between and amongst persons in the country.

As with the normal dealings with rights and legal situations, the tribunals in Canada about to the bodies similar to courts of law with less formality and focused on the areas of individual discrimination in one or all of the stipulations and on 11 categories of persons by sex, age, ethnicity, and so on.

With the powers of the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada Act, the tribunal became enforced and capable of enforcing on discrimination cases in the country circa November 1, 2014. The Government of Canada “is consolidating the provision of support services to eleven administrative tribunals – including the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) – into a single organization, the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada (ATSSC).”

Where this head into the future for potential excess bureaucratization but also the possibility for more equality, or both, the ATSSC and the tribunal forms a solid foundation for the protection of individual persons within the country as a referral body (the tribunal) for the discrimination allegations and complaints sent from the commission and then deliberated upon and sent to the tribunal.

However, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal mandate does not get affected in any way by this administrative change. The “Case matters will continue to be filed, managed and safeguarded in accordance with existing CHRT procedures.” That is, the operations will continue as always with the caveat of the changes to the higher-order organization, which appears to an amalgamation of power and influence oriented toward the enforcement of human rights in the workplace and elsewhere.

For the equality of the sexes with the right for women in vote almost a century ago to the provision of a human rights act for the workplace with specific stipulations on discrimination to the commission for the deliberation and consideration of the human rights (discrimination) complaints, to the tribunal for the referrals from the commission for decisions, the progressive changes over decades have civilized the nation for further equality between the sexes.

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2022-04-22

The Canadian Human Rights Act and Women’s Equality

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/06

The equality of women with men becomes an important subject matter not only for the men who want a more justice and fair world but also the outcomes of the upcoming generations. The Canadian Human Rights Act is an important part of a framework for the provision of the further equality of women with men.

From 1977, the Canadian Human Rights Act speaks to the right of equality for all persons and peoples within Canada. The equality for the sexes in this instance for both sexes. This extends into the right of equal opportunity. If a position exists within the society, then all Canadians – and so women and men – deserve equal access to the job.

Fair treatment is enshrined within the act as well. If someone had the equal chance to apply for the position, earned the station, then when on the job the individual deserves the fair treatment by employers and employees in comparison to others or coworkers and not in contrast. An important point of contact in terms of the individual human rights of people.

The equality as a right, the equally provided-for opportunities, and then the fairness in the treatment of the individuals, all salient for the improvement of the individual lives of workers. When some individuals and public intellectuals decry other Canadians arguing for their fundamental human rights, they simply work against fundamental bases for equal within the society.

Through arguing against human rights, whether formal arguments or emotional appeals with crying, individual persons deserve the right to equal access to the society and treatment within it. This seems particularly true of women who historically have had an extraordinarily difficult time in comparison to men in Canadian society.

The next section for the act comes in the form of an environment free of discrimination based on one’s own sex. Of course, sexual orientation and gender identity remain different but associated with the biological sex or the sex one is born with regarding, for example, genetics. It makes sense to not be discriminated against based on one’s sex.

It may seem obvious to others reading The Good Men Project, too. However, with long and hard experience, the clear line for one’s own discrimination based on sex can be present and, in the minds of a not-so-small minority, justified. It becomes a basis for a prejudice within the socio-cultural matrix of the nation, which the act and other similar documents like it form the basis for the protection of vulnerable individuals.

Those vulnerable individuals come from groups and communities and categorization accepted within the culture. Those with histories with influence into the present. The main basis for their protections as classifications but, at the end of the day, as individual persons come from the Canadian Human Rights Act and other documents covered in previous articles.

Those documents do not discriminate. They distinguish and make distinct the lines between categories for the subsequent strengthening of the trend towards equality in actuality. The documents amount to the car. We merely need to drive the car and bring as many people along as possible. The subtle form of this comes from a fair and equal workplace and life without discrimination based, in this narrowing of the broad topic, on one’s sex.

The act also speaks to the “sexual orientation, marital status and family status” of the individual in question. Whether on is employed by an organization or company, or receiving services from it, they deserve the equality, the access, the fairness of treatment, and the lack of discrimination based on sex within the confines of most domains or all areas within the country including the federal government, First Nations governments, and the “private companies that are regulated by the federal government like banks, trucking companies, broadcasters and telecommunications companies.”

These build into other topics include the Canadian Human Rights Commission utilized for the investigation and settlement of complaints oriented around those of discrimination. If a Jamaican-Canadian or a Dutch-Canadian undergoes discrimination based on their being of a particular national heritage within the Canadian context and the work environment, these human rights commissions provide the basis for recourse for the individuals who may need legal assistance and protections.

The documents are the fundamental help with this as well. Similar to the cases of the nationality and ethnic heritage, we can discover the same reasoning or ratiocination in the protection of one’s livelihood and equality of rights – and so status within the society, which, within environment of historical precedents and less than a century of women having equal legal status as voting person’s in the Canadian democratic system, provides the protections for women – as this does for Jamaican-Canadians or Dutch-Canadians who may undergo similar difficulties in their lives regarding equal in work, the privileges instantiated as rights, the fair treatment on the job, and the non-discrimination based on sex/national-ethnic heritage.

For further information and to be explored in further documents and articles in the coming days and weeks and months, we will look into more acts, tribunals, and conventions, and declarations within the national and international rights scenes in order to implement the protections of the rights and privileges – and so dignity and respect as persons and peoples – necessary for the fair and just future all people of conscience, including myself and I assume you, too (dear reader).

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2022-04-22

Equality of the Sexes and the Canadian Human Rights Commission

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/06

I want to speak this morning about the relevance of human rights in the provincial, territorial, federal, and international levels.

The stipulations in some documents provide the basis for non-discrimination in civic, political, and professional life. The individual protected life through the provisions of the equality of others in group identifications remains foundational but interrelated with the concrete notion of the embedded individual. Here, we find the notion of the individual within the group but also distinct and unique and aside from it. A neat conceptualization of a person, not quite group only as in some philosophies or as an individual rugged, alone, and striving seen in others.

Rather, we find the provision for the equal life of the individual citizen with the protection of them and their standard identifications, which seems reasonable within a bureaucratic system. They need classifications for collectives and individuals, which leads to the basis of the Canadian Human Rights Commission based on the Canadian Human Rights Act of 1977.

The act is purposed for the extension of the laws in effect within Canada. The intention comes from the “matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament.” It has a scope of all peoples and persons within Canadian society. Then these two directions come together for the equal opportunity and access for all peoples and persons within Canadian society without regard for the individual’s “race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.”

With respect to the nature of the equality of the sexes, the equal access to the levers of the society through work becomes integral to the fundamental notion of the equality of the sexes. It does not lie in the separation of men and women or in the restriction in one and the enhancement of the other, but the recognition of the inherent equality in rights of men and women.

From this frame of mind or reference point, the equality provided for through the act becomes enforceable in various domains with the commission as one potential area in which to do it.

The work of the commission amounts to “an Agent of Parliament.” In this, the commission operates in an independent way apart from the government while also performing the function of a human rights observer: also known as a watchdog. The interest of the commission is the interest of the public with the holding of the Canadian government accountable on the matters of human rights.

In the case of work, for example, if there is an explicit mistreatment or inequality based on the sex of the individual, and if this happens with the workplace as an instance, the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Canadian Human Rights Act become important for the maintenance of the equality, which raises some questions about the work of the commission as the act is separate, but, granted, associated in some important ways.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission works to “research, raise awareness and speak out on any matter related to human rights in Canada.” That is, the documentation and the act of finding out what is really the case is an important aspect of the work of the commission. With the research component in place, the raising of awareness of an individual citizen’s rights is important as a function and process of the commission because this can provide individual Canadians with the ability to act on that knowledge.

If an individual Canadian citizen of any stripe of background does not know about their individual rights, then they would not have any recourse for dealing with any potential discrimination and violation of said rights because the basis of any action is information translated from knowledge into action. The awareness component is not a trivial aspect of the functions of the commission. In addition, the commission as an explicit interest and, indeed, duty to do its due diligence in acting and speaking out on the violations of the human rights of Canadian citizens.

The basis for the research, raising of awareness, and the speaking out on areas of discrimination, as provided in the act, comes from 11 grounds – one or more at once – with one including sex. While at work, the commission will receive complaints with the respondent and the complainant being responded to, in order to resolve the issue of the complaint through mediation.

In the cases where there is an inability to resolve a complaint through the mediation, the commission will further examine the complaint to see if there is a justification for further work. And in fact, if this develops far enough, the commission will then make a referral of the complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

The commission works on a number of fronts including the employers who have federal regulation because there needs to be an alignment with what the company or organization does and the statements in the Employment Equity Act. Through all of these mechanisms, there is the work to look into and settle the areas of potential discrimination against Canadian citizens.

These bases protect the equality of men and women in order for further equality and fairness to exist not only in the workplace, as per one example, but also across the country.

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2022-04-22

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Section 28

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/05

In the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, there exist the fundamental provisions for equality throughout the nation-state.

Many statements with easy interpretation for the furtherance of a more fair, just, and equal society. In the sentences, or in the manner of a few statements, millions of girls and women within the country earn and deserve fundamental equality and consideration with boys and men in the society.

Of course, the distributions of inequality imply sufficiently distinct but partially overlapping distributions of equality depending on the area of the country and the personal narratives taken into account. Nonetheless, the overwhelming emphasis and ethical arc of Canada remains the integration of equality for all peoples and persons in the nation.

With Section 28 of the Charter, we discover the fundamental notion for a super-operation or meta-process for the means by which to apply the document within Canadian society unto itself through the equal application for men and women for all parts and portions and sections of the Charter. As stated, the 28th section:

Section 28 guarantees that all rights covered in the Charter apply equally to men and women.

Not a complicated process oroperation; however, this gives a basis for the other sections to integrate into a singular set. A set where everyone acquires equal treatment, especially relevant given the historical treatment of women in this country, especially Indigenous women right into the present. History remains.

Duly note, these are guarantees for all rights within the Charter for women with equal application to the men. Women must, as a moral imperative, have the equal treatment without discrimination, as per Article 15, in their fundamental treatment within the society. The basis for the civil society becomes the basis for the equality of women.

Protecting Women’s Rights in Canada with Section 15 of the Charter

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/05

In the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we find and the fundamental rights given to all Canadians.

Within this framework of a provision for rights, we can discover the means by which to protect the rights of women and men. In this particular instance, we can find the protection of the rights of women with the development of a thorough understanding of the Charter.

Through the Government of Canada, we can see the development of an important foundation for equality and justice for all.

Happiness becomes another issue. For the equality of women with men, there needs to be a consideration of the particular statements in sections of the Charter.

The one for some minor exploration and discussion today will be Section 15 of the Charter with an examination of its scope and limits and implications.

Section 15 of the Charter states:

Equality Rights

Marginal note: Equality before and under law and equal protection and benefit of law

(1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

Marginal note: Affirmative action programs

(2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

As can be seen in the description, the formal important of equality before the law as one truncation and then the equality under the law as the next one. The importance of the equal protection as a fundamental right both under and before the law.

In a manner of speaking, it states: all interpretations provide equal protection for every person.

Every person as women here too, of course, but this is new as women did not have the right to vote in a democracy until the early 1900s in Canada.

This for the basis for the legal persona non grata of women in Canada. If a woman cannot vote in a democracy, then the woman does not amount to a legal person in a democratic state.

The import of the provision of equality for women and men or every person becomes integral to Section 15 of the Charter. Furthermore, the protection within the law comes with extras or benefits within the law.

That is, regardless of one’s sex, a woman retains the right – and a man – right for equality before and under the law without discrimination on the basis of their being a man or a woman.

As to subsection (2) of Section 15, we find the statements about the specifications of the equality within the equal protection before and under the law.

The activities, laws, and programs designed for the reduction in the disadvantage of those with less in society remain protected and, indeed, extensions of the concerns and issues with Section 15(1).

Now, the three points of contact within the functions of the society would include the activities, laws, and programs.

Regarding activities, these, as can probably be inferred, incorporate any and all activities devoted for the reduction in inequality in the society. How can these take place? Under what circumstances?

Who can be the arbiter of the level of reduction in inequality? And so on. All valid questions with less generalizable answers and more specified within the context answers for the individuals to develop for themselves.

For the programs of decreased inequality, there have been some programs devoted to the IAT or the Implicit Association Test in order to detect some implicit biases rather than explicit ones. It amounts to the comparison of implicit is to explicit as prejudicial attitudes are to segregated schools and urinals.

It becomes psychological rather than legal-behavioural-educational (in one example).

I did have dinner with Anthony Greenwald who spearheaded the intellectual and psychological science around the IAT as a young psychology student, first-year psychology student invitation from Dr. Daniel Bernstein. Interesting experience.

The efficacy of the IAT comes under fire at the moment with some programs implemented to reduce the discrimination against those less seen or represented in the society.

In particular, the use in anti-discrimination work. The efficacy does not extend to individuals seen as discriminatory themselves. It amounts to a reaction time difference in positive and negative valence words relative to race, gender, class, age, and other categorizations of individuals.

The Left speaks of this as indicative of racial or other bias.

The Right talks of this as faux science or a pseudoscience akin phrenology where bumps and ridges on the head indicated personality traits and intelligence levels – interesting epistemology of the soul but wrong and too coarse. Not exactly positron emission tomography scans.

Left and Right stand tall, bold, courageous, and adamant in their positions… and wrong. The IAT measures the speed of cognitive processing or mental associations, not bias by necessity.

The speed from loose empirical findings into direct activism seems too hasty for the best of intentions; people want to reduce discrimination. Does this reduce the level of discrimination against individual persons in Canada?

Others work within legitimate frameworks for the decrease in discrimination based on identification while bearing in mind the need for a slower processing of it.

With the third category or the laws, the legal precedents set for the reduction in the discrimination against women. These give the basis for equality. It can enter into a variety of domains with some focus on the Charter itself through Section 15 and Section 28.

It can enter other domains in relation to international law, conventions, declarations, and other relevant documentation enforceable on Canadian society within a higher-order ethical justice system.

Section 15 of the Charter segments in a neat manner. It sets the grounds for the equality of all persons but also, and in this relevant sub-interpretation today, the equal treatment of women before and under the law.

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2022-04-22

On the Protection of Women’s Rights in Canada

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/04

With the moderate flame of Canadian discourse risen in some unhealthy ways, the need to keep in mind rights of the individual person through group identification becomes important. It becomes important insofar as the individuals work to reduce the implementation of women’s rights through various means in this country.

The stance of the Government of Canada regarding women’s rights remains that they are human rights. With the importance of equality, and with the unequal treatment Canadian women have faced in the history of Canada, the rights for women in this nation become more prescient, salient, and needing to be prominent for public discussion.

As noted by the Canadian government information resource in the above-paragraph link, we find several legal instruments for the equality of women within the country. One of the main ones, and the sole one to be covered in this article, is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. This document unequivocally states the constitutional protections of individual human rights, including women’s rights.

This means the constitutional protections for women’s rights within the context of the relationship between an individual Canadian woman and the Canadian federal government. The scope and limits of women’s equality with men in the society. Some other documents, not covered here, include the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) and provincial and territorial human rights legislation.

As this remains an introductory article on the basis of equality for men and women within the country, the main sections of import for this coverage includes, in brief, Section 15 and Section 28 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. These two sections speak to the equality of women with men through the equal protection and benefit of the legal system and framework established within Canada, where women are not to be discriminated against for those equal protections and benefits of the law based on their sex.

The other section – 28 – speak to the guarantees of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom for equal application of the Charter to men and women. There is a rising tide against women in this as the deck of the country is shuffled based on technological shifts and changes, robotics and artificial intelligence infusion into the culture, and the impact on employment for men with globalization.

It seems relevant, to me, to bear these in mind.

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2022-04-22

On Becoming Involved in Student Politics with Shif Gadamsetti

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/03

Shif Gadamsetti is the Former President of the Students’ Association of Mount Royal University, Support Staff for the Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse, Former Chair of the Board of the Canadian Alliance of Students’ Associations and a Member of its Alumni Council. Here we look into her life, work, and views based on an interview in Canadian Atheist.

When the line of questioning with Gadamsetti began, the focus was the background in order to gauge where she was coming from. She was raised by two traditional Christian parents who were involved in the church life while she was growing up. that would mean the entire family would attend the Sunday sermons, being involved with the youth group and outreach, as well as the teaching of Sunday School linked with the worship team of the church.

Gadamsetti described, “My family immigrated to Canada from India in 2001, and settled in Calgary almost immediately. There was a certain gap in terms of finding cultural community to bridge with once we had moved. We only had one extended family in the city, and our primary social network was through the church, which did not have a significantly diverse cultural congregation at the time.”

I wanted to probe deeper, plumb the depths more, to see the ways in which this life path lead into leadership as a young woman. Gadamsetti explained how she was involved in leadership throughout youth. In that, the opportunities from within the Christian community and church provided the chance to explore leadership roles and expand horizons in said stations.

With traditionalist and immigrant parents, Gadamsetti recalled the ways her parents remained restrictive with her. However, this community became a place in which to integrate with Canadian culture while maintaining the religious roots of the family. Religious roots, to many people, retain the sense of community and history from generations ago.

Now, she works as a nurse. Gadamsetti explained, “I work with an interdisciplinary team – we always have at least one other nurse, an anesthesiologist, a surgeon, and other physicians, who either assist or residents that participate in our surgical cases. My responsibilities include a pre-operative assessment, including looking for any potential risks that could compromise the surgery – these range from substance use, underlying health conditions, something as simple as the patient ingesting food or drink prior to the surgery (which could complicate their intubation and present a choking hazard if they were to vomit), etc.”

With these particular cases, Gadamsetti “circulates” (the nurse who is not sterile) and then assists the surgeon and scrub nurse. The hep can come in the form of opening tools, sterility maintenance, and the documentation and monitoring work needed during the cases.

“If I am scrubbing in on the case, my primary role is to assist the surgeon with their procedure, which can range from anticipating their needs, positioning, preparing tools such as sutures or drills to be used, and tracking any of the materials used to ensure that we maintain the integrity of the procedure and don’t accidentally leave something in a patient, for example,” she said.

As well, Gadamsetti works for women’s rights through the Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse organization as a support staff. She relayed always having an interest in learning about and supporting the reduction in gender-based barriers and violence. She notes the sexual violence is a nuanced issue with the ongoing issues of the perpetuation of miseducation about it, the other mental health and relationship concerns surrounding it, and so on.

Gadamsetti stated, “There is so much that broader communities don’t understand, it is often considered a taboo topic, communities feel unequipped to have conversations that wholly support the victim, and the work is difficult – not everyone is cut out to handle such matters, which I do not fault them for. There’s a very difficult way to gauge my responsibilities – a ‘good’ day includes having a collaborative team, a client that feels supported, autonomous, and well managed for both the social and administrative work that goes into processing a case, but its never really a good day because my clients have been victims of sexual assault.”

Her hope is to become involved in the wider issues associated with the prevention of sexual violence and support for survivors including the pathways to solutions through policy development and education.

“I’ve learned so much and challenged many assumptions, despite how much work I’ve put into understanding the issue, and I’m very grateful to have the opportunity,” Gadamsetti opined in reflection.

Then she also held the position of the president of the Students’ Association of Mount Royal University (SAMRU). The term is over. However, she spoke to the benefits in the infinite possibilities and potentialities provided by the role. In that, it was an honor to be elected, lead, and serve the best interests of the students.

She garnered experience in management and leadership, and other domains, in addition to building strong connections with other leaders in the postsecondary sector. She sees these networks as lasting a lifetime. Gadamsetti spoke to a shared vision and work ethic for the achievement of internal and external advocacy.

Then as the conversation shifted to its end, the focus went into the concerns of women on postsecondary campuses throughout the nation as well as means by which to solve them.

“I wouldn’t want to generalize – but perhaps, the ones that most students face are common across women as well – financial precarity, employment, etc. I would, however, point out that the common issues amongst students are exacerbated by gender-based barriers – sexualized violence can sometimes be a prevalent issue amongst women on campus for a variety of reasons – lack of education around consent in an environment where young people are discovering and establishing boundaries,” Gadamsetti said, “lack of institutional policy and supports available to help those who experience it, a lack of consent culture, perpetuation of toxic behaviours that develop into patterns that are harder to address when they become systemic or cultural.”

She also noted the other issues women face in their professional work with the risk to life and livelihood. Associated with this, the various marginalizations happening to women due to their race, sexuality, and so on. Then the continued barriers based solely on gender in the employment line, which show in the employment trends.

She opined the long-term nature of the solutions to these problems. Gadamsetti noted that some of these issues come to the root of the common perceptions of women as less qualified, and being unequal and even subservient to men and others. Then the ways this can influence the various discrimination and violence against women.

She continued, “I believe that institutions need to become bolder and take hard-line stances on the matter, while demonstrating their commitment to resolving these issues with comprehensive policies that support all students’ safety, regardless of how these opportunities might seem risky to the institution’s reputation.”

With regards to the sexual violence on campuses, Gadamsetti reflected on the largest problem being the inability of most of the leadership to admit, target, and work to solve the issues of sexualized violence faced far more often by women than men. In particular, this may be a problem because some in leadership, Gadamsetti noted, would need to admit to being part of the problem. Then there would need to be a massive overhaul of institutions to tackle the problem of sexual violence against women.

“Culture is important – when a zero tolerance stance without allowing loopholes or technicalities to exist is implemented, those perpetuating violence might think twice, and evaluate their own behavior before choosing to victimize someone in that way. At the same time, being transparent about problems and choosing to address issues by prioritizing victims over the institution as a whole would complement the approach well,” Gadamsetti stated.

Gadamsetti seeing the power of community to deal with the real problems facing us; she knows one of the better means by which to deal with large-scale problems in the postsecondary community, broadly speaking, would include a community effort. With a community, the institutions can be pressured to change, to adapt, to the prescient concerns of the community regarding women in particular and concerned men in general.

Then, of course, the conversation shifted to a senior high school or first-year woman student in postsecondary education who may want to become involved in the student political world as well as the potential responsibilities they should bear in mind that they will most certainly be taking on board in student politics.

Gadamsetti immediately directed attention to a student’s own students’ association. That the best place to learn more would be as student transitions into university, meets new people, and begins to find a place comfortable for them. Then a student can learn to familiarize themselves with the arena of student politics.

“Student association spaces have always provided me with great insight into what students care about, need, celebrate, and champion. I started getting involved with my faculty club, and branched out to others that suited my interests. You might not be interested in running for a position as a student executive after it’s all said and done, but I guarantee you that it will enrich and support your university experience like no other,” Gadamsetti concluded.

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2022-04-22

LGBTQ2IA+ and the Undergraduate Postsecondary Learning Environment with Aria Burrell

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/03

Aria Burrell (Twitter and Medium) is the Former Vice-President External of the Students’ Association of Mount Royal University (SAMRU) with an interest in the LGBTQ2IA+ community. Burrell did not work on those issues while in the formal position or through it as much. However, with the work through the Canadian Alliance of Students’ Associations and SAMRU, Burrell has extensive experience in listening to the concerns of and know the lives of postsecondary students. Here we talk about the LGBTQ2IA+ community in postsecondary undergraduate environments.

When I asked about the issues affecting the LGBTQ2IA+ students, Burrell talked about the umbrella issue for the sexual orientation and gender identity minority in the postsecondary learning environment regarding undergraduates in particular. The concern of the relatively low levels of inclusion inside of the classroom and in the course content.

Burrell stated, “On its surface this doesn’t often register as a problem from the outside, from administrators and instructors who think in terms of cisgender, heteronormative defaults, but in aggregate it tells LGBTQ2IA+ people we’re not welcome in our schools or chosen fields. For instance, Statistics classrooms that continue to teach students to encode gender as a binary field, Psychology courses which continue to pathologize asexuality, English courses which continue to teach that gender-neutral ‘they’ is agrammatical, etc. don’t reflect the lived experiences of many students.”

She noted the social acceptance of the notion, in an academic setting, of Alice and Bob as the default names for a married couple, but not Claire and Alice. A lesbian couple is seen less in the academic textbooks or course materials provided to students. In that, these texts become out of date with the times, according to Burrell.

She continued, “Some students end up having to work under instructors who are not accepting of their identities and orientations, and this can make for a psychologically taxing classroom experience. Instructors who won’t use a transgender student’s chosen name or pronouns are more common than most institutions would like to admit.”

Burrell talked about the various experiences relayed in conversation after dialogue with those known to her. Where the instructors in the university begin to use the class as a place for ender essentialist and anti-equality talk, even “rants,” in the midst of individuals who are either queer or trans, she describes this as a source of stress for the LGBTQ2IA+ students in the classroom setting.

Furthermore, these students hoping for a civil environment with some moderate accommodations for them in the classroom do not get them. The accommodations are denied to the sexual orientation and gender identity minority students. Burrell notes this as a disheartening phenomenon for many students.

When I reflected on the prior line of questioning, I wanted to extend into the action items for those students who want to make a difference. A change for more inclusion and integration of the LGBTQ2IA+ in the postsecondary learning environment in the undergraduate level of schooling in Canada.

“Availability of gender-neutral restrooms is a must for non-binary students to be included in post-secondary given the stress that population faces around public, gendered spaces,” Burrell recommended, “Administrations should offer and instructors should participate in training for sensitivity to gender and sexual minority concerns and failures to support these students in terms of basic respect and accommodations should be met with appropriate responses from human resources.”

Furthermore, she suggested the departments within the universities should work to alter the curricula for the reduction in bias based on sexuality and gender. The burden, often, is set on the limited working hands and minds of the Women’s Studies and Sociology departments. It becomes an unfair burden for them. It should be broader for the sake of these communities,, especially in solidarity.

Burrell emphasized, “Particular to the two spirit identity, which I am not part of, I understand further efforts to Indigenize the academy are necessary alongside moves to ensure pre-colonial concepts of gender and sexuality are sufficiently represented and accommodated in disciplines beyond Indigenous Studies.”

Then the line of questioning went into the organizations to work with for further acceptance and equality of the community. Burrell spoke on organizations that work in LGBTQ2IA+ equality and acceptance efforts in post-secondary institutions across the country as being regional, especially regarinding the students’ associations.

She concluded, “These student-run bodies often are at the cutting edge of acceptance and support for marginalized populations on campus. LGBTQ2IA+ advocacy organizations often function at a federal or provincial/state level and can be great sources for basic educational materials. Many offer diversity training and can work with post-secondary institutions to develop appropriate training for course instructors.”

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2022-04-22

The Second Statements in the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/02

Article 2

States Parties condemn discrimination against women in all its forms, agree to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating discrimination against women and, to this end, undertake:

(a) To embody the principle of the equality of men and women in their national constitutions or other appropriate legislation if not yet incorporated therein and to ensure, through law and other appropriate means, the practical realization of this principle;

(b) To adopt appropriate legislative and other measures, including sanctions where appropriate, prohibiting all discrimination against women;

(c) To establish legal protection of the rights of women on an equal basis with men and to ensure through competent national tribunals and other public institutions the effective protection of women against any act of discrimination;

(d) To refrain from engaging in any act or practice of discrimination against women and to ensure that public authorities and institutions shall act in conformity with this obligation;

(e) To take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women by any person, organization or enterprise;

(f) To take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women;

(g) To repeal all national penal provisions which constitute discrimination against women.

Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women

Now, of the documents covered in the last week or so including The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2), Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13, and the Istanbul Convention Article 38 and Article 39.

The purpose of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women is grounded around the Committeeon the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which is independent experts, as a body of them, who monitor the implementation of the convention.

There are 23 experts from around the world who have specializations in women’s rights. With the document, we find one of the more prominent documents devoted to the fundamental human rights and protections of the bodies of women. As stated in some other recent work, the documents around the world are integral to the maintenance of the increased equality and freedom for women.

In the opening section of Article 2, we find the statements about the condemnations by the relevant states, who sign onto it. Those states defy individuals or groups within their societies who would deny women equal status to the levers of the country in any form. It is about the prevention of discrimination against women. As stated:

Not the precision in the terminology about the condemnation of the discrimination of women in particular and all forms in general. Women.. in general… discrimination… and condemnation, these terms provide the thorough foundation for the equality of women in the world. Indeed, not only the condemnation of these discriminatory measures against women, which can be found in all areas of the world but also the means by which to do it.

“All appropriate means and without delay” meaning some flexibility of “appropriate” but any means in theory with haste as the operating time for the prevention of discrimination against women within the states who have signed onto the document. The purpose then, of course, lies in the matter of women as an equal of man, of men and women as equals insofar as the practice can reach the theoretical.

This leads to subsection (a), which states:

(a) To embody the principle of the equality of men and women in their national constitutions or other appropriate legislation if not yet incorporated therein and to ensure, through law and other appropriate means, the practical realization of this principle;

This section speaks into the international norms around the “principle” to be embodied, an embodied principle in which women and men are seen as equals. Some religious faiths speak of a spiritual equality. It seems abstract in the sense of this principle while also playing into an embodied sense of equality between the sexes.

If men and women within their particular nations signatories to this convention, then the efforts work within the ethical precept bounds of an embodied equality. This can come in the form of a legislation or of a national constitution, or, of course, both. The purpose of having the formal national documentation comes from the need for an ensured equality in actuality or in the reality of the state.

In Article 2(b), we find the following:

(b) To adopt appropriate legislative and other measures, including sanctions where appropriate, prohibiting all discrimination against women;

The principle as an ethic or moral precept set into the constitution of the state and in legislation for the prevention of discrimination and the assurance of equality of men with women forms the basis in theory for the practical realization spoken in Article 2(a). The next part of the practical realization of equality emerges in the form of a formal adoption in legislation and elsewhere in the country for women’s equality.

In other cases, there will need to be the sanction of practices deemed unequal for women with men or for giving power without merit of men over women. For the former, we can look into the practice of sati. In these cases, we find the women thrown onto the funeral pyre to die a horrific death on fire, where the encomium may be stated for the husband and then the wife is thrown on his funeral pyre.

If the wife dies first, insofar as I know, the husband is not burned to death. In fact, the issue for the women seems far more brutal and unfair. In the case of a practice where men have more power than the women, we can find the obvious case in the Guardianship laws. The woman must travel with a male relative as a guardian to protect her, in theory.

The purpose is to purportedly protect women with the assertion or tacit assumption, or premise, of women as men’s unequal and weaker with men as predators and, therefore, women need to be protected and, in its core manifestation, owned by the men in where they can go, with who, for how long, and why what means in their lives.

The ending of these laws would provide further equality for women in terms of the unequal nature of the relations between men and women. We do not know the full capacities of women; indeed, we do not know the full capacities of men until the relations of the sexes comes to its realization, not by some inevitable force of the world but by the hard work of individuals with a hoped-for tomorrow.

With the national constitution and the legislation, and then the adoption of said, the development of the legal protection of women on an equal footing or basis with men can better be maintained or if violated then prosecuted as discrimination against women under Article 2 of the convention. This creates furtherance of a strong foundation for the legal equality of women.

In my own country, women did not have the equal right to vote for a very, very long time. It took several decades since the formal founding of the full country for the suffragists to win some ground and have women garner the right to vote. In a democracy, as far as I am concerned, if you do not have the right to vote, then you do not count as a legal person because a democracy amounts to, in more updated and modern parlance, one person one vote.

The state or national tribunals should remain competent. This seems in direct alignment and isomorphism with the idealized stance of an embodied principle or ethical precept inhered in the conceptualization of an equal stance of women and men. In order to maintain this and judge the validity or invalidity of purported injustices or justices, a competent arbiter or set of them needs to stand in the place of judge or judges to make these principles as realized in the world as possible.

Other public institutions can be used in this manner to protect women against unequal treatment, for feminists and allies, and other interested parties; the use of the public institutions and the need for a competent set of national tribunals seems necessary for the implementation of an equal society. In Canada, we can see movements to have those social and political movements attack themselves through the framing of the debates and public discussions.

If we take the phrase “radical left,” we can see the stance there. When, in fact, the right acts in radical ways through general assaults on the public whether the sexual education programs, the healthcare system, efforts to imbue public institutions and health programs with distrust, and to marginalize the dissident voices and demonize the poor and beatdown as the real criminals when others with power and influence and wealth can smoke crack in public office, work to dismantle the sexual education program consulted to and implemented with the assent of the general public and others.

This tangles the debates and shifts focus on real efforts to undermine the poor and marginalized from mobilizing to act in their best interests rather than the interests of the wealthy. We can see this in stoking of Cold War fears of communists, Marxists, and multiculturalists and efforts to reinstantiate magical thinking through vague definitions of terms and sloppy interdisciplinarity to formulate narratives to redirect attention from the undergirding problems in the society with attempts to attack women’s rights and the livelihood of poor children in this country.

This also shows in the work of the human rights tribunals and the demonization of them and then the work to take any partial mistake and blowing this particular out of proportion to derogate the class enemy. The academics and intellectuals work in line with this at times because this benefits them. All around, we see these attacks to distract attention, attempt to undermine coalition building between poorer peoples, and work to disenfranchise these people further and remove their sole methodologies for better lives and protection of their rights and interests.

If these people can be distracted through religious fundamentalism and magical thinking, this becomes the basis for the further marginalization of the general population that serves to disempower them. That would amount, in all this, to an attack on the general population from multiple angles, but the public is catching on and rejecting the institutional narratives fed through these channels that amount to lies.

The basis for the equality of women must come from these conventions and documents on an international stage to provide a higher-order mechanism to protect the least among us. The competent tribunals form one basis of this, for an “effective protection” of the rights and privileges of women.

Which then leads into Article 2 (d), as follows:

(d) To refrain from engaging in any act or practice of discrimination against women and to ensure that public authorities and institutions shall act in conformity with this obligation;

Within this particular article, we the “refrain” of an engagement in discrimination. Again, the term “any” is used, oft-used in the document, here to mean all. It amounts to a statement like “any and all” or “under any circumstance” found in other documents. The point is to keep on with the theme of the highest possible ideals, which does seem to imply a utilitarian ethic of a form.

In fact, John Stuart Mill, no doubt in conjunction with the help of Harriet Taylor Mill, mentioned the “Nazarene” (Jesus Christ) as another individual who developed an isomorphic ethic with him, similar morality, with the Golden Rule formulated in the New Testament Gospel accounts of the sayings of Christ.

Utilitarianism amounts to the Christian ethic. The ideals for non-discrimination against women become Abrahamic in religious tone and Utilitarian in secular garb. It seems interesting to note the similarities noted by the founder of one faith, or one claimed by many to found a faith, and another who founded an ethic and started much of the philosophical grounding for the modern women’s equality movement.

Ethics relates to how we deal with one another and not as individual atomized units. It does have a metaphysical quality about it. The obligation of acting in accordance with this highest good for all, in particular women in this case, through the reduction in harm via decreases in discrimination against women. Duly note, the public authorities and institutions have an obligation to act in accordance or conformity with the obligations set out in the convention.

(e) follows in this pattern for Article 2, stating:

(e) To take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women by any person, organization or enterprise;

No individual or collective entity may discriminate against women. It is one of the most efficient statements of a Golden Rule ethic in the document with the individual and collective levels of responsibility to women writ large, as a category. Again, the echoing of the sentiment with the “appropriate measures.”

Whether persons, organizations, or enterprises – public or private, individual or collective, everyone remains answerable to rules of equality.

In Article 2(f) of the convention, it states:

(f) To take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women;

The activism can take effect more thoroughly with further gravitas than otherwise. Because the emphasis is on the ability of the or the right of individuals, whether women or men, in a society bound to the convention to implement changes to the legislation. This could be in the modification of the current laws, which may need some form of alteration to make them better suited to the times.

Others may be completed outdated including Guardianship laws or the bans on abortion, where the abolishment of either would provide a stronger ability for women to exercise their rights to life and bodily autonomy. Often, women are denied those rights and privileges even when they are provided for men. It becomes an unbalanced equation unsuited to the modern world.

A world, probably, heading towards either authoritarianism or further freedom and autonomy of individual persons. The individual ability without precedent in the history of the world except insofar as that developed in some of the anarchist traditions of the Indigenous peoples around the world but with the caveat of a cleanliness and quality of life in abundance never before seen in the history of the world; while at the same time, we destroy many of the prospects for decent human existence in other forms and the abundance and diversity of life extant, organisms other than ourselves.

No custom or practice may be the basis for the discrimination against women. In addition, the customs of a culture standing in place to restrict the capacities and livelihood of women. The legal and social-cultural frameworks for the historic and present discrimination against women become untenable in the light of updated standards.

In a way, these do not by necessity reject the Golden Rule ethics found in religious traditions. With a recognition of a serious lack of women in the stories of the religious traditions and narratives, the religious traditions and narratives could inculcate an updated version of themselves with an expansion of the moral and ethical sphere to women as full person through the natural extension of the Golden Rule into heretofore unrecognized areas, especially in popular consciousness.

These decades-old documents represent some of it. They show work to expand the moral sphere to the other sex as others work to expand the same to children, labor, minorities, Indigenous peoples, and others, even artificial constructs or replicative intellects (“artilects”) in the future. The culture and the law can begin to change with the creation and adoption of the provisions necessary for women’s equality.

That leads to Article 2(g):

(g) To repeal all national penal provisions which constitute discrimination against women.

Any across-the-country provision for the discrimination against women forms the basis for something with the need for repeal. The world will take years and decades to do this. However, we see the news cycle with the provisions for women and then the restriction or retraction of those provisions for women.

The continual drawing of the lines here represents or indicates the shifts in the modern world with the third wave or fourth waves of feminism. The waves of the women’s movement devoted to the further shifts in the landscape with ownership to one’s body. The first wave came with the recognition of one’s identity as an equal in a democratic system with universal suffrage.

The next was in the workplace and the home for the ability to work and so on. The newer ones fragment far more than others as the distinctions become greater than the prior generations and, hence, the inability to cope with the complexity of the varieties of women’s rights movements throughout history in the social commentary and in the confusion of third wave and fourth wave.

The battle lines here will continue for some time, as the nations throughout the world with penal provisions constituting discrimination against women seem palpable and sex-distinct with the representation of women as one loose marker for the equality of women around the country. The lack of provisions for equitable and safe access to abortion, for example, amounts to one failure.

The repeal of the discriminations against women throughout the world continue apace and Article 2 represents an important historical document with modern relevance for the equality of women with men and, in turn, the ability for men to become more full human beings with the freedom provided for women and, thus, for themselves, where both sexes win.

—

One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13.
The Istanbul Convention Article 38 and Article 39.
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
Beijing Declaration(1995).
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).

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2022-04-22

The Benefits of Some Bright and Sunny Days

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/02

Low levels of vitamin D can lead to various health problems to someone, especially if they are of advanced age. The ability of the skin to produce vitamin D begins to decrease with age. The skin becomes less and less efficient at the production of vitamin D, which is gradual and so happens over time.

As the Mayo Clinic notes about the problems of insufficient Sun exposure or vitamin d production, there is the issue of the deficiency. What are the problems that arise in general health without the sufficient amounts of vitamin D needed for optimal health?

Vitamin D deficiency can lead to problems with insulin production and immune function in addition to the as yet unknown ways in which this helps with the reduction of various chronic diseases and cancer. With low levels, your bones can become brittle and thin, even misshapen.

The article states, “Although the amount of vitamin D adults get from their diets is often less than what’s recommended, exposure to Sunlight can make up for the difference. For most adults, vitamin D deficiency is not a concern. However, some groups — particularly people who are obese, who have dark skin and who are older than age 65 — may have lower levels of vitamin D due to their diets, little Sun exposure or other factors.”

You can take supplements. However, as per usual with health, the best option for the maintenance of a healthy diet is nature. I do not mean au natural or the fame and fortune garnered by charlatans and food fad folks. I mean a well-balanced diet reflects the same with Sun exposure. It is about the proper amount of intake.

Some Sun exposure is the key to a happy and healthy life. Too much can harm your health, though, which we will cover in a moment.

But first, “The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for adults is 600 international units (IU) of vitamin D a day. That goes up to 800 IU a day for those older than age 70. To meet this level, choose foods that are rich in vitamin D. For example, choose fatty fish, such as salmon, trout, tuna and halibut, which offer higher amounts of vitamin D, or fortified foods, such as milk and yogurt,” the report explained.

Some of these, I did not even know about. There are some issues with the toxicity of vitamin D too.

The condition is known as hypervitaminosis D. It is rare. However, it would be instructive to cover a bit of time on it. Because it can be hazardous to personal health in the long-term if one has it. It can produce excess amounts of vitamin D in your body.

“Vitamin D toxicity is usually caused by megadoses of vitamin D supplements — not by diet or Sun exposure. That’s because your body regulates the amount of vitamin D produced by Sun exposure, and even fortified foods don’t contain large amounts of vitamin D,” the article explained.

With hypercalcemia or a buildup of calcium in the blood, the vitamin D toxicity can cause a variety of consequences. Some of these include frequent urination, nausea, vomiting, and weakness. Indeed, if these problems continue, you can develop bone pain and kidney problems with kidney stones. Some treatments would include the restriction on the intake of vitamin D and dietary calcium – sources mentioned above.

The article continued, “Taking 60,000 international units (IU) a day of vitamin D for several months has been shown to cause toxicity. This level is many times higher than the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for most adults of 600 IU of vitamin D a day. Doses higher than the RDA are sometimes used to treat medical problems such as vitamin D deficiency, but these are given only under the care of a doctor for a specified time frame. Blood levels should be monitored while someone is taking high doses of vitamin D.”

In each case listed here, the main message is to be in touch with both your body but also your medical professional regarding supplementation and the potential health pitfalls of the Sun in this case

Also, if you are a normal person and have sensitive skin or are concerned about skin protection from Sun damage – you should be, then you should bear in mind the need for protection from it. Sun damage is permanent.

With the summer with us now, for most of us, though as a Canadian the timing was a little bit delayed (!), the importance of being smart about exposure to the Sun cannot be underestimated. Skin cancer risk is increased proportionally to sun exposure as sun exposure causes sun damage. Remember: the Sun is a nuclear furnace.

“In this Mayo Clinic Minute, Dr. Dawn Davis, a Mayo Clinic dermatologist, has tips to keep your skin safe and healthy in the Sun,” the clinic stated, “It is spring break time, and many people are headed to warmer climates to get much-needed R & R and some Sun, which means you could get sunburned. Sunburns can be painful, and they can increase your risk of skin cancer. So it’s important to slather on the sunscreen and expose your skin to the Sun gradually. But, with all the different products out there, how do you know what number Sun protection factor (SPF) to use — 15, 30 or 50-plus? Dr. Davis has recommendations.”

If some Sun exposure is coming your way, then you should be wearing some sunscreen as you. The Sun can be toxic if more than 15 minutes or so. It depends on the level of melanin in your skin, but it can be an issue regardless of ethnic background and skin tone – as skin is simply a variety of barrier of the sun and a producer of vitamin D.

But do not sweat it! A little Sun, and if a little more then a little sunscreen, then the Summer and Spring Sun are yours to soak up!

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2022-04-22

Should you use dietary supplements?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/01

Some considerations arose in the midst of reading an article about supplements. Are they for you?

The article was from the Mayo Clinic. The prominence of dietary supplements make the possible effects on the body of importance for any health conscious person. With a healthy diet, a normal and prime of life person will not need them. Then this leads to questions about what ifs. What if is you are not having a healthy diet or cannot maintain it for some reason? What if you are not prime of life?

These seem like legitimate questions altogether and associated for that matter. This then leads to some further questions. A nutritious diet prior to the age of 65 should be fine without supplements. However, once you do reach the are of 65, your ability to absorb a few nutrients such as calcium, vitamin b-12, and vitamin D can be limited.

That is, a multivitamin may be in order. It can improve immune function and decrease the risk of possible infections, apparently. No joke.

Then there is the case of the person who eats junk food or few good foods. A multivitamin will not fill the gap, especially regarding micronutrients, but you can work to impact our bad health habits a bit with some supplementation in that case. However, if you want the best health outcomes, a lot of fruits and vegetables connected to a general diet of healthier foods is ideal. I prefer the Mediterranean myself.

Other people may have some specific dietary needs. Those may, sometimes, only be covered with a single vitamin-mineral supplement.

“If you’re a vegetarian who eats no animal products from your diet, you may need vitamin B-12. And if you don’t eat dairy products and don’t get 15 minutes of sun on your skin two to three times a week, you may need to add calcium and vitamin D supplements to your diet,” the article recommended.

Then there are cases of women who have gone past menopause. Those women will need to get sufficient calcium and vitamin D with the bone loss acceleration and the increased need for calcium. Then the ability to absorb the relevant nutrients (calcium and vitamin D) decrease at the same time, which makes this a more difficult and harder process altogether.

The article continued, “Some health conditions and treatments make it difficult to digest or absorb nutrients. Examples include a disease of your liver, gallbladder, intestine, pancreas or kidney, or a surgery on your digestive tract. In such cases, your doctor may recommend that you take a vitamin or mineral supplement.”

The final note in the suggestions was that there may be medications that could interfere with the ways in which your body abords nutrients. Those were “Antacids, antibiotics, laxatives, diuretics or other medications.”

If you start today and stick to a life of healthier eating, unless over 65, you do not necessarily need supplements. But always consult with your medical professional.

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2022-04-22

Article I of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/01

Article I

For the purposes of the present Convention, the term “discrimination against women” shall mean any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.

If you peer above, the first article emphasizes the sole purpose of it: non-discrimination against women. The prevention and reversal of the discrimination against women and human beings simply for being human beings. The basis is sex, not gender, in the documentation. So, individuals discriminated against based on biological sex rather than social, cultural, psychological, and emotional gender, which amounts to a complicated overlay and outgrowth of biology in connection with culture and other factors.

Of course, we are not amoebas or formless creatures, so biology connects to gender and sexuality – as we evolved and garnered capacities that come with concomitant limitations. The main emphasis here in the discrimination against women, which seems palpable around the world, begs several questions about the intentions or purposes of an international document devoted to the prevention of discrimination against women.

The forms of discrimination here include distinction, exclusion, or restriction. Each operation in the ways in which people may treat women, which can include how some women may treat some other women. These then extend into the world of purposeful impairment or nullification, either reduction or ignoring, of the contributions of women to the conversation.

These same operations work in regard to the enjoyment of a woman or the exercise of a woman. The broadest interpretation for enjoyment would be complete life satisfaction and wellbeing with eudaimonia found in the ancient Greek repertoire. If someone works to reduce the individual happiness of a woman, then the woman will be discriminated against there.

Same for the exercise of a woman. This does not mean working out (but it could, technically). This means the exercise of efforts by a woman in, for example, working for enjoyment in life.

To all the single ladies and the married women, it does not matter what your marital status; no man and no woman hold the right to withhold your own life from you. If they work to try to control you, then you have the right to leave them. They are in violation of this convention.

Same with the fundamental basis of equality. Women deserve it; men deserve it. This will be continued and elaborated on in coverage of subsequent Articles.

—

One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13.
The Istanbul Convention Article 38 and Article 39.
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
Beijing Declaration(1995).
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).

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2022-04-22

Article 39 of the Istanbul Convention

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/30

Article 39 – Forced abortion and forced sterilisation
Parties shall take the necessary legislative or other measures to ensure that the following
intentional conducts are criminalised:

a performing an abortion on a woman without her prior and informed consent;
b performing surgery which has the purpose or effect of terminating a woman’s capacity to
naturally reproduce without her prior and informed consent or understanding of the
procedure.

The Istanbul Convention is an important document not only for the equality of the sexes, but also for the protection of women from culture, community, society, and fundamentalist religion opposed to bodily autonomy.

In the convention, the equality of women with men comes, in Article 39, in the form of prevention of female genital mutilation. In the examination of the two starting terms, we find the forced abortion and the forced sterilization as the opening terms. With the forced abortion, an adult woman, typically, cannot be forced to have an abortion.

This should include the coercion from a partner, family, or community because, as an adult, a woman has a right to bodily autonomy. The “forced” portion of “forced abortion” creates a foundation for consent with the violation inherent in the vernacular: “forced.” Then the “sterilisation” or, more properly in the context of the readers here, “sterilization” prevents women from ever becoming mothers.

It rejects the option of a person’s life. Women become unequal in this sense. Also, this founds another basis for the violation of bodily autonomy and, indeed, integrity. With consent implied in the first line and bodily autonomy and integrity integrated into the context as well, we come to the next line of Article 39 of the Istanbul Convention.

The relevant parties, for whenever and whoever, will create legislation for the criminalization of the abortion of a woman, as described in (a), without prior and informed consent. Prior and informed consent refers to two-party consent. The first with “prior” being the woman in question know beforehand what is going on, where, when, how, and so on. Basically, the woman has an idea as to what will happen to her in order to make a prior choice.

She is not being randomly taken for an abortion in blunt terms. The second with “informed” implies the knowledge of the woman who can make a choice with said knowledge. Together, the “prior” and “informed” mean before the actions are taken on the woman’s body regarding abortion or sterilization the woman in question must know ahead of time and have had made an informed choice in the matter.

Without those two, the abortion or the sterilization process violates the Istanbul Convention in Article 39. In fact, the nations around the world beholden to the convention have to criminalize that too. Women have the right. If someone argues against the right, they argue against women, whether from family, tradition, partner, culture, religion, or other excuses for the violations of women’s rights.

(b) is intriguing:

b performing surgery which has the purpose or effect of terminating a woman’s capacity to
naturally reproduce without her prior and informed consent or understanding of the
procedure.

The focus is on the prior and informed consent from before. However, this comes with an additional premise of “understanding the procedure” and keeping intact the woman’s ability to naturally reproduce. These are important, nuanced, and widely unimplemented provisions for the rights of women. They should know and be knowledgeable of everything beforehand.

This includes the procedure for her. These conventions and declarations are not to be trifled with, nor are the fundamental rights of women, or the responsibility of the international community to protect the bodily autonomy and integrity of women. It seems easy for some to mock or denigrate the work of the international community or the UN.

However, the conceptualization of rights is new. These are newer than the Divine Right of Kings, the Commons, the Charter of the Forest, the Ten Commandments, and the Golden Rule’s variations. In this, the important of the instantiation of new and more considered to the time’s standards is important.

Bear in mind, many in the world would prefer an ethic oriented around the fundamentalist interpretations of the Quran with Islamism or of the Bible with the Christian Dominionists or Reconstructionists, where this comes from the idea in Genesis 1:28 with God providing dominion over the Earth to Mankind.

Much of humankind differs of that interpretation, in particular, most of the world. The international secular consensus or universalist ethics provides the basis for individual and collective belief and the protection of the individual integrity and autonomy of the person. In the cases here with the Istanbul Convention and others, we find the protection of the integrity and autonomy of the individual woman.

That amounts to something worth protecting and within a modern context, as in human rights. Thus, to stand for the rights of others, as a man for women, you can then stand for the eventual protection of your own rights but also the rights as a concept worth valuing.

—

One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13.
The Istanbul Convention and Article 38.
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
Beijing Declaration(1995).
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).

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2022-04-22

Unhealthy Belly Fat in Men

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/30

The Mayo Clinic reported on the excess belly fat in men.

It is an unhealthy thing to have in men. There are some important considerations to having excess belly fat in men. If you want to improve your overall ong-term health, the, men, you will probably want o keep in mind some of these trimming up recommendations and considerations in mind, courtesy of the clinic.

The article stated, “The trouble with belly fat is that it’s not limited to the extra layer of padding located just below the skin (subcutaneous fat). It also includes visceral fat — which lies deep inside your abdomen, surrounding your internal organs.”

It is like the belly iceberg. The fat there represents only a portion of the real problem in health linked to it. With more belly fatty, above and below the surface so to speak, the consequences to health comes with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, colorectal cancer, high blood pressure, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, premature death from any cause, and sleep apnea.

The problem with weight comes from a garbage in and garbage out knowledge of the body and caloric value. If you eat more than your body burns in the day, including maintenance of life and exercise, then you will begin to gain weight, slowly, over time.

Loss of muscle mass from age can be a factor to consider from all this as well. As you slowly lose hormones and age, your body will gradually lose its definition and overall amount of muscle mass. Muscle burns calories, slowly over time by simply existing and more so than fatty tissue.

“According to the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, men in their 50s need about 200 fewer calories daily than they do in their 30s due to this muscle loss,” the article explained, “Your genes also can contribute to your chances of being overweight or obese, as well as play a role in where you store fat. However, balancing the calories you consume with activity can help prevent weight gain, despite your age and genetics.”

Other issues can be from the alcohol diet. It is known as the beer belly. Alcohol contains calories. These go to the gut. If you want to do a loose diagnostic, then you should stand in place with a tape measure and wrap that around your bare stomach from your hip bone.

Then you can have that measuring tape wrap snugly around you without putting pressure on the skin. Then you can relax and exhale and then measure the waist without sucking in your stomach (no cheating!). For the men, the healthy size is less than 40 inches. More than that is a sign of some potential health problems.

“You can tone abdominal muscles with crunches or other targeted abdominal exercises, but just doing these exercises won’t get rid of belly fat. However, visceral fat responds to the same diet and exercise strategies that can help you shed excess pounds and lower your total body fat,” the article stated.

In terms of life practices, some of the things to bear in mind will be a healthy diet, reasonable portions, replacement of sugary beverages, and then physical activity in your daily routine. If you make those a life practice, you will very likely have a decent chance at a healthier life.

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2022-04-22

The Purported “Supremacy of God” in Canada

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/29

The Freedom of Thought Report seems like one of the most comprehensive reports on – ahem – free thought known to me.

It provides great reportage in its Canada section. I highly recommended it. In the Constitution Act 1982, there is a statement:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law

It amounts to a symbolic representation of God into the Constitution Act 1982. Note, the presumption, probably, at the time, given the demographics of the nation, amounted to an Abrahamic theistic God. It would seem, by implication, to leave out no gods, no Supreme Being stated as “God,” and non-Abrahamic gods.

That is, the symbol leaves out the non-religious who do not believe in gods or a God, the polytheistic, and the non-Abrahamic faiths. With the continued decline of the Christian religion and much of the Abrahamic religious cultural influence on Canadian society, this section may need new discussion, especially oriented around its removal.

The report also states, “…the French version of the national anthem references carrying a sword in one hand and a cross in the other. While these are symbolic, and aren’t used to justify discrimination, the preamble was used as an argument from city lawyers in Saguenay (see below) for allowing governments to endorse prayer/religion as part of public office.”

Again, find another case with the symbolic representation of a Deity or a Theity within formal Canadian public life. This seems unfair once more. At bottom, it seems rude. At the top, it represents some moderately serious concerns around equal representation through no representation or preference of any god or God within Canadian formal public life.

There has been some progress, for example, on the front of the purported or alleged supremacy of God. That is, the prohibition of the saying of prayers in the middle of municipal council business. In addition, there are formal and public, and vocal, supporters including the Mouvement Laïque Québécois. The case was brought forward by one resident in Saguenay in Quebec.

That Mouvement Laïque Québécois supported it. The questions then emerge for other areas in which further equality can be had through the retraction of discriminatory symbolic gestures, by implication, in favour of some belief preferences over others. A proposed revision of the Constitution Act of 1982 from the current|:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law

To the following:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the rule of law

It becomes more concise, to the point, and enjoyable to both the eyes and the efficiency gods (joke), also representative of the broad base of Canadian society (and a growing one for that matter) through no preferential symbolic representation. As a principle employed with a gentle gesture and nudge, in a Canadian tone, why not make the changes, please?

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2022-04-22

The Last Sections of Article 38 of the Istanbul Convention

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/29

Article 38 – Female genital mutilation
Parties shall take the necessary legislative or other measures to ensure that the following
intentional conducts are criminalised:

a excising, infibulating or performing any other mutilation to the whole or any part of a
woman’s labia majora, labia minora or clitoris;

b coercing or procuring a woman to undergo any of the acts listed in point a;

c inciting, coercing or procuring a girl to undergo any of the acts listed in point a

In the convention, some stark statements arise including ones related to the practices of female genital mutilation, of which tens of millions of women around the world are subject to and suffer from at the hands of religious and cultural practices entwined together. In Canada and elsewhere, we do not have to worry too much about unconsented to the mutilation of girls’ bodies. It can happen.

However, the cases do not emerge at consistent rates. The questions about the use and abuse of women’s bodies for cultural and religious practices are many and broad-ranging. The main ones here are about Article 38(b) and Article 38(c) of the Istanbul Convention. It deals with the coercion and procurement of women to get excision, infibulation, or other genital mutilation relevant to women’s bodies.

It does not matter if this is encouraged by religion culture, family or community. No one has the right to go out and mutilate a women’s body, but, again, tens of millions of girls and women around the world have undergone these procedures. Section (b) relates to (c) on that point but also to leads naturally into section (c).

As stated clearly in the documentation, the incitement and coercion, and procurement of a girl is also prohibited. That is, whether a woman or a girl, no one holds the right to deny a bodily autonomy to this person. That makes the religio-cultural context and familial and community pressure moot. If people, especially girls and young women, are pressured by community, the community and the family is violating the fundamental basis of Article 38 of the Istanbul Convention.

—

One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on. Based on the personal analysis in conjunction with a colleague (Sarah Mills) in other publications, I find the following documents with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13.
The Istanbul Convention and Article 39.
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
Beijing Declaration(1995).
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).

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2022-04-22

Men’s Health in 3 Minutes

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/28

The Mayo Clinic stated in a very, very short article the nature of the health threats for men and some other key items. Let’s run through them!

The big ones for men are cancer, heart disease, and unintentional injury. I believe the lattermost one comes from the vast majority of the most dangerous jobs being dominated by men. So, they will more probably be injured on the job by those things. With heart disease and cancer, there are definite genetic components to those.

However, these can be curbed with some healthy lifestyle choices and physical activity added into the routine for the day. There are some things that men do which are casual sex and drinking to excess. Those harm their health. It is part of the higher risk-taking of men, which harms them in general.

Men need to use seat belts and helmets, and use safety ladders too, in order to prevent injuries on the job or in recreation. Come on, guys!

Men age as with everything. They become less virile, more brittle, and more breakable than before. Systems in the body break down more. The aging guts that grow as one’s chronological numbers grow. The testosterone levels that drop inversely to the age increase.

So, the good news: these are avoidable problems for a while, for a healthy and long life – as a statistical bet on long-term health span.

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2022-04-22

Article 38(a) of the Istanbul Convention

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/28

International documents provide the basis for rights, for individuals and peoples. This includes the marginalized. This incorporates the majority, whoever and wherever. The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention is a huge document.

However, when one examines the particular issues over 100 million and potentially 200 million girls and women around the world, potentially far, far more, but at least tens of millions of girls and women. They undergo this in unsanitary and forced conditions with the pressure of religion, family, culture, and community.

The 38th article of the document lays out the importance of this act. That is, it should be criminalized rather decriminalized or permitted in the first place.

Article 38(a) states:

Article 38 – Female genital mutilation
Parties shall take the necessary legislative or other measures to ensure that the following
intentional conducts are criminalized:
a excising, infibulating or performing any other mutilation to the whole or any part of a
woman’s labia majora, labia minora or clitoris;

That seems rather comprehensive and covers the main concerns regarding women’s health and the violation of their bodies. Regardless of the basis for it, this act should be criminalized in any of its forms and this document provides the basis for activism against it. Women can do something about it. Men can support them.

Especially for those men in more prominent positions, the “M” in “FGM” seems straightforward. It is mutilation often at a young age and without consent. It tends not to be an adult with fully informed consent and in unsafe and dirty conditions. Should this be permitted to happen to tens of millions of women?

The Istanbul Convention is a salient piece of international rights statements because of the continued retractions, currently, ongoing in spite of the vast strides made for the equality of women with men.

—

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13.
The Istanbul Convention and Article 39.
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women(1993).
Beijing Declaration(1995).
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).

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2022-04-22

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/27

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) was adopted, and so legitimized, through the United Nations General Assembly on December 16th, 1966. After ten years or so, all Member States of the United Nations became parties of the covenant. That remained the plan or projection, or extrapolation, as the case may be.

As it turns out, the document had the sufficient Member States in 1976 – tens years after 1966 or its adoption by the UN General Assembly – and became active as planned in 1976. The United States Senate ratified the ICCPR in June of 1992 with some exceptions to the treaty. Some of those included that the treaty will not be enforceable in the courts of the United States.

The introduction states, “Thus the United States Senate denied Americans the legal power to secure and enforce the human rights recognized by this international covenant.”

That is, the document may be enforced in the other Member States but most definitely not in the United States of America. With the social and legal and cultural and political equality of men and women on the international agenda more, especially with the rising inequality, nationalism, and authoritarianism, and outright sexism by secular and religious groups around the world, this document becomes ever-more important.

It becomes important with the civil and political rights rather than reproductive rights, which become different when in consideration of men and women, and trans-men and trans-women, e.g. in the cases of abortions and birth control provisions and the implications for men and women and some trans-men and some trans-women. Civil and political rights seem relatively straightforward as rights afforded in civil society and political life of the nation.

The main article from this document with direct relevance is Article 3, which talks about “The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to ensure the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all civil and political rights set forth in the present Covenant.” It is straightforward and in contradistinction to the obvious current treatments of men and women the world over in terms of rights.

When international and civil society organizations argue for human rights, and speak about the current inequality the rights of men and women, they speak with authority and in line with the documentation adopted by the United Nations decades and decades ago. Our parents’ generations were kids when this was ongoing.

In the denial of the right for women to drive, or the Guardianship laws grounded in culture and the Islamic faith fundamentalist interpretations, the retraction of equal rights in law, the restriction in the right to vote, to marry, to have a marriage with full adult consent, and so on, the various conventions and documents, such as this one – and especially in Article 3, continue to be violated.

They remain some of the stronges tools in Canada and elsewhere to argue for the full equal rights of men and women in civil and political life. We should use them to full force regardless if people use distractions, emotional appeals, logical fallacies, or force to deny said equality. We owe this to women; we owe this to men.

We are in a moment of minor retractions. Let’s change that.

—

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13.
The Istanbul Convention in Article 38 and Article 39.
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women(1993).
Beijing Declaration(1995).
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).

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2022-04-22

Manage Your Stress Before It Mismanages You

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/27

The Mayo Clinic remains the #1 medical clinic in the entire world. So, when they talk about something, they have the highest overall ranking in the world to substantiate their evidence and claims with a world-class staff too.

I want to talk for a short while today about stress. Because this is an affliction of modern society. There is a need for minimum or optimum levels of physiological and psychological stress. It keeps us alert during the day. That alertness helps us keep our jobs. We do not want to be fired. We do not want to crash the car or forget where we are.

A little stress can do you some good. However, it can move from a performance enhancer to some that harm health. Your wellbeing can go down. Your body and brain cannot cope with it as well. Then your overall performance in life begins to slip away and decline overall. Let’s have the Mayo Clinic have some say here.

It states, “Stress is a normal psychological and physical reaction to the demands of life. A small amount of stress can be good, motivating you to perform well. But multiple challenges daily, such as sitting in traffic, meeting deadlines and paying bills, can push you beyond your ability to cope.”

“Your brain comes hard-wired with an alarm system for your protection. When your brain perceives a threat, it signals your body to release a burst of hormones that increase your heart rate and raise your blood pressure. This “fight-or-flight” response fuels you to deal with the threat,” the article continued.

The point is to be relaxed in some ways and at some times and not at others. It is the Yerkes-Dodson curve of performance. Some activities require high arousal, moderate arousal, and minimal arousal. If you miss the mark of the level necessary for the task ahead of you, this creates some major problems for you.

“Once the threat is gone, your body is meant to return to a normal, relaxed state. Unfortunately, the nonstop complications of modern life mean that some people’s alarm systems rarely shut off,” the article said, “Stress management gives you a range of tools to reset your alarm system. It can help your mind and body adapt (resilience). Without it, your body might always be on high alert. Over time, chronic stress can lead to serious health problems.”

So do not forget to consider stress as a needed daily spike, but be chary or wary of a continuous possibility of health problems associated with it.

Don’t wait until stress damages your health, relationships or quality of life. Start practicing stress management techniques today.

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2022-04-22

The Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) Article 2

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/26

From the Convention Against Discrimination in Education in Paris, France December 14, 1960:

Recalling that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts the principle of non-discrimination and proclaims that every person has the right to education,

Considering that discrimination in education is a violation of rights enunciated in that Declaration,

Considering that, under the terms of its Constitution, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has the purpose of instituting collaboration among the nations with a view to furthering for all universal respect for human rights and equality of educational opportunity,

Recognizing that, consequently, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, while respecting the diversity of national educational systems, has the duty not only to proscribe any form of discrimination in education but also to promote equality of opportunity and treatment for all in education,

Having before It proposals concerning the different aspects of discrimination in education, constituting item 17.1.4 of the agenda of the session,

Having decided at its tenth session that this question should be made the subject of an international convention as well as of recommendations to Member States,

Adopts this Convention on the fourteenth day of December 1960.

Rights form the foundation of an ethic to derive other ethics. In this exemplary sense, provide the basis for another form of meta-ethics. An ethic to permit other ethics. Formal metaethics deals with some issues.

This rights ethic derives from the foundation in international documentation. The means by which the global community does not come to total agreement on issues but, rather, comes to a consensus through mutual consideration, debate, discussion, and reflection on the issues of the day.

If rights to a belief or a religion, as an example, then the belief in the religious or non-religious ethic does not remain contained in the rights ethic. Instead, the rights derive consensus permission for the religious belief.

In consideration of the modern split in the world, the two sides split by a major partition in morals comes from a traditional conservative religious transcendent ethic inhered into the essential nature of a metaphysical being who either created the world or generated a world alongside its self-existence.

The other ethic instantiates in the universalist notions and consensus ethics with continual revisions and updates based on shared human values brought together through mutual respect in conversation about matters of value.

Documents including the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provide some basis for the universalist conceptualization of ethics.

In the national and international acceptance of these values, though not by and large completely implemented, the transcendent ethic can flourish freely; same with the other non-religious ethics or non-transcendentalist ethics associated with the religiously unaffiliated, typically.

With only the transcendentalist ethics inculcated within the society, the religiously unaffiliated ethics garner little to zero implementation or consideration. Cases in points, the theocratic institutions in some nations working to restrict and repress those with lack of religious affiliation with adherence to a transcendentalist ethic in government and law while rejecting the universalist ethics.

Regardless, this all relates to the work for equality in provisions through these universalist and international consensus based ethics. In the Convention Against Discrimination in Education, the second Article talks about the equality of men and women.

In Article 2’s opening, it states, “When permitted in a State, the following situations shall not be deemed to constitute discrimination, within the meaning of Article 1 of this Convention…”

“(a) The establishment or maintenance of separate educational systems or in-stitutions for pupils of the two sexes, if these systems or institutions offer equivalent access to education, provide a teaching staff with qualifications of the same standard as well as school premises and equipment of the same quality, and afford the opportunity to take the same or equivalent courses of study…” the convention continued.

With separate educational systems or institutions for the students of either sex, and equal provision of education with relatively equally qualified teaching staff, the educational system amounts to an equal one. Equipment should remain the same. Identical rule with course provisions.

Section (b) states, “The establishment or maintenance, for religious or linguistic reasons, of separate educational systems or institutions offering an education which is in keeping with the wishes of the pupil’s parents or legal guardians, if participation in such systems or attendance at such institutions is optional and if the education provided conforms to such standards as may be laid down or approved by the competent authorities, in particular for education of the same level…”

That is, the religious or linguistic separation of educational provisions do not prevent the proper education of the child. While also respecting the rights of the parents or legal guardians of the child, the systems for the educational institutions, if kept to normal standards of curricula, should be respected as a possible choice.

The final part (c) states, “The establishment or maintenance of private educational institutions, if the object of the institutions is not to secure the exclusion of any group but to provide educational facilities in addition to those provided by the public authorities, if the institutions are conducted in accordance with that object, and if the education provided conforms with such standards as may be laid down or approved by the competent authorities, in particular for education of the same level.”

The purpose of education remains the equal opportunities, access, and provisions of education for all children and others regardless of the background. The public authorities cannot exclude groups from one another, so not abrogating the right to discriminate individuals identified as belonging to a group in the process.

The main, and echoed point, in section (3) comes from the (re-)iteration of the competent authorities and quality standards in education across all levels. For the women around the world prevented from education for transcendentalist ethical notions about women’s inherent inferiority or only place and capacities being in the home, or for the fatherless and modern technology addicted young men who feel rudderless and without purpose, this convention remains a foundational document, and in particular Articles 1 and 2, for equality.

—

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13.
The Istanbul Convention in Article 38 and Article 39.
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women(1993).
Beijing Declaration(1995).
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).

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2022-04-22

Freeing Hearts and Freeing Minds with Yasmine Mohammed

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/26

Yasmine Mohammed is an activist, author, and ex-Muslim living in British Columbia, Canada. Her story is an intriguing one, to say the least. She recounts the personal story in the book entitled From Al-Qaeda to Atheism. In January 30, 2018, in an interview for Canadian Atheist, Yasmine and I talked about the life story for her, in brief. We have an extended interview upcoming in In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. Here we reproduce some of the publication in an article interview format.

When I opened the conversation, I noted the fact of Mohammed’s moderate levels of fame with Canada and North America. The reason: she married a member of Al-Qaeda. She was subsequently contacted by CSIS or the Canadian secret service. She described the personal narrative from there.

Mohammed stated, “As is typical, this marriage was coerced/forced. ‘Love marriages’, as they’re termed, are looked down upon. It means the couple was debaucherous enough to know each other prior to marriage.”

As Mohammed’s daughter turned one-year-old, Mohammed’s mother began to bleed from the nose and mouth. She called 911. She did not know if her mother would live or die. The ambulance took her away. However, Mohammed and her daughter went in the ambulance.

She notes. This was the first time that she had ever left the house without her husband by her side. As Mohammed sat in the waiting room, a man and woman, who explained that they were from CSIS, approached her.

“They told me that the man I married, Essam Hafez Marzouk, was an Al Qaeda operative who worked closely with Osama Bin Laden,” Mohammed stated, “In a pre-9/11 world, those words didn’t mean much to me. I knew he had been in Afghanistan before he came to Canada, so I suspected he had some ties to jihadis. Why else would an Egyptian teenager go to Afghanistan? But I had no idea of the extent of his involvement.”

When I queried about an equal partnership in the marriage for her, as a neutrally phrased question, she described the new marriage to her current partner as lucky because her current husband is a “wonderful man.”

In the previous relationships, she recalled being told that she was easy to please because she felt “over the moon if they didn’t abuse me! But I have come a long way. It was a slow process of rebuilding myself brick by brick.”

She took the hard road of self-reconstruction. The initiative to bit-by-bit, or brick-by-brick in her metaphor, to rebuild and remold herself. The notion of faking it until you make it was the beginning and the eventuality – faked and made. She crafted new values more to her authentic self.

“One of the things I faked was that I deserved a decent, loving boyfriend, and I would not accept anything less. My husband, of ten years, is most definitely decent and loving. He is exceptionally kind and he is confident enough to allow me to define my needs in our relationship,” Mohammed opined.

Now, she reacts swiftly to any scent of inequality in the marriage. She will never return to the submissive woman defined by lack of spine and a will co-opted for obeisance to the husband.

The conversation shifted into the more progressive and liberal forms of Islamic upbringing. However, Mohammed had difficulty in a proper response to the question because a progressive Muslim, in her opinion, is not one who follows the religion as closely as a conservative.

Mohammed quipped, “There is no such thing as progressive Islam, there are only progressive Muslims.”

I then recalled an experience with Haras Rafiq, who is the CEO of the Quilliam Foundation. I remember using the term moderate, which came from mainstream media discussions. If extremists exist, then moderates must be the opposite of them. It formed a non-conscious – not critically examined – binary view of the Muslims. He corrected me.

I feel glad about it. He noted the term ordinary, which makes more sense. So, I asked Mohammed about the importance of precision in the use of language in one of the emergent and important conversations now.

“Yes. I think precision is important. ‘Ordinary’ denotes that the type of person you are describing is the norm or the majority. And that is simply not true. If you refer to PEW research, you’ll find that so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims are very far from ordinary-in fact they are more of an anomaly,” Mohammed stated, “The ordinary Muslim is incredibly conservative and would not even consider a ‘moderate’ Muslim to be a Muslim. Anyone who veers from conservative Islam is killed. Ahmadis, Sufis, any other moderate sects of Muslims are killed.”

She reflected on 300 Sufis being killed as they prayed in their mosque.

Next in the discussion was the new initiative called Free Hearts, Free Minds (FHFM) and an, at the time, main focus of the written text, From Al Qaeda to Atheism, of Mohammed. The FHFM campaign works to support ex-Muslims in Muslim majority countries.

Mohammed said, “In a lot of Muslim-majority countries, one could be killed for leaving Islam. As such, people who find themselves denouncing the faith must be very quiet about it. It is an incredibly difficult journey for anyone-but it is 100 times worse when you are in a society that could jail you and execute you for leaving the religion you were born into.”

Some of the other work for FHFM will be connecting ex-Muslims in the Muslim world to have a marriage of convenience. That is, “…If people are going to be coerced into marriages anyway, then at least I can help them to get into a marriage with someone they share values with. There are similar websites for the LGBT community, so I’m hoping to mimic their platforms,” Mohammed explained.

In the conclusion, Mohammed made a call to those who are facing honor violence, female genital mutilation, and other violence to then reach out to the AHA Foundation. She further continued on those in the Muslim majority countries who can “contact me through my website.”

The organization will help them get involved with FHFM and to meet a ex-Muslim life coach to help find inner courage, fortitude, and to provide them with the means by which to fight back against their upbringing. and I will get you involved in my Free Hearts, Free Minds program that will match you up with an ex-Muslim life coach who will help you find your inner strength and will arm you with the tools you need to fight back.

Finally, she stated other organizations such as the Ex-Muslims in North America (EXMNA), Faith to Faithless in the UK, and Muslimish in the US.

—

Free Hearts Free Minds is committed to helping ex-Muslims to successfully transition out of Islam and into a happy, healthy life. We will be presenting ex-Muslims from Muslim Majority countries with the opportunity to receive coaching and mental health support. We are working with Jimmy from Integrated Wellness. An ex-Muslim Integrative Coach who has lived through the experience of leaving Islam.

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2022-04-22

If We’re Doing Ghost Tours, Why Not Angels, Demons, Hobgoblins, and Zombies?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/25

If you look into the cultural milieu of the most non-religious province in Canada known as British Columbia, we find a large number of SBNRs or “spiritual but not religious” citizens. Those SBNRs may also adhere to disjunct religious propositions and beliefs.

They may partake of yoga and meditation. They may also harbor beliefs apart from practices. Some beliefs, on the other hand, can include the community activities. Sometimes, these amount to entertainment for the kids. A sense of amusement akin to Santa and the cookies and milk left out at Christmas, and the letter sent with wishes for a bigger Nerf gun this year.

What about when this becomes less about entertainment and more about true unjustified belief? That which, in this context, gets held as true but without evidence and so unjustified as a proposition. This relates to ongoing practices within British Columbia, Canada.

I use this as a case study in the places where beliefs in ghosts influence behaviors and actions. Actions becoming the attendance at events including the haunted house and ghost tours. If these forms of events, of which serious scientists do not entertain too often or consider out of bounds in terms of evidence, these do not amount to crazy beliefs.

In a sense, these amount to a-evidential or non-evidentiary beliefs about the world. Akin to the ones about hobgoblins, angels, demons, and zombies, we see them in movies. We see them in spoofs. We watch poorly trained individuals masquerading as scientists in bad television and movies in a desperate search for the apparently unfindable.

That seems okay. People have a right to freedom of belief. However, if this becomes a norm, we find examples of small provincial income emergent in these activities, of which we may not or even probably should not take part. Imagine an adult who believes in and acts on the belief in Santa Claus, as per the earlier example, what becomes of this individual?

They become a person of mockery and ridicule, but in quiet fashion, unfortunately. It becomes a social faux pas to be the last kid to believe in Santa Claus and the elves. We become the fake Santa sitting in the mall with the kid on the lap and Will Ferrell the oversized elf whispering angrily, “You sit on a throne of lies!”

Let’s take the cases of British Columbia, Canada with Vancouver, Victoria, Vernon, and Fort Langley.

Vancouver has the Ghostly Gastown Tour and the Granville Tour. These are part of the Ghostly Vancouver Tours. The main city also has The Lost Souls of Gastown and Prohibition City as part of the Forbidden Vancouver ‘experience.’

There is the Haunted Vancouver Trolley Tour too. In Victoria, we have the Discover the Past with the Ghostly Walks, and Ghost Bus-Tours, and the Haunted Victoria Ghost Bus Tour in Victoria, BC. In Vernon, there are the Ghost Tours of Vernon. In Fort Langley National Historic Site, there are the Grave Tales. It is not ubiquitous, but prevalent within the province, whether population centres or historic sites.

Important to bear in mind, a significant portion of the Canadian population adheres to these a-evidential or non-evidentiary beliefs, like the Devil and the efficacy of exorcisms for the apparent non-problem but then are asserted as such, as truths. They act on them. They pay money for them. Sometimes, people bring kids for a one-off fun, which is a gentle and fun event. Or a couple goes on a date, which makes sense for young people. It probably feels fun to feel like a kid again or have a dark place to flirt. I get it.

Harmless stuff for the most part. The question arises about values inculcated, in this rather minor and semi-trivial example exemplifying a larger problematic trend, in the young through parental and adult figures engaged in beliefs without evidence or asserted evidence based on a misunderstanding about the ways in which the mind habitually forms false beliefs about the world or the way in which the world works on the most superficial of levels.

Should we stop attending these and, maybe, pick a better hobby or time out with the kids or with a partner on a date?

May I recommend Science World or a concert?

The province may be better off in terms of cultural maturity and socio-cultural sophistication without these haunted tours and ghost tours in British Columbia, Canada. If so, why not vote with your feet and your pocketbooks – attend them less and so the less they show up?

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2022-04-22

On Article 1 of the Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/25

From the Convention Against Discrimination in Education in Paris, France December 14, 1960:

Recalling that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts the principle of non-discrimination and proclaims that every person has the right to education,

Considering that discrimination in education is a violation of rights enunciated in that Declaration,

Having before It proposals concerning the different aspects of discrimination in education, constituting item 17.1.4 of the agenda of the session,

Having decided at its tenth session that this question should be made the subject of an international convention as well as of recommendations to Member States,

Adopts this Convention on the fourteenth day of December 1960.

The equality of men and women remains important around the world. It continues to garner attacks from ancient philosophies known as theologies, which come with modern developments and criticism and counter-arguments to the criticisms.

The reports tend to indicate the onslaught and attacks on women’s rights not incoming from religion in general, but religion in its conservative, fundamentalist manifestations. These religious fundamentalist elements of societies merge with conservative components of the nations.

Around the world, these become a multinational and, at times interconnection, an international coalition to attack equality of women with men through attacks of reproductive rights, for example.

Others come in the form of the restriction or denial of the right to education. This makes international documents relevant to education important as well. As noted in Article 1 Section 1 of the Convention Against Discrimination in Education, the convention outlines discriminations’ boundaries.

As stated, “For the purposes of this Convention, the term `discrimination’ includes any distinction, exclusion, limitation or preference which, being based on race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, economic condition or birth, has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing equality of treatment in education and in particular.”

It seems to the point, concise, and all-encompassing. To the next portions of the first section of the first article, it, in (a), states, “Of depriving any person or group of persons of access to education of any type or at any level…”

Women and men deserve the right to equal access to education from Kindergarten through to graduate school. If men or women have restricted access, this becomes a violation of the convention.

More often, as seems known, men seem less motivated in advanced industrial nations for education. However, throughout the world, women have glass ceilings, secular sociocultural customs, and religious laws infused into the state government in order to prevent equal access to education.

It is important to focus on boys’ and young men’s lack of motivation. However, it seems more internationally salient to focus on the ways in which women remain restricted from access to education.

In section (b), it states, “Of limiting any person or group of persons to education of an inferior standard…” That is, everyone deserves equal access to, as in (a), and equal provisions in quality, as in (b), to education for boys and girls, and young men and young women.

One may assert for all age groups of either sex.

(c) and (d) state, “Subject to the provisions of Article 2 of this Convention, of establishing or maintaining separate educational systems or institutions for persons or groups of persons; or (d) Of inflicting on any person or group of persons conditions which are in-compatible with the dignity of man.”

No man or women, or child, deserves restrictions in access, limitations in quality, and separation in educational systems within a country and around the world. What does this mean for women given lesser education or means by which to access it?

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Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 2.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13.
The Istanbul Convention in Article 38 and Article 39.
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women(1993).
Beijing Declaration(1995).
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).

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2022-04-22

Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/24

One of the most endured and important documents of the 20^th and early 21^st century remains the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

It articulates the inherent dignity and equality of people, not in capacities, power, and so on, but, rather, in the rights of everyone. The basis for this creates “freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

In particular, some statements relate in the direct implication of theoretical considerations and practical manifestations of the equality of women with men and vice versa as a high ideal. Within the Preamble of the document, we find clear articulation.

It states, “Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom…”

In other words, the Member States of the United Nations affirmed the fundamental rights of men and women. This continues in the document into Article 16 Sections 1 through 3. In Article 16(1), it says, “Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.”

All women have the equal rights with men for marriage and the foundation of a family with equal rights, and considerations, prior to, during, and (sometimes, unfortunately,) the “dissolution” of a marriage.

Article 16(2) states, “Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.” Article 16(3) continues, “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”

The free and full consent of the spouses. This eliminates any ethical quandaries about forced marriage or people prior to the age of consent – children or adolescents. That is to say, adult women can marry and hold the right to consent or not to a marriage. Girls cannot or should not marry because of living prior to the age of consent.

A woman must be an adult and be within reasonable conditions for a free and fully consented to choice in a marriage. With respect to Article 16(3), the family, and not the individual, amounts to the fundamental group of a society with the individual as important but not a group.

Which implies, the individual as fundamental with the adult as the key component who can freely and fully consent to marriage and then the formation of a family – with or without children as implied dependent on the particular couple – as the fundamental group unit. Two basic units: the individual and the family.

Those two get protection from the society and the State.

Finally, and one with particular emphasis on biological women, Article 25(2) says, “Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.”

Whether born in or out of the fundamental group unit of a society, motherhood and childhood are to be entitled to the special care and assistance with children having social protection as well. Ongoing movements want women in the home or back in the home – who try through various overt and covert means, girls married prior to adulthood and without consent, women to be enforced into marriages, and these fundamental equalities to be violated, these rights documents list the protections from the social and political control of women and children.

These remain fundamental to the 21st century and essential to implement for a freer, more just, and equal world.

—

Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1 and Article 2.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13.
The Istanbul Convention in Article 38 and Article 39.
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women(1993).
Beijing Declaration(1995).
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).

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2022-04-22

On the Moral Education of Males: Men Should Attend to Women’s Rights as Human Rights

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/24

Women’s rights are partially overlapping but sufficiently distinct from human rights. The rights stated in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and in other documents.

Women’s rights encapsulate reproductive health rights as well. Some forms of reproductive health rights not for biological males. On occasion, the world undergoes reversals in the considerations of women as equal.

Men should care about women’s rights. Why? Men, as with women, are our fellow human beings, haven’t you noticed. The denial of rights for one sex implies the denial for the other, eventually. As with the use of war machines against enemy states, those methodologies of war come to the home turf in surveillance apparatuses and force against the home civilian population. Protection of rights implies self and collective interest.

According to UN News, there exist “alarming pushbacks” based on the description of the Working Group on Discrimination against Women in Law and in Practice. The working group stated the forces working against women’s rights include an “alliance of conservative political ideologies and religious fundamentalisms.”

This was noted in a report sent to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.

The working group stated, “Practices such as polygamy, child marriage, female genital mutilation, so-called honor killings, and criminalizing women for sexual and reproductive behavior, have no place in any society…there is no acceptable justification for waiting for the elimination of discrimination against women.”

The reasons come from the rise in authoritarianism, economic crises, and the increase in inequality in societies becoming unhealthily stratified. There are positive changes including the Irish referendum for the repealing of the almost total ban on safe and equitable access to abortion.

In those prior circumstances, women go underground to acquire abortions. Thousands die and thousands more are injured for life as a result of the illegality and unsafe provisions of abortions. If abortion is safe and equitable in terms of access, which is a fundamental human right as noted by Human Rights Watch, then abortion rates go down, fewer women and infants die, and women and families, and babies are happier and healthier.

Therefore, as per the empirical support for the pro-choice argument, the true pro-life – and pro-family for that matter – individuals who want to lower the numbers of abortions – on only that singular focus and narrow ethical conceptualization of an important issue to innumerable people around the world – would support the legalization of safe abortions with equitable access to them too.

The working group continued, “Through popular vote as well as legislative and judicial actions, efforts are being made, in particular, to secure reproductive rights, which is encouraging in a global context of retrogressions in this area.”

Other countries work to close the gender gap and to strengthen the criminalization of sexual violence, misconduct, and rape. These are wins, not to be ignored or diminished in the long fight for equality.

However, the march of social and political conservativism connected to religious fundamentalisms amount to the main methodologies or grounds for techniques of social control against host populations. These then clamp down on women’s progress through denial of women’s rights.

The UN report talks about the culture, family, reproductive health, and sexual health as the biggest battlegrounds, where the lines are continually being redrawn internationally in the struggle for equality.

“For 70 years, women’s equality has been enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; nearly 40 years ago the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was adopted,” UN News explained, “… 25 years ago, on Monday, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action established that women’s rights are an indivisible part of human rights.”

The discrimination against women has not been eliminated in any country in the world, according to the experts’ report. This leaves room for vast improvement in the quality of life conditions for women in the world.

The further stated, “This should not be tolerated or normalized. There is an urgent need to protect past gains, and move forward to secure equality for women everywhere.”

As stated by John Stuart Mill, not exactly a fool, – and Harriet Taylor Mill, who he claimed was smarter than himself – in The Subjection of Women, on “The moral education of men,” stated:

My first answer is: the advantage of having the most universal and pervading of all human relations regulated by justice instead of injustice. That bare statement will tell anyone who attaches a moral meaning to words what a vast gain this would be for the human condition; it’s hardly possible to make it any stronger by any explanation or illustration. All of mankind’s selfish propensities, the self-worship, the unjust self-preference, are rooted in and nourished by the present constitution of the relation between men and women.

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2022-04-22

A Plan to Quit Smoking

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/23

According to common sense and the Mayo Clinic, tobacco is a killer drug comprised of poisonous chemicals. The people who smoke set themselves on the line for a shorter life.

The article stated, “People who smoke or use other forms of tobacco are more likely to develop disease and die earlier than are people who don’t use tobacco.” Lovely.

How can we begin to work as a society to reduce our smoking levels and eventually quit? It takes time. People have legitimate worries about health. They feel concern about the consequences to long-term health.

These are valid issues and concerns for health. As far as I can tell, smoking wears down the lungs and then constricts the circulatory system.

As noted in the article, “If you smoke, you may worry about what it’s doing to your health. You probably worry, too, about how hard it might be to stop smoking. Nicotine is highly addictive, and to quit smoking — especially without help — can be difficult. In fact, most people don’t succeed the first time they try to quit. It may take more than one try, but you can stop smoking.”

Every journey of quitting an addiction begins with a first step. It is like the old Dick Gregory bit, “Confucious say…” But less vulgar, the point is the importance of working on one stage at a time.

Most alcoholics and addicts quit one step at a time. They get a community. They get supports in other words. Those can help them develop in their capacities. One of the first steps is setting a quit date. So, let’s make a pact together, even though I do not smoke: take a piece of paper or your Google Calendar and add one day, one week, and one month, and one year if needed, then let’s call that the quit date.

There are resources to help you, too. The Mayo Clinic continued to talk about the residential treatment centers, the tobacco treatment specialists, and friends and family who want you to look and feel better.

It takes will and time, and a plan. Maybe, this can be a special first step. Plus… you promised!

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2022-04-22

Fish Oil as a Targeted, Partial Heart Health Support

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/23

Many people throughout developed nations, especially North America, intake supplements. Supplements, drugs, and prescription medications get used a lot. Questions arise about the efficacy of supplements.

Do these help?

Can they be harmful?

What degrees of help? In what areas?

These important questions arise in the free choices of North Americans and others about the effectiveness of supplements. One prominent case emerges with fish oil or omega-3 fatty acid supplements. Our bodies need omega-3 fatty acid for muscle activity, cell growth, and other things. Without this crucial portion of a diet, we do less well.

The Mayo Clinic states, “Omega-3 fatty acids are derived from food. They can’t be manufactured in the body. Fish oil contains two omega-3s called docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Dietary sources of DHA and EPA are fatty fish, such as salmon, mackerel and trout, and shellfish, such as mussels, oysters and crabs. Some nuts, seeds and vegetable oils contain another omega-3 called alpha-linolenic acid (ALA).”

The standard forms for the omega-3 supplements are capsule, liquid, and pill. For those with a risk of heart attacks and strokes, high triglycerides and blood pressure, they may want to take these based on some evidence to help reduce the risks to health.

Mayo Clinic explained, “Heart disease. Research shows that eating dietary sources of fish oil — such as tuna or salmon — twice a week is associated with a reduced risk of developing heart disease. Taking fish oil supplements for at least six months has been shown to reduce the risk of heart-related events (such as heart attack) and death in people who are at high risk of heart disease. Research also suggests that the risk of congestive heart failure is lower in older adults who have higher levels of EPA fatty acids.”

The article continued to talk about many studies speaking to the “modest reductions in blood pressure” for the individuals who take the fish oil supplement. Some greater effects for those suffering from moderate to severe hypertension compared to those with only mild hypertension.

“High triglycerides and cholesterol. There’s strong evidence that omega-3 fatty acids can significantly reduce blood triglyceride levels. There also appears to be a slight improvement in high-density lipoprotein (HDL, or “good”) cholesterol, although an increase in levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or “bad”) cholesterol also was observed,” the report explained.

It comes with some similar benefits for rheumatoid arthritis. The fish oil supplements help to reduce pain, relieve the stiff of the morning and may reduce the need for some anti-inflammatory medications. The Mayo Clinic gives the green light to the fish oil supplementation market, apparently, with the benefit for those oils coming better from broiled or baked fish and not fried fish, but the supplementation is good as well.

The article concluded, “Fish oil supplements might be helpful if you have cardiovascular disease or an autoimmune disorder. Fish oil also appears to contain almost no mercury, which can be a cause for concern in certain types of fish. While generally safe, too much fish oil can increase your risk of bleeding and might suppress your immune response. Take fish oil supplements under a doctor’s supervision.”

For more information on safety and side effects, please see the article link for further information.

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2022-04-22

The Iranian Kurd Human Rights Case of Ramin Hossein Panahi

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/22

United Nations (UN) human rights experts have been working to save the life of Ramin Hossein Panahi from execution.

They continue to call for the annulment of the death sentence for the Iranian Kurd. He is only 24-years-old. The news reports have been speaking to Panahi being killed after the end of the month of Ramadan.

The original execution date was set for May 3. However, the date was postponed. The Iranian Supreme Court rejected the calls for a judicial review in late May. Following this decision, the Iranian Supreme Court referred to the decision made by them to the office responsible for the completion of the penalty.

“The Iranian authorities must now halt the execution of Mr. Panahi and annul the death sentence against him,” the UN human rights experts stated. The Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, Agnes Callamard, talked about the issues for Panahi.

One of the main ones being the mistreatment connected to no fair trial. I was stated that he was tortured.

“While acknowledging the postponement of the sentence in May, we regret that Iran seems intent on executing Mr. Panahi, disregarding previous calls to annul the death sentence, and ensure he is given a fair trial,” Callamard explained.

Protests took place in Erbil, Kurdistan region. The protestors spoke out against the torture and mistreatment of Panahi. The statement talked about the gathering together to call on the United Nations to put strong pressure to halt the verdict against Ramin Hossein Panahi.

The charge that will result in his death if not stopped. They view the execution as an unjust verdict.

It should be added. Panahi was denied access to a lawyer and medical care. He was held incommunicado. He was mistreated and tortured and not given a fair trial. The UN human rights experts share the same sentiments as the protestors.

They showed concern over the charge of Panahi. The ways in which they did not meet the international standards. That the death penalty should be limited to the cases of intentional killing. However, Panahi was arrested. Why?

He joined a Kurdish nationalist group called Komala. Then he was convicted of “taking up arms against the State.” The Revolutionary Court then sentenced him to death in January 2018.

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2022-04-22

The Physical, Mental, and Social Health of Men

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/22

Men’s health is something of a personal responsibility to each and every man. It encompasses physical, mental, and social health, where mental includes emotional (no brain, no emotions).

At the same time, it is a place where we can help them.

It deals with their exercise routine for each day. It deals with their stress management strategies. It deals with their social life. More young men continue to fall in each of those categories of health with increases in obesity, depression and suicide, and lack of friends and social connectivity.

It is about self-management, self-care, and public presentation. How do I look to the outside world of my peers? It is also about the best men’s by which to remain healthy in spite of difficult circumstances.

If a man remains unkempt, unwashed, uncouth, and unwarranted, that amounts to his own problems, but with spillover issues to others around him. Without dietary and exercise discipline, a man can grow around the waist and lose muscular definition.

Lacking proper mental self-care, men can wander into the yonder woods of mental life with isolation and subsequent depression and anxiety issues. With poor efforts in building on the ties and relationships with others, professionally and personally, men can lose friends, even family.

Nothing in life is free. Same for family member ties and friendships. The ties can fray and the ships can sink.

Think about social life: sometimes, it is not pleasant to be around a rude person. Other times, the person is not rude but acting in an inappropriate way for a particular venue, though some overlap with rudeness there. This amounts to a certain social health.

So, this becomes a question for the men. Do you want to be any of these types of guys? The one with weight and so health issues. No one should be shamed for their weight. However, we should not deny the effects of higher BMI on health.

Same with the diet. Diet is important. Imagine all the empty calories consumed in this culture leading to lower life spans and shorter health spans.

That is today, even if a man lives longer than the average, he will live even unpleasantly for those short number of years.

Also, men live shorter than women as men’s poor health habits lead to shorter lifespans than women’s, too.

Mental health is being talked about more and more. It is helping provide a sense of being part of a larger community of caring individuals. Men need more of that.

Males with masculine identities work best in male company and with male therapists for men’s mental health problems.

But men need to get out into the world of these three areas, as at the end of the day these are their personal responsibilities.

If part of a faith community or if part of a secular church, then these amount to their own responsibilities.

On top of that personal responsibility, which many masculine males prefer and even need (need to feel needed), communities and families can work proactively with men and boys to work on these issues in their lives.

Most people notice issues with men. Once past the socially dysfunctional, personally abusive, and socially degenerative epithets thrown against men’s characters, the veneer of mockery gives way to non-functional young men.

We need them. They need to know it. They have begun, sadly and unfortunately, to opt out in various domains after the slow deterioration in their motivation for integration into the society at large.

If we work to help them get some bearings on social life, in mental life, and in physical life areas, we can begin to reverse an unhealthy trend.

A trend, typically, indicative of an increase in crime associated most often with males, failure in school, unemployment, the burden on the social safety nets, and damage to families and with all the aforementioned damage to communities.

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2022-04-22

Sedentary Early Grave Guarantee

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/20

According to the Mayo Clinic, the negative health conflicts in sitting can be profound.

A sedentary life is a guarantee of a premature death. If you are sitting most of the day, then your total energy burning will be less than it could be overall. In fact, you could develop a series of comorbid conditions including higher blood pressure, obesity risk, blood sugar, body fat on the wait, and highly abnormal cholesterol levels for the makeup of metabolic syndrome.

It can be a serious issue.

“Too much sitting overall and prolonged periods of sitting also seem to increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer,” the Mayo Clinic stated, “Any extended sitting — such as at a desk, behind a wheel or in front of a screen — can be harmful. An analysis of 13 studies of sitting time and activity levels found that those who sat for more than eight hours a day with no physical activity had a risk of dying similar to the risks of dying posed by obesity and smoking.

So watch yourself, you never know when too much sedentary behaviour can increase the risk for a lower quality of life and healthspan.

With a study of over 1 million people, which is an enormous sample size, 60 to 75 minutes of moderate physical activity can counter the effects of sitting down too long in the say. For those most active, sitting did little for mortality difference for the most active people.

That means get active! Motion and aerobic exercise to have the body work properly is important for overall health. You can get up and watch around during work. You can have a weight set by work. You can take a walk into town for lunch. Lots of little things add up.

However, unlike some other studies, this analysis of data from more than 1 million people found that 60 to 75 minutes of moderately intense physical activity a day countered the effects of too much sitting. Another study found that sitting time contributed little to mortality for people who were most active.

The article concluded, “The impact of movement — even leisurely movement — can be profound. For starters, you’ll burn more calories. This might lead to weight loss and increased energy. Also, physical activity helps maintain muscle tone, your ability to move and your mental well-being, especially as you age.”

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2022-04-22

Getting Into Stretching

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/19

Jamie L. Friend wrote a good article in the Mayo Clinic on yoga. The ways in which to become involved in it. The benefits from it. The use of it. Friend relayed the experiences of students who come to yoga. They reflexively state their inability to turn into a pretzel.

They have a point. First of all, Friend would need a big oven. Second, that would take a lot of salt. The students feel as if they cannot stretch that much. Maybe, they are right. At the same time, maybe, they are wrong.

Much of yoga focuses on the breath. It improves the mindset of the individual and overall wellbeing. If one starts at any age, they can, in proportion to age and health expectations, probably improve their flexibility with the introduction of even light yoga practice.

Friend stated, “Thinking that you need to be flexible is a common misconception about yoga. The truth is, yoga is an ancient practice that encompasses many different elements beyond the poses you may be familiar with.”

The article goes on to the focus about yoga on the breathing, where the breathing is as important as of the functioning of the body and the relaxing of the mind.

“The foundation of yoga is deep, steady breathing. The reason: Your breath connects your mind and body. Here’s an example of how it works: Let’s say you’re sitting in a work meeting, and it’s not going well. Maybe deadlines aren’t being met or you don’t have enough resources,” Friend explained.

It reads as if the proper breathing techniques amount to dials for the relaxation of the mind and well-being of the body. The slow inhale, pause, exhale, inhale from the diaphragm, pause longer, exhale from the chest, and repeat, but deeper, and deeper, and longer.

The heart slows, the neck unwinds, the shoulders lower, and the jaw relaxes as the body becomes used to the activity of the breathing. The body works as a whole, so the activity in one system can impact another operation in the body.

“When you see photos and videos of yoga, you’re probably seeing the most complicated poses performed by experienced yoga teachers. But the beauty of yoga is in the basics,” Friend said, “Establish a strong base of movements that you can do with steadiness and ease. Some basic poses to start with include child’s pose, cat and cow pose, mountain pose, warrior two pose, bridge pose and tree pose.”

Those basic poses, apparently, add to a functional routine for yogic practices, which seems especially relevant for the novices. Even with the breathing techniques, you find relaxation and stress reduction on demand.

The important of a teacher was noted as well because working “with a teacher can be a great support when you’re new to yoga, no matter what your fitness level. A teacher can also be a great resource to help explore other aspects of yoga beyond the poses.”

In terms of finding a classroom for you, Friend recommended looking into the classes available. I would add to it. You may want to look into the details of the exercise if you feel more conscientious.

However, if you want to take a partner and jump into the class, then you can print a list, pin the paper to the wall, and throw a dart from across the room. These can help out. When you feel comfortable in one relationship with a teacher, then you may want to think about maintaining a positive relationship with them.

Also, if you do not find a class worth your time at the moment, then you can skim through the menus online and take sample classes or introductory versions of the types of yoga classes out there.

Some classes may drain you. Others may empower you. You feel regenerated and energized after them. It depends on you. Your feelings and your understanding of your body. If you hurt, you can discontinue it.

Try something else.

If all else fails, you can throw on a track suit and head to the fields and do some good old sit on your butt, spread the legs, and reach fingertips to toe tip. At any rate, that would be a start.

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2022-04-22

Happy and Healthy in Nature

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/20

The Mayo Clinic wrote a short article and produced a video emphasizing the benefits to health from living in the midst of nature. One study cited in the article indicates living by a “green space” can improve health span and life span. For example, for women, it can improve their mental health too.

Not associated with the research but Dr. Vandana Bhide, a Mayo Clinic internal medicine specialist, in terms of the research explained, “This was a large survey of nurses who were asked about where they live and how much green space nearby… Results suggest people who live in the greenest areas actually had a lower death rate.”

The argument by the research publication’s authors is that the men would have a similar reaction to the women. Jeff Olsen talks more in the video in the article here.

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2022-04-22

For Men: The Benefits of Regular and Proper Bench Pressing

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/19

Healthy Living wrote on the health benefits of bench pressing. Think about the big guys and gals lifting the bar with so much weight that the metal bends from the sheer pull from gravity on the weights. It is impressive feats.

Humans evolved to have muscles for movement, defense and attack. Our ancestral environments permitted and necessitated more exercise in the outdoors. However, our lives were short and violent on average.

Now, less so, the modern world comes with the development of conveniences. The car, the train, the plane, fast food, video games, and the like, each helps and entertains us. In the process of helping and entertaining, these made us travel with our muscle less and sit and lie down more.

These modern comforts are good. However, they limit the range of the possible for us. These conveniences can make us less healthy over time. That means, we need to take it upon ourselves to become healthier through conscious activity, by conscientiously engaging in an activity.

The article stated, “While the exercise chiefly works to build upper-body strength, some of the benefits of bench pressing – which range from improved cardiovascular health to a reduced chance of developing common diseases – may come as a welcome surprise.”

The bench press is one such exercise with benefits to upper body strength and overall health. The main muscle exercised in this form of workout is the pectoralis major muscles of the chest. If this is done with some regularity, then the pectoralis major muscle set will grow.

They will become thicker, more toned, and robust in the definition. Bench presses can help with the deltoids and the triceps as well. They act as, apparently, synergists of the muscles that help some of the other muscles to be able to develop.

“Additionally, this exercise also works the biceps, which serve as dynamic stabilizers by countering the force of the press. Finally, the bench press engages the rhomboids, rotator cuff and serratus anterior as secondary muscles,” the article continued.

There appears to be benefit to the bone and joint health from these weight training exercises too. The weight training helps with the increase in muscle mass, a decrease in fat, the strengthening of the bones and the flexibility of the body to a degree.

It also helps with the bone density. It is important, especially for the people who are getting on in years then, too. Regular training can reduce osteoarthritis.

“The positive effects of bench presses don’t end with the muscles and bones. In addition to increasing overall endurance, resistance training exercises such as the bench press lead to a reduction of “bad” cholesterol and an increase in “good” cholesterol levels,” the article explained, “according to the American Council on Exercise. Regular weight training helps the body process sugar, leading to a reduced risk of diabetes.”

This path of exercise should come with some cautions including overdoing it. Take into account age, current fitness, diet, time of the day, pre-existing conditions, and so on, bench pressing can help with health, but needs to be considered among other factors too.

The article concluded, “Practicing proper form – including keeping your feet firmly planted, maintaining a straight back and keeping your shoulders and glutes flat on the bench at all times – helps prevent these injuries. Seek the guidance of a certified trainer to learn proper form before incorporating the bench press into your regimen.”

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2022-04-22

The World of Mr. Aron Ra, Ex-Mormon and Famous Atheist

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/18

Mr. Aron Ra was born in Kingman, Arizona. He was baptised as a Mormon. He is the ex-President of Atheist Alliance of America. He is a public speaker, secular activist, and an advocate for reason in education. He hosts the Ra-Men podcast with Dan Arel and Mark Nebo of BeSecular. Here we talk about religion.

Ra began to challenge the religious people in his life. He has done so throughout his life. But as he began to experience the droll of the common and poor responses to religious faith, he wanted to challenge what he viewed as dangerous and bad ideas.

“So I started making a challenge to people: ‘Can you show me anything in your religious belief that you can show to be more accurate than any other religious belief?’ I would stress for people not just to show me where other religions are wrong, but to show me where theirs is right! So I have to define my terms very rigidly all the time.”

Ra was left to investigate the definition of Truth. To him, he found people, in conversation, they were less deep than they thought about the definition of truth. He sees truth as that which corresponds to reality. Facts amount to data points, which can be verified.

“A lot of people hate these definitions because it completely undermines their theology. They can’t make the assertions that they want to by saying anything is the absolute truth, because under the definition of either word no you don’t!” Ra exclaimed.

He views people more often pretending to believe something. He does not work to pretend to know something. However, if someone makes large-scale claims based on a theistic metaphysical view, in which a Theity – an intervening God – exists, then Ra challenges it.

The questions arise about the individuals holding the views less and more about the ideas and the premises in larger arguments. That seems to make the emphasis on ideas and arguments more than individual people.

“That’s the problem. People want to say what they know only what they believe. They pretend. There’s not a part of it that is honest. My biggest sticking point is that the only value that any information can have is however accurate you can show it to be, and if you can’t show that it is accurate at all then that information has no value at all. So it is just an empty assertion.”

He requires, in a discussion or debate format, the substantiation of claims made by religious believers. He will not accept any less than that.

Ra explained, “I can show you the truth of evolution. I can show you the facts of evolution. I can show you the positively indicative and physical evidence that is exclusively concordant with one conclusion over any other. I can do that all day, but religion can’t. No religion can because they’re all just made up. They don’t have any truth at all in them, none of them.”

He considers the best evidence given by religion is the anecdotal responses and then the citation of logical fallacies. He gave an example in the case of Kent Hovind’s son, Eric Hovind, who made the statement, to the effect, that if the Bible contains it then it is true.

“He said that we don’t need science to back us up. Wow!” Ra exclaimed, “That’s a hell of an admission. I do need science to back me up. They have to do this reversal of the burden of proof. If I don’t believe that claim that you’re making, that positive claims require positive evidence and the burden of proof is always on the person making the positive claim.”

He continues with the burden of proof line of thought. That the emphasis is on the person make the claim, according to Ra, to prove it or support it. Because the argument for the position comes from an assertion. If no assertion, then no burden of proof.

However, the believer asserts several premises for Ra to believe, which he does not agree with at all – or mostly.

He stated, “If you use religion for your reason for any action or a position, then you still haven’t given a reason because religion isn’t one. It is as far against and away from reason as one can possibly be. When people use religion as their only reason for whatever laws they want to impose of people or on other things, these are always mostly unjust.”

He cited the restrictions of everyone else’s freedom based on the brand or sect of one particular religion. The encroachment of religion into the public arena. At that point, it becomes an issue for the public of other religions, other religious sects and traditions, and the non-religious.

As an outspoken atheist, Ra will have issues with this because this limits his freedom, when religion becomes imposed in the public to restrict the lives and rights of the atheists in the United States.

If bad ideas or arguments go unchallenged, and without the public engagement work of individuals including Mr. Ra, then other religious faith believers and the non-religious can have their freedoms, rights, and liberties curtailed in the United States. That’s why these conversations matter for every concerned party.

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2022-04-22

Religion According to a Leading American Atheist

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/18

When Ra and I talked back in May of 2017 for Conatus News, Ra emphasized the situation in arguments with him. His life is marked by continual, non-stop debating with theists as an atheist. He is not the norm, but atheists do tend to debate.

For Ra, the nature of the debate format takes on a more informal flavor with him. Because of the nature of his ways in which to talk, discuss, and converse with believers of various formal and non-formal religions.

He, in the context of the personal predicament, explained, “When you’re talking to someone who, like me, knows both sides of the argument, when you start talking to someone like this about why they don’t believe, you have to make a choice whether to remain honest or whether to remain creationist, because it is no longer possible to be both.”

This means the renunciation of the creationist claims as fallacious or the creation of falsehoods to defend the faith. It amounts to a choice. Some will choose one path. Others will choose another by implication of Ra’s logic.

“There was a movie that came out a couple of years back I happen to have been in, which was in called ‘My Week in Atheism.’ It was made by a Christian named John Christy who was only pretending to be an atheist for a week,” Ra stated.

The person in the film travels to an atheist conference. He makes an analogy to what happens at the conference trip for the movie as to what happens in the churches. Described how people seem to see an even presentation with everyone on equal sides.

But there is the person at the end, who is purportedly not a plant. That person then proclaims how their mind has not been changed at all. Even going so far as to say, that their faith is even stronger now after the interaction with the atheist.

Ra takes this as a completely false front. He exclaimed, “This is pretend! That was the game in the first place! That it doesn’t matter what anybody says. You’re going to continue to believe. This is what I bring up in my book. If you look up any of the leading creationist organisations – creation.com, Creation Moments, Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research.”

These organizations have a statement of faith. The basic purpose of the statement of faith, according to Ra, is the prevention of critical thinking about the articles of faith. In short, it provides the basis for not having to question fundamental beliefs. One’s at odds with the vast majority of the practicing biologists, for example.

Ra related, “One of them put it that ‘wherever science and the Bible conflict, the science is wrong. The Bible is right.’ Another one says, ‘Whether it is archaeology, history, or any fact at all. If it refutes the Bible, it can’t. The Bible is always right.’”

Based on the personal narrative of Ra, this becomes the life experience for him. He related the debate viewed millions of times. The one between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. Bill Nye known as a science educator. Ken Ham known as a creationist educator.

“The leading apologetic debater makes the same argument. That whenever there is an obvious conflict between theology and science that science is wrong,” Ra stated, “It is like Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis said when they asked him and Bill Nye, ‘What would it take to change your mind?’ Bill Nye said, ‘Evidence.’ Ken Ham said, ‘Nothing.’ He’s going to believe what he wants to believe no matter what.”

The basis of the disagreement between fundamentalist beliefs and Ra’s atheism split there, deviate at that point. On the one, the respect of empirical information to inform, piece by piece, the framework for comprehension of the world.

On the other, the use of revelation and inspired writing in the purported word of God in the Bible as the foundation for knowledge of the world and then the empirical information will become conformed to the pre-existing, extant pattern of the text.

Hence, evidence changes one mind; revelation informs and conforms another.

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2022-04-21

Fatherless Sons – The Facts, The Figures

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/17

Dr. Edward Kruk wrote a decent article in Psychology Today on fatherlessness. In particular, I want to take some of the discussion in the article with some quotes and paraphrases for commentary on Father’s Day about the impacts of fatherlessness on sons.

Most reasonable people perceive a problem with the lives of modern boys and young men. Sometimes, they frame this from the compassionate view about boys and young men. Other times, and more often, they frame this in an ideological perspective directed towards the wellbeing of women.

How will the decline of boys and young men impact the lives of young women who want families and husbands? Answer: they may not want to have children based on the failures of men around them. Women also may choose to become single mothers. However, neither case, even combined, creates an enduring, lasting, and robust culture, historically speaking.

I want to frame this within the other perspective, though the declines do affect most women’s wellbeing and remain a concern and a valid perspective. However, how will fatherlessness impact boys and young men who become men?

Kruk said, “According to the 2007 UNICEF report on the well-being of children in economically advanced nations, children in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. rank extremely low in regard to social and emotional well-being in particular.”

He directed attention to several theories about it. The problems for the boys. The main issue of fatherlessness. The theorizations of the experts, who spend professional lives in care study. They sit. They wait for data. They do experiments. They compare data. They hypothesize other theories.

They examine other cultures. This is done for decades. Some theories point to child poverty, race, and social class as the variables for the problems in, for instance, boys. Father absence damages kids.

“First, a caveat: I do not wish to either disparage single mothers or blame non-residential fathers for this state of affairs. The sad fact is that parents in our society are not supported in the fulfillment of their parental responsibilities,” Kruk cautions, “and divorced parents in particular are often undermined as parents, as reflected in the large number of ‘non-custodial’ or ‘non-residential’ parents forcefully removed from their children’s lives, as daily caregivers, by misguided family court judgments.”

The importance of proper policy and laws to change the landscape of North American culture and several advanced industrial technologically advanced societies becomes more than noteworthy.

This can become a crucial linkage from the theories and evidence to the practical improvement of our lot. Children need mothers, as is known. They need fathers too, as is less acknowledged as an important factor.

Kruk stated, “More often than not, fathers are involuntarily relegated by family courts to the role of ‘accessory parents,’ valued for their role as financial providers rather than as active caregivers.”

He notes this with the fact of fathers sharing caregiving responsibilities with the mother prior to divorce in two-parent, intact families. Kruk continued, “This is both because fathers have taken up the slack while mothers work longer hours outside the home, and because fathers are no longer content to play a secondary role as parents.”

Modern dads continue to love the idea of being active, involved dads. Dads of prior eras may have wanted to become more involved with their children, but could not. They, in a sense, felt forced or compelled to work. They failed to be fathers by culture.

Women failed to be professionals by culture. Think about the lost time, love, care, and the vast regrets of those old, and now those dead and gone, fathers who wished to be fathers before they grew old, but could not. All of them gone – time and them. Distant memories and generations colored by regret.

“Most fathers today are keen to experience both the joys and challenges of parenthood, derive satisfaction from their parental role, and consider active and involved fatherhood to be the core component of their self-identity,” Kruk opined.

However, the institutional structures and supports of the culture do not permit the ability of parents to be fully engaged parents, argues Kruk. Children who lack fathers undergo a severe cascade of life tragedies and character failures.

He explained, “…children’s diminished self-concept, and compromised physical and emotional security (children consistently report feeling abandoned when their fathers are not involved in their lives, struggling with their emotions and episodic bouts of self-loathing).”

The children will have behavioral problems. We see this especially in the prison populations with the men who were troubled, fatherless boys and young men. The men who work to show off machismo as a mask for their real selves.

“…truancy and poor academic performance (71 per cent of high school dropouts are fatherless; fatherless children have more trouble academically, scoring poorly on tests of reading, mathematics, and thinking skills; children from father-absent homes are more likely to play truant from school, more likely to be excluded from school, more likely to leave school at age 16, and less likely to attain academic and professional qualifications in adulthood),” Kruk elaborated in depth.

The impacts of fatherlessness extend into the realm of delinquency and youth crime as well. With the 8% number of youth in prison having an absent father, the adults come from the same house arrangement. Fatherlessness becomes a predictor of being a prisoner.

This impacts the promiscuity and pregnancy rates too. “…fatherless children are more likely to experience problems with sexual health, including a greater likelihood of having intercourse before the age of 16, foregoing contraception during first intercourse, becoming teenage parents, and contracting sexually transmitted infection,” Kruk notes.

The shows in girls with an “object hunger” for males. They experience emotional loss of fathers, especially those who egocentrically reject them. Women become exploitable by the adult men in their lives. One may surmise the men become the exploiters with similar backgrounds, possibly.

The fatherless do drugs, drink, and smoke throughout life more than those with fathers. 90% of runaway children have an absent father. The majority of the homelessness are men. The exploitation and abuse probability rise as well.

Kruk explained, “…fatherless children are at greater risk of suffering physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, being five times more likely to have experienced physical abuse and emotional maltreatment, with a one hundred times higher risk of fatal abuse.”

Psychosomatic illnesses emerge more from the fatherless children too, e.g., asthma, chronic pain, headaches, and stomach aches. This comes to the mental health disorders too. Anxiety, depression, suicide, and mental health problems emerge from the fatherless sons.

If alcoholism amounts to a family disease, and if depression equates to an individual psychological disease, and if criminality is a moral and behavioral failing or disease in a way, and so on, then this would seem to imply fatherlessness as a total life disease along statistical and probabilistic lines based on the aforementioned risks.

“…life chances (as adults, fatherless children are more likely to experience unemployment, have low incomes, remain on social assistance, and experience homelessness),” Kruk explained, “… future relationships (father absent children tend to enter partnerships earlier, are more likely to divorce or dissolve their cohabiting unions, and are more likely to have children outside marriage or outside any partnership).”

It creates a cycle of lower lifespans too. Child die sooner. The fatherless live four years shorter over the lifespan. These problems of individuals, families, and societies correlate fatherlessness more than any other factor.

“…surpassing race, social class and poverty, father absence may well be the most critical social issue of our time. In Fatherless America, David Blankenhorn calls the crisis of fatherless children “the most destructive trend of our generation,” Kruk described.

Some identify this as a public health issue. That is, a society-wide problem of serious consideration now. The problem seems more pertinent for focus on during Father’s Day.

Leonard Sax, Philip Zimbardo, Nikita D. Coulombe, Christina Hoff Sommers, Hanna Rosin, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Andrea Dworkin, and many unlisted others commented, in the past and present, on different facets – from sometimes vastly different angles – directly or indirectly associated with these problems of boys and young men and the men who they become in their futures.

“Many fathers’ advocates have stressed the need for fast, low-cost, effective ways for non-residential parents to have their court-ordered parenting time enforced,” Kruk said in a concluding statement, “While access enforcement is important, legislating for shared parenting would be a more effective measure to ensure the ongoing active involvement of both parents in children’s lives.”

This becomes the presumption of shared parenting as important with the primary parenting done by not one or the other parent, but both. Parents need respect and consideration. In particular, they need this in order for the best interests of the child, even if the parents separate. They can amicably deal with the shared responsibilities as the next generation, and their legacy, develops at any rate. We owe that to them: fathers, mothers, and sons and daughters.

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2022-04-21

Aron Ra on the Early Life of a Male Atheist

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/17

Ra and I talked about early life for him. He was born in Kingman, Arizona. He was baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or the Mormons. Although, to remain polite, the term “Mormon” within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints gets taken as an epithet or invective, not a term of endearment.

As a short social lesson, I would suggest, though may be wrong, not using the term “Mormon” in conversation or in the description based on the tone and perceived derision in the term “Mormon” to some or many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. However, I will use the term here, simply for ease and not for offense.

When we began the discussion, and as Ra remains one of the most prominent popularizers and speakers on mainline atheism and New Atheism in particular, which amounts to an outspoken form found in at least two subgroupings with Dr. Richard Dawkins in Militant Atheism and with David Silverman in Firebrand Atheism.

He stated, “Well, my family background largely identified as Mormon. Although, most don’t know what that means. We have some people in the family that do the whole magic underwear thing. Some even to the point of not drinking coffee or eating cinnamon, but those are very, very rare. Most Mormons are disciplined for the most part. And most of my family are (way) not.”

I laughed “way” part. He continued to speak on the family identification with Mormon. A lot of individuals within the family still identify as Mormon. The family members identify as Christian. Other denominations of Christianity do not view the Mormons as Christian.

Many do not view the Catholics as Christian, or the Eastern Orthodox as Christian. It comes from the same trend, of which Ra described to me.

“This was an advantage for me growing up. I got to see the interdenominational bigotry within Christianity,” Ra continued, “When we lived in places like New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado that were Mormon dominant, they were places that the Mormons controlled everything. And if you were not a Mormon, you were not employed, at least not if you were white. There were places that were like that. Utah is rife with them. When we moved to other places, and I moved a lot as a kid, I moved an awful lot – up to 8 times a year.”

He would switch between parents moving from one house to another. There were different places. He moved to the Los Angeles area at one point. He found the Mormons did not control the area. Someone asked the question about faith to him.

He noted two issues there. One with individuals caring about his faith. Another with the ensuing or upcoming argument based on it. Because the assumptions in the statement about the title of a faith matter to people, especially in America – as the nation ranks off the spectrum in adherence and degree of religiosity compared to other advanced industrial nations.

Ra, based on the conversation from the question of personal faith, opined, “Mormons do believe ridiculous things… Every religion does, to be completely honest. But the Mormons have their own collection of ridiculous things that are exclusively Mormon that are not the same ridiculous things that other Christian denominations believe, but the accusations these people were making were ridiculous things that my family, so far as I could tell, did not believe – none of them. So my mum was always the most devout of all of the Mormons in my family that I could talk to.”

When he would invite them into the home to explain to his mother the things believed by them, they would always reject the invitation for some reason.

Ra said, “They would always refuse the invitation. The refusal of the invitation seemed telling. It shows that they know what they are telling me is not true. They knew how quickly it is that I could refute all of that. I have been involved in the religion versus anti-religion argument unknowingly my entire life.”

Furthermore, he remembered a series of conflicts with people because of religion at the ages of 5 and 8. Ra did not realize it. That is, this became a consistent theme throughout the entire life for him. He would ask about how Jesus Christ made water into wine and other things.

“But as it turned out, when I grew up I looked it up. It is only the difference of a carbon atom. The molecules are much more complex. But they involve oxygen, hydrogen, and some additional carbons. That’s it. But all I knew at the time, water is H2O, and alcohol and fruit juice are something else,” Ra explained, “How does Jesus turn water from H2O into H2O and whatever else? I thought someone would give me some kind of intelligible answer. Like how Jesus does that, whether he uses telekinesis or whatever he does.”

Ra found a consistent phenomenon. The individuals in conversations did not seem to want concrete, naturalistic explanations.

The common notion within the community emerged in the form of the stereotyping of skeptics. That is, they get seen as cynics. That can create problems. It can become a conversation stopper. Something to restrict full conversations in a healthy way, for the inter-belief conversations.

If someone prays, in other words, and if another person looking on doubts its efficacy, the doubter gets seen as a cynic rather than a skeptic. It amounts to an assertion about the other person problem. This happens to the non-religious community, often.

“They should’ve paraphrased this: People that make up stuff and call it truth have the power to imagine all kinds of nonsense. But that’s what it is all about. It really is make believe, and it took me the longest time to figure that out. I thought, honestly, naively, even into middle age. I was in my 30s before I realised there were some people who do not believe what they do for a reason,” Ra lamented.

He continued to state, “If you ask anybody, ‘Why do you believe X?’ They are going to give you a reason why they think X is true. I thought this was true for everyone. I thought that you couldn’t believe something for no reason because that’s stupid. You wouldn’t believe something against all reason. I have had people tell me exactly that. I get into more and more arguments moving into my 30s. I would identify as an activist since then, since around Y2K. I got into these arguments heavily on the internet, on Usenet.”

He was at a period of life with the unlimited use of the internet time. He has a 12 hour per day job. It permitted the use of the internet to learn and become obsessive about the topic of religion, atheism, and belief superstructures and metanarratives. The ways in which people’s total beliefs structure themselves and religious narratives orient people’s entire lives.

Ra stated, “And I get into these discussions, in-depth discussions with professional scientists and professional theologians on both sides. They are both giving me references to look into. So I did for a number of years. It was almost obsessive the amount of time that I dedicated to this subject, this argument. When I came across people and asked them, ‘Why do you believe this?’ I had never really bothered to ask them this. The answers people give are, ‘I believe this because I want to. I believe this because it makes me happy.’”

He sees the answer to the searches there. People believe what they do not think as true, tacitly. They state this as a truth. They act in certain ways. However, they feel an uncomfortableness about the entire endeavor of faith practices. That seems like a common realization in the earlier life of Ra.

Then when he points this out, he gets criticized.

Ra said, “They’d say, ‘Why can’t I believe what I want to believe?’ Why would you say that about something that I just proved is not true? Why would you want to believe something after finding out it is not even possibly or even probably true, in either case? It is not possibly true. It is not probably true. It is not indicated by anything. It is disputed by everything. There is no possibility here. This did not happen. There are no two ways about it. What the hell are you going on about? ‘But I want to believe that.’ Why [Laughing]?!”

Ra joked, “[Laughing] I want to believe I’m a multimillionaire. I do. I want to believe that I have time travel capabilities. Great! But that doesn’t make anything real. And it is insane to imagine that. It took me forever to realise that. I actually said this myself ahead of Peter Boghossian. He famously did a video on ‘faith is pretending to know what you don’t know.’ As if people know they don’t know it, and they’re pretending on purpose. But yes, I said something similar on video prior to that.”

The quote or statement was as follows:

But faith is often a matter of pretending to know what you know you really don’t know, and that no one even can know, and which you merely believe – often for no good reason at all.

Ra talked about how he did not make as much money from the particular statement. However, he does consider faith to be nothing more than make-believe in a literal way. He considers the belief in God and miracles magic.

That is, if someone believes in a higher power with omnipotence and similar traits and if the individual beliefs in the abrogation of the laws of nature, then, in Ra’s view, this amounts to the belief in magic. He considers this within the definitions of miracle and magic from a variety of dictionaries.

“You will discover that if you compare the definitions between a miracle and magic, you will see that they are both the ‘evocation of supernatural forces or entities to control or forecast natural events in ways which are inexplicable by science because they defy the laws of physics, meaning they are physically impossible,” Ra explained, “That’s what both miracle and magic mean. So miracle is the same things as magic in the same way a boat is a yacht is if it is big enough.”

He compared murders and assassinations and miracles and magic. If a murder is a very important person, then it is an assassination. A miracle amounts to that for the magical world.

Ra stated, “Let’s imagine that there’s some form of technology sometime in the future that can detect the essence of God and can measure it. We can confirm God exists, and importantly whose God it is. All of these people are making claims about this personal God and calling it Allah, or Krishna, but failing to call it Jesus. Jesus isn’t the only personal saviour out there. There’s a bunch. All of these people making absolute statements about what they know for absolute certain about this absolute God.”

He concluded on the idea that the beliefs are not mutually exclusive but, rather, mutually inclusive and so cannot be all true or all wrong. One of the belief systems has to be right and the other has to be wrong. Ra views the beliefs of the formal believers who grew in the religions as having been lied to their whole lives through propaganda.

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2022-04-21

On Mentors, Mentoring, and Mentees

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/16

Marilyn Price-Mitchell Ph.D. in Psychology Today talked about the importance of mentorship. The benefits to the mentee who receives the mentorship. A single adult who shows care and concern for a young person can change that young person’s life for decades. I know; other knows.

In fact, I know from both perspectives. Someone to listen your stories. A person to confide in. An individual to give guidance. To give and receive these gifts can be extraordinary, heartfelt, and life changing, I have been blessed to be able to mentor and lucky enough to have been mentored.

If the fit is right, the mentor-mentee relationship is extraordinary at times.

Price-Mitchell stated, “We understand the benefits of mentoring young people when we hear the powerful stories of teens whose lives have been changed by a single, caring adult. If you listen, those stories are everywhere.”

She relayed a similar great experience of being mentored by someone. Where the positives of the relationship accrued over time, she does have a doctorate after all.

“What we know about mentoring is that it matters to positive youth development. Now, one of the largest mentoring studies ever conducted continues to support this thinking and links mentoring to a reduction in bullying,” Price-Mitchell said.

There was a study done by Big Brothers Big Sisters Canada over five years. The children with the mentors were more confident with fewer behavioural problems.

Price-Mitchell continued, “Girls in the study were four times less likely to become bullies than those without a mentor and boys were two times less likely. In general, young people showed increased belief in their abilities to succeed in school and felt less anxiety related to peer pressure.”

This is all to the good. It shows the benefits for the mentorship that accrue compared to the control or no mentoring. These relationships require some finesse and remained quite complicated in their structure because every kid or adolescent is an individual.

“In my own research with teens who became engaged citizens, all of the young people in the study had naturally developed mentee-mentor relationships with adults sometime during their middle and high school years,” Price-Mitchell explained, “None were matched by organizations. Nonparent mentors – teachers, clergy, and civic leaders – were highly instrumental in how these teens learned to believe in themselves and tackle challenging goals – much like those in the Big Brothers Big Sisters study.”

The teens without typical help, e.g. poor whites, blacks, Native American kids, and especially currently boys. They then can benefit from these interventions. It can make a huge benefit to the other people in the process too. The mentors can grow individually in learning to give to others too.

She recounted research, “A study conducted by North Carolina State University showed that youth from disadvantaged backgrounds are twice as likely to attend college when they have a mentor, particularly a teacher.”

Those kids going through the greatest hardships can benefit the most from the interventions of others, especially because many minority kids and single parent kids can be subjet to worse social and emotional development.

They can suffer from discrimination, family stressors, and abuse.” Price-Mitchell stated, “While many studies have focused on the effects of mentoring disadvantaged teens, we know that ALL teens reap big developmental dividends from nonparent mentoring relationships during their high school years.”

If you want to grow as a person, whether in giving or receiving, a mentoring relationship can really change a life – for others and yourself. The qualities of a good mentor with youth, according to Price-Mitchell, are being supportive, an active listener, assertive in pushing the kid enough but not too much, having an authentic interest in the kid, working to foster self-decision making, and then also lending perspective and insight from an older person.

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2022-04-21

Bicycling Can Save Lives Across Canada

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/16

Statistics Canada reported on bicycling in Canada.

Physical activity, moving, is an important part of a healthy day. That is to say, a good day comes from the workout in nature ideally too. It can come from walking, weightlifting (though hard to do outdoors), and the playing sports.

There are many ways to get it. But there for some, there are limitations in what they can do. For some, that can mean a limitation in the ways in which they are able to handle themselves in a sport where they do not have the skill.

They may have a tendon or ligament injury at the time, or surgery from years prior, that can limit their ability to play the sport with friends. Weight training can be similar, but can also be the source of injury.

As we age, we become less and less able physically and mentally to bounce back from the traumas. In terms of the physical traumas, to muscle, bone, ligament, and the like, we need to keep in mind the limitations of current physicality and of age.

There was a good article with lots of notes by Statistics Canada on the benefits of lower impact exercises found in a regular upright or recumbent biking or bicycling. The article bleakly opened on the note of the level of obesity in the general population.

“In an era when nearly a third of children and youth and just under two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese, cycling for leisure or transport is a valuable form of exercise,” the report stated, Cycling is also good for the environment―commuting by bicycle helps to alleviate road congestion and noise pollution and reduces emissions.”

The benefits are for the health folks and for the environmentally minded. Not everyone is one or the other let alone both. However, there are noted risks with bicycling. Those include the possibilities of crashes.

“Strategies to protect cyclists include infrastructure such as bicycle paths, dedicated bike lanes and traffic calming; side guards for heavy trucks; driver behaviour, with an emphasis on sharing the road; and cyclist behaviour, including increased visibility and helmet use,” Statistics Canada explained.

It has been a rather quiet national debate. However, people care about the environment in a similar way in which they care about the health of themselves in general. One of the main concerns for Canadians is health care. It may be the big one for the population, especially with an aging population approaching the concerns of the Western European and East Asian nations.

The report continued, “Some resist legislated helmet use, at least for adults, on the grounds that helmets offer minimal protection and encourage risk-taking, and that such legislation impinges on personal freedom and reduces ridership; others dispute these claims. Medical, public health and other sectors recommend that all-age helmet use is legislated and enforced across Canada.”

The analysis showed the helmet and bicycle use of the Canadians aged 12 and older in 1994/1995 and 2012/2013. There was also some analysis of the cycling fatalities for the 1994-2012 period.

The behaviors of helmet users and non-user had examination and analysis as well. They were drinking alcohol, getting flu shots, seatbelt use, and smoking. A common and good methodology and analysis to see if people are healthier in their habits in general if they also use something health-wise or not.

“In 2013/2014, an estimated 12 million Canadians (41%) aged 12 or older reported that they had cycled in the previous year,” the article stated, “Cycling was more common at younger ages―82% among 12- to 14-year-olds versus 27% by age 50 or older―and among people in higher-education and -income households.”

Education and income reflect the cycling levels. It also may reflect residence. The neighborhoods with lower traffic due to particular traffic reduction implementations, bicycle paths for the ability to easily bike, and the perception of crime levels.

There may be more crime in some areas, but the individual residents may not feel as though there is as much crime in the area. Men bike more than women. Those in the cities were more probable to bike than the rural folk. It has a certain logic to it.

Although, women reported the amount of traffic as a boundary to full participation in the bicycling world.

“The decrease in cycling was evident in most age groups. Cycling was more common in Quebec (48%) and Manitoba (46%) than in the rest of Canada,” Statistics Canada explained, “It was less common in the Atlantic Provinces (from 18% in Newfoundland and Labrador to 32% in New Brunswick), Saskatchewan and Ontario (both 38%), and Nunavut (23%).”

According to the 2013/2014 estimations, about 7 million people biked in the previous 3 months, which is up about 500,000 people since 1994/1995. Could that be due to the increase in the total population, so a similar percent?

Statistics Canada stated, “Despite this numerical increase, cyclists comprised a diminishing percentage of the population: 24% in 2013/2014 versus 29% in 1994/1995 (Figure 1). Even when the aging population was taken into account, the decrease persisted: if the age structure had remained unchanged during the two decades, an estimated 25% of the population would have reported cycling in 2013/2014.”

With the apparent decrease in the physical activity, it seems important for Canadians to get back on their butts because general health can be improved through some simple aerobic activity on their inside recumbent or on an upright bike down the local bike trail. Do it!

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2022-04-21

The Rise of Single Fathers

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/15

The Pew Research Center reported on the rise of the single father rates. Apparently, the number has increase as much as 9 times in the last 5 or 6 decades, or since 1960. 8% of the households with minor children in the United States has a father as a sole head of the household.

It was only 1% in 1960. This is based on the analysis done by the Pew Research Center through the Decennial Census and American Community Survey data.

The report stated, “The number of single father households has increased about ninefold since 1960, from less than 300,000 to more than 2.6 million in 2011. In comparison, the number of single mother households increased more than fourfold during that time period, up to 8.6 million in 2011, from 1.9 million in 1960.”

That makes for more men as the heads of single parent households with a drastic increased in their numbers. There are still differences between the single mothers and the single fathers out there.

“Single fathers are more likely than single mothers to be living with a cohabiting partner (41% versus 16%). Single fathers, on average, have higher incomes than single mothers and are far less likely to be living at or below the poverty line—24% versus 43%,” the report explained, “Single fathers are also somewhat less educated than single mothers, older and more likely to be white.”

The single fathers tend to be younger while also less educated and financially less well off than their women single parent counterparts; their single mother counterparts. The fathers were men aged 15 and older, so quite young all the way to the much older.

“Fathers who are living in a household headed by someone else are excluded from the analysis, as are fathers whose children are not living with them,” the article stated, “The term ‘single father’ includes men in a variety of family circumstances.”

Half of them are divorced, separated, widowed, or never married. They are not living with a cohabiting partner either. About 40% or 2/5ths are living with a non-marital partner. One small share of them are married while also living away from their spouse.

The article continued, “Cohabiting single fathers are particularly disadvantaged on most socio-economic indicators. They are younger, less educated and more likely to be living in poverty than are fathers who are raising children without a spouse or partner in the household.”

About 2/3rds of the houses in the United States with children have two married parents, which is a drastic decline from the 9/10ths seen in 1960. There seem to be a number of factors associated with the decline in the number of married parent households.

The big one is the significant increase in the number of non-marital births. This may mean that marriage has less of a pull for the current generations compared for the several decades prior generations, where each subsequent generation saw marriage as less integral to the basis of having a child in the first place.

“And even though divorce rates have leveled off in recent decades, they remain higher than they were in the 1960s and 1970s,” the article explained, “Some experts suggest that changes in the legal system have led to more opportunities for fathers to gain at least partial custody of children in the event of a breakup, as well.”

A change or alteration in the standard gender roles is important to consider as well. Men are not only see as breadwinners. Women are not only seen as child caregivers. Women are further along in the dual-basis of a full life with childcare and work; whereas, men are getting there, but slower.

The reportage continued, “Analysis of long-term time use data shows that fathers are narrowing the still sizable gap with mothers in the amount of time they spend with their children. And Pew Research surveys find that the public believes that a father’s greatest role is to provide values to his children, followed by emotional support, discipline and income support.”

When it comes to the specific characteristics or traits of the single fathers, they are like the single mothers in being less educated and not as well-off. They are younger and tend to be less white. The single father households are better off financially in contrast to the single mother households.

The single fathers are much younger than the married fathers while also older than the single mothers. For example, only 8% of the married fathers are young than 30 years old. The number of much different for the single fathers and the single mothers – 18% and 23%, respectively.

However, 47% of the single fathers are over 40 years or older. This becomes 59% for married fathers and 38% for single mothers. It is a much different story for each demographic.

“Single father householders are more likely to be white than single mother householders, but less likely to be white than married father householders. Just over half (56%) of single fathers are white, as are 45% of single mothers and two-thirds (66%) of married fathers,” Pew Research Center elaborated.

Single fathers are less likely to be black at 15%, especially compared to black single mothers (28%). Hispanic single mothers is about 22% and the Hispanic single fathers is about 24%, about parity in fact.

The report continued, “The educational attainment of single father householders is markedly lower than that of married father householders. About one-fifth (19%) of single dads lack a high school diploma, while just 10% of married fathers lack one.”

The single mothers have it at about 15%. The Median annual adjusted income for the single fathers is $40,000 and for the single mothers it is $26,000. This compares starkly with the $70,000 of the households headed by the married fathers.

“The same pattern is reflected in poverty status across these household types. Almost one-fourth (24%) of single father households are living at or below the poverty level, compared with just 8% of married father households and fully 43% of single mother households,” the Pew Research Center explained.

The number of single fathers continues to decline with age. However, most younger single fathers will be cohabiting, for example. Poverty is a high positive correlate. If someone is a single father, or a single mother for that matter, then will quite likely be a poor or in the poverty line as well.

“Since 1990, the Census Bureau has collected data not only on the marital status of household heads, but also information regarding whether the head was living with a non-marital partner. This allows for a further differentiation of single fathers—those who have no spouse or partner living with them and those who are cohabiting,” the reportage continued.

The big rise in the single father rates, about 8 or 9 fold, leads to higher rates of poverty among the single fathers themselves and their families, but, even so, those men tend to be far poorer than their counterparts who are married across ethnicities but also richer than their single mother comparisons.

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2022-04-21

The Weight of Men’s Anxiety

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/15

Anxiety BC talked about the role of generalized and acute anxiety in the lives of men.

The organization spoke about the personal experience of one man named Bruno Feldeisen who was aged 34 at the time of a first anxiety attack. He lived in New York. He was a chef with a solid reputation. He won competitions and awards, and the respect of colleagues and friends.

Feldeisen stated, “The light dimmed, my vision got narrow, I couldn’t breathe… I thought I was having a heart attack.” Feldeisen has left his French home country for America several years earlier.

What was the source of this mans stress and strife? It came from the mind. He was an abused child by a drug-addicted mother.

“While Feldeisen had learned to suppress his trauma, the past caught had up with him. Even though the cardiologist reassured him his heart was fine, Feldeisen couldn’t stop worrying about his health,” the article explained.

Feldeisen talked about the mind focusing on the tight chest and the dizziness. The physical symptoms of the panic attack. These symptoms would in turn cause a panic attack. He continued to search for an illness on his body.

It is noted that his old life “melted away. He stopped going out in public because restaurants made his back spasm and busy streets caused hyperventilation. He quit his job, drifted, and eventually went bankrupt. ‘I didn’t enjoy life anymore,’ he said.’

These are common stories for men with anxiety. Men report anxiety half as much as women. This is according to the research director in the Thomson Anxiety Disorder Center at Toronto’s (Ontario) Sunnybrook Hospital, Dr. Neil Rector.

The article explained, “Data from the Anxiety Disorders Association of Canada show that one in four Canadians will have at least one anxiety disorder during their lifetime, which translates to one in six men, all of whom may suffer the same crippling consequences as Feldeisen: they can lose their jobs and damage their relationships, said Dr. Rector.”

This led to an internal question about the sex differences. The reasons for why women have less anxiety than the men. Dr. Mohamed Kabbaj, Professor of Biomedical Sciences and Neurosciences at Florida State University, stated, “For men, the male hormone testosterone protects against anxiety.”

The role of testosterone in the reduction of anxiety results from neurotransmitter load differences based on the interactions of the male typical hormone with the brain. It boosts GABA and serotonin. Those two neurotransmitters are found in the low anxiety people.

It also reduces the level of activity in the fear center of the brain, the amygdala, important for the fight-or-flight phenomena. This means a reduction on several levels from a neurological and biochemical position. These lead to lower anxiety.

The article continued, “Additionally, it diminishes fear and anxiety by dampening the activity of the circuit linking the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis with the amygdala. Finally, testosterone modulates the release of the hormone cortisol, in response to stress.”

Lower fear, lower stress, and lower anxiety for men who tend to be higher in testosterone, men who do feel anxiety, though, feel something unbeknownst to the women, which is shame.

Dr. Rector said, “If you’re male and have been socialized to be active and controlling, anxiety is (perceived) as a sign of weakness.” Men have an internal dialogue oriented around weakness with viewing themselves as failing and vulnerable. This creates an embarrassment.

From that embarrassment, the men do not want to reach out. So, when men do reach out to the professional help, their condition appears far worse than the women.

For example, Feldeisen elaborated, “I was ashamed and disappointed in myself… I was not a masculine man (anymore)… If a man says ‘I have a mental illness’, that’s equal to craziness.” Can’t have that, men must be strong, so goes the narrative.

Men restrict themselves. Those around them may exacerbate this because they do not want to hear about this as well. It is not a judgment of the family and friends or on the men, but in the culture created through expectations and historical inertia.

“Many men with anxiety express similar feelings as Feldeisen. Instead of seeking help, 30% of men with anxiety turn to substances as a way to cope with their symptoms, said Dr. Jeffery Wardell,” Anxiety BC stated, “post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. Men’s greater impulsivity also accounts for their higher reliance on substances.”

Women have fewer positive beliefs about alcohol. Men have higher positive beliefs about alcohol. The anxious women will turn to female friends in time of needing some substances while anxious.

The women will limit consumption because of the greater expectations and judgments on them. Men, in other words, are seen as engaging in male behaviour if they drink, even if it as a masculine self coping mechanism.

Dr. George Koob, Director of the US-based National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said, “People suffering from anxiety take substances in an effort to self-medicate.” Alcohol and similar substances of common overuse are ones that naturally hijack the reward centers of the brain, the mesolimbic dopamine reward system built for the pleasurable stimuli from food and sex.

There is an extra high from the substances. The user feels pleasure and so uses the substance more and more to quell greater and greater levels of anxiety. This is, apparently from the prior points, particularly true of the men.

“The ingestion of substances including alcohol, opioids, marijuana, and nicotine produces identical pleasure effects. When endorphins (the chemicals responsible for the “runner’s high”) are released by natural stimuli or by substances,” the reportage explained, “they bind to the same receptors as morphine, dulling emotional pain and calming the mind. It is this type of relaxation that people with anxiety are seeking when they turn to substances.”

Mr. Feldeisen went to the common one: alcohol. He drank two full glasses of wine at dinner in order to feel numb. Why numb? He wanted to rid himself of the anxious feelings after the first panic attack. It became an exogenous assistance in the prevention of coping with the anxiety.

The article continued, “While many men are reluctant to admit their anxiety, making it difficult for loved ones to find out what’s going on, there are some tell-tale clues, said Dr. Martin Antony, Professor and Chair in the Department of Psychology at Ryerson University in Toronto.”

“If the man in your life starts to avoid things he used to enjoy or becomes irritable, these can be signs of an anxiety disorder. Anger is more acceptable for some men than anxiety,” Antony stated.

Men suffer too. However, they do not reach out. They reach out in silence. They experience anxiety and depression, like women, and even commit suicide at times, too. For those concerned about the men, they should look into the trouble in concentration, the difficult in sleeping, and the loss in an interest in sex as symptoms of potential anxiety of the men in their lives.

The men we all know and love, but who can, at times, be not succeeding all that well in coping with anxiety. Dr. Maureen Whittal, who is a psychologist in private practice in British Columbia, suggested, “Instead, reassure him that his condition is extremely common… Tell him ‘It doesn’t have to be this hard’. Find him a family doctor when he’s ready, and you can offer to accompany him. Suggest you treat the visit as an experiment, and don’t ask for a commitment to treatment.”

Feldeisen lacked a partner to motivate him. He has a son. However, the son was not at the age of being able to help him at the time. Feldeisen stated, “I told myself enough is enough… We need to fix this. My son needs me to be the best person I can be… My therapist is one of the best in Canada.”

Dr. Rector talked about the hope for the future for men. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is an important methodology to help with some distorted thinking patterns. It is a first defense or intervention in the combatting of anxiety disorders.

Apparently, it works about 60-70% of the time. Rector said, “Some patients can also be treated with medication, while more severe cases may require both counseling and pills.”

Now, Feldeisen is a thribing person. That, potentially, makes him a better chef as a boss or colleague and a better dad. He concluded, “You don’t need to be ashamed of the life you’re living—by seeking treatment, you could fully live the life you want.”

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2022-04-21

The Maximization of Happiness and Life Satisfaction

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/14

Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis, M.D., M.Sc., M.A., Ph.D. is a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist running his private practice in Thessaloniki, Greece. Having perceived the importance and impact of internet in our lives, he is also professionally active offering online psychotherapy and counseling for Psycall.com and Shezlong.com. He earned an M.D., Medical Doctor Diploma (2000), M.Sc., Medical Research Technology (2003), M.A., Philosophy (2012), and Ph.D., Psychopharmacology (2015), awarded by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Dr. Katsioulis is mostly challenged by expression, thinking and communication. Therefore, he is involved in writing articles, novels, quotes and screenplays. Since 2001, he is the Founder of the World Intelligence Network (WIN), an international organization targeting the detection, development and appreciation of abilities. Feeling a citizen of the world, he currently lives in Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece.

On January 1, 2015, we published an interview. Here, we talk about awards and happiness.

Katsioulis earned a number of awards. Of course, along with the various awards and recognition from the prizes, the awardee is expected to provide some form of commentary relevant to themselves and the focus of the award.

He had a statement, wherein he said:

I believe in the power of human mind and my works contribute to the facilitation of mind expressions, promotion of creativity and enhancement of productivity for a better life quality for everyone. Maximizing outcomes based on the appreciation and utilization of people’s potentials for the benefits of any individual and humanity in general.

Katsioulis describes the ways in which people can improve the life satisfaction of their lives. The ways in which individuals can maximize their lives, and how he can be a part of this in collaboration with others in the high general intelligence community.

I do not sense an arrogance or conceit around it. I noted a sense of service based on acknowledge of greater ability and so higher levels of duty to work on common problems. I asked about the motivation to help others.

Katsioulis stated, “Life is a continuous claim of happiness and satisfaction. There are plenty of distractions and attractions in life which can mislead and redirect people causing disorientation, targeting fake goals and resulting to low life quality. I am passionate with people and communication and that is the main reason I chose to be a Psychotherapist, Psychiatrist and a Founder of some communities and networks.”

All the aforementioned high-IQ – and other gifted and talented – societies function on this basis. To serve the gifted and talented population as identified by various means, and to cater to their needs, they then serve the general public, often in ways others cannot.

He continued, “I believe in self-awareness, self-appreciation, self-confidence and self-determination. Offering people an opportunity to look into themselves and grab the chance to evaluate their lives, attitudes and interests, is a challenge for me.”

Katsioulis went through these processes too. That is, he speaks from personal experience. He wants to provide the same psychological services for others. It seems to come from the same sense of duty. It feels as if a moral-bound, ethical, foundation.

“I support people and I believe in their abilities, talents and specialties. Psychologically speaking, I may provide what I would appreciate to have been provided,” Katsioulis elaborated.

In reflection on the statement in the award, I quoted him, “Humans are biological beings, life is a mystery, creation is still unknown. We live a miracle and we can only maximize this miracle’s impact in every single moment of our existence.”

That formed the basis for the conclusion of the interview with some final questions. He mentioned “miracle,” which raises hopes in some minds, anxiety in others, and discontented question marks in still others. Also, though more directly apprehended, the idea of the maximization of the moments of our lives was mentioned by him.

Katsioulis clarified, “Allow me to clearly mention that I do not wish to support any specific religion with my statement. I have the feeling that the advanced and complicated structure and function of life, considering even only a single cell, is itself a miracle.”

It becomes more concrete without support for a specific religion. As a background context, living in Greece, the majority religion remains Eastern Orthodox Christianity or the Greek Orthodox Church tradition within the Eastern Orthodox Church. This faith comprises about 90% of the population.

“I am using the word ‘miracle’ since mathematicians have proved that it is rather impossible all cell components to accidentally find themselves in the proper position and start functioning as a cell within the total duration of universe existence,” Katsioulis explained, “So the time elapsed since the creation of universe supports the non-accidental, thus miraculous nature of life.”

As noted in the response, Katsioulis seems to note a transcendent sentiment. Something external to and containing the natural and physical. The sense of the miraculous in the statistical improbability of functional life.

Katsioulis continued, “The specific rational for this miracle, a specific power, God, destiny, even the nature itself, has been a fascinating topic for many other specialists throughout all human history.”

He concluded on the idea of happiness and the operation of its maximization, or optimization. “The maximization of our life moments is a quality term, used to define appreciation of our time, life satisfaction and happiness. Since we know nothing about the reasons of our existence,” Katsioulis concluded, “we may solely take advantage of the fact that we are alive and experience the most out of it. In this context, we need to define what makes us excited and content and we should target and claim satisfaction and happiness.”

—

Dr. Katsioulis earned the best performance in the Cerebrals international contest (2009), best performance in the Cerebrals NVCP-R international contest (2003), best performance in physics for the national final exams in Greece (1993), and third place in the Maths national contest in Thessaloniki, Greece (1989).

Dr. Katsioulis scored some of the highest intelligence test scores (SD16) on international record with IQ scores of 205 on the NVCP-R [Rasch equated raw 49/54] in 2002, 196 on the Qoymans Multiple Choice #3 [ceiling] in 2003, 192 on the NVCP-E [Rasch equated raw 35/40] in 2002, 186 on the NVCP-R [Fluid Intelligence Index Score] in 2002, 183 on the NVCP-E [Fluid Intelligence Index Score] in 2002, 183 on the Cattell Culture Fair III A+B [ceiling-1] in 2003, 180+ on the Bonnardel BLS4 – 2T [ceiling] in 2003, and 180+ on the WAIS-R [extrapolated full scale] in 2002.

Subsequently, Dr. Katsioulis remains a member in over 60 high IQ societies. In addition, he is the president and founder of Anadeixi Academy of Abilities Assessment and World Intelligence Network (WIN), and OLYMPIQ, HELLIQ, CIVIQ, GRIQ, QIQ, IQID, GREEK high IQ societies. He talked here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal.

In one listing, Dr. Katsioulis is listed among other smartest people in the world including Paul Allen, Christopher Michael Langan, Judit Polgar, Marilyn vos Savant, John H. Sununu, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Kim Ung-Yong, Mislav Predavec, Manahel Thabet, Rick Rosner, Chris Hirata, Steven Pinker, Ivan Ivec, Garry Kasparov, Terence Tao, Scott Aaronson, Nikola Poljak, Alan Guth, Donald Knuth, Noam Chomsky, Magnus Carlsen, Shahriar Afshar, Akshay Venkatesh, Saul Kripke, Ruth Lawrence, Grigori Perelman, Andrew Wiles, and Edward Witten.

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2022-04-21

The Responsibility in Public Recognition of Excellence

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/14

Dr. Leo Igwe is the founder of the Nigerian Humanist Movement and former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. On May 27, 2018, we published an interview. Here, we talk on the responsibility that comes with public recognition of excellence.

Dr. Igwe and I were conversing on the subject of the widespread recognition in Nigeria and African, especially the non-religious and humanist communities for founding the movement.

The Nigerian Humanist Movement, the first person to enact this formal movement out of tens of millions. He is an ever-active activist for the non-religious and a spokesperson for the equality of men and women, of the need for the implementation of human rights, and the importance of critical thinking and scientific education.

With regards to the responsibility that comes from the public recognition for Dr. Igwe, he stated, “The widespread recognition means more responsibility and more work. It obligates me to exert more efforts and sustain the momentum to further humanist ideals and values. It entails devising new and more potent strategies to make humanism flourish, and mainstream the rights and interests of nonreligious persons.”

It means the sign of the improvement in performance and a track record for Igwe. It amounts to thanks for the public service and an identification of the excellence of the public service. He notes this as an enhanced sign of the importance of his life’s work: humanism.

“…an indication that a long forgotten, long overlooked need for a positive non-religious outlook is now being fulfilled. In a country such as Nigeria, religion has an overwhelming influence,” Igwe explained, “So it can be very difficult for humanist activists to make any significant impact because such an impression chips away on the rock of overbearing religions.”

He considers the recognition of excellence welcome. Igwe feels that this is a sign of hope and that this “should propel” him and other activists to work harder than before. Because the progress won to date took a long time.

It was something not in the realm of the possible centuries ago, but became one recently. That makes the consolidation of the progress never certain but easier to maintain than originally acquire in the first place.

The recognition of the peers and the youth makes this an especially important point of contact in his career, as, seems to me, he works from a harder vantage in Nigeria than in other countries such as Canada, where humanism has a long tradition.

“It means striving to ensure that humanism takes its rightful place on the table of religions, philosophies or life stances, and that humanists and other non-religious people can live their lives and go about their everyday business with less and less fear,” Igwe stated.

He continued to state that this means the end of the persecution and the discrimination of the non-religious people in the country and the region in order to secure a greater secularity in Nigeria.

Igwe said, “In Nigeria, those who identify as having no religion are in the minority; they are not reckoned with. Non-religious persons suffer systemic marginalization. For too long, persons without religion have been identified as a silent and sometimes, a non-existing minority.”

He feels the and thinks strongly that the mistreatment of the non-religious is unacceptable. He wants to work for a world where these people are not discriminated against.

“In the coming years, I want to work to ensure that Nigerians grow up understanding that religion is an option, and knowing that they can leave religion; that they can criticize religion. I want to make sure that people in Nigeria are aware that humanism and atheism as options that they can explore and embrace,” Igwe concluded.

—

Dr. Leo Igwe is the founder of the Nigerian Humanist Movement and former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He is among the most prominent African non-religious people from the African continent. When he speaks, many people listen in a serious way. He holds a Ph.D. from the Bayreuth International School of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, having earned a graduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Calabar in Nigeria. We have talked or I have written on Dr. Igwe here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

He talked here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal.

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2022-04-21

On a Humanist Masculinity with Dr. Leo Igwe

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/13

Dr. Leo Igwe is the founder of the Nigerian Humanist Movement and former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. On August 16, 2017, we published an interview. Here, we talk about gender roles.

Igwe and I had an extensive conversation on the nature of gender roles in the context of modern Nigerian. The sub-text of the conversation came from modern and Indigenous spiritualities of the African continent, the colonial religions seen in Islam and Christianity, and with the pre-text of humanism rejecting these Indigenous and colonial supernaturalisms to define gender.

When we began to talk more, the emphasis of the conversation focused on the humanist masculinity. What is it? What defines it? How is it constrained, defined, and set about in practical terms?

Igwe stated, “It is the idea of maleness that emphasizes the humanity of men and males, the fact that men are human like their female counterparts. That males have emotions, entertain fear and suffer pain like their female counterparts. Simply humanistic masculinity stands for maleness as humanness.”

There comes more emphasis on the care, compassion, and the cooperation of the masculine in a humanistic framework. That, as human beings, men can act in cruel, mean, domineering, and oppressive way.

That these can be cross-gender, or occurring in any gender, traits, which tend towards the personally and socially destructive. “The whole idea of humanist masculinity is vital in clearing this mistaken impression that associates ‘masculinism’ or masculinity with the subordination of women. There are cases of male oppression of women but is that masculinism? No, not at all,” Igwe said.

The idea being that basis for the humanistic man, the masculine self grounded in the philosophy and life stance of humanism, comes from the concrete rather than the supernatural and the non-subjection of women.

In modern vernacular, this means the empowerment of women and the inculcation of the notion and actuality of equality for men and women. Of course, as seems historically and presently the case, most males act masculine in one form or other; most females act feminine in one form or other. There should be flexibility within the humanistic frame while acknowledging some connections between the biological sex differences and the associated tendencies in thoughts and behaviours in genders. However, the bigger category remains human.

“Being manly should be within the ambient of humanity not without. Women do oppress men too but is oppression of men feminism? No. Subordination of men should not be identified as feminism. It is an aberration of feminism,” Igwe explained, “Just as feminism does not imply the oppression of men, masculinity should not be equated with the oppression of females. Thus humanist masculinity is – and should be–about the expression of hu-maleness or hu-manliness and not the humiliation and subordination of females.”

The conversation concluded on the ways in which to inculcate this other modern masculinity. Igwe lamented, “Unfortunately, this goal cannot be realized in the form of education we have in Nigeria at the moment. The educational process is manipulated to preserve certain religious and traditional values and interests. The educational system is used to reinforce notions of masculinity and femininity that are incompatible with humanist and human rights values.”

It leaves questions about an overhaul to the fostering and furtherance of a humanist or humanistic oriented educational system with the best interests of the child in mind.

—

He talked here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal.

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2022-04-21

Indigenous Nigerian Gender Roles Rooted in Supernaturalism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/13

Dr. Leo Igwe is the founder of the Nigerian Humanist Movement and former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. On August 16, 2017, we published an interview. Here, we talk about gender roles.

I asked Dr. Igwe about the designated roles from the Abrahamic traditions, which he corrected to the supernatural traditions. Why the expansion in the terminology? The intention was to extend into the Abrahamic “codifications” and the traditional pre-colonial traditions in the area known now as Nigeria.

This point extends to the whole of the African continent’s diaspora. He notes the supernatural definitions for the supported qualities of the masculine and the feminine, of the femaleness and the maleness of a particular individual.

Igwe stated, “In fact, traditional masculinity and femininity are embedded in indigenous religions that predate Abrahamic religious traditions in Africa. What we have in contemporary Africa is a situation where the faiths of Christianity and Islam only reinforce pre-existing religious and traditional notions of masculinity and femininity.”

Now, as Igwe founded an entire movement in humanism, the next natural query would follow into the humanistic. He had some interesting views on the traditional gender roles and the humanist perspective on this.

“A humanist perspective is the same with the traditional viewpoint in the sense that they are all human creations and constructions. They are all attempts by humans to define, designate and assign roles and duties,” Igwe explained, “Humanist and non-humanist ideas of manliness and womanliness are devices to make sense of human associations and interactions. But the humanist perspective is different because it is a product of critical evaluation, not of revelation or blind faith.”

This makes the supernatural elements in the traditional gender roles overlaid on biological sex differentiations less relevant. Because they do not become considerations. The humanistic perspective on the masculine and feminine, according to Igwe, becomes non-dogmatic.

Gender roles subject to challenge and critical questions. He considers the perception of a male and a female as something informed by human rights, reason, and science, which means non-conformist (to tradition) and non-orthodox (to the Abrahamic religions, for an example).

Igwe concluded, “Like traditional masculinity and femininity, humanist masculinity takes cognizance of the outlined duties and responsibilities. However, the humanist idea of manliness and womanliness is not cast in stone. The qualities and functions are subject to revision and rejection in the light of knowledge and individual freedom.”

—

He talked here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal.

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2022-04-21

The Traditional Nigerian Masculinity and Femininity

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/12

Dr. Leo Igwe is the founder of the Nigerian Humanist Movement and former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. On August 16, 2017, we published an interview. Here, we talk about gender roles.

Dr. Leo Igwe and I talked about the Nigerian Humanist Movement founded by Igwe and the traditional masculinity and femininity in Nigeria. Igwe, in the response, cautioned about the common and ever-present possibility of the misinterpretation of responses.

That is, the misunderstanding of talking about men and women in Nigerian meaning all men and all women in every context when referencing “men” or “women” rather than the statistical nature of the representation of the traditional masculinity and femininity.

“There is always a risk of conflation in responding to a question such as this because any answer could easily be taken to be all embracing and applicable to all. Definitely, an understanding of traditional masculinity or femininity that applies to over 170 million people in Nigeria with various cultures and beliefs presents a challenge,” Igwe stated.

His personal opinion of the nature of traditional femininity and masculinity within a highly diverse and populated society such as Nigeria. It is simply the idea handed down from the past. Some from a before when these were not necessarily highly scrutinized.

Igwe said, “This idea of what it is to be a man or a woman draws its moral and binding force from the fact that it was handed down to a generation that assumes it is expected to observe it, comply with it and pass it on without revision or alteration.”

It becomes a tradition with the sacrosanct nature of the maleness and femaleness. It becomes designated as the standards in social life or the norm for nurturance and cultivation in males and females – a social and cultural overlay on top of the sex differentiated characteristics.

“It is important to note that the idea of manliness and womanliness which people regard as the norm because they are handed down from the past differ from community to community, and sometimes from family to family, in fact from individual to individual. It is difficult to pin it down,” Igwe opined.

In Nigeria, the masculine is see as something with leadership, power, strength, and toughness; the feminine with weakness and vulnerability. Male seen as the head of the home and society. Some strong and capable. Some who can absorb pain and not cry. The man must be defense. Because he is needed to protect family against the dangers and threats of the world.

“Womanliness,” by contrast, “is associated with ‘weakness’ and vulnerability. Marriage, childcare, child bearing and domestic duties are also linked to womanhood,” Igwe explained, “Persons are brought up to fit into these roles and expectations. Unfortunately, the emphasis is often, on women and their designated subordinate and subjugated roles.”

Igwe noted the forgotten facts about males being raised by parents who include the mothers, and other family members such as nieces, sisters, and aunts who have them (the males) fit into some institutionalized, limited, gender roles.

Igwe, in that response, concluded, “They are pressured sometimes against their will to be manly. These designated manly and womanly roles are well spelled out and mainly applicable in rural areas and among uneducated folks, or in religiously conservative environments. In such situations and circumstances, ruralness, lack of education and faith constrain the ability of males and females to break away from the traditions.”

—

He talked here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal.

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2022-04-21

Biology, Machines, and Mind and Reality to a World Famous Psychiatrist

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/12

On January 1, 2015, we published an interview. Here, we talk about the potential for the merger between biology and machines, and the ultimate relationship between mind and reality.

Asking Katsioulis about the future of biology and machines, and the potential for the merger of the two, he remarked on the control of machines by humans. Although, we remain bound to biology, to the capacities and so limitations of our natures.

The machines may help with the replacement of some dysfunctional biological components or missing ones. As he stated, “We do control machines (for now), however we cannot control or overcome biological rules. Machines could substitute some missing, mistaken or dysfunctional biological structures, however we are in no position to support artificial life at least for now.”

Humans control the machines. The machines can help with the healthy and functional living of biological life, presumably our own mainly. Regardless, we seem in an unfit position to support said artificial life. In a way, we marginally handle ourselves – remaining barely kept from nuclear catastrophe, destruction of the climate and environment for decent human life, and so on.

Katsioulis continued, “Having in mind the science progress and knowledge advancement within the last century, we may soon manage to understand much more about life and even copy biology principles creating a kind of life.”

The target of the question came from the observation of the integration of biological systems and artificial systems. Noting a common interest, Katsioulis, with a tone of inquiry and insight about the interviewer (and humor), stated, “There are no limits in this integration. From your question, I could assume that we both like science fiction movies.”

When I turned attention from biological systems and artificial systems into the deeper question about the ultimate relationship between mind and reality, Katsioulis mentioned the mind as an information processor to help us. It seemed like a concrete definition with a psychological orientation for the definition.

Bearing in mind, the basis for Katsioulis, as a life work, comes from the desire to know the soul of a person, a human, or humankind. That is, this harkens back to the original goal of psychiatry with the intent to know the soul or the entire makeup of a person, a human, or humankind, not only the narrowed focus on the behavioral and the mental as in, for example, psychology.

“Mind is an advanced personal processor, responsible for the perception, reaction and adjustment in reality. We need mind to live our reality. I suppose we all know what is the condition of a body with a non-functioning mind,” Katsioulis elaborated, “Reality is an objective and independent set of conditions, events, happenings, incidents, people, principles, facts.”

The mind, to Katsioulis, amounts to something to make the objective something subjective. Katsioulis continued, “Our mind personalizes this objective information to a subjective representation in us. Mind function is influenced by factors, such as perceptual ability, reasoning, previous knowledge and experiences, psychological status and mental state.”

He notes the presence in an event, the comprehension of oneself and others, the difference in those states of perception of the same event, and the impacts these have on individual lives.

“For instance, we have all been present in an event and our understanding of what happened may significantly defer from what anyone else present states. So, we need mind to live our reality and we need reality to use our mind,” Katsioulis concluded.

—

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2022-04-21

Some Notes on Weight Training for Kids

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/11

Let’s talk about weight training for the kiddos today.

Do the accrued health benefits for health span, how long you stay able and capable – healthy, from weight training for adults help kids in the same or even a similar way?

It seems like an important question with the increased obesity of the population, especially the younger and the upcoming generations of kids and adolescents.

The Mayo Clinic reports that the strength training does, in fact, maintain some benefits for children with some caveats, justifications. It can, first and foremost and most important in the value structure of North American society, improve the way one looks and feels.

Kids want that, potentially even more than the adults. It would seem so with the adolescents. If the habits are inculcated early enough, then the kids may actually develop habits for a longer and healthier lifespan. They can stick around longer and walk and lift things while they do it.

The article states, “Don’t confuse strength training with weightlifting, bodybuilding or powerlifting. These activities are largely driven by competition, with participants vying to lift heavier weights or build bigger muscles than those of other athletes”

If a young person paces too much strain on the functional structure of their body, it can have long-term impacts, e.g. damage to the muscles, tendons and cartilage of the young person. The point is proper training, especially if going over the top with the amount of the weight for the young person.

“For kids, light resistance and controlled movements are best — with a special emphasis on proper technique and safety. Your child can do many strength training exercises with his or her own body weight or inexpensive resistance tubing. Free weights and machine weights are other options,” the professionals recommend.

If done with the proper technique, pace, and weight for the kid, this can, improve the endurance and strength and performance in a sport, strengthen the bones, protect muscles and joints from various sports-related injuries of the kid, even give them better technique and form for the future – as these properly developed techniques in early life.

In terms of the ‘right’ time to start with the training, the Mayo Clinic explained, “During childhood, kids improve their body awareness, control and balance through active play. As early as age 7 or 8, however, strength training can become a valuable part of an overall fitness plan — as long as the child is mature enough to follow directions and practice proper technique and form.”

Even with the preparedness of the child in terms of their mind set, it is important to bear in mind the forms in which damage or stress to their young tissues can take place. A parent or guardian should take caution in the potentials for injury, which may last a long time.

Not only this, the child should be warned in an assertive, caring, and compassionate manner as well, especially tone. You are the parent after all.

Some of the basic instructions from the article include the seeking of proper instruction for your child, a warm up and cool down series for the exercises – like an on and off switch, maintaining a light load, emphasizing the proper technique, supervision of the child while they lift heavy weights, and then the rest between workouts with the attitude of keeping this fun More details in full below:

Seek instruction. Start with a coach or personal trainer who has experience with youth strength training. The coach or trainer can create a safe, effective strength training program based on your child’s age, size, skills and sports interests. Or enroll your child in a strength training class designed for kids.

Warm up and cool down. Encourage your child to begin each strength training session with five to 10 minutes of light aerobic activity, such as walking, jogging in place or jumping rope. This warms the muscles and prepares them for more-vigorous activity. Gentle stretching after each session is a good idea, too.

Keep it light. Kids can safely lift adult-size weights, as long as the weight is light enough. In most cases, one or two sets of 12 to 15 repetitions is all it takes. The resistance doesn’t have to come from weights, either. Resistance tubing and body-weight exercises, such as pushups, are other effective options.

Stress proper technique. Rather than focusing on the amount of weight your child lifts, stress proper form and technique during each exercise. Your child can gradually increase the resistance or number of repetitions as he or she gets older.

Supervise. Adult supervision by someone who knows proper strength training technique is an important part of youth strength training. Don’t let your child go it alone.

Rest between workouts. Make sure your child rests at least one full day between exercising each specific muscle group. Two or three strength training sessions a week are plenty.

Keep it fun. Help your child vary the routine to prevent boredom.

Results won’t come overnight. Eventually, however, your child will notice a difference in muscle strength and endurance — which might fuel a fitness habit that lasts a lifetime.

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2022-04-21

Time for Rests, Naps, and Sleep

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/11

Rest okay.

Naps good.

Sleep great, especially in the proper amounts.

The Mayo Clinic commented on the need for a minimum of 7 hours of sleep per night for optimal health. In that, this amount of sleep for a healthy adult sets the rest of the day’s decisions on a particular course, e.g. more effective decision-making.

A bad sleep can affect one’s overall tone of day. The inability to focus on daily tasks can be a problem of this too. It affects the body and the mind in different but severe ways. A common experience of the overworked comes in the form of sleep deprivation.

As the article states, “Sleep deprivation can have a significant impact on both your mind and body. In addition to perpetuating serious health conditions, lack of sleep can negatively affect your mood and temperament, as well as your ability to focus on daily tasks. Plus, lack of sleep influences what and how much you eat.”

That is, the hormones throughout the body get regulated through proper sleep. That means the hunger hormones move into the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt. You become hungrier, even hangrier.

People may stuff themselves with bagels and muffins in order to quell the increased cravings. The cravings arising from the lack of sleep, the sleep deprivation. This sleep permits the body and the mind to recover from a full day’s work. It becomes highly important for health.

“Furthermore, sleep allows time for your mind and body to recover from the day’s work, and these important processes are cut short when you don’t get ample shut-eye. During the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep,” the Mayo Clinic explained, “your brain sorts the important information from the unimportant and files long-term memory. If this stage of your sleep cycle is shortchanged, your mental focus and acuity may decrease.”

You can become ill-tempered and irascible as a result. With less than 7 hours of sleep per night, an individual can, over time, begin to suffer from depression, diabetes, high blood pressure, and weight gain. Other health consequences as ensue.

“In addition, when you don’t get enough sleep, you may experience increased body aches and pains, reduced immune function and impaired performance at work. All of these problems can have a ripple effect on your daily habits,” the Mayo Clinic said.

However, if an individual can make a habit of sleep as part of their daily routine, even with some forgiveness and room for slipping up or a late night work or school assignment, then health can improve.

The improvement would be on the all the above-mentioned health risks. It would be a reduction in them. Some tips from the staff at the Mayo Clinic include the setting of a sleep goal of a regular time and sleep duration at the recommended amount for your sex and age.

The next is to make a routine of the bedtime. Honor and respect yourself with the proper sleep goals. The next is to eat less processed food, have more fruits and vegetables and lean meats, and feel better with the healthier diet, and then feel better with the improved sleep from the good sleep due to not feeling hungry when going to sleep or waking up. Hunger interrupts sleep.

Another recommendation is to ease into your sleep regimen in order to feel better and more comfortable when finally finding the time to rest and catch some z-shaved sheep while counting them.

On the flip side, making sleep a priority can help you achieve your other wellness goals, such as stress management. When your body and mind are well-rested, you’ll be able to respond to life with greater perspective and understanding. Try these tips for getting better sleep and creating the foundation for your overall wellness.

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2022-04-21

On the Function of Society’s Systems Through Plato

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

On January 1, 2015, we published an interview. Here, we talk about the educational systems, the gifted, and the main global problem and its solution.

When I asked Katsioulis about the interactions of the numerous systems within society, those integrated concepts with common markers or widely accepted bases in everyday life. I wanted to target the ways in which the world functions and fails to work too.

The political life in which citizens want to organize the public life of the country. The economic system under which people buy and sell with one another. The religious practices and beliefs to motivate and inspire people’s lives. As per individual motivations, and the UN Charter, everyone reserves the right to freedom of belief and freedom of religion.

The corporate monoliths from which multinational and international trade and commerce take place. The educational systems from which values, knowledge, and skills get inculcated and nurtured in the young. Many more interlocked, interrelated, and interdependent systems function in societies.

All topics of intrigue on a large, societal scale. The question related to the proper development of a society from his perspective. Katsioulis opened the response, “I would say no more than what a great ancestor said 25 centuries ago. Plato suggested an ideal society based on the special abilities of the citizens.”

A society built on the more suited person for a particular position. The ablest for a particular function in a society should run that position in the society. For example, the strongest should help with the physical needs of the society.

“…a meritocracy should be in place. We should all contribute to the society well-functioning, if we intend to live in the society and benefit out of it,” Katsioulis stated, “The definition of one’s prosperity should be defined only in the context of the society prosperity. If we act against our nest, how should this nest be beneficial, protective and supportive for us.”

He laments those who only work with marketing skills and great influence. Those individuals with little to no skill except insofar as they can advertise themselves in a positive light and use power at whim. “We often see people who have no other than marketing skills or powerful backgrounds to guide societies, decide about millions of people, control people’s future, when many capable and talented others live in the shadow,” Katsioulis said.

Katsioulis indicated the importance of the individual in a society. That is, the citizen is the crucial element in any society, who should realize their individual and collective power.

“There is no society without citizens, there are no rules without people to follow them. People can claim their right to live their ideal society,” Katsioulis concluded.

—

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2022-04-21

On the Different Interests of Men and Women in Computer Science

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Claus D. Volko, B.Sc. was born in 1983 in Vienna, Austria, Europe. He began to teach himself how to program at the age of eight. He started editing an electronic magazine at the age of 12: Hugi Magazine. After high school, he studied computer science and medicine at the same time.

Eventually, he became a software developer with some work, on leisure time, spent on medical research projects. Now, he maintains the website entitled 21st Century Headlines and founded, recently, Web Portal on Computational Biology. Here we talk about men and women in computer science from his personal experience.

Volko and I talked about the reasons for the sex split in the computer sciences. Volko made an opening guess that women tend to have less interest in computers for programming and software development.

“Another reason may be that they are not so self-confident about their computer science skills. Maybe they also think that computer programmers are somewhat lonely and they would rather prefer to work in a team of
people,” Volko said.

Then I asked further about the split with women liking graphic arts and music composition with computers more than programming, where men prefer the programming far more. Volko remarked women tend to have little interest in code optimization.

Volko stated, “In the demoscene, code optimization is one of the most important skills because one of the categories of artworks demosceners create is heavily size-optimized intros sized 64 kbytes or even 4 kbytes or less. This requires far more than being just able to write working code.”

He continued to say that a perfectionist attitude is necessary. It is something that requires someone to code for as many hours as possible. The purpose of which is to keep the code as small as possible. Volko commented on a woman programmer he knows from Hungary interested in this form of software development.

“But she is the only women I know who is into this field. I met some women in the demoscene who are actually not totally unskilled when it comes to programming, some of them even earning their income as web developers (employing PHP and JavaScript),” Volko explained, “but still they prefer to compose music or create graphics when it comes to spending their sparetime with computers in a creative way.”

When he reflected on men, they tend to be far more attracted to programming “because men are supposed to be smart, and programming is a way to prove that you are. And apparently, programming is more fun for men than for women.”

Women may find programming as more of a chore needing doing and will try to avoid it if at all possible. However, and by contrast, “many male programmers I know, including myself, actually seem to be enjoying what they are doing.”

Volko knows the psychometric data and statistics around IQs for men and women. For example, the average or mean IQs of men and women are about the same. However, when the detailed data is analyzed, there are differences, more in some areas than others.

“Some people consider it politically incorrect to talk about sex differences in IQ but there are some scientists who have done research into that field. Richard Lynn, for example, published about it,” Volko explained, “He
stated that while the average IQ of both sexes is about the same, the standard deviation is different – it is smaller for women, which means that there are (by proportion) fewer women who would have to be considered mentally retarded, but also fewer women who would have to be considered highly gifted.”

Volko notes that if Lynn is correct then this may describe how women tend to have less interest in the computer sciences than men. The average intelligence quotient of computer scientists is very high compared to other professions, according to Volko.

He noted that the average computer science student had an IQ of about 125. “It can, therefore, be assumed that the average computer science graduate has an even higher IQ, of 130 or higher. That makes 50% of all computer science graduates fall at least into the “gifted” range,” Volko described.

He continued to state that Lynn describes how there are fewer women than men in the “gifted” range, which may explain the difference in enrolment in the computer sciences for men and women. “Likewise, it may be that graphic design and music composition are less related to IQ than programming, and that might also explain the sex differences in the preference for activities regarding creative use of computers,” Volko stated.

Volko, as a medical graduate, did comment on the genetics of general intelligence as measured by IQ tests. He noted the genetics of intelligence is not a trait defined by an individual gene, but, rather, something researchers find correlated with many genes on the X chromosome.

He explained:

The special feature of the X chromosome is that healthy women have two of them, while healthy men have only one of them. This may explain the difference in the standard deviation of IQ between the sexes: Apparently a gene variant that would increase the intelligence of a male person already if this male person had only one copy of this gene variant needs to be present in both X chromosomes of the woman to have the same effect. Of course, the probability that both X chromosomes have the same gene variant is lower than the probability that the single X chromosome of the male has the gene variant in question.

Within this framework of an expert in computer science, and who has deep knowledge of medical sciences and intelligence testing, these may provide the basis for an explanation of all, most, or some of the differences in the different interests and enrolment in the computer sciences. It is not a vantage that I hear often.

—

Volko earned a score at an intelligence test score of 172, on the Equally Normed Numerical Derivation Tests (ENNDT) by Marco Ripà and Gaetano Morelli. It was on a standard deviation of 15. A sigma of 4.80 for Claus, which is a general intelligence rarity of 1 in 1,258,887.

Of course, if a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.

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2022-04-21

Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis on Educational Systems, the Gifted Population, and Global Problems

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/09

Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis, M.D., M.Sc., M.A., Ph.D is a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist running his private practice in Thessaloniki, Greece. Having perceived the importance and impact of internet in our lives, he is also professionally active offering online psychotherapy and counseling for Psycall.com and Shezlong.com. He earned an M.D., Medical Doctor Diploma (2000), M.Sc., Medical Research Technology (2003), M.A., Philosophy (2012), and Ph.D., Psychopharmacology (2015), awarded by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

On January 1, 2015, we published an interview. Here, we talk about the educational systems, the gifted, and the main global problem and its solution.

Katsioulis and I talked about the educational systems of the world and the provision for the needs of the gifted population. In terms of the help for the gifted population, he had a few targeted and direct means by which to improve their educational experience.

“The development of a more personal, more accurate and proper educational system is one of the target goals of Anadeixi. I strongly believe that not even 2 different persons can have the exact same profiles, characteristics, needs, personalities, interests, abilities, backgrounds and goals,” Katsioulis stated.

He directed attention to the diversity and the variety of the pupils’ personal profiles. People remain different from one another through life. They should receive education in a similar manner: individually.

Katsioulis judged, “It is rather an unfair, conforming generalization all of the students to participate in the exact same educational program. There should be an introductory level of the basic sciences offered to anyone and on top of this an additional specialized education program based on the personal needs and potencies of any of the participants.”

Other basics in the educational curricula of the world should include reading, writing, and simple math calculations. Also, students should learn a basic knowledge of geography, history, and the other domains of human inquiry and knowledge.

“However, some of the students have specific preferences and interests and the educational system should take these into consideration and respond accordingly,” Katsioulis stated. He proposed a hypothetical system through a diagram, a 2-dimensional representation, for this educational system.

Katsioulis explained, “The horizontal axis may include all the special fields of science, knowledge and interests and the vertical axis may demonstrate the various levels of performance and awareness. Thus, any participant can be allocated to the proper horizontal and vertical places based only on his interests, preferences, goals and current expertise and awareness.”

The power in this educational system comes from the lack of a place for restrictions of age or otherwise. The conversation moved into the global problems at the moment and means to solve them.

Katsioulis stated the main problem as an identity crisis. “People lost their identity, their orientation, their life quality standards.” People do not care about their real personality. They create false selves from the mainstream trends and waste their lives to adjust to only a few others’ expectations of them.

Katsioulis continued, “People have neither time nor any intention to realize what life is about. They are born and live to become consistent and excellent workers, minor pieces of a giant puzzle for some few strong people’s entertainment purposes and benefits. Therefore, they don’t care about the quality of their lives, about other lives, about relationships and the society in general, about our children’s future.”

He views this as both a fact and a pity. However, the proper education described before. This may help with “self-realization, awareness, knowledge, mental maturity, overcoming any external restrictions and limitations. As I usually say to my psychotherapy clients, the solution to any problem is to make a stop and one step back.”

—

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2022-04-21

The Differential Attendance of Men and Women in Computer Science

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/09

When I asked Volko about the experience of having more men than women in the computer sciences while a student, he commented on enrolling in university. Then he mentioned not feeling many surprises at there being fewer women classmates.

He estimates about 5% of the students who went the lectures on a regular basis were female, even potentially fewer. He was into computers since his early childhood. He was involved in an international computer art community called the demoscene, “so-called.”

Volko stated, “In the demoscene, there were hardly any girls or women, and most of the few ones were not programmers, but graphic artists or music composers. I actually never had any prejudice about women being less talented at mathematics, for example, which would be an explanation for them having a harder time getting their ideas implemented as programmers.”

He notes that the proportion between the sexes “spoke a clear language.” He did not consider being around mostly other men, as a young man, as the most please thing. Men, Volko said, tend to be interested in women with a desire for women as partners around that age.

That makes men at this age particularly fond of the opportunities to be able to get to know women, especially with the opportunities that may arise to know women interested in computers like them.

“The fact that few women study computer science may also be the reason why computer science students supposedly tend to be single more often than students of other academic disciplines,” Volko explained, “As a student majoring in one field, you usually do not get to meet students of other majors that often, so you are likely to either find your partner among the ones sharing the same major, or to be left without a partner.”

He may be an exception as he was enrolled in both computer science and medical school at the same time, which is a peculiarity in Austrian tertiary education. In the medical school, about 60% of the women were female. That meant it would not have been that hard for him to find a partner compared to his other classmates who were in computer science only.

In his time, he had two female partners. Both worked in computer science. His first was enrolled in medical school at the time. He got to know her there. Then she was also interested in computers too.

Volko said, “That might have been the reason why I chose her as a partner of all the women who had approached me. Soon after we split up, she abandoned medical school without a degree and started studying computer science; in fact she turned out to be far more talented than I had expected, as she now is a proud holder of a Ph.D. degree in computer science.”

His second partner, who he still spends weekends, has a Master’s degree in computer science, which she completed with distinction. The two of them were still students when they got to know one another. His second partner is also a member of Mensa, the world’s largest high-IQ society.

“Yet there were also some courses in her studies that were troublesome for her because she had attended business school prior to studying computer science, at which higher math had not been taught,” Volko explained.

Now, his second partner is involved with a semi-private company, where she works as a Java user interface developer. She is one of the few women who he knows is into programming. Volko does not view her as the typical “nerd” because she also has several other interests including on in Botany.

—

Of course, if a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.

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2022-04-21

Simple Exercise Tips for Men

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/09

The Mayo Clinic Staff mentioned a physical fitness program as one of the best things for health. Any basic fitness regimen scheduled daily, especially outside, can help with the reduction in the probability for ill health.

“…physical activity can reduce your risk of chronic disease, improve your balance and coordination, help you lose weight, and even boost your self-esteem. And you can reap these benefits regardless of your age, sex or physical ability,” the Mayo Clinic noted.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services made some recommendations, which the Mayo Clinic echoed in the article. Healthy adults should include decent amounts of aerobic and strength training exercises into these regimens.

As stated:

At least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week, or an equivalent combination of moderate and vigorous aerobic activity
Strength training exercises of all the major muscle groups at least twice a week

These simple steps do not amount to much. They can benefit whole body health. The work one does earlier on in life to make this a routine can develop a healthy habit to improve health for the long-term.

Not only a potentially longer lifespan but a definite longer health span, the number of years but also the number of quality years of life.

You can look and feel better. A regular exercise regimen helps with the reduction in heart disease and various cancers, strengthens the bones and muscles, and can help with the control of weight.

Which, if you have not noticed, North Americans are beginning to climb in their weight categories.

The Mayo Clinic cautions, “But if you haven’t exercised for some time and you have health concerns, you may want to talk to your doctor before starting a new fitness routine.”

Mayo Clinic staff also point to the fitness goals. What are they? How do you intend to develop them? What will you include? What things may be an off day? What will other ones be an on day? And so on.

Others things to bear in mind are the things that you prefer and the things that you do not prefer. Because if you continue to work out at specifics that you hate, then you may find these as barriers to the construction of a routine.

You can track your own personal progress and work to stay on the fitness regimen. It is important to remain on a fitness program. However, you do not need to stress yourself, so pace yourself, pick the good ones for you, and have fun why don’t ya!

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2022-04-21

The Personal Background and Professional Work of One of the World’s Most Gifted Men

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/08

On January 1, 2015, we published an interview. Here, we talk about personal views and professional life.

When I asked Katsioulis about the personal background from childhood through adolescence into adulthood, especially regarding the extraordinary giftedness, he stated, “Well, I didn’t have any forehead mark indicating that I have any special abilities, so my childhood was mainly full of activities that I enjoyed, such as reading literature, solving math, logical problems and puzzles, getting involved in discussions with adults and having rather many questions.”

He remarked on a time in childhood. When he was a boy, he made one assumption, reasonable at the time, about sheep. That is, white sheep produce white milk. So, by his thinking, black sheep should make cocoa milk. He spent lots of time alone rather than with friends. This continued into adolescence.

His teachers’ feedback remained “positive and promising at all stages” of his educational experience. “At this point, I should mention that I am very grateful to my parents, both teachers of the Greek language, who provided me a variety of mental stimuli and a proper hosting setting for my interests. During my adolescence, I had a distinction in the national Math exams in 1990 and in the national Physics Final exams in 1993 among some thousands of participants,” Katsioulis remarked.

On the first attempt at the School of Medicine, he was successful in the acceptance based on performance on the entrance examinations in 1993. He remained one of only six successful candidates who went and passed their examinations on their first attempt at it.

Indicative of the performances in scholastic achievements, Katsioulis scored some of the highest intelligence test scores on record, nationally and internationally. In many cases, he scored the highest. On the Physics National Final Exams (Greece, 1993), Cerebrals NVCP-R international contest (2003), and the Cerebrals international contest (2009), he earned the best performance in all three.

These points of the conversation led to the conversation about meeting other ultra-high IQ individuals and then feeling a sense of community.

“My ranking on the Physics National Final Exams is mainly the result of hard work and personal interest in Physics. Having scored quite well in some IQ tests and contests, I joined many High IQ Societies since 2001. I noticed that there were some difficulties in their proper functioning minimizing interactivity and subsidizing creativity,” Katsioulis stated, “Therefore, I took the initiative in 2001 to form a pioneer organization focused on promoting communication and enhancing productivity for the individuals with high cognitive abilities.”

This was the World Intelligence Network. It amounts to an international collective entity for the support of High IQ societies. At the time of the interview, there were 48 High IQ Societies affiliated with the World Intelligence Network. He took the initiative with five other organizations as well. Katsioulis sets a solid example for other gifted men and gifted people in general for perseverance, hard work, and service where little or no help exists.

Those five core organizations are for the 1^st through 5^th standard deviations, which, on a standard deviation of 15, amount to societies for the IQs of 115, 130, 145, 160, and 175. In order, these are QIQ, GRIQ, CIVIQ, HELLIQ, OLYMPIQ. There are two more for children and adolescents called IQID. Then one only for the Greek people, which is a “Greek NGO for abilities, giftedness, and high intelligence named Anadeixi.”

—

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2022-04-21

On Artificial Intelligence and Its Applications

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/07

Eventually, he became a software developer with some work, on leisure time, spent on medical research projects. Now, he maintains the website entitled 21st Century Headlines and founded, recently, Web Portal on Computational Biology. Here we talk about artificial intelligence and then some applications to everyday life for men and women.

Dr. Volko and I discussed the nature of computational intelligence and artificial intelligence. In particular, the system of his expertise, which amounts to evolutionary algorithms and neural networks. These evolutionary algorithms and neural networks become applied to artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence works in numerous movies. It works less functionally in real life in a general sense. However, artificial intelligence functions in many narrow senses in daily life. I asked about the expert consensus definition. Volko stated artificial intelligence as an intelligence displayed by computers and other machines.

“This contrasts with natural intelligence, which is displayed by humans and animals. As there are dozens of definitions of intelligence, there are also many things artificial intelligence may be,” Volko explained, “I like Jeff Hawkins’ definition that intelligence is the ability to make predictions. It is a pretty general definition and it encompasses what is measured by traditional, standardized intelligence tests.”

He mentioned a recent article, which makes a similar comment:

Our brains make sense of the world by predicting what we will see and then updating these predictions as the situation demands, according to Lars Muckli, professor of neuroscience at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging in Glasgow, Scotland. He says that this predictive processing framework theory is as important to brain science as evolution is to biology.

Volko stated artificial intelligence, in a way, amounts to prediction done by computers. The unsupervised learning becomes a form of artificial intelligence. Here, “the machine automatically detects common properties of subsets of the given training data set and is able to classify new data accurately,” Volko stated.

That leads to some more specifics. The nature of a neural network becomes one. According to Volko, the basic premise comes from an artificial neuron in a computer. Each artificial neuron gets input. Artificial neurons link to one another. The output of one neuron becomes the input of another neuron.

Typically, the processing of the input comes from arithmetical operations, e.g., addition, multiplication, and subtraction.

Volko continued, “So, the way a neural network works is: There is some input; this input is sent to the first layer of artificial neurons; the output of these artificial neurons is then sent to the second layer of artificial neurons, and so on, until we get a final output value.”

One of the learning algorithms used to train a neural network is deep learning. Where a machine learns through modification of the neural network, the algorithm used to accomplish this: backpropagation. Each artificial neuron works with a weight. The weights per artificial neuron change “until the output of the network better fits the expectations. With the term weight I am referring to factors with which the input values are multiplied before they are added or subtracted,” Volko said.

The final two forms, relevant to the article domain of discussion, come in evolutionary algorithms and genetic programming. As a separate paradigm of research, though work is ongoing to merge evolutionary algorithms and neural networks Volko notes, evolutionary algorithms work with a mathematical function.

A mathematical function in need of improvement. “By various operations, you modify this function, generating several variants. Then you test which variants produce the best results. This process is called selection and it is inspired by natural (Darwinian) selection,” Volko stated.

Of the best “variants,” these generate novel variants for experimentation or testing. Volko said variant generation can be done through “mutation” and “recombination.” Both inspired by evolutionary theory. One variant on evolutionary algorithms emerges in the form of genetic programming.

Rather than a specific mathematical function, a whole program gets evolved.“I once wrote a program called “GPgl” which evolves a program that generates graphical output. Some of the results of this are quite fascinating, see: http://hugi.scene.org/adok/miscellaneous/gpgl.htm,” Volko said. Then this touched onto some of the applications for everyday people.

One came from dating sites. Volko notes numerous possible applications for the artificial intelligences. He argues the limit will come from the human imagination. He proposes the possibility of a dating site, which asks users to rate possible partners on a 1 to 10 scale.

Or, the users can rate several traits individually. “Based on these ratings, the dating site could compute which person would most probably be the best fit for the user as a partner,” Volko said, “Other applications include natural language processing (e.g.www.deepl.com), facial recognition, games (e.g. chess or Go), medical diagnosis,…”

Artificial intelligence is happening now, at least in a narrow fashion. However, the applications are broad. The continued encroachment of artificial intelligence into our lives needs more attention, especially as technology continues to shake and rattle the fabric of global society – even down to the nitty-gritty of our dating lives.

—

Of course, if a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.

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2022-04-21

Professor Anthony Pinn on Gender, Race, and Humanism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/06

Professor Anthony Pinn is the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities at Rice University. He earned his B.A. from Columbia University, and M.Div. and Ph.D. in the study of religion from Harvard University. He is an author, humanist, and public speaker. Also, and this is in no way a complete listing of titles or accomplishments, Pinn is the Founding Director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning (CERCL) at Rice University.

Here we talk about the gender, race, humanistic aesthetics, and more.

Professor Pinn and I talked about gender, race, and humanism. I appreciated the time taken by one of the foremost humanist thinkers in America, especially for a Canadian. When I asked about the manifestations of the more restricted gender roles for men and women, I framed the question within European-American and African-American communities.

Pinn responded from a different perspective. That is, the view of gender roles cutting across the construction of race in social life. He stated, “That is to say, the restricted and restrictive nature of, say, masculinity and femininity are not defined in terms of ‘blackness’ or ‘whiteness’ but rather in terms of the larger social framework of the Western World. The difference is this: for African Americans, for instance, these restrictive gender roles are also tied to certain forms of stigma associated with race and class.”

I then asked about the humanistic outlook. The ways in which humanism may provide a broader set of possibilities for gender roles for men and women.

“Humanism doesn’t necessarily provide a broader set of possibilities for gender roles. This is because humanists live in cultural worlds, just like theists. As a result, humanists can be just as guilty of encouraging restrictive gender roles. The difference is this: humanists don’t attribute this bad thinking to divine forces,” Pinn explained.

Pinn has expertise in multiple areas. One domain seemed like the aesthetic of African-American humanism. He said, “My answer depends on what you mean by ‘aesthetic.’ In a general sense, there is no overarching ‘style’ or ‘mood’ associated with humanism in African American community – just as there is no one way to be ‘black.’”

I wanted to conclude on knowing some the nuanced and updated to the modern period expectations. The ways in which men and women can contribute to North American societies with newer roles suited to the times.

“The key isn’t to simply “borrow” from one group to correct the problems of others. The key is to understand the constructed nature of gender, to privilege healthy life options that promote the freedom to define and perform ourselves in complex and layered ways,” Pinn concluded, “The goal should be to remove modes of injustice that work against health life options and the beauty of diversity in its various forms.”

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2022-04-21

Responsibilities Via Recognition of Excellence and Quality Public Speaking

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/06

Professor Gordon Guyatt, MD, MSc, FRCP, OC is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact and Medicine at McMaster University. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Here we talk about responsibility to various communities with recognition of professional excellence and the differences between good and bad public speaking.

In the extended 2017 interview in In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, Guyatt and I talked about the numerous representations in the media. He gets representation in the news, in interviews, in articles, in peer-reviewed articles, and so on.

The responsibilities come from the influence or the power. The influential garner responsibility by virtue of power. People listen to them. It depends on the community too. Guyatt seems to gain power and so the responsibility to the medical, public policy, and scientific community.

When I asked about it, Guyatt stated, “To behave with integrity, the main responsibility when you disseminate is accuracy. Another specific concern is a conflict of interest. Many people within the medical community who take public stances are conflicted. They get lots of money from industry. It is hard for that not to influence you.”

He talked about other conflicts of interest. These can mean intellectual conflicts of interest. That is, a researcher prefers their own research compared to others. If someone has evidence or research in disagreement with one’s own, then the other person must be wrong.

Guyatt finds this as a universal phenomenon. “There is a responsibility to be aware of one’s conflict of interest. When there are conflicts of interest, it is crucial to make the conflicts clear. Also, there is a responsibility to attempt to minimize the conflicts of interest, and the presentation and interpretation of things,” Guyatt explained.

He also mentioned the responsibility to listen to others and remain open to other perspectives. In the midst of the presentation to the public, there comes the added benefit of public speaking engagements. People with influence and professional respect get speaking engagements.

They are asked to talk to the public and to constituencies in the professional community. In this case, it is in the medical community. I asked about the good public speakers versus the bad ones.

Guyatt said, “There are the same pieces if you’re talking about medicine and public policy, or whether you’re talking about basic clin-epi. We will talk about large group presentations. [Laughing] I run a course on how to teach evidence-based healthcare.”

He gave an analogy with lectures, on the goodness or badness of a lecture. Guyatt’s first tip is to be enthusiastic. No one wants to see a boring speaker. This gives the impression to the audience of an interesting and energetic presentation.

“I never speak from behind a podium. I give a roving mic. I come out in front of the audience getting or becoming immediate with the audience. As one of my colleagues has said, ‘Just talk to them.’ Which means, be calm, relaxed, and conversational, and look around, and talk to the people in front of you, you should make eye contact,” Guyatt explained.

To give a good speech, and to have public recognition, these go hand-in-hand.

To give a good speech, and to have public recognition, these go hand-in-hand. There is a responsibility to be a good speaker or at least give a better public speech. With a bigger audience, Guyatt continued, there can be the chance to give eye contact to people all over the place.

Another rule is to be organized and repeat in a proper manner.

“Well-organized, very knowledgeable about what you’re talking about, we have a rule: ‘Tell’em what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell’em what you’ve said.’ An organization includes, ‘Okay, folks, here are the major points I’m going to make,’ Guyatt stated, “You do it. At the end, you say, ‘Okay, folks, what might you want to take away from this, what major points have we made.’ That structure is a crucial thing.”

One other thing is to have humor and to tell the stories in an effective and convincing way. You can tell many stories to illustrate everything. A final point is to vary the tone. Guyatt will have pace and modulation in tone per point.

Altogether, a good speech is another responsibility, and a concrete example of that to the public, which comes from the professional recognition of excellence.

—

The British Medical Journal or BMJ had a list of 117 nominees in 2010 for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Guyatt was short-listed and came in second-place in the end. He earned the title of an Officer of the Order of Canada based on contributions from evidence-based medicine and its teaching.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2012 and a Member of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2015. He lectured on public vs. private healthcare funding in March of 2017, which seemed like a valuable conversation to publish in order to have this in the internet’s digital repository with one of Canada’s foremost academics.

For those with an interest in standardized metrics or academic rankings, he is the 14th most cited academic in the world in terms of H-Index at 222 and has a total citation count of more than 200,000. That is, he has the highest H-Index, likely, of any Canadian academic living or dead.

He talks here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. We conducted an extensive interview before: here, here, here, here, here, and here. We have other interviews in Canadian Atheist (here and here), Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Humanist Voices, and The Good Men Project (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

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2022-04-21

Autonomy and Equity Values and Preferences in Practical Terms

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/05

Here we talk about the practical terms of equity and autonomy for Canadians in healthcare with a note on national pharmacare.

On the concrete side of the funding, Guyatt reflected on the situation in Canada. I wanted a more practical look at the costs associated with different value sets. Where in terms of values and preferences, Canadians prefer equity more than autonomy.

Although, some Canadians value autonomy too. However, the costs associated with each differ. They differ for different populations. They do not come out the same. Autonomy as the main value preference. It is associated with private healthcare.

It costs less for the rich and more for the poor. Equity as the main value and preference. It is associated with public healthcare. It may cost some more for the rich. However, it costs less for the poor.

America exemplifies the value and preference of autonomy or choice. Canada and Western Europe characterize the value and preference of equity. Canadian citizens value equity more than autonomy.

“People continue to put a high value on healthcare. I would anticipate that if, in fact, the curve starts swinging up again. We could quite reasonably tolerate, for instance, a 1% increase in our GDP devoted to healthcare. People will tolerate that pretty easily,” Guyatt explained.

With the 1% increase, I wanted to probe deeper. What would this mean in practical terms?

“Everyone [Laughing] would have to pay 5% more in tax burden. Of course, it is how you distribute that. If it were in a Trumpian way, the rich would pay less and everybody else would pay more,” Guyatt stated, “Or you could distribute it in various ways. It means a relatively marginal increase in taxes across the population.”

When I queried about the American administration in office now, Guyatt described the current delivery method of healthcare in the US highly inefficient.

“It is clear that the US way of delivering healthcare is extremely inefficient, extremely inequitable. It turns out on average that there are not better outcomes achieved and probably not as good outcomes in many areas,” Guyatt stated, “They are wasteful and poor outcomes. It is not a very good deal.”

American citizens, unfortunately, pay more for worse outcomes. Guyatt explained a systematic review of health outcomes done by colleagues and himself. In the systematic review, in an analysis on similar conditions, they compared the United States and Canada.

30 conditions were looked at in the research. “There were about 30 conditions that we looked at in the research,” Guyatt said, “There were 15 of them for which there was no difference, essentially, between Canadian and US outcomes. There was about 10 of them with Canadian outcomes as better and 5 with American as better.”

They submitted the paper the first time. They said that the US pays more and do not gain anything. The journal reviewer who examined the academic paper stated that Canadian outcomes are on mean better.

“We became less conservative after our peer reviews. On average, the Canadian outcomes are better. The very conservative statement is that the Americans are paying more on average for worse outcomes if you look across the spectrum,” Guyatt said, “We are constantly decrying the support for evidence in political decision making (academics). The continued support for universal healthcare. The governments, Kathleen Wynne extended healthcare to the under 25.”

People would pay less for equal or better drug coverage with a pharmacare program done across the country. A national pharmacare program akin to the national healthcare program. This is independent of the concern of whether the politicians could communicate this to people.

Canadian citizens would pay less. If you look at the American case, “the US may be paying somewhat fewer taxes – even though that is somewhat questionable, but their payments are gigantically more,” Guyatt said.

If Canada had a national pharmacare program, then Canadians would gain in the lowered drug costs. This would “more than make up for any increased taxes. However, Guyatt concluded, “There is no groundswell for universal pharma care.”

—

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2022-04-21

Distinguished Professor Gordon Guyatt on Equity and Autonomy in Medical Care

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/05

Here we talk about equity and autonomy values around the world in medical care. This amounts to part of the evidence-based medicine model with values and preferences considered in medical care within the context of technological advances.

Guyatt, when asked about the aging populations of North America and Europe, responded on the valuation of equity over autonomy, and vice versa. The value judgment depends on values of preferences.

Those values and preferences come from culture. These influence individual and societal medical care decisions. Guyatt included Japan in with the Western world in terms of the aging population, which amounts to a significant problem in the demographics.

“Most of the Western world in terms of the aging population, and also Japan, are substantially ahead of North America. A big thing that people do not realize in terms of healthcare for populations and the aging of the population is that the huge bulk of expenditures comes in the last year of life,” Guyatt explained.

People live longer. Whether we die at 100 or 60, the largest bulk of healthcare expenses come from the last year of life. We get sick. We age. Sooner or later, we die. Guyatt said there has been a good job in the constraining of costs.

The technological advances, according to Guyatt, have raised the costs of healthcare. However, this depends on the costs people feel willing to pay out. The advances in technology can be drugs, surgical devices, and other things.

These improve health outcomes but cost more than before. Guyatt stated, “We live longer, longer, and longer. Yes, we may have to, if we want to take advantage of all of the technological advances that are going to continue even though the last 7 years it has not gone up, spend more of our GDP on healthcare.”

If done efficiently, according to Guyatt, then this will be public expenditures rather than private expenditures. He argues, in the next 100 years, that Canada, as an example, will get close to what the United States spends as a portion of its GDP on healthcare.

The US spends about 18% at the moment. However, I am aware of Moore’s Law in information technologies and the Law of Accelerating Returns. This brought a question to mind for me. I stated, “Technology becomes cheaper over time. Phones were for the rich decades ago. They were not good. But they became better. The poorer were able to afford them and the phones were far better.”

“It is a great point. 50 years ago, everybody had to live with their debilitating hip osteoarthritis or knee osteoarthritis. Now, hundreds of thousands of people are getting their hips and knees replaced,” Guyatt responded, “That ended up costing money for years. The hip and knee replacements have become much more efficient. People used to stay in the hospital a week after the hip replacement. Now, it can be the same day. It is a good point.”

He surmised that this may be the reason for the stagnation in the increase in health care cost as a percentage of the GDP in Canada. Potentially, this may extend to other nations as well. Some of the advances can raise costs. Other can decrease them.

In the end analysis, the increase in efficiency may balance out with the increase in costs due to more advanced technology introduced into the global medical care market.

Guyatt, in a final example, concluded, “Another huge example of that is it used to be 45% of our healthcare expenditures were spent in the hospital. Now, it is 30%. There has been a gigantic shift to doing things as an outpatient, which is a much more efficient way of operating.”

—

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2022-04-21

On Gender Roles in Fundamentalist Religion

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/04

Karrar Al Asfoor is the Co-Founder of the United Atheists of Europe. Asfoor is also the Co-Founder of Atheist Alliance – Middle-East and North Africa. United Atheists of Europe is an organization in development, more in theory than in practice, and devoted to the unification of atheist efforts in Europe. Here we talk about Islam and gender roles from Asfoor’s perspective.

When I asked Asfoor about the standard gender roles in Islam, Asfoor talked about the complete dominance of men over women. That is, the women are treated as if property or chattel for men. Asfoor considered the most appropriate term “slaves.” Women become slaves for men.

The restrictions for human possibilities are greater for women than for men. “Many women in the Muslim world spend their whole life among four walls,” Karrar stated, “They are not allowed to go out without approval from their families. Many of them never get the opportunity to study or work.”

In addition to these restrictions on women, women spend the first portions of their lives inside of the house and then the second portions of life in the husband’s place. They work there. The work includes cleaning, cooking, and raising children.

Karrar said, “This policy is not only unfair for women but also it causes the society to operate in half of its power causing it to collapse and that’s why the Islamic world is going backward while the rest of the world is going forward.”

Women lose out; society loses out. I asked about the divinely prescribed gender roles in Islam. Asfoor quoted four verses: Verse 4:34, Verse 4:11, Verse 4:3, and Verse 2:282. “Verse 4:34 in the Quran clearly states that men are dominant over women. They have the right to beat them. Furthermore, Verse 4:11 gives women half the share of men when dividing the inheritance,” Asfoor explained.

Verse 4:3 permitted men to marry up to 4 women including additional sex slaves. Verse 2:282 says two female witnesses are equal to only one male witness. Asfoor considered these indicative of women seen as half-humans or less than half humans within the faith.

I asked for a comparative analysis. That is the perspective on the standards stated before. Then the humanistic standard that has been seen elsewhere in different documents. Do these seem humanistic in general? Do these consider women as full human beings? I wanted to know more.

Asfoor, stating in the negative. Islam seems non-humanistic to Asfoor. He concluded, “Because every self-aware being is actually looking for happiness and rejecting pain, and considering them not to be full humans just because they don’t have male sexual parts is something ridiculous, irrational, and not humanistic at all, it causes pain to them and this is an immoral act.”

Asfoor sees these principles and standards set for women as non-humanistic.

—

He talks here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. He authored/co-authored some e-books, free or low-cost. If you want to contact Scott: Scott.D.Jacobsen@Gmail.com. We published other interviews in Canadian Atheist, Humanist Voices, and Personal Medium account.

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2022-04-21

The Exciting Research in Medicine and Critical Thinking About Medical Care

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/04

Here we talk about the research that helps the low income and the critical thinking stance to take on pseudo-medicines or medicine purporting to help but does not in the end.

In 2017, I had the chance to talk with a leading medical research, distinguished professor Gordon Guyatt. He specializes in evidence-based medicine. I wanted to talk about some important research and some practical tips for the public.

Tips for the public to avoid snake oil and bogus remedies. We started on the research and then moved onto the practical tips. When I asked about the research, I focused on the research with the most potential to improve health outcomes for the low income.

On low-income Canadians, Guyatt stated, “The best way to improve the health of low-income folks is to decrease income gradients and that would have far more impact than any particular health interventions.”

That is, if society could stop or reduce smoking, then this would improve the health outcomes of the entire population. Lifetime smokers have seven few years of life than non-smokers. That is significant. Who would not pay for another 2,000-3,000 days of life, especially near the end of life?

It is a “far bigger gradient that can come from any particular health interventions. So if we can persuade everyone to stop smoking, that would have an enormous impact on health. While medical innovations have made a big impact on both quality and quantity, there are other things like income gradients, like health habits – in particular, smoking – that have a bigger impact,” Guyatt explained.

As a provincial, national, and, indeed, international expert in evidence-based medicine, this became an important point to convey to me. In particular, the clarity comes from the expertise, knowledge, years in the field, and reading the research.

“Medical treatment has made a big impact on various areas, including cardiovascular disease and treatments and cancer. Those were made because those were the biggest sources of morbidity and mortality in society. That is where I see the biggest continuing potential: certainly, within the area of cancer, our understanding biology has advanced enormously,” Guyatt said.

He states that there will be a steady intake of new preventions and therapies. Many fatal cancers will be chronic diseases in the future. This has been happening. He predicts this will continue into the future. When I shifted the conversation to the critical thinking part. I wanted some simple tips.

Guyatt stated, “What they can do is learn the basic principles of deciding what evidence is trustworthy and what is not. That should be possible. A colleague of mine by the name of Andy Oxlan has completed a large randomized trial in Africa of teaching school-age kids about recognizing, as you put it, snake oil from legitimate health claims.

Oxlan’s randomized trial showed that kids improved substantially in their ability to make the distinctions. At the same time, the parents’ ability to make these decisions improved too. Now, these are highly poor or poverty-stricken areas of the world in parts of the African continent.

We live in a rich country with more resources including information. That would make our job easier in terms of taking a proactive approach to personal health claims.

“Should people decide to educate themselves, they all would be in a position to make judgments themselves. They should certainly be in the position, even with quite limited knowledge,” Guyatt explained, “of asking their clinicians to justify what evidence there is to base what is being suggested and to challenge the physician or the clinician in explaining – to be made knowledgeable of the evidence that supports what they’re doing.”

—

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2022-04-21

Distinguished Professor Gordon Guyatt on the Canadian Healthcare System

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

Here we talk about the big wins from public healthcare compared to private healthcare on most metrics.

Guyatt and I continued the conversations on the societal variables of the United States. Those variables or factors to make the US an outlier compared to other developed nations/rich nations with good infrastructure.

“I think most people would say that the United States in terms of that value that we were talking about earlier. That is, the value one puts on autonomy versus the value one puts on equity or social solidarity. The US public has extremely different values,” Guyatt opined.

The ability to do one’s own thing. The freedom to choose as one wishes. The chance to be an autonomous and self-governing individual. This is a higher value to Americans than Canadians. This plays out in the healthcare system too.

Guyatt stated, “So, that the fact that it could even be an issue that you could legally insist that people purchase insurance for their healthcare in one way or another – by governments making it available to them. It would inconceivable in Western Europe that that would be a question.

That is, there are influences of the cultural trends on the selection preferences of the population with Western Europe and Canada more towards public healthcare tendencies and the United States towards the private healthcare tendencies.

There is an influence of attitudes – or values and preferences in the evidence-based medicine literature vernacular – on the desired social programs “across the spectrum.

“Social solidarity, equity, support for the disadvantaged, so on and so forth, is much more highly valued in Western Europe and Canada than it is in the United States,” Guyatt said.

With background, I stated, “I see this attached to your work with Evidenced-Based Medicine with the part that was added on later in the research with ‘values and preferences.’ Culture influences values and preferences even to the extent of administrative costs being swallowed.”

Guyatt responded, “Yes, you are absolutely right. Way back in 2002, when Roy Romanow did his work on a recommendation to the government about a healthcare recommendation, he surveyed Canadians in a variety of formats.”

Base on the survey collective data set analysis, Canadians placed equity as a high value and not autonomy; where the United States, they value autonomy more than equity. In terms of the implications of the financing and the things people pay for healthcare, Guyatt argues there is misinformation.

He considers Americans horrified with the possibility of not being able to pay for quicker and better healthcare. For social solidarity and equity in contrast to autonomy, Scandinavian nations and the United States of America differ starkly.

—

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2022-04-21

The Wins from Public Healthcare in the Canadian Healthcare System for Most Citizens

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

Here we talk about the big wins from public healthcare compared to private healthcare on most metrics.

Professor Guyatt ran for the NDP four times and lost “honorably” four times. He replied, “I do not know about honorably.” At that point, I laughed because it was a good joke. However, this prefaced some conversation with Guyatt about healthcare.

For example, the New Democratic Party in Canada may more probably work with platform positions and policies leaning more in ways favorable to the general public regarding healthcare. For those on the outside of this slant, they may value choice.

These types value the freedom and autonomy in their healthcare selections. This means the private funding model of healthcare, which benefits the rich. The other, the NDP type mentioned before, represents benefits or interests more for the poor.

Although, simplistic, it represents the split between private and public healthcare well.

“Those are different perspectives. The issue is if one were talking about the values issue. The value comes down to equity versus what people call ‘autonomy’ or ‘choice,’” Guyatt explained, “On the one hand, there are people who say, ‘You should not have financial barriers to high-quality healthcare. Everyone should get the highest quality healthcare that the system has to offer.’ That is one value.”

The other value Guyatt describes is the ways in which people spend money on healthcare similar to other things in their lives, including a better house or an upgrade in a car. That is, the individual Canadian citizen should be able to spend resources in a similar way on their healthcare.

Guyatt stated, “That is a fundamental value and preference divide, which tends to follow a left-right distribution. The folks on the left value equity more. The folks on the right value choice or autonomy more.”

The discussion shifted into an elimination of autonomy as a consideration. The frame of mind or outcomes if one takes choice or freedom as a value within the set of values thought important for oneself.

“Let’s say one thinks it is a good thing to constrain healthcare expenditures and say that you do not want too much GDP going towards health, the dramatic contrast with that concern is the United States and more or less the rest of the high-income countries,” Guyatt said.

Guyatt compared various areas and countries of the world on private and public healthcare. The United States is 45% public and 55% private. Canada is about 70% public and 30% private. France and Germany are about 75% public and Scandinavia tends to be over 80% public and at or below 20% private.

The United States, in developed nations, stands out. It becomes the proverbial sore thumb or a “big outlier with a much smaller proportion public than the rest of the Western world,” Guyatt described.

“Not coincidentally, they take the cake in terms of percentage of GDP spent on healthcare in the vicinity of 18% now. So, the reasons for that is administrative costs are in Canada perhaps 16 and 17% of our healthcare expenditures,” Guyatt stated, “In the US, it is over 30%. As soon as you make people pay privately, everybody has to buy health insurance, then you have huge administrative costs.”

That means insurance companies need to be founded and maintained. They make packages. They compete with one another. A large documentation is needed for all health services. This becomes a big administrative cost with the private funding compared to the public funding.

Guyatt concluded, “Government cannot constrain healthcare costs, essentially. They cannot set boundaries effectively within a private funding model. In terms of constraining healthcare costs, public funding is an out and out winner by a long margin.”

—

He talks here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. We conducted an extensive interview before: here, here, here, here, here, and here. We have other interviews in Canadian Atheist (here and here), Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Humanist Voices, and The Good Men Project (here, here, here, here, and here).

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2022-04-21

Professor Gordon Guyatt on Healthcare in Canada

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/02

Here we talk about the potentials for a private versus public healthcare.

In a March, 2017, Professor Gordon Guyatt talked about private healthcare versus public healthcare. He looked into the distinct advantages and disadvantages of public and private healthcare in Canada.

I reached out to him to become more informed on the topic. When I talked to him, he noted people want to know how to decide on the relative merits of public healthcare funding versus private healthcare funding. A few things arise for people, according to Guyatt.

Some of the questions raised is health outcomes. For example, the impact of people’s health, the access to care, the impact on the patient satisfaction, and the impact on autonomy or choice. Then there is healthcare cost or spending too.

Individual Canadian citizens who can afford and prefer private healthcare funding need a primer, first. Guyatt notes the large amount of misinformation. There is a misinformation coming for a number of reasons.

Guyatt states that the mindset as follows: “things aren’t working the way they are now. There has got to be a better way, at least with respect to physician and hospital services. Perhaps, we should try something different.”

That can be one driver for it. People want something different. They look for something different than the current setup. The benefits or the outcomes of the private versus the public funding will depend on the individual.

If someone is poor or rich, or penurious or wealthy, the considerations and benefits or outcomes become different for people. The changes in outcomes happen across this spectrum. It is also different if a healthcare provider compared to a consumer.

“When I talk to audiences, there are notions that people have about what is affordable. There are notions people have about what it will do to their own income,” Guyatt stated, “Those will influence things. Often it starts off with ‘public funding of healthcare is not sustainable.’ To deal with that, I ask, ‘What do you think has happened to healthcare expenditures as a proportion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over the last 7 years?’”

He begins to give some options of the amount going up over every year, most years, and so on. Many people become surprised at the answer. The amount has stagnated or decline. “So, as a percentage of GDP, healthcare is lower than 7 years ago. Also, they tend to be surprised when you inform them: in 1991, it was 10% of GDP for all healthcare expenditures,” Guyatt said.

At the time of the interview, it was a bit below 11% over more than 25 years. With public healthcare expenditures, it becomes more extreme over 25 years at about 7% to 7.5%. This can shape the perception of people about healthcare.

Guyatt concluded, “In general, that leads people to rethink the unaffordability of public funding of healthcare. Often, that is the first thing in people’s minds.”

—

He talks here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. We conducted an extensive interview before: here, here, here, here, here, and here. We have other interviews in Canadian Atheist (here and here), Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Humanist Voices, and The Good Men Project (here, here, here, here, and here).

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2022-04-21

National Pharmacare for Everyone in Canada

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/02

Here we talk about the potentials for a national pharmacare program.

—

Professor Guyatt and I talked about the dynamics between the medicare and pharmacare systems for Canada. The important point, the former exists; the latter does not exist. Why? “Historical accident,” Guyatt said.

The national healthcare program never expanded to a national pharmacare program out of historical accident. Most developed nations have one. It drastically lowers the price for most people, so benefits more of the population.

Other nations of the developed world considered this to a greater extent. The Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau not too long ago talked about the formation of a committee and then the development of a national healthcare program in Canada.

At the time of the interview, Guyatt, though things may have changed, stated, “The status of that is, at the moment, unfortunate. So, Eric Hoskins resigned as health minister in Ontario to go and work on this. We thought – it is hard to know – that he was quite progressive. That he would be doing this because it is very exciting to have a real national pharmacare.

Bill Morneau (at the time of the interview) talked about the possibility of a mixed public-private healthcare system akin to the system developed by the Obama Administration prior to the Trump Administration in the United States.

“If it happens that way, it will be extremely unfortunate. Whereas, people who are interested in national pharmacare got very excited about the apparent initiative. The way Morneau has talked about it, subsequently, has considerably dampened the enthusiasm and gotten people much more worried,” Guyatt laments.

For the lower socioeconomic status or SES Canadians, the prices can be big issues. These are people with part-time jobs, poorly paying jobs, and low-skill jobs. This lead some of the conversation into the health gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.

It is about 10-15 years, depending on reportage, in lifespan not to mention healthspan between Indigenous Canadians, as Professor Guyatt has likely read and knew. It is a national concern. According to a colleague Professor Guyatt talked with, apparently, some Indigenous have drug coverage. That spares some the problem.

Other folks, the lower-income Canadians in general, will have a real problem; the ones without drug coverage have a real problem on their hands. When I asked for numbers on the problem, Guyatt stated, “I have seen different statistics. I think it would be of the order of 15% or 20% who, when asked, would say, ‘I haven’t filled a prescription because of the financial issues.’”

Some activism became part of the conversation as well. Guyatt described how letters to the fedral MPs can be a great help. Those letters with group signatures for pharmacare. Guyatt opined, “I think the politicians are more impressed at individual letters, individually written. Anyone who cares about pharmacare and who would like to write an, even brief, individual letter. Those things make a difference.”

The things most appealing, likely, to the poorer Canadians would be the coverage for everyone under 25 in Ontario by Kathleen Wynne, according to Guyatt.

“So, people on social assistance over 65 get coverage. Now, she has extended it to everyone under 25. Here is pharmacare for everyone under 25,” Guyatt explained, “Now, it is a relatively easy population because people under 25 don’t usually need many drugs. So, it is good. It is nice. But a relatively inexpensive group to extend to. In terms of what is required to gain both the equity and the efficiency goals, it is a program that would simply give universal coverage. The way we have for physicians in hospitals.”

—

He talks here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. We conducted an extensive interview before: here, here, here, here, here, and here. We have other interviews in Canadian Atheist (here and here), Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Humanist Voices, and The Good Men Project (here, here, here, and here).

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2022-04-21

The Canadian National Opioid Guideline from 2017

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/01

Here we talk about the start of national opioid guidelines for Canada from late 2017.

Professor Guyatt helped with the national opioid guidelines. He talked about the over-prescription of non-cancer pain alongside an increase in excessive doses of opioids for it. This led to narcotic dependency among the population of these users.

“Everybody knows this is a problem. An earlier Canadian guideline in the days before people were really waking up to this, basically, did not say when to use opioids. It said, ‘If you decide to use opioids, what are the best ways? What are the guides for giving out the opioids?’”

Within the context of the medical community and the patients receiving care, the reasonableness of these prescriptions was within it. People needed care. People were in pain. Opioids reduced the pain.

Problem solved. However, the problem came with unpredicted side effects. It contributed to the opioid overprescribing, which was a problem.

“So, a couple of years ago, and a few months ago produced, a national guideline for opioid use,” Guyatt stated, “It starts out saying, ‘Before you use opioids, try non-steroidal, try drugs like Acetaminophen, try a number of other drugs such as those in the anticonvulsant class that have analgesic properties. Some antidepressants have analgesic properties. Bottom line: do not use opioids as your first, second, or third option. Try other things before you move to opioids.’”

The next finding for the Canadian medical community was the opioids were really great for the short-term but powerful pain, or acute pain. These provided substantially positive effects for the acute pain of patients.

However, there is a point at which the patients become used to the opioids. That means the opioid effects wear off. “When you give opioids chronically, the effect is actually quite limited,” Guyatt said.

If there was a visual analogue of the pain as a scale with 0 as no pain and 10 as the worst pain, chronic opioids only lower pain by about one unit on the scale using whole numbers. A 6 becomes a 5 and a 4 becomes a 3, and so on.

“Very modest effect, it has lots of side effects,” Guyatt explained, “So, the guidelines say, ‘Do not give large doses of opioids. No extra benefits, extra risks, if you are going to give opioids, first try everything else, then when you try this make the dose modest.’”

The guidelines also provided people who are stuck on opioids how to reduce their opioid use and even eliminate opioids as part of their medication set.

Guyatt concluded, “A whole set of recommendations for dealing with the over-prescription of opioids. That will hopefully lead to much better prescribing.”

—

He talks here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. We conducted an extensive interview before: here, here, here, here, here, and here. We have other interviews in Canadian Atheist (here and here), Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Humanist Voices, and The Good Men Project (here, here, and here).

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2022-04-21

The Beginning of the National Healthcare Coverage in Canada

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/01

Here we talk about the start of national healthcare coverage for Canadians.

The conversation went into the beginning of the national healthcare coverage in Canada. Dr. Gordon Guyatt described how the program was a national hospital insurance program and began in the late 1950s.

He stated the big change came from the bringing in of the physician services under the national program. We call this Medicare. The Premier of Saskatchewan in the early 1960s, Tommy Douglas, made the provincial program cover the physician services.

“The physicians were very unhappy. There was a physician strike. They had to bring in people from England to fill in the gaps, but, eventually, the physicians lost that battle. There was a Medicare program for physicians’ services in Saskatchewan,” Guyatt stated, “It is for this reason that some people see Douglas as the father of Canadian Medicare. A few years later, the Pearson government passed legislation that enabled the national Medicare program that we have. Now, medicine, medical services, in Canada are a provincial responsibility, so that the federal government could not bring in their own program.”

There was a need to persuade the other provinces of the need for the program. That the program meets the federal standards. The incentive was if the program met a minimum standard then 50% of the cost would be paid. It was a “very enticing” carrot for the provinces.

By the late 1960s, legislation was being passed and by 1971/72 the rest of the provinces bought into the deal. “Now, we have effectively national public insurance for physicians as well as hospital services. Canadians have been the beneficiaries,” Guyatt opines.

Healthcare may be less important to young people than to old people because young people tend to be healthier than old people. Young people develop illnesses with, at times and unfortunately, fatal or seriously injurious consequences.

“If you want a picture of the difference, you would only have to look south of the border. You come from a high-income family. Your parents in the States have probably purchased insurance from you, or can pay if you have problems,” Guyatt explained, “If you are low income or middle income, and not fully insured, which would be the case for a lot of young people who say, ‘Okay, I am low-risk. Why should I pay these very high insurance costs?’”

You are in big trouble. That is a worry and a burden that you are free of in Canada. It makes a big difference to our quality of life. The feeling, “If I fall into problems, then I have a system there. That will deal with me. That I will not be constrained from it because of cost.”

When I asked about younger Canadians feeling more precariousness in their sense of security around health without the Canadian national healthcare program, Guyatt said, “I think inevitably. If you had been in the United States, you would either have one of two choices. You pay insurance. There are varying levels of insurance. You pay the basic insurance. That you might be able to afford, but that means if you get sick then you have additional payments that you can’t afford.”

Some people may take the risk. Others may not take the risk. However, if they take the risk and become sick, then they will be in real trouble because underinsurance is the number one cause of United States citizen bankruptcy. It has to do with people getting sick.

“Most people who go bankrupt have some insurance,” Guyatt notes, “But they are underinsured. There is a whole level of insurance, where to be well-insured costs a lot of money. So, the choices facing young people in the United States who are not from very affluent families is not a cheerful one.”

—

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2022-04-21

An Empathy Chasm in Young Men is a Problem

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/31

I want to talk about young men today.

In Psychology Today, Professor Philip Zimbardo commented on the state of affairs for young men. He does not have a positive prognosis so far, especially without remedial changes for them, and by them for that matter.

Zimbardo opens the articles with the statement and question, “As our kids and grandkids head back to school for a new semester, we are thinking about more than their grade point average. We are thinking about their safety, their development, and what’s going to happen when they graduate. Are the kids really going to be all right?”

The emphasis is on the concern of the older generations, “parents and grandparents,” regarding their young. In turn, this implies the nation’s young. Though this happens globally, such as some issues for young men, this becomes any nation’s youth.

The boys are not alright, but girls seem to be doing more swimmingly in more ways than the boys who become young men and the girls who become young women.

Zimbardo continued, “Whether we’ll admit it or not, young men as a group are getting left behind amid the shifting economic, social, and technological landscape. Everyone knows a young man who is struggling, either in school or afterward; “failing to launch,” with emotional disturbances, in interactions with the opposite sex, or with drug use and gang activities.”

This produces a problem for the sex dynamics on campuses, for the professional achievement of the young men, and the family formation of the couples. In the United States, where this failure to launch seems more prevalent, the Congressional Office reports one in six men is incarcerated or not working.

It is an increase of 45% since 1980. The mass shootings, perpetrated mostly by men, and suicides have increased drastically as well.

“There is an empathy gap in society when it comes to having compassion for the challenges boys and young men face, the issues that underlie the statistics above,” Zimbardo laments, “Nobody sees investing in boys’ development as “worth it” and as a result boys today are growing up and deciding that it is not worth it for them to invest their time and energy back into their communities.”

What happens as a result in the various cultures? Most prominent phenomena acquire a name with an implied judgment. Many names abound including bamboccioni, diaosi, hikikomori, MGTOW, NEETS, and numerous others.

“The shift into alternative realities disconnects young men further. Asking what’s wrong with them or why aren’t they motivated the same way young men used to be aren’t the right questions. Society is not giving the support, guidance, means, or places for young men to be motivated or interested in aspiring to long-term real-life goals,” Zimbardo stated.

Nikita Coulombe and Zimbardo published variations of a book on this topic. In some of their research, they conducted a survey of about 20,000 people. They wanted to know about the motivational problems for the young men around us.

The top answer for men is a conflict of messages. The institutions in their lives. Their media, parents, and peers. They give a set of images and rules. A set of things they should not do. Some in derogatory and demeaning tones. Does this help them?

For one, the conflicting messages set young men – 18-to-35-year-olds – on a path in life with a double bind, in more precise language: damned if they don’t and damned if they do. Young men left without guidance or conflicts in guidance.

Often, it seems targeted, even for good intentions, with a derogation, a tone of derision. Few people react well to this. Masculinity manifests itself in many forms. As Dr. Leonard Sax notes in another commentary, the attempt to create androgynous men and women failed or seems to be a failure.

The gender differences seem to have, in part and in some areas, exaggerated in not-so-healthy ways. With it, the rise of what has been termed “toxic masculinity” or “hypermasculinity” by feminists and social progressives.

Zimbardo perceives this as viewing masculinity as in and of itself a disease. It leaves questions about a role model or role models more generally for young men and boys. Who models hypo-masculinity or salutary masculinity – so to speak? By which I mean, less jocularly, the sense of a healthy, positive, proactive, and assertive sense of a masculine sense of self for boys to want to grow into and young men and men to become.

“Just one out of five (link is external) elementary and middle school teachers is male, and fatherlessness in America remains above 40 percent (link is external),” Zimbardo explains, “Among boys who do have fathers, the amount of time they spend in one-on-one conversation with their dads is only a fraction of the time they spend in front of a TV or on a computer, where they see men represented as emotionless warriors, hapless dads, or losers who can’t get anything right.”

A decline in the role models combines with only the unhealthy – or toxic masculinity or hypermasculinity if you must – masculinity represented. In gangs, in schools, in peers, in media, in video games, the main roles represented are the unhealthy forms of the masculine self.

Boys want to become gangstas, playas, sexual conquistadors, dominating and domineering dads, unemotional robotic achievement-only men, and buff and powerful mentors respected for any of the aforementioned.

What about becoming fathers? What about achievement in school and in being a compassionate person? What about being a slow and steady, tender and passionate lover who embodies romantic ideals, where sex does not become another commodity?

What about love for one another – the Golden Rule rather than, say, the Bronze Rule of all for myself and nothing for anyone else – in spite of the mean, the cruel, the greedy, the stupid, the bigoted, the irascible, the cowardly, the rude, and others in daily life deserving of similar low regard, as a high value?

Zimbardo said, “In other words, many boys are going from male-absent home environments to male-absent school environments back to male-absent home environments where they then watch toxic male role models on a screen; this begs the question: what kind of future are they supposed to envision for themselves?”

What is this future? Approximately 15 years are between kindergarten and university. That spells trouble into 2033, potentially. Any remedial changes will take time, potentially 15 years. If starting in 2018, then the changes will need 15 years to see the changes in the unhealthy patterns.

Unfortunately, I see little done. At the same time, I predict a continuation of the problems, or an exacerbation for more precision, for at least another decade. “In our book, Man Interrupted (link is external),” Zimbardo plugged, “we explore what’s happening with young men and where they are headed by examining the individual, situational and systemic factors that are contributing to these trends. The concluding chapters offer a set of solutions that can be affected by different segments of society including schools, parents and young men themselves.”

His, Zimbardo’s and I assume Coulombe’s, take-home message comes to guidance and compassion for young men in our lives. Young adulthood remains hellish; to add the burden of demonization by the systems around you, including the stated before of media, peers, parents, and the schools, can be worse than hellish.

Zimbardo reflects, touchingly, on personal experience and opines, “Growing up in poverty, I saw the difference a mentor could make. If we alienate our sons we’re going to lose a whole generation, to say nothing of the ripple effects that impact us all.”

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2022-04-21

Humanism in British Columbia for 2018

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/31

Ian Bushfield, M.Sc., is the Executive Director of the British Columbia Humanist Association (BCHA). The BCHA has been working to have humanist marriages on the same plane as other marriages in the province. Here we talk about recent updates from the view of the BCHA.

Bushfield and I talked several months ago, but I had not caught up with him. So, I decided to follow up with him on the updates from the non-religious, and the humanist more particularly, the landscape in Canada, especially in British Columbia.

Bushfield directed attention to the Government of British Columbia needing to tackle the ongoing housing crisis. This means a committed and concerted effort to work with non-profits, faith groups, and others, to develop more affordable housing united.

He noted the developments – the housing crisis kind – have put vulnerable groups at risk of religious coercion. “While we understand the urgency of getting units built, this shouldn’t come at the cost of violating the human rights of the nonreligious, religious minorities or the LGBTQ+ community,” Bushfield opines.

The second thing he noted as an ongoing concern is the need to table a bill for the creation of a new Human Rights Commission in the fall of 2018. Bushfield explained, “This can be an important institution that acts to proactively protect human rights in the province, including secularism. The devil is going to be in the details so we’ll have to keep our eye on what comes forward.”

For the concerns of the non-religious across the nation in 2018, Bushfield talked about the federal government tabling legislation for the repeal of the blasphemy law in Canada. However, the bill continues to be stalled in the Senate. It has been for several months as of now.

“We need to continue pressing the government and Senators to move the bill forward and ensure its passage this fall. There’s always a small chance that the government will opt to prorogue Parliament over the summer,” Bushfield stated, “and that could mean we have to start from square one again. While we’re on the Senate, the chamber has also created a committee to study Canadian charity law.”

The BCHA is coordinating with the Canadian Secular Alliance in order to speak out against the privileged position of religious groups in Canadian law. To those in some religious communities, this may as unnoticed as birds in air or fish in calm waters; however, to the non-religious, these tend to be more noticed, as if a mild storm for the birds in the air.

Bushfield noted, “Between this and the government’s expected response to an expert report on loosening the rules around charities’ political activities, we have a rare opportunity to remake Canada’s charity laws.”

Bushfield took part in a debate too. It was extended to Bushfield via Apologetics Canada. The debate was between Dr. Andrew or “Andy” Bannister. It was a “cordial dialogue” about Humanism or Christianity providing a better basis for human rights.

Dr. Bannister talked from the Christian view; Bushfield spoke from the Humanist view.

“While Dr. Bannister has far more academic training than me in philosophy and apologetics, I tried to present a layman case for the understanding that morality and therefore our contemporary human rights are the result of a cultural evolutionary process and something we can continually build upon,” Bushfield stated.

Bushfield emphasized the “simple and largely universal approach of the Golden Rule.” He said that he had a lot of fun and encourages people to take a look into the dialogue or debate – here and here.

Bushfield wants to focus on the fundamentals of Humanism over 2018 as a big overarching goal. The goal is to make a difference in the lives of the citizens of British Columbia and Canada as well.

Bushfield describes Humanism as pro-human in the sense that it is not anti-religious but stands more for human rights, democracy, and peace.

“I’m increasingly worried that as a movement we’ve possibly spent too much time on the latter and that’s made some of our spaces less welcoming than we’d want. I think there’s an appetite for the secular, inclusive and progressive message that Humanism can offer and I’m eager to talk more about that,” Bushfield concluded.

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2022-04-21

The Mayo Clinic Anxiety Checklist

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/31

I want to talk to you today about anxiety.

Anxiety can be a restrictor of life quality and general wellbeing. The sense of anxiousness and unwarranted concern through stress can take its toll on mental and physical health.

The Mayo Clinic, of the and often rated the foremost medical clinic in the world, talked about anxiety and the feeling of anxious. Imagine the times when you are in traffic, waiting for the light, or caught in the deep of an uncomfortable social situation. No one wants those, normally.

Some people feel this most or all the time. They are anxious, nervous, concerned but not for a specific reason. They feel generally anxious. They have what is quite literally called generalized anxiety disorder.

It is different than a momentary blip in the anxiety radar. Or a sense of urgency about things for a tad, especially around an assignment due or a big job initiative or promotion. This generalized anxiety disorder can develop at most ages. That means childhood and adulthood where this would become a problem.

Some people have obsessive compulsive disorder. Others have major depressive disorder, still others have this generalized anxiety disorder. It does not make the person good or bad, but does make daily living potentially a little or a lot more difficult for the person to manage it.

Since this, like the others, can be a long-term condition, it can be a challenge for the long haul for the person with the disorder. Some preliminary things that have helped those with it: psychotherapy and medications.

However, you may need to look into the signs of the disorder too. The Mayo Clinic recommends looking at the following signs:

Persistent worrying or anxiety about a number of areas that are out of proportion to the impact of the events
Overthinking plans and solutions to all possible worst-case outcomes
Perceiving situations and events as threatening, even when they aren’t
Difficulty handling uncertainty
Indecisiveness and fear of making the wrong decision
Inability to set aside or let go of a worry
Inability to relax, feeling restless, and feeling keyed up or on edge
Difficulty concentrating, or the feeling that your mind “goes blank”

If you are concerned about a friend or family member, I would recommend looking at or asking about the physical symptoms. This can include fatigue or difficult sleeping. Ask if they have muscle tension or even aches in their muscles, they may have a certain trembling or twitchiness to them.

They may also have developed a general nervousness, sweatiness, and nausea along with it. If you know them really well, they may tell about issues with diarrhea and irritable bowel syndrome or irritability in general.

The worries, the psychological manifestations, may be gone, but the individual may have anxiousness left in them. It can cause troubles for the individual in work and in social life. The worries, the things located and pinpointed as conscious concerns, can emerge at times.

For the younger population, and so more advice for aunts and uncles, parents and grandparents, the child or teenager may have issues with performance in school and in sports due to the anxiety. They can have excessive worries about safety of a family member, punctuality, and potential catastrophic events involving earthquakes or nuclear catastrophe, and so on.

One checklist in terms of the excessive worry comes from the article:

Feel overly anxious to fit in
Be a perfectionist
Redo tasks because they aren’t perfect the first time
Spend excessive time doing homework
Lack confidence
Strive for approval
Require a lot of reassurance about performance
Have frequent stomachaches or other physical complaints
Avoid going to school or avoid social situations

This can lead to some questions for doctors. If the anxiety is moderate as a disorder, then the this can interfere with some of the work and friend environment and relations for you. If you are feeling even depressed or irritable, this is important to keep an eye out for, especially if you have other comorbid or co-occurring medical disorders.

If you are having trouble at the extreme end with suicidal thoughts, then you should seek emergency treatment immediately.

Try to catch the issue early to be able to cope earlier, before the more significant issues can, potentially, rear their heads – and good luck, blessings, or whatever works for you.

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2022-04-21

The First Half of 2018 for the Humanist Movement in British Columbia

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/30

Since he leads one of the more prominent humanist organizations in Canada, I wanted to see what was new, up, and all around in the air for the humanist movement in the province.

I asked about the general trends to open the conversation with Bushfield. He described the lack of regular data, saying, “I can only speak broadly, as we don’t get a lot of regular data on the religious and nonreligious make-up of British Columbia. What we do know is that over the past few decades, BC has become increasingly secular where most metrics show a majority of people in the province identify as having no religion and as few as one-in-ten regularly attend religious services.”

As a secular hotbed of activity, but lack of identifiable and rich data for description and extrapolation, this makes the trend finding difficult for the humanist community here in little ol’ British Columbia.

“Within the BC Humanist Association, we’ve continued to see growth throughout 2017 and 2018. Some of our biggest growths in membership and support have come in the past year and we’re really excited to continue that trend through 2018,” Bushfield continued.

In terms of the recent past, as in 2018 so far or the first five months, he noted some developments. There has been an interaction with the British Columbia Government for several months now.

“Some of it has been promising, like their commitment and consultation around rebuilding the province’s Human Rights Commission, while other issues have been a bit more disappointing,” Bushfield explained, “like the continued funding of religious independent schools, possible expansion of faith-based care facilities in Comox and lack of movement on permitting Humanist marriages.”

It seems like a set of positive developments in a democratic fashion for the non-religious. Bushfield remains optimistic about the progress for the non-religious community in British Columbia in coordination, and in a way negotiation, with the Government of British Columbia.

In terms of the campaigns, prominent ones, ongoing for 2018, Bushfield talked about the Supreme Court Decision around the Trinity Western University law school case.

“We intervened at the Court to argue that organizations shouldn’t be able to claim religious exemptions under Canadian law. If the Court adopts our arguments that will be a big defence in Canadian law against the excesses we’re seeing in the USA following Hobby Lobby,” Bushfield stated, “We are also continuing to follow a number of issues such as access to reproductive healthcare and medical assistance in dying and the pushback by religious fundamentalists to improved sexual and gender education in BC schools.”

In other words, these amount to progressive endeavours for secularism in education, women’s rights, reproductive rights, and the right to die as one wishes. For 2018 and 2019, there are a series of projects and campaigns in particular.

The first Bushfield and company are looking to advance are the approximately CAD0.5 billion handed to the private schools in this province alone. The majority of the schools teach in a faith-based setting, which means a religious context – “faith-based” means “religion” as religion got a bad rap.

They “proudly mix creation in their science classrooms,” many of them. “Overall, these schools segregate students by class and religion, which is antithetical to Humanist values,” Bushfield notes.

He continued, “Second, we’re starting to do some work on looking at how BC municipalities treat religious property tax exemptions. They have some latitude in how they treat these exemptions and we know that not all towns simply give a blanket exemption to all churches.”

The final campaign is to look into the overdose crisis and the government responsiveness to it. That the best available evidence is taken into account while respecting individual citizens’ religious, or non-religious in this context, freedoms and rights.

That is a start.

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2022-04-21

On the Future Prospects for Irreligiosity for the Men and Women of Tanzania

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/30

Nsajigwa I Mwasokwa (Nsajigwa Nsa’sam) founded Jichojipya (meaning with new eye) to “Think Anew”. We have talked before about freethought in Tanzania. He is a pioneer freethinker in Tanzania and has trained in Tanzania and Japan in farming, cultural tourism, youth development from the grassroots, worked as a tour guide, in teaching, in translation from English to Swahili and vice versa, and in the incubation and mentorship of the youth. Here we continue the discussion.

Nsajigwa I Mwasokwa (Nsajigwa Nsa’sam) is a pioneer in the freethought movement in Tanzania. Our conversations spanned a wide set of topics.

I asked Nsajigwa about the number of the religious people in Tanzania. He noted about ½ to 1 percent of the population. By comparison, Mensa has about 2% of any population. So, this is a rarefied population in Tanzania.

Not many people, it becomes a small community and, by implication of usual social conventions, the community members will keep quiet for fear of offense or being ousted from the mainstream community.

It becomes a difficult situation. Nsajigwa notes the difficulty in looking ahead for the non-religious population in Tanzania.

Nsajigwa opined, “It is tough to forecast based on the experience that during 1960 – 70s it was thought then that the campaign going on to fight against “enemy ignorance” would, by the year 2000 lead to high level of literacy. It surprises that irrationality and gullibility is still high despite education. Someone said it was free education but also free of knowledge too!”

He says that the prospects, likewise, for the decrease in religiosity will be due to the internet. The fact that an individual Tanzanian can gain access to information on their own. They can become informed on the issues of the day.

The religions over time become questioned from all sides. This questioning weakens the superstructure of religion in general. More properly, the fundamentalist aspects of religion begin to wither compared to their prior ‘glory.’

The zeitgeist of the non-religious continues to assert itself in different, and interesting ways over time. “However there must be efforts like ours of Jichojipya to showcase (thus catalyze) the populace to know that even at the local level there are freethinkers individuals,” Nsajigwa, explained, “that it’s possible to “live clean”, ethically good, rationally guided without a religion, any.”

I asked about the theology or the social cohesion purposes of religion in Tanzania. Nsajigwa described the second being the proper one to conceive of religion in purpose and form. That the religious institutions and leaders work for both, but emphasize the second more.

“The church is powerful theological-wise on what it disseminates each Sunday plus it has several educational institutions that it runs. Mosque exerts quite an influence too,” Nsajigwa stated, “But it’s social cohesion where religion is strong in playing the non-reality of how to conceive the world, as I have explained the impacts of religions to our daily life here. That is a big part, African triple heritage cultural reality on the ground.”

In terms of those who want to help out Tanzania, surrounding countries, or the African diaspora, Nsajigwa gave some recommendations. He says to look for the rational and skeptical perspective on any claim, including religious claims about the world.

The countries around Tanzania should, Nsajigwa suggests, look to foster a skeptical outlook on the world with the foundation of a freethinking, secular, and humanist movement. One from the ground up. A movement build from the grassroots for the general population and by them.

He thinks the African diaspora – those with immediate African heritage around the world – should work to help the “motherland’s emancipation” from the superstitious mental slavery including the religious forms of it.

Nsajigwa argues there should be training of STEM subjects. The foundation of projects with an emphasis on independent thinking, freethinking, secular humanism, and so on, to match the reality of the 21^st century in Africa.

Nsajigwa concluded, “And if you mean Afro-Americans, yes likewise, if they are open-ended Black freethinkers nonbelievers, those free from keeping a blame gaming white man for everything 50 years since civil rights movement, Humanistic to see things beyond either-or black and white. If willing they can help out. In fact, anyone within a human race can help on this. Thanks for the opportunity.”

Other conversations here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. He talks here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. Nsajigwa’s contact emails: mutazilitesfreethink@gmail.com & jichojipya@gmail.com.

Nsajigwa’s contact emails: mutazilitesfreethink@gmail.com & jichojipya@gmail.com.

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2022-04-20

On the Prejudices and Biases Against Atheists and Freethinkers in Tanzania

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/25

Nsajigwa I Mwasokwa (Nsajigwa Nsa’sam), who is now 53-years-old male from Tanzania who is leading a community and who, founded Jichojipya (meaning with new eye) to “Think Anew”. He is the Founder of Jicho Jipya/Think Anew Tanzania. We have talked before about freethought in Tanzania. Here we talk about atheist thinkers in Tanzania and atheist thinkers and literature.

Here we continue the discussion, other conversations here, here, here, and here, and here, here, here, here, and here.

Tanzania is an interesting country with an intriguing dynamic with the belief system landscape. The non-religious are a marginal or peripheral community within the country. However, there have been prominent, e.g. Kingunge Ngombale-Mwilu – though deceased as of February of this year, public figures who were freethinkers or even atheists.

Those who did not adhere to the central tenets of the faith. This provides a context for understanding some of the differential dynamics compared to, for example, the majority of the Good Men Project readership, insofar as I can discern, who live in North America.

The atheist and freethinking community will undergo severe and minor negative treatment in the public. The view of the African community, according to Nsajigwa, is a community outlook. One based on shared values and solidarity of community with an expectation of conformity of all people in it, of all members residing in the community.

The idea, Nsajigwa stated, is that “things should be done as traditions and what religions require. On religion itself, it is very influential, plus our political culture is illiberal, yes we are a peaceful Nation since independence but skepticism and criticism are not tolerated despite the fact we became a multiparty democracy since 1992.”

In the law, I asked about some of the anti-atheist biases, which may or may not exist. He said, “The founder father Mwalimu Nyerere was, fortunately, a good student of John Stuart Mills philosophy “on liberty”. He made it clear the fact that our Nation is secular though people (including himself) are in religions.”

“There is a temptation though from various players to wish that religion should penetrate more into government because people and their leaders are religious anyway. In Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous government with a majority of its population (90%+) being Moslem, Islamic laws applies (via what are known as kadhi courts) in dealing with matters of inheritance, marriage, and divorce,” Nsajiwa continued.

When I concluded this particular session, querying for potential feelings or thoughts, Nsajigwa talked about the modern world. Our modern cultures and societies with the need to provide an education with an emphasis on the STEM – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – professions. Jichojipya, or Think Anew, is part of this process.

The process of respect for the power of and responsibility that comes from that power of science. A science grounded and guided by a humanistic ethic, a secular humanistic and scientific outlook on the world. Nsajigwa directed attention to the need to eliminate the superstitions that lead to even the murders of Albino people because they are Albino.

“There is modern African triple heritage concept by which in Tanzanian case, Islam, Christian, and Traditionalists are almost one-third each by percentage (35-35-30 respectively), though there is much dominance of the first two in the public while the third (tradition believes) are somehow dormant, activated only when everything else fails to work,” Nsajigwa explained.

He described how many countries are illiberal in Africa. That independent thinking and freethinking are thwarted, where these people suffer lives of hard psychological, physical, and emotional strain because they lack religion. Because they are athests and freethinkers. Full stop. Period. Exclamation point.

Freethinking, atheism, and humanism in Africa are intended to be a means by which to emancipate Africans from illiberal thought and religious fundamentalism.

“[They are the] mental slavery of religions that have evolved to become dysfunctional, as they shape ideas of superstition and wishful thinking that support dogma, irrationality, and fatalism,” Nsajigwa stated, “It’s a herculean task needed to be met to push the cause of African renaissance and its enlightenment. All due support by Freethinkers Humanists from other parts of the world (Canada etc) is needed, to sustain this work for modernism by secularism in Africa, Tanzania inclusively. That is the historic generational duty for humanity.”

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2022-04-20

A Tanzania Freethinker on Tanzanian Atheism and Atheist Thinkers

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/24

Nsajigwa I Mwasokwa (Nsajigwa Nsa’sam) founded Jichojipya (meaning with new eye) to “Think Anew”. He is the Founder of Jicho Jipya/Think Anew Tanzania. We have talked before about freethought in Tanzania. Here we talk about atheist thinkers in Tanzania and atheist thinkers and literature.

Here we continue the discussion, other conversations here, here, here, and here, and here, here, here, here, and here.

Nsajigwa talked about an individual elder in the Tanzanian community, who was known as a public figure. His name is Kingunge Ngombale-Mwilu. In Tanzania, and an important point for even some more developed countries, Ngombale-Mwilu is the only person known, in a public position, to be sworn in without holding a Bible or a Quran.

Since Tanzanian independence, he has served in top ranking positions as a minister of the state. “That is, how we suspected him to be a nonbeliever and on interviewing him recently he came out as such, a freethinker who is Agnostic (though our society thought of him as a socialist communist),” Nsajigwa explained.

In Nsajigwa’s interactions with Ngombale-Mwilu, he, Ngombale-Mwilu, self-described as a freethinker. He was inspired by philosophy, especially the writings of Thomas Paine and Ludwig Feuerbach, saying, “It’s not god creating man in his own image but rather a man creating God in his imagination.”

Nsajigwa pointed to himself too. That he is a long-time freethinker and an autodidact, a self-taught Tanzanian philosopher. He is an avid reader and someone who believes, as a freethinker, in the ability to live ethically without religion.

I asked about some books. He noted a deceased person named Agoro Anduru. Anduru, by Nsajigwa’s account, was a good writer. There are stories in Swahili written by Mohamed Salum Abdalla, or Bwana Msa, and “speeches by Mwalimu (Swahili for a teacher) Nyerere – Tanzanian founder father, teaching, insisting and reminding on several occasions that Tanzania is a secular state,” Nsajigwa recommended.

There are, in general, biases and prejudices against the non-religious around the world from social ostracisation to the death penalty. The organized atheist community is beginning to emerge with some pioneering freethinkers such as Nsajigwa and others.

The writers, the public figures, the intellectuals and philosophers, these people are beginning to gain ground in some of the more difficult contexts for atheist or nonbelievers. Where this will end up, it becomes a question of individual human choices with individual leaders providing some guiding light in the open seas of philosophical life, including Nsajigwa and others.

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2022-04-20

A Tanzanian Freethinker on the Continent of Africa, Africans, and Freethinking

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/23

Here we continue the discussion, other conversations here, here, here, and here, and here, here, here, here, and here.

My friend from Tanzania and fellow free mind, Nsajigwa I Mwasokwa (Nsajigwa Nsa’sam), took some time in September of 2017 to talk about the life of an atheist in a highly religious country.

A country religious in the raw numbers of those who identify as religious. A highly religious country in the level of religiosity or adherence to the tenets of faith. Often, the continent of Africa, due to colonization and other influences, as with Canada (where I reside), remains permeated in the symbolisms, the language, the holy texts, and figures of Abraham.

Abraham who birthed over half the world’s modern minds. The Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, especially Islam and Christianity, dominate our areas of the world and about half the world’s population if combined.

Not necessarily a more difficult time in life, but a different way in life because a slight or even great, but no doubt different, point of view. I asked about atheism in Tanzania. He said that there have been freethinkers in Tanzania, Canada, and in other periods and places around the world.

“Canadians should know that as it is for every human society throughout ages and generations that there have been within independent thinkers and freethinkers, so too there are such ones in Tanzania, though few, as it has hitherto been,” Nsajigwa said, “There are Tanzanians who think outside of the box of religiosity despite the fact that in Africa religion is overwhelmingly omnipresent and -potent, covering all aspects of life, from the birth point of entrance to death point of exit.”

He described the previous stereotypes about Africans as those who think more emotionally and that the “philosophy of Negritude” is that of the spiritual. He said that this would assert “rational is Greece as emotion is black.”

He points to this as too much of an exaggeration. He did, though, direct attention to the percentages in Africa.

He explained, “In terms of percentage, it is recorded that independent thinkers, individuals living without religion in Tanzania could be up to 1% of the population (the challenge is to make it rise to 10% as there might be enough such ones who however are in the closet).”

As our conversation continued onward, I wanted to know about the thoughts about atheism as a viewpoint from the broader population of Tanzania. He stated that this was viewed as part of socialism of a communist variety such as that found in the USSR and “thus ideological.”

However, he opined, “Tanzanians who are fundamentalist in their religious outlook, they view it negatively, as an arrogant rebellion against God’s will by the few people educated (to become confused) by too much secular book reading. Further extremes view it as for those who are “lost” and on Satan’s side (Satan being the opposite of good God).”

I wanted to know about the commonality of atheism there. He said, “As a movement it is coming up, emerging as is the reality of it all over Africa. Some individual independent thinkers to freethinkers exist.”

Nsajigwa continued that it was only since the new millennium that pioneering efforts have been done to teach philosophy in order to identify and bring atheists and the non-religious together.

Before the internet, as far as he knows and as far as I know, Nsajigwa has been the primary person, akin to Dr. Leo Igwe in Nigeria for humanism, for the advancement of not precisely atheism but more freethinking. He has been doing this, impressively, prior to the internet since the 1990s.

Nsajigwa concluded, “We are developing a fellowship to be a community in the future via Jichojipya – Think Anew as a formal organization and vehicle for that, we founded it to live to achieve common goals of institutionalizing Humanism ideas and ideals guided by Humanist’s Amsterdam Declaration 2002 of which I translated into Swahili that being first time that it was in an African language.Its Humanistic aspects happen to be similar to some aspects of Tanzanian own Arusha declaration doctrine of 1967.”

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2022-04-20

On Islam, Humanism, and Questioning with a Sunni Scholar and Imam

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/22

Prof. Imam Soharwardy is a Sunni scholar and a shaykh of the Suhrawardi Sufi order, as well as the chairman of the Al-Madinah Calgary Islamic Assembly,founder of Muslims Against Terrorism (MAT), and the founder and president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada. He founded MAT in Calgary in January 1998. He is also the founder of Islamic Supreme Council of Canada (ISCC).

Imam Soharwardy is the founder of the first ever Dar-ul-Aloom in Calgary, Alberta where he teaches Islamic studies. Prof. Soharwardy is the Head Imam at the Al Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre.

Imam Soharwardy is a strong advocate of Islamic Tasawuf (Sufism), and believes that the world will be a better place for everyone if we follow what the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (Peace be upon him) has said, “You will not have faith unless you like for others what you like for yourself.” He believes that spiritual weakness in humans causes all kinds of problems.

Mr. Soharwardy can be contacted at soharwardy@shaw.ca OR Phone (403)-831–6330. Original interview here. Some prior discussions here, here, here, and here. Here we talk about questioning and faith and non-religion.

Imam Soharwardy took the time for an interview with me. We talked the young. In particular, the young non-religious and religious. Those who may believe in humanism. Those who may believe in Islam.

Humanists, mostly, coincide with the beliefs as atheists. Others, like super-minorities, may be theists in some modified definitions, deists, and even pantheists.

Their emphasis is humanistic valued. I wanted to focus on dialogue between communities. I find some sects in Islam and communities of the non-religious do not respect freedom of religion and freedom of belief for others.

In some sects of Islam, as seems pointed to, often, the tendency seems a desire to eliminate atheists, the non-religious, the infidels, and to, in secular terminology, disregard freedom of belief and freedom of religion, which includes other metaphysical propositions such as atheism.

Same with some sub-communities of the mob-religious. The tendency to want to eliminate or destroy religion. The desire to “free” the world of superstition through deletion of religious belief, which disregards freedom of religion and freedom of belief in some ways and not in others.

At the end of the day, as some say, people hold beliefs, which differs from the beliefs. However, the rights to the various freedoms amount to consensus-based abstract principles for everyone, not some, to hold rather than live in a Platonic vacuum.

In fact, a test may emerge from permission for those one most disagrees within these areas to hold the religious/non-religious beliefs. Not an agreement with the beliefs, per se, but the agreement in the right of the person to hold the beliefs.

Anyhow, Soharwardy took time to talk with me. He pointed to the youth in the congregation, saying “If you attend my congregation, especially the youth groups, you will see the lively discussion that I have with our students.”

He mentioned having a son and a daughter. Both, he noted, have been raised with the ideas that they should not believe in Islam because of them as the parents but, rather, because they want to through their own consciences.

Soharwardy talked about his religious text, “Being a Muslim and following the holy book, the Quran, in almost every volume of the holy Quran, it says, “Why don’t you ponder? Why don’t you think? Why don’t you explore?” It says, “Why don’t you explore the world?””

The emphasis being on questioning rather than blindly following. He believes, whether humanist, Muslim, or another belief system, that the point is to not be a “blind follower.”

“However, the steps to those make sense in intellectual discussion, not simply blind following or blind beliefs because I was born into a Muslim family. It is because it is a natural, normal, and common sense religion,” Soharwardy stated, “Our boys and girls have lots of questions. I never say, “You cannot question.””

He never discourages questioning from a youth: every symbol and figure in the Islamic texts should be questioned. “What happens, Scott, you talk to someone who does not understand his or her own religion. When the person him or herself is confused, somebody goes and asks the question, but the person cannot explain properly,” Soharwardy opined.

I noted the trends in some Canadian households, or homes, with the lack of questioning allowed because the parents, for the best of intentions, do not want to lose the child.

The two dominant faiths in Canada are Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. I suspected similar phenomena with Sunni Islam and Shia Islam. The parents not wanting the questioning of the faith for fear of losing their children to non-belief in heir brand of religion.

The parents disallow the questioning. The parents prevent the child from developing the critical capacities, and so on.

Soharwardy replied, “I completely agree with you. There will be families in the Muslim community who do not allow their children to question the faith. Some of the people and families are rigid. They have been told some things and simply follow it.”

He considers this against Islam to not question, seek, and explore. “To be a blind follower, that person loses the spirit of Islam,” Soharwardy said, “Some families, they do not allow thinking. It causes a serious harm to the boys and girl who have been forced to follow a belief system. Their heart is not in it.”

He went on to say that it is a requirement of the Islam faith to practice from the heart. If a good deed is done, while not an act from the heart, then Allah or God will not accept the good deed. The acceptance by their God of the actions depends not only on the goodness or righteousness of the actions but also the intentions behind the actions.

Soharwardy bluntly stated, “If my intention is not to pray 5 times a day, but I have been forced to pray five times per day, that person should know, according to Islam, their prayers are not accepted.Nobody should be forced to pray five times per day or fast during the month of Ramadan.”

Compulsion in the faith, in other words, does not practicing the faith. If one is forced, then they do not count as one of the faithful. In this interpretation, the people without the heart in the acts could be considered infidels or heretics by the proper faithful who have their hearts in the acts of prayer of fasting during Ramadan as two examples.

“I always say that it bothers me, sometimes, when the newspapers talk about these terrorist groups. They are forcing people to convert to Islam,” Soharwardy said, “If people are forcing people to follow Islam, and if there is no compulsion in religion, then Islam does not recognize that person as a Muslim.”

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2022-04-20

On the Autonomy, Efficiency, and Equity Factors of National Healthcare Programs with Professor Gordon Guyatt

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/22

We conducted an extensive interview before: here, here, here, here, here, and here. We have other interviews in Canadian Atheist (here and here), Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Humanist Voices, and The Good Men Project.

As a specific topical interview, we focus on the efficiency, equity, and autonomy associated with national healthcare programs.

I got the opportunity to speak with professor Guyatt on national healthcare programs in developed countries. Guyatt spoke on things relevant to national healthcare in Canada. Those items Canada may have that other countries do not have.

Guyatt said, “It depends. There are two ways of doing national healthcare. One is a model like the German model. It is not a government program. It is a program that started as a job-based program. There are a whole bunch of organizations that the government ensures that, effectively, in the end, everybody is insured.”

He continued to say that this is not an overall government program, which is less efficient. For physician and hospital services, we have a single program. That program is provincially administered, but, at its core, amounts to a national program. That means increased efficiency.

For physician and hospital services, Guyatt talked about the funding being more by the funding than most other places. He described the ways in which places have a private section for the ability to pay for better and quicker care.

However, for physician and hospital services, we lack that, which becomes a bi equity advantage for Canadians. By equity, this means more people can use it. More of the general public gets access to the physician and hospital services.

“On the other hand, for everything other than the physician and hospital services, we are quite severely disadvantaged. The only people who have their drugs covered are those on social assistance over 65,” Guyatt noted.

If you are under 25 in Ontario, there are some support programs. If a drug costs too high, then this becomes burden for the low-income people. Where, for many low-income people, it becomes a situation in which they simply cannot afford their drugs.

Guyatt explained that drugs are a big gap and dental care is another gap. Where “we have essentially no coverage for public dental care, other countries to some degree cover dental care. The drugs and dental care the big deficiencies in the Canadian program,” he stated.

As the conversation progressed, I wanted to focus on the things Canada has, which other developed nations do not.

“I do not know the details, but I would have thought that it was hit and miss if some things get developed here and there are some enthusiastic and leading physicians bringing something in,” Guyatt explained, “Then there may be areas where we do particularly well. In other countries, they have other physicians.”

Guyatt talked about the United States healthcare system. He describes theirs as in many ways a disaster. For those who can pay for it, for the well insured, for those who can pay out of pocket, the US does the best for highly advanced medical technology. However, it “is a hit and miss thing.”

Canada, by comparison, does not have a particular are in which we are far more advanced for the medical technology.

When I questioned about lifespan and health span differences for those who do and those who do not have efficient and equitable access to health in their country, Guyatt made the opening salvo statement, “So, universal coverage is universal coverage.”

“If you are now talking about gradients, you are talking about gradients of insurance that come with gradients of income. That then becomes impossible to tease out,” Guyatt explained, “The lower income people are sicker and live shorter lives than high-income people. They are also the people when there is no government insurance who are not insured. It is also confounded with that.”

He described some professional research into the health outcomes in Canada and the US. If anything, the outcomes were a small advantage for Canada. That was attributable to more universal healthcare coverage. “You have many Americans who cannot afford drugs, hospitals, and so on. They are at a disadvantage in health outcome because they are poor and because of a lack of health coverage,” Guyatt stated.

Overall, the equity and efficiency associated with national healthcare programs (read: public) tends to produce better outcomes for more people on those two metrics with marginal or questionable autonomy benefits on privatized healthcare programs (read: private).

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2022-04-20

Advice for Adult Women, African-American Women, and Professional Women from a High Achieving One

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/21

Dr. Margena A. Christian was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. She has a background of African American, Cherokee Indian, and German. I was lucky enough to interview her about some of the work done by her. Christian founded and owns DocM.A.C. write Consulting. Full interview here. Part 1 of this GMP series here and part 2 here, and part 3 here. These can be read as a series. However, they are stand-alone article interviews as well. Here we look at Christian’s advice for women tied to experience and experiences.

When I set the chat on the path of advice for the younger people or for those in particular demographic representations or in professional life, Christian provided some more advice based on further consideration.

It was near the end of the conversation, but it seemed to add more depth to the conversation. She said journalists should read, write, read, write, and find a mentor who can guide them.

Because those relationships and connections are crucial for this particular profession. However, this advice differed from those for girls. Where she stated, “The advice I have for girls is to discover your passion and then you’ll find your purpose. Ask yourself, “What would I do for the rest of my life even if I never got paid to do this?” That’s usually your answer.”

Then I queried about women in general. She noted a nuanced point about the still and quiet voice inside each grown woman. That voice that women should listen to and develop when they make “any type of decision.”

Christian described the need to trust your own individual instinct as a women because “you can’t miss what is meant for you.” This then built into a line of questions about African-American women and professional.

Of course, every woman is different. Every African-American or black American is different. At the same time, one should extrapolate trends based on statistics and then apply advice to yourself based on that framework if within a particular demographic within a country.

“The advice I have for African-American women is to never forget that you are a queen,” Christian said, “Wear your crown with pride and know that you are wonderfully and divinely created.”

When it came to professional women, and many of these levels of analysis and advice can overlap with one another, she explained the importance in having multiple streams of income and the independence of finances.

The independence of finances through not relying on only one job. As well as the crucial advice, no one will work harder for you than you.

Now, I wanted to ground some of this in the acknowledgement of a high achieving person. Most high achieving people encounter problems, personal and otherwise, and overcome them, or fail completely and then rise again from the ashes as if a mythical force like a phoenix.

However, these overcoming of trials and tribulations takes courage, fortitude, and power, which do not come overnight, easily, or even in a straight line. They take time.

In personal life, the greatest struggle according to Christian: “The greatest emotional struggle in personal life is realizing that people will disappoint because they are human.”

In professional life, Christian opined: “The greatest emotional struggle in professional life is being so passionate about making certain that my students learn and that my stories educate, enlighten and uplift.”

Of course, life has a time for celebration too. She said that the best surprise that her sister and close friends ever gave was a surprise graduation party post-doctorate. Humbly, Christian said, “I don’t like surprises and I don’t get fooled easily, but they managed to do a splendid job of knocking me off my feet. I was very touched.”

However, and on the other hand, people can be mean. “People did things to be mean but now I look at those encounters as part of divine order. I always remember that rejection is God’s protection,” Christian explained, “I also know that what people intended for harm was designed to help and push me into my purpose. So, mean things weren’t done to me only things that were MEANt to grow me.”

To close off the interview, I asked about drive. Christian said, “Faith and passion drive me.” She concluded by saying, “We keep someone’s legacy alive by educating future generations [ed. in reference to turning the dissertation into a book] … Trust the process and always keep the faith. In the words of the Hon. Marcus Garvey, “Onward and upward.”

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2022-04-20

Dr. Margena A. Christian on Editorial and Writing Positions and Abilities, Knowledge, and Skills Developed from Them

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/20

Dr. Margena A. Christian was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. She has a background of African American, Cherokee Indian, and German. I was lucky enough to interview her about some of the work done by her. Christian founded and owns DocM.A.C. write Consulting. Full interview here. Part 1 of this GMP series here and part 2 here. These can be read as a series. However, they are stand-alone article interviews as well. Here we look at some of the professional work in editing, professional development, proofreading, and writing services with some insights through important stories covered and the diverse experience in her time writing throughout her career with some as blessings in disguise.

Christian, in her dissertation research, wanted to know the ways in which John H. Johnson was using the magazines produced by him in adult education. An adult education oriented in order to combat forms of intellectual racism.

She found that he educated different races around the world on the forms of intellectual racism. Christian’s professional life portion of the interview moved into the senior editor and senior writer roles at EBONY.

As well, she was an editor of Elevate and the features editor for Jet magazine. She also helped with the inauguration of the EBONY retrospective. She described the features editor position as being in charge of pitching and writing and editing human interest stories.

Christian also helped with selecting and securing the high-profile folks figured within the publication.

“Elevate was a section in EBONY that focused on health, wellness and spirituality,” Christian explained, “EBONY’s Retrospective was an opportunity for me to marry my love of entertainment with my interest in historical data by examining pivotal cultural moments in music, movies and TV that shaped my race.”

As I asked about the abilities, knowledge, and skills developed from the editorial and writing experiences, I gained an insight into the peripheral and central aspects of the work.

If someone edits or writes, they work within a lens of the work alone. They also garner contacts and networks from the work, too. Christian talked about learning an art.

The art of multi-tasking and having steady relationships. It is important to focus on who knows you and returns the call. I suppose this can be interpreted to mean those who spend the time to consider you important to them as you consider them important to you.

One part of the publication for Jet magazine skills was an expectation. The ability to do due diligence in meeting a weekly deadline.

“This included tracking down sources, doing research, conducting interviews, writing stories and editing. Early on I handled images for both EBONY and Jet by operating the Associated Press photo machine,” Christian stated, “including breaking it down and cleaning what was called the oven. Moving to EBONY in 2009 offered me a bit more time to work on lengthy features.”

For the Retrospective pieces, she was expected to produce something like 1,500 words, but “would force their hand at close to 3,000 words!”

Another aspect of this is the finding of a diverse set of interests to guide writing. Christian has an interest in education, fashion, finance, health, medicine, parenting, relationships, religion, and spirituality.

This does seem to require a certain self-insight, which Christian starts with the career at Jet magazine. All news editors had to write on every subject with Christian’s specialty as entertainment.

Mr. Johnson and his daughter, Linda, expressed an intrigue in written work about celebrities for EBONY. “I recalled being told by Mr. Johnson that rank determined who would talk to the notables at EBONY, so he thought Jet would be a better fit since all editors had an equal chance of doing stories about celebs,” Christian said.

After this period, she began to write on health. Christian did not like it, but did find this to be “a blessing in disguise” because she “secretly began to enjoy writing about this subject.”

Christian did cover the death of Michael Jackson and described this as a hard time while also recognizing this as a job to complete. She was transitioning to the company. However, bear in mind, she had also garnered varied experienced prior to the transition and the difficult work.

All important for the development of profession relevant skill sets. She documented some of the history. However, Christian’s interest was in the artist rather than the history of the man.

“I spent three weeks in Los Angeles, spending time at the Jackson family’s Encino compound, camped outside with the hundred other reporters from around the world,” Christian opined, “and driving for hours to Los Olivos to visit Neverland. I met a man during a church prayer service named Steve Manning, who was one of his best friends who first ran the Jacksons fan club back in the day.”

She continues to stay in touch with them. One year after Michael’s death, Steve happened to be at the Jackson home. She was able to speak with the Jackson mom, Katherine.

It was the weekend before Mother’s Day. Christian was tongued-tied. Janet sent a Christmas card one time to Christian, by the way.

Christian said, “The Jackson family grew up at Johnson Publishing Company and were close friends with Mr. Johnson. I felt honored when I was selected by the managing editor, Terry Glover, to document this important history. She knew what I brought to the table and that I would deliver.”

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2022-04-20

Editing, Professional Development, Proofreading, and Writing Services with Dr. Margena A. Christian

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/19

As the conversation with Dr. Christian continued, I asked about DocM.A.C. write Consulting, which is a service for editing, professional development, proofreading, and writing.

In terms of the clientele, I wanted to know of the importance of these services to the improvement of written work. Christian said that people want to improve their writing as well as the skills necessary to improve it.

“Educators need to remain current with pedagogical strategies so professional development is one way to achieve this. I also do dissertation coaching,” Christian stated, “Thus far I’ve helped two people complete their dissertation. The coursework is the easy part; the hard part is crossing the finish line by submitting the dissertation! There’s a great deal of folks who are ABD (all but dissertation) who need the right push to move along. That’s what I do.”

However, to maintain the basis for training people, you need people. Christian needs clientele. Those who are clientele come from the word of mouth, as they say uncommonly, and through professional networking, as they say more commonly.

With the quality of the work, and the building of a base of a clientele through these means based on quality, Christian, and others can too, has been able to build a steady clientele and many of whom have recommended others to her.

One of the interesting things about Christian is also the lecturer position at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It amounts to a position requiring the ability to convey and correct. Convey the knowledge; correct the material for learning, these can be tough on a consistent basis.

She helped build the professional writing concentration as a minor at the institution. Christian developed and designed two of the courses entitled Writing for Digital and New Media and Advanced Professional Writing.

Christian reflected, “One thing I enjoy most about being a lecturer is that the focus is on teaching and not so much research. If I choose to conduct more or to write journal articles, it is optional and not mandatory. Each semester I teach three different courses so my prep time is far reaching. Thanks to my organizational skills, I make it work effortlessly.”

Christian worked on a dissertation entitled John H. Johnson: A Historical Study on the Re-Education of African Americans in Adult Education Through the Selfethnic Liberatory Nature of Magazines. She was hired by John H. Johnson in 1995 as an assistant editor for Jet magazine. He was lovingly called Mr. Johnson and died in 2005.

Not only with the consulting services and the teaching, the people behind a publication as well can make the difference in the style, content, tone, and quality of a publication.

“Let’s just say that I knew that one day the magazine and the company as I once knew it would be no more,” Christian stated, “It hit me that there would come a time when people won’t remember or know anything about a man who lived named John H. Johnson. It struck me that one day people won’t know about his iconic publicatons.”

She reflected further on the house built at 820 S. Michigan Avenue would be gone. Christian realized: “I was the last editor hired by Mr. Johnson and worked along his side who remained at the company before my position was eliminated in 2014.”

When Jet magazine ended, her position ended. Simeon Booker covered the 1955 Emmett Till story while Christian did further coverage in 2004. She found the experience “an honor to have Booker hand me the baton and for Mr. Johnson to have approved it.”

“After a series of stories that I penned for a few years, I concluded that chapter in my life and the magazine’s annals by purchasing a beautiful oil painting of Till (shown in image) that was done by a fellow JPC employee, Raymond A. Thomas,” Christian said.

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2022-04-20

On Early Life in America with a Cherokee Indian, African-American, and German-American Background

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/18

Dr. Margena A. Christian was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. She has a background of African American, Cherokee Indian, and German. I was lucky enough to interview her about some of the work done by her. Christian founded and owns DocM.A.C. write Consulting. Full interview here. Here we look at some of her story and views and early life.

When I asked about her growing up and the geographic, cultural, and linguistic context for family, she talked about the relatively traditional African-American environment. A working-class family.

Her mother worked as a librarian and media specialist. He father worked as an inspector for General Motors. Christian stated, “Growing up in St. Louis was an interesting experience. There is much division there between African Americans and Whites. I lived on the city’s north side, which is predominantly Black.”

Christian talked about attending Most Holy Rosary as a Catholic grade school and Cardinal Ritter College Preparatory for a Catholic high school. The students who attended, she notes, looked like her.

She went to St. Louis University (SLU), which is a Jesuit institution. However, it felt like a major adjustment for her. Few people looked like her. She recalls being the only African-American in many classes.

“Going from being around my own 24/7 and then moving into a world where I was suddenly the only “one,” took some getting used to. I can say that I had a pleasant time as a Billiken at SLU.,” Christian said, “I worked hard and made stellar grades so I stood out for more reasons than one. And, needless to say, I hardly ever missed class because the professor always seemed to notice.”

Now, as noted earlier, Christian’s mother was a teacher. While at kindergarten, she went to the same school that her mother taught. With her mother there, she did not feel the same need to work as hard.

It was a feeling of privilege over other students. Christian’s mother found that it was not a great idea for your kid to work at the same school as you. She explained, “I was headed to the third grade when my parents decided to take me out of the St. Louis Public School System and have me attend an Archdiocesan school. She didn’t feel that my siblings and I were getting the best education, so she convinced our dad to allow us to transfer to Catholic schools.”

She ended up going to a co-ed high school, which was among the best private and Catholic schools for an urban area. With Saint Barbara and in a leadership class, her life was changed ever-after.

“She knew how much I loved to write and told me about the Minority Journalism Workshop, sponsored by the Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists,” Christian remembered.

The program was meant for juniors and seniors in the high school system with some early college students as well. As a sophomore, she was accepted after an application.

“Renowned journalists George E. Curry and Gerald Boyd were founders of this pioneering workshop, which would become the blueprint for other minority journalism workshops throughout the country,” Christian said, “Training with professional journalists at such a young age helped to hone my craft and solidify my desire to do this for a living.”

With this, she honed her craft, as they say, and won two scholarships and earned a publication of her first article. She finds that nothing compares to hands-on, practical experience with a craft. As the only person to look like her at SLU, she felt uncomfortable and so did not write for the SLU student newspaper.

Rather, she did an internship at the top African-American publication in the country, which was the St. Louis American Newspaper. Later on, she wrote for Take Five. At the end of the experience, she had “an attractive portfolio.”

“However, coming from a family of educators, I did what most people who aspire to become a journalist do. I played it safe and got a job as an English teacher at a Catholic grade school, Bishop Healy,” Christian explained, “So, essentially, I taught by day and wrote by night. Healy was in the city and practiced the Nguzo Saba value system.”

She reflects on her life. Christian feels as though she was being prepared and “concepts in my dissertation were the Nguzo Saba,” which represented the publisher John H. Johnson and Johnson’s commitment to race in the presentation of documenting “our history in magazines.”

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2022-04-20

An Indigenous or Indian Perspective on Love, Fear, and the Future

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/17

Morris Amos, or Giltimi, is of the C’imotza Beaver Clan. He is an advisor to Haimus Wakas, who is the Hereditary Chief of the C’imotza Raven Clan. He notes two communities in a part of British Columbia, Canada. One being Kitimat, British Columbia and the other being Kitamaat, British Columbia. Kitimat occupied by the white community. Kitamaat occupied by the Indian or Indigenous community.

We first met at a closed-door minor political party meeting. He came with two others. One of whom was Haimus Wakas. He came down from Kitamaat in order to disseminate knowledge.

Now, I did not know a lot before. I know some more now, but know the more I know the less I know in the scope of what I realize I do not know. I know young people, such as myself, take on particular views. One view is not knowing much about the history of the country and the various peoples and faiths within it.

Another is aggressive activism. This has its own problems by making other peoples “the other.” I mean this in the full context of othering people from all sides.

When I brought this perspective to Giltimi, and Haimus Wakas as well, Haimus Wakas and Giltimi educated me. They described a view of the current state of affairs for the current generation and the next generations.

One emphasizing getting beyond dualities and having real forgiveness – moving past, forward, and having younger generations think in terms beyond dualities. I reached out on the 14^th to ask about expanded descriptions on non-duality and forgiveness from his perspective.

On moving beyond dualities, Giltimi said, “I am aware of what constitutes history, History, as we have known it, is largely written by the victors in war. What this tells me is history is a tool for the victors to continue control and manipulation over those conquered. This world view is mine, as a member of an oppressed race of people’s.”

Giltimi continued on the oppression through contact with whites and the written history of the Indigenous population out of the history books. He called this a history with an “entirely ethnocentric point of view.”

People are wising up, though. From Giltimi’s independent research, he views the perpetrators of violence against the Indigenous came with a larger plan. A plan to dominate the world.

“Some call this plan the New World Order. I am now satisfied that white people are victimized by this plan just like the Indian. We are all oppressed by this plan,” Giltimi opined, “I am not opposed to world order but I oppose the New World Order as planned due to the nature of the control and manipulation mechanisms as proposed and also to the reasons for desire of control which is simply to be in control for self effacing purposes, not for the good interests of humanity.”

Giltimi referenced being an advisor to Haimus Wakas. He looked into the banking systems, big pharmaceutical companies, food production, the law, and oil and gas interests. He notes that they work within divide and conquer.

This permits ease of the creation of problems for the camps made in this process in order to self-aggrandize and benefit a small group of people. Giltimi views the emotional basis of this in fear, “which in resource terms equates to what I call the consciousness of lack.”

The basis of this is in the creation of poverty and forcing people to have a small number of jobs. A limited quantity of work where people compete for access to them. People become desperate and easily divided and conquered, Giltimi explained.

This, he related to duality as well as polarity.

“Duality of opposites such as up and down, in and out, black and white. This translates into what I call the dance of light and dark. The dark has held sway over humanity for millenniums of time,” Giltimi stated, “with the rise in consciousness, the light is now on the rise. The light equates with love, the polar opposite of fear.”

He sees fear as still prevalent and needing to be replaced by love. Giltimi sees the highest energy of the Great Spirit aligned with love. The work to bring light and love is what he sees as his work.

In a way, his work for unity is working for, within his philosophy of existence, for the highest energy of the Great Spirit. A new world built around love rather than fear. Giltimi views love as non-exclusionary.

“I now use this forum to call an end to the denial of my people, the genocide of my people, we must be included in the move toward love. The continued denial of my people is an obstacle to our spiritual evolution,” Giltimi said, “The denial of my people has created a resentment of settlers which can only be remediated by an end to denial based on divisiveness.”

He viewed the fear-based new order to have demonized Indians or Indigenous peoples. It caused the settlers to support a plan that resulted in resentment. With an acknowledgment of the truth, Giltimi says that the resentment of the Indigenous population would leave and the forgiveness would take its place.

Where a new real partnership with the visitors who never left can come forward, he made a distinction between a New World Order and white people. That it should be clear that the Indigenous resentment towards settlers is as misguided as the settler fear-based resentment towards the Indigenous.

He views this new real partnership as the basis for freedom.

“I now know the current fee simple land tenure system combined with banking elitism is at the root of a fraudulent pyramid scam that uses force to filter all wealth to the top, leaving the world struggling with induced poverty,” Giltimi explained.

The empowerment of the Indigenous with love and respect for them and with love and respect for the settlers can help the creation of the new real partnership and dislodgement of the fear-based world order.

Giltimi said, “I can say that in C’imotza our hereditary system is still in control of the land. If we can set as our goal a method to dislodge the NWO from control over us I am certain we can unite to develop a system of land tenure and banking that takes into account the best interests of both Indigenous peoples and settlers.”

He sees the corporations as taking control of common wealth against the common interests of the people, Indigenous peoples and settlers. Giltimi noted the power of corporations is pyramidal and used to create perpetual fear-based conflict in order to control and manipulate.

Giltimi said, “I am working on my end to make this happen, I call on all to join with us in this movement to unify humanity against those who would control us for their own dark based agenda. Let love be your choice not fear. I have spoken.”

Within Giltimi’s worldview, the nature of love has been forgotten, but the Mayan Tzolkin movement of the Earth into the Photon Belt is producing a rise in consciousness. One towards love rather than fear, where people would previously be divided they are being brought together.

“Those that are not attached to the energy of the great spirit, who some call the ether or ethos, who are detached,” Giltimi concluded, “think of themselves as isolated and in need of empowerment. In this case, they look for empowerment outside themselves and this form of empowerment always comes at the expense of the disempowerment of others. Those connected to the ether energy of great spirit will always look inward for their empowerment and will do so in a manner that empowers others. this knowledge will result in new leaders being called forth.”

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2022-04-20

Quick Checklist and Tips for Male Depression from the Mayo Clinic

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/16

The Mayo Clinic pointed to a few questions to ask about men’s depression. The case of male depression can, at times unfortunately, lead to suicide or isolation. They say, “Do you feel irritable, isolated or withdrawn? Do you find yourself working all the time? Drinking too much?”

These amount to unhealthy coping strategies. Men and women differ in their coping strategies. However, if a male and if feeing a bit different than usual on the more negative affect side, you can keep in mind a few things.

Some symptoms include:

Feel sad, hopeless or empty
Feel extremely tired
Have difficulty sleeping
Not get pleasure from activities they once enjoyed

Other behaviors in men that could be signs of depression — but not recognized as such — include:

Escapist behavior, such as spending a lot of time at work or on sports
Alcohol or drug abuse
Controlling, violent or abusive behavior
Irritability or inappropriate anger
Risky behavior, such as reckless driving

These unhealthy coping strategies may be clues that you have male depression. The behaviour and signs can overlap. The severity of the depressive symptoms and signs can be different as well.

However, the tendency in the culture is towards men not going out to ask for help. Males not asking for help can make the reportage about depression just that, an underreported phenomenon.

Men may downplay the symptoms: “You may not recognize how much your symptoms affect you, or you may not want to admit to yourself or to anyone else that you’re depressed.”

They may not recognize the depressive symptoms for depression itself, potentially: “Men with depression often aren’t diagnosed for several reasons, including: You may think that feeling sad or emotional is always the main symptom of depression. But for many men, that isn’t the primary symptom.”

Men may be reluctant to even discuss it if they suspect something is up: “You may not be open to talking about your feelings with family or friends, let alone with a health care professional.”

Males who find, finally, that this is something wrong, amiss, and potentially needing to be dealt will still not go out and get proper help: “Even if you suspect you have depression, you may avoid diagnosis or refuse treatment.”

As a result, men may attempt suicide in these cases. In the cases of suicidal thoughts and fear that you, the man, may hurt yourself or are afraid a male in your life may hurt themselves:

Call 911 or your local emergency number immediately.
Call a suicide hotline number — in the United States, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) to reach a trained counselor.

In order to cope with the depression, as help is always available, some lifestyle and worldview things to do according to the Mayo Clinic:

Set realistic goals and prioritize tasks.
Seek out emotional support from a partner or family or friends.
Learn ways to manage stress, such as meditation and mindfulness, and develop problem-solving skills.
Delay making important decisions, such as changing jobs, until your depression symptoms improve.
Engage in activities you enjoy, such as ball games, fishing or a hobby.
Live a healthy lifestyle, including healthy eating and regular physical activity, to help promote better mental health.

If you or someone you know needs help, it is always there. You simply need to ask or keep an eye out.

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2022-04-20

Marieme Helie Lucas on the Context Surrounding Noura Hussein Hammad

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/15

Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian sociologist, activist, founder of ‘Secularism is a Women’s Issue,’ and founder and former International Coordinator of ‘Women Living Under Muslim Laws.’ Here, and in a few subsequent article interviews, we will discuss gender, Islam, Muslims, and this context surrounding the urgent case of Noura Hussein Hammad.

Hammad has been sentenced to death and has less than two weeks to appeal the case. The hashtag: #JusticeForNoura. There is a petition. Sodfa Daaji’s is the person to email. Daaji’s email if you would like to sign the petition, and please provide first and last name and country, then please send an email to the following contact: daajisodfa.pr@gmail.com.

Part 1 here and part 2 here.

*This amounts to an activist and educational series.*

The conversation with Helie Lucas moved into the topic of gender roles in Islam. The Islamic prescribed role for men and women. The question being: what makes for a better foundation for the rights of women compared to conservatism and traditional religion?

Helie Lucas is quick to point out. The we should fight within Islam, but, rather, within each of our societies. She does not feel personal responsibilities for the changing of Islam, Christianity, or other religions.

“As a citizen, I feel responsibility for changing laws in democratic ways, towards more equality between all human beings, regardless of class, age, sex, beliefs, etc.,” Helie Lucas said, “As a secularist, I do not want to live under non-voted un-changeable a-historical supposedly-divine laws. This is the essence of democracy.”

Helie Lucas described the ways in which activists in Muslim contexts fight conservativism. They fight to change regressive laws. They work to promote progressive ideals. She pointed to a case in Algeria.

In Algeria, since 1984, women have been working on wali. That is to say, women have worked to end the institution. In this termination of wali, women would become “legal adults and not forever minors who cannot enter into a contract, by themselves, without a male tutor. So far, we have not succeeded.”

Helie Lucas pointed to a courageous women’s rights organization “20 ans Barakat ! (‘20 years is enough!’).” It presents women and men struggling on the ground in many of their countries.

Helie Lucas provided a link:

The clip shows for instance, women’s demonstrations in the capital-city, Algiers, during which home-made bombs were thrown to demonstrators by fundamentalist groups. These initiatives need to be supported – not lead – from the outside. In Sudan, on the forefront are the women’s rights and human rights organizations that are leading the struggle for Noura’s rights. They do so at great risk for themselves.

WACHDAK :collectif “20 ans barakat”par www.algerie-femme.com …

▶ 4:33

Helie Lucas described the undergirding progressive movements in the Muslim world and elsewhere.

“But they are little considered outside their countries – especially in the West which globally tends to ignore them. Noura’s case is a good opportunity to reach out in solidarity to progressive, feminist, humanist, secular forces in our parts of the world,” Helie Lucas concluded, “It is an opportunity to create working links that would last even after we save Noura’s life – as I am now convinced we will, collectively.”

The hashtag: #JusticeForNoura. There is a petition. Sodfa Daaji’s is the person to email. Daaji’s email if you would like to sign the petition, and please provide first and last name and country, then please send an email to the following contact: daajisodfa.pr@gmail.com.

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2022-04-19

An Urgent Human Rights Case of a Young Sudanese Woman

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/14

Part 1 here.

*This amounts to an activist and educational series.*

As the conversation progressed, we talked about the violations of rights for men and women, but more for women. This went into areas of gender inequality. All of this specified on the case Noura Hussein Hammad.

In the context of marriage in an Islamic context, Helie Lucas described two parts as normal for it. Two events with days or even years, depending on the case, between the events for the individuals.

In Hammad’s case, she was married against her will. Her father was the signatory of the contract “as her legal tutor, her wali.” She was married at the age of 16. In this context, the marriage was legal and permitted with the law.

The bride does not necessarily have to be around at this time for the marriage.

“The bride does not even have to be present during this signature. Then she was sent to her husband’s house for the consummation of the marriage when she was 19,” Helie Lucas explained, “She never flinched in her refusal of this marriage. Both Sudanese laws and international law prohibit forced marriages.”

Helie Lucas described how the institution of wali forever leaves the woman, or women more generally, in a status of a legal minority. Someone less than the other. In this case, a woman less than the man by law.

She notes that this is specific to the Maliki ritual prevalent in North Africa for the most part. However, Helie Lucas stated that this is not practiced in all schools of thought in Islam.

Forced marriages “are generally prohibited under the law of the land, not all countries take it to heart to implement these laws. This is also a child marriage,” Helie Lucas stated directly.

With the increasing influence and growth of the fundamentalist preachers, the marriage age continues to decrease to the puberty of girls. Some can be married off as early as 9 or 10 years old.

With the case of Noura Hammad, she has another violation of rights, not only forced marriage but also in, the rape. She had marital rape and gang rape.

“The second violation committed against Noura is rape – and not just, if I may say, ‘marital rape’, but it is gang rape, as – in order to crush her physical resistance,” Helie Lucas explained, “[the] husband sought help from several of his male relatives in order to pin her down and hold her arms and legs while he was raping her in front of them.”

According to Hammad’s lawyers, Hammad had bruises and scars from the fight. One day after the marriage, Hammad’s husband tried to rape her once more, but used a knife in self-defense and killed him.

“She went to her father’s house, but he disowned her and took her to the police. She was convicted with murder and sentenced to death,” Helie Lucas said, “With no consideration for the circumstances, and for a case of self defense. Hence Amnesty International’ recent demand that this judgment be annulled and for a more equitable trial to take place.”

There are cases like Hammad in many places around the world, but this is a particular case that made news and Hammad’s life is at risk with the call for a hanging. Sudan, as with some other Muslim countries, have a legal provision for blood money.

Helie Lucas stated, “…the family of the victim can demand a financial compensation for their loss, – rather than a death sentence for the culprit. In Noura’s case, the late husband’s family refused compensation and demanded the death sentence.”

More tomorrow.

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2022-04-19

On Islam and Muslims, and the Difference Between Ideas, and Sociology and Politics

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/13

*This amounts to an activist and educational series.*

Religion, culture, gender, sex, theocracy, and democracy work within controversial, but important, conversations, especially more in the modern period. Helie Lucas took the time to answer some questions on gender roles and religion.

When I questioned Helie Lucas about gender roles and legal rights, she made an important preliminary note to not presuppose “so-called Muslim countries – or Muslim majority countries – are automatically theocracies; that is definitely not the case, they are mostly democracies, technically speaking.”

Where the emphasis for the faith and the democratic elements should be left to the theologians, that is, if they conform with Islam, the theologians have more authoritative statements.

Helie Lucas prefers not to use Islamic: a “doctrine, a philosophy, an ideology, a vision of the world, a faith… I use the term ‘Muslim’, which refers to human beings who claim faith in this ideology.”

By making the distinction between ideas and then “actions, laws, practices, of sociology and politics,” Helie Lucas, wisely, clarified the context of the conversation on Islam as a set of doctrines and suggested practices and Muslims as self-identified practitioners of one of the world’s great faiths.

“In actual fact Muslim majority countries are anything but homogenous; they range from theocracies to democracies, from ultra conservative to socialist,” Helie Lucas explained, “The rights granted to citizens in general and to women in particular therefore vary from country to country; factors that account for these differences are essentially political, economical – far more than religiously grounded.”

Helie Lucas described the Koran and the Bible, in reading them, that one can find both the wrath-punishment god and the mercy-tolerance god. Each progressive and conservative theologian dealing with particular passages of their scripture to justify the progressive or conservative view of the world.

She reflects on this happening with progressive and conservative Christian theologians as well. Helie Lucas believes the problem is political or, more properly, the political use of religion.

“And what is the balance of forces between those and the defenders and advocates of secularism is the next question,” Helie Lucas opines, “This is what really determines the status of women, among others. In Muslim contexts like anywhere else.”

The great problem, as identified by Helie Lucas, is the ultra-conservative political forces on the rise, in a steady patter, around the world. Some with the extreme right, or far-right, in Europe or in Trump’s America.

Also, the similar concern arising in Modi’s India with Hindu fundamentalists vying for power or the Buddhist far-right in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Helie Lucas uses these as points of comparison for the rise of the far right in the world.

With the rise of the far-right, this becomes the general context of which Islam sees a particular brand of the rise. In these mostly Muslim contexts, then the “gender roles and legal rights are different and unequal for men and women – but more so under conservative governments and less so under democratic ones; and even less so in socialist regimes.”

While looking at the history of the countries with mostly Muslim populations include Iraq, Libya, Syria, and the Central Asia Republics, Helie Lucas educates. She explains women had the right to vote.

In some cases, these women had the right to vote well before their European counterparts. “French women for instance only gained voting rights in 1945, i.e. after WWII; as for Swiss women, a last canton gave them voting rights in the last decade – would you believe it?, Helie Lucas said.

These distinctions matter. These histories matter or facets of national and religious and rights history matter. Approximately 100% of girls went to primary school in Libya and if they went to university most would receive a state grant.

This happens, Helie Lucas said, at the same time many women were kept in illiterate states and remained secluded in Asia and Africa. She talked about the quasi-equality and even outright submission of women to male relatives.

Helie Lucas argues that if we want to fight this appropriately then we should bear in mind the political nature of this far right movement. An ultraconservative movement that takes on the cloak of religion in order to justify its existence.

With cases such as Noura Hussein Hammad, Islam amounts to that cloak or guise, but the main theme tying these fundamentalist and ultraconservative movements together is the global tendency towards the right – a far-right global phenomenon.

“At the moment, for instance, many countries in Europe are facing terrible attempts at curtailing reproductive rights, from Spain to Poland, you name it,” Helie Lucas said, and then asked, “Would you say religion is the cause or would you name the far-right forces (eventually backed by Christian fundamentalists) that use Christianism and fear of god to prevent women’s access to contraception and abortion?”

These are important considerations for the contextual analysis of the global rise of the far-right while at the same seeing the rise of ultra-conservative religious and political movements at the same time.

Of course, Helie Lucas made an important concluding note for this session:

Let me clarify one thing: this is NOT a defense of ‘Islam’, it is just trying to position ourselves better in understanding the political forces we are confronting, whether or not they pretend to represent Islam. We should not fall into the trap they set for us.

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2022-04-19

Ghada Ibrahim on Islam, Gender Roles, and Leaving the Faith

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/12

Ghada Ibrahim is a Former Muslim and Saudi Activist. In particular, an activist for the rights of women in Islam and talking about her former faith. Ibrahim took some time to sit down with me to discuss Islam, gender roles, and some of the limitations in interpretations and on some women as a result.

I asked Ibrahim about the gender roles in Islam. She talked about the standard, traditional gender roles found in Islam with women as the makers of the home and the men as the winners of the bread.

As I asked about the limits this puts on women, and even men, the restriction depends on where the women are located and if the separation between religion and government is strong or not.

Ibrahim explained, “For example, in Saudi, if the family imposes these gender roles on women, the women are limited to what their families impose on them. In secular countries, once women reach adulthood, they can break free and pursue their dreams.”

When I questioned the various interpretations of Islam, noting the different ones around, especially in regards to the similarities and differences between men and women, she couldn’t think of any. By Ibrahim’s analysis, the progressive Islamic interpretations tend to justify atrocities of Islam.

“For example, some progressive Muslims go on and on about how the word “beat” doesn’t actually mean “beat” in 4:34, but has several meanings in the Arabic language,” Ibrahim sated, “Or trying to justify the inheritance being half of that of men by excusing it saying men are required to provide for women and therefore it makes sense that they get more in inheritance.”

If she had to choose, Ibrahim went with the liberals and reformers of Islam who provide better interpretations of Islam. Also, if women want to leave Islam, some countries have mechanisms and structures in place for women to leave the religion.

Some women disagree with the tenets and practice and, by freedom of religion and freedom of belief, should be able to leave the faith. Ibrahim described the secular nations as safer for women to leave and seek out community.

“In the US and Canada, there is an organization called Ex-Muslims of North America that helps create communities for ex-Muslims to get together. Knowing that there are more people that have left the religion as well is therapeutic and helpful,” Ibrahim said, “In Muslim-majority countries, it is more difficult, but not impossible. Finding like-minded people is still a possibility and finding an outlet, whether it is in social media or a group of close like-minded friends is very helpful.”

So, the help exists for leaving the faith if a woman, or a man for that matter, feels the particular interpretation does not permit them to be free and happy. The support structures for men are similar as for women if they so wish to leave the faith.

However, men face fewer hurdles. The honor culture in many Muslim-majority countries makes the issue much more difficult for the women: “Women are in danger of honor violence as well.” The apostasy punishment, e.g. beheading and life imprisonment, is more dangerous for the men, though.

For the kids, I asked about their chances. “Unfortunately, they are trapped. In most countries, even secular western countries, forced indoctrination is not looked at as a form of abuse. So unless parents do something that is illegal,” Ibrahim opined, “such as trying to force their minor child into marriage or beating them when they do not pray, children will have to be diligent and prepare to walk out once they reach adulthood. It is even more difficult if the child lives in a Muslim-majority country, where leaving the religion is not even a choice.”

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2022-04-19

The Urgent Death Penalty Case of Noura Hussein Hammad

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/11

Sodfa Daaji is the Chairwoman of the Gender Equality Committee and the North Africa Coordinator for the Afrika Youth Movement. Here we talk about Noura Hussein Hammad’s urgent case. The hashtag: #JusticeForNoura. Daaji’s email if you would like to sign the petition, please provide first and last name and country to the following contact: daajisodfa.pr@gmail.com.

As I asked her about gender-based violence, as well as masculinity and gender roles as aspects in this, she talked about the multiple forms of violence faced by Noura.

Daaji stated, “Noura has faced multiple forms of violence, but she is still treated as the perpetrator, and not as a victim and survivor.” She explained Sharia Law does not permit the detailing her case in full to the judges.

However, marital rape is recognized in Sudanese law, but this aspect of the law was ignored in the case of Noura. It was ignored and not applied in short. The father treated Noura as if this was a woman whose fate was written through being married to a man chosen by the father.

Daaji described how Noura had zero chance to state no and be able to decide for herself, for her body, for her future.

When I asked about the ways in which the general public, the ordinary people, can help, Daaji stated, “Now, we need to be heard. We have 15 days and we are literally fighting against a system and against the time. We are not willing to be polite anymore, and we just need to be heard. Sharing the official hashtag #JusticeForNoura and her story will help us to fight for Noura’s justice.”

The prevalence of the cases such as Hammad’s seems common, according to Daaji. She wonders, along with other concerned people, if others are facing similar death penalties on similar grounds in Sudan.

“Women around the world are often the victim of injustice, and in some countries, laws are not equal. We are trying to mobilize to urge the Sudanese authorities to change as well the law,” Daaji explained, “and to start to take in consideration the details of each story, case by case. And of course, it is our duty to advocate for the abolishment of death penalty.”

Daaji cares passionately about the Sustainable Development Goals. She believes we cannot speak of leaving anyone behind in the developed world if we do not take other less well-off countries where the death penalty is part of the judicial system.

Hammad has less than 15 days to appeal the decision of the death sentence for her.

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2022-04-19

#BNChangesLives and Lives Changed by Black Nonbelievers, Inc.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/10

Mandisa Thomas is the Founder of Black Nonbelievers, Inc. One of, if not the, largest organization for African-American or black nonbelievers or atheists in America. The organization is intended to give secular fellowship, provide nurturance and support for nonbelievers, encourage a sense of pride in irreligion, and promote charity in the non-religious community.

I was lucky enough to have a short conversation with Thomas about a new hashtag campaign of Black Nonbelievers, Inc. (BN). When I asked about the reason for the campaign, #BNChangesLives, Thomas pointed to the consistent theme of hearing the personal stories of members and allies of BN.

Many people who felt as though they were helped in the transition out of their faith and to be able to find a community. With campaign on social media and elsewhere, the messages that are shared can be a few words and even a couple paragraphs in order to share their story. This sharing of personal narratives can help bridge the gap of aloneness for many nonbelievers and help bring them together with fellow atheists and nonbelievers, Thomas noted.

BN has been around for about 6 years now. Thomas explained, “We wanted to give people the opportunity to be able to share how we have done that. We wanted to give supporters – people who support our organization – who do not know how we have made an impact. This is a way to tell members how we connect with the overall community.”

When I questioned about specific stories of lives greatly improved by activities of BN or other organizations, Thomas pointed to a woman who was “very heavily involved in her church. She questioned the Bible and decided to leave. She was lacking community. She saw the need to help build that community and help find other nonbelievers. In contacting myself and wanting to get involved with the organization, we started the Portland, Oregon affiliate. She is connected with other black nonbelievers in general, in her area.”

Thomas talked how they have begun to work on some events together in order to create a cultural connection in a community. Where once there was a church, they have one means of nonreligious community, even online forums for the members of BN. In particular, Thomas talks about one person who was contemplating suicide based on emotional trauma that came from being a believer.

She found BN and saw a means to connect with another community and express inchoate frustrations. While BN does not put themselves out there as an alternative to mainstream medical professionals, as Thomas makes clear, people with trauma from a religious community who can find another community feel a place in which to heal is BN.

Thomas talked about how the community helped this woman deal with suicidal tendencies. “Her frustrations were that family member who was a pastor or deacon in the church had molested her,” Thomas stated, “She was sexually assaulted by a family member who was a leader in the church. That is not frustrating [Laughing]. That is traumatic.”

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2022-04-19

The Changing Discussions Around Gender Roles from Progressives and Traditionalists

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/09

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar is the founder of Ideas Beyond Borders and Bayt Al-Hikma 2.0. I sat down and talked with him about the conversations happening around traditional gender roles and progressive gender roles. Those gender roles more in the public discourse for deconstruction, debate, conversation, negotiation, and inquiry.

When I asked Al Mutar about the reasonable and unreasonable aspects of these debates, he responded, “I see it as kind of sad that the conversation about gender roles is happening again even in progressive societies.”

Al Mutar considers the segmenting of people into categories is limiting. He mentioned a recent attendance at a Liberty Con conference. There was a discussion around the categories and the limiting of people into categories.

Al Mutar said, “In the Roman Empire, you needed the military to be strong, physical men with good equipment and all that.” He gave that as a point of comparison. Where “a good solider” might not need the same physical requirements now, this is contrasting the Roman Empire with now.

With the drone technology, Mutar explains, and the advancement of military equipment, the limitation on gender with these old views can seem outdated.

“What happens is, sometimes, they make generalizations… even if they use stats, they are using it as a generalization which is ironic because obviously statistics are the opposite of generalizations,” Al Mutar opines, “So, I don’t want to make it sound like they’re the same, but the argument is that, ‘Oh, according to stats, more men prefer jobs in engineering and more women prefer jobs in social arts and liberal arts.’”

Al Mutar emphasized less the statistics and more the point of the advancement of some arguments. He thinks that, sometimes, conversations on gender roles can lead to bad outcomes or consequences. The emphasize, he thinks, should be on the individual pursuing their potential rather than having a societal restriction on an individual based on their gender.

When sked the people putting forward this more progressive worldview rather than traditional worldview, Al Mutar talked about the emerging movement comprised of many people. Those more often are left-leaning people.

Al Mutar describes how some in this emerging movement can be extreme. Extreme to the point of ignoring the differences between men and women, in denial of the science.

“So, within the more left-leaning, anti-gender roles groups, while I’m fully supportive of that and something I’m more aligned with; there’s also a movement too that pushes against the science behind it, which I think is not helpful to their cause in trying to say there is almost zero biological difference,” Al Mutar stated.

Al Mutar looks more for the type of society someone wants to live inside. Even if the science says otherwise, he posed the question, “Do we really want to put limitations on people based on their gender?”

“If more of the secular folks make arguments based on that rather than denying the science, I think they will be able to convince more people of the arguments rather than denying basic facts,” Al Mutar concluded.

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2022-04-19

On the Avenues of Intergenerational Communication

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/08

Melvin Lars is a fellow Good Men Project writer and Social Interest Group call listener-commentator. One topic was intergenerational communication. I wanted to garner some insight with a conversation between an older American and a younger Canadian.

We both live in North America, in different countries, and lived in different generations growing up (and continue to, of course). This is intended as a series on the subject of intergenerational conversation. Mr. Lars comes from Bossier City/Shreveport, Louisiana.

Lars earned several undergraduate and graduate degrees, is married to Ann Lars, and has a son named Ernest Lars. Here we talk about intergenerational communication.

When I asked Mr. Lars about the subject matter of intergenerational bonding, communication, and the facilitation of bonds through communication between generations, he talked about the importance, first, of listening.

Listening as the foundation to understanding, compassion, and exchange of experiences. Different generations have different experiences. In that, older generations and younger generations need to communicate with one another.

It seems like the foundation for long-term societies. Otherwise, society does not have anything other than a short-term perspective. Lars talked about one of the problems in the listening of the older generations. He talked about how they want to share wisdom and expect the wisdom to be absorbed.

However, they do this without first taking into account building that bond through listening and communicating in the first place with the younger people. I posted this to him as listening to learn rather than listening to respond to the young person.

He considers this exactly on point. Later in the conversation, I asked about some stronger points of communication or wisdom coming from the younger generation to the older generation and from the older generation to the younger generation.

Lars responded by talking about the attempts of the older guys to try to appease the younger guys. He argues that we need to delete the idea of a preconceived outcome for a conversation or dialogue. He also talked about deleting the idea that a young person has nothing to offer an older person. We also talked about the need to delete the attempts of the placation of the young people.

Lars goes on to note that placation is something people notice and do not like. At that point of understanding that they are being placated, people will shut down. He gives an analogy with Charlie Brown with the teacher going, “wa-wa-wa-wa.”

In terms of barriers to communication between adolescent men, young men, middle-aged men, and elderly men, Lars talked mainly from his own demographic of older men. He notes that older men have a tendency to put on a persona of seeming as if they have everything together. However, he describes the reality is quite different often: older men may not necessarily have it together. They may not want to take responsibility for skeletons they have in their closet or mistakes they made in the past.

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2022-04-19

Laity and Catholic Hierarchs on Abortion

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/19

Jon O’Brien, the President of Catholics for Choice, took the time to discuss reproductive health issues and the Roman Catholic Christian faith with me. I asked, in particular, about the situation in America regarding both, especially touching base around pro-choice issues.

When asked about the more pressing issues within the faith community, O’Brien said, “One of the biggest problems is the disconnect between the Catholic hierarchy and the Catholic people on issues of contraception and abortion. For example, in the failing days of the Pinochet regime of Chile, the Catholic hierarchy there pressured General Pinochet to introduce a restrictive anti-abortion law. In 2017, Chile, a country that is still predominantly Catholic, changed this Pinochet-era law on abortion. We see that sort of law all over the world, especially in Latin America.”

A stark example of the differences between the hierarchs of the Catholic Church and Catholic laity. O’Brien stated that there does need to be a deeper comprehension of civil rights, human rights, women’s rights tied to the ideas of conscience and autonomy.

He pointed to the stereotypes, from the outside, of the Catholic laity, where if someone is known as Catholic then they are viewed as anti-abortion or pro-life.

O’Brien gave an example of the prime minister fo Chile, Michelle Batchelet, who introduced a law to reform the complete ban on abortion with the now limited allowance of abortion dependence on the case, e.g. the pregnancies that may result from a rape or with fetal abnormalities and to save the life/health of the woman.

He does note an important point, “What is significant is we’re seeing Catholic voters and Catholic politicians no longer feeling intimidated by the institutional Church and standing up and saying as Catholics, ‘We don’t see a contradiction between allowing people to follow their conscience,’ which is a Catholic thing.”

He points to two intellectual giants within the theological traditions of the Catholic Church with Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine. Both Aquinas and Augustine taught that the final arbiter in an ethical decision is conscience.

That is, the individual conscience of the Catholic Church layperson in opposition to the hierarchy’s teaching within the church. It amounts to issues around autonomy, personal freedom, and LGBT issues as well.

Catholics support homosexual marriages in the United States. O’Brien reflected, “Although the Knights of Columbus and the Catholic hierarchy ran really highly funded campaigns against the idea of marriage equality, they lost. In the Republic of Ireland, the country of my birth, we’ve seen a referendum on the same subject. In other words, the people themselves voted in favor of marriage equality, despite the views of the Catholic hierarchy.”

It comes to the same story over, and over, again with conscience deciding against the hierarchical authority in favour of the ordinary believer of the church, the laity. He does not view these people as less Catholic. He views them as living social justice as they view it.

Catholics are making decisions for themselves. They say, ‘Your baptism makes you Catholic,'” O’Brien stated, “Being Catholic is not a litmus test as to whether you adhere to the letter of law in every teaching. Nor does it mean you get up in the morning and do whatever you want to do. It means you properly form a conscience and follow it. You must examine your conscience and that is a serious process of looking at what the church leaders have said, looking at what the Church has written and looking at your impact on others.”

He made a stark point that 99 percent of Catholic women who are active, sexually, in America use a form of birth control, which the bishops of the Catholic Church does not like.

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2022-04-19

The Humanism Time Machine

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/07

Andrew Copson, the Chief Executive of Humanists UK and the President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, talked with me about humanism in terms of its meanings and origin.

Copson said, “In English since the mid-nineteenth century, when it first appeared as a word, ‘humanism’ has had two main meanings. One refers to the cultural milieu of Renaissance Europe, which we now more often call ‘Renaissance humanism’. The second refers to a non-religious approach to questions of value, meaning, and truth, which emphasizes the role of humanity in these areas of life rather than the role of any deity.”

The second form of humanism inspired the organizations for humanist thinkers and activists. When I asked about the mobilization of those outside of a faith-based framework, and inquired if there are any similarities in the frameworks, Copson stated that there were not that many differences, as people have beliefs that motivate action in the world.

“Certainly, humanist organisations and leaders don’t have the god-backed power to instruct their fellow believers to do this or that, but then that doesn’t work out terribly well for religious leaders either,” Copson explained. “I think that leadership in a humanist context is about being clear in public forums about our values and beliefs, and then living out and modelling them in practice too. If people agree with your reasoning and warm to your manner, they will consider doing as you suggest.”

When I talked with Copson further about the founder of humanistic values, whether an entire society or an individual thinker, he pointed to several incidents bubbling up in the historical record including people such as Mengzi in China about 2,300 years ago. In addition to Mengzi or Mencius, he noted the Charvaka school in India, which had a similar counterpart in another part of the Greco-Roman world between 2,500 and 1,800 years ago.

“None of the societies in which these views were expressed could be described as humanist—they were diverse societies in which there were many schools of thought,” Copson explained, “but they were certainly more humanistic than, for example, the Christian states of medieval Europe. It was in part the rediscovery and reception of these humanistic thinkers that kickstarted the humanistic trends that have transformed the world and made it modern.”

Humanism has been an emergent property in world cultures. The principles of the philosophy have arisen at different times. As the different cultures and times have come forward, the definitions have changed, but the core of humanism has been consistent. It is in this that the humanist philosophy appears to be something universal to human beings. But the question remains as to why it is stayed so small in adherents.

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2022-04-19

Public vs. Private Healthcare According to a World Medical Expert

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/19

In March of 2017, one of Canada’s most distinguished academics, Professor Gordon Guyatt at McMaster University, talked about healthcare. In particular, his area of expertise in public and private healthcare, with an emphasis on the advantages and disadvantages of each system.

He took the time to have a discussion with me on the nature of the two different healthcare systems, the positives and negatives of each, and which might interest particular populations within a country.

When it comes to the general factors for the discussion for private versus public healthcare, Guyatt said, “When I gave the talk, I ask people, ‘How should we decide?’ There are a number of things that people raise. One is health outcomes.”

“It depends on the ultimate goal of healthcare, such as keeping people healthier. We also must consider what the impact is on people’s health, access to care, patient satisfaction, and autonomy—often characterized as a choice, and so on.”

He went on to describe the cost of healthcare as a major factor. But he also lamented that there is a lot of misinformation. This is distressing because the necessary ingredients for an informed decision by the public on the matters of healthcare require accurate information, not misrepresentation and distortion.

He notes that one of the major drivers for everything is the dissatisfaction with the way things are working now. That there must be a better way.

“You are looking for something different. It depends on who you are talking to. Their perspective might make a difference,” Guyatt explained. “The outcomes of private versus public funding will differ depending on who you are.”

“If you are very rich, it is a different calculus than if you are very poor. It changes across that spectrum. And it is very different if you are a healthcare provider versus a healthcare consumer.”

Income becomes an important factor. If you are a wealthy citizen, then the healthcare considerations will be different than if you are not as wealthy or a regular Canadian citizen. One concern for people is the sustainability of the current healthcare costs.

These differing frames of reference change the ways in which people are able to take into account the idea of “cost” within healthcare. He continued, “When I talk to audiences, there are notions that people have about what is affordable. There are notions people have about what it will do to their own income.”

To deal with the sustainability of the healthcare system, Guyatt said that he asks people about the healthcare expenditures as a proportion of the GDP over the last seven years. He gives multiple choices: gone up every year, most years, and so on.

“People end up surprised when the answer is that it has been stagnant or declined. So, as a percentage of GDP, healthcare is actually lower than it was seven years ago. They also tend to be surprised when you inform them that in 1991, that it was 10% of GDP for all healthcare expenditures. Now, it is a little bit below 11%. That is over more than 25 years.”

The healthcare expenditures over 25 years have been more extreme, according to Guyatt, “About 7% to 7.5%”. These influence the perception of the public on the costs of healthcare spending as a share of national wealth, which turn out to be false perceptions.

If we don’t clear up the misinformation, then making an informed choice on healthcare systems won’t be possible, but Gordon Guyatt is doing what he can to change that.

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2022-04-19

Meaningful Conversations Begin With Ethics

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/09

Islam, akin to Christianity, remains one of the largest religions in the world, with an enormous number of followers well over one billion. This means a variety of views, interpretations of religious scripture, values, and perspectives on one’s role in society—especially gender roles.

Shaykh Uthman Khan, Academic Dean of Critical Loyalty, an online university, recently took the time to sit down (virtually) with me to answer some questions about gender roles in Islam. Khan is an academic and Muslim.

♦◊♦

When I asked about effective means of communication in documented Islamic history and gender roles, Khan noted, “You should listen with the intention to understand and not with the intention to reply.” If someone wants to take on a new perspective, then dialogue becomes foundational, with the intent of the conversation to listen and understand the other person’s point of view.”

When it comes to some Islamic theology and some Islamic scholars, Khan noted that even if from the same religion, the disagreements in theology can make a scholar not want to associate with another: “I still don’t associate with you because we’re not from the same group.”

“A grouping that we’ve done within ourselves, different groups that we’ve created. It’s a big problem,” Khan explained. “The only way to overcome that is to come to a common understanding or a common ground.”

I have friends who are Christians and Jews. When I’m talking to them, I don’t talk theology with them.

“Religion aside,” he continued, “I have friends who are Christians and Jews. When I’m talking to them, I don’t talk theology with them. The theological conversation eventually starts trickling in if I need to talk theology, but we’ll talk about something that we both agree on.”

Finding that common ground within the faith, with disagreeing interpretations and perspectives of the faith, can be a tool applied to a broader context as well. For example, before a discussion on gender roles in the modern period, there must be the common ground as a foundation first.

Then the dialogue can move forward into the appropriateness of certain gender roles, for men and women. He notes this as a phenomenon extending beyond the intrafaith dialogue of the Muslim community, saying, “Muslims, I find, have segregated themselves a lot from others, from everyone else that’s not a Muslim. So, it’s like, ‘I’m a Muslim and you’re a non-Muslim.’”

He noted that this segregated approach is promoted in Islam and hasn’t found this to be the case in other religions. The dichotomy becomes Muslim vs. non-Muslim. But finding that common ground can be a good start to have the important conversations on gender, at which point he spoke about a mutual friend, Shireen Qudosi.

What do you call Shireen Qudosi? So, it happens to her all the time…She is called a slur, which is, ‘I consider you a kafir.’ Kafir means a non-Muslim.

She is a Muslim but doesn’t wear a hijab, for instance. “What do you call Shireen Qudosi? So, it happens to her all the time,” Khan described, “She is called a slur, which is, ‘I consider you a kafir.’ Kafir means a non-Muslim.” The reason for the epithet is because she is not wearing the hijab.

Shaykh Khan stated the same happens to him. He becomes considered, by some, a kafir or a non-Muslim because of disagreements on Islam, while both people identify as devout Muslims. Khan stated that this is a big impediment to the development of pluralism. It is a “big problem”.

He shared the following story from seminary. There was a dialogue course, which is a course where discussion and dialogue are encouraged. As an exercise, the people came from outside and put sticky notes on the wall. The notes had different identities on them: religion, age, education, and so on, in the myriad self-identifications of people.

“Believe it or not, 99 percent of the Muslims went and stood by the religion part,” he said in a surprised tone. Religion becomes a primary way that Muslims identify themselves—more than education, age, or other descriptors. He talked about explicit and implicit rules within Islam surrounding the community of Muslims.

He stated, “There are these rules there, but people are forgetting that Islam and ethics create a barrier in between because ethics are universal. You can be ethical and not be a Muslim, right?”

What defines you and makes you a Muslim is these few things that you’re doing, this belief that you have, believe in one god, in the prophet Muhammad, that’s what makes you a Muslim. Then your rituals will add on to that, then your ethics are universal.

“What defines you and makes you a Muslim is these few things that you’re doing, this belief that you have, believe in one god, in the prophet Muhammad, that’s what makes you a Muslim. Then your rituals will add on to that, then your ethics are universal.”

Ethics will bring people together because ethics are universal, in his opinion, where the discussion on beliefs—those that comprise Islam—can then become part of the discussion. But if the religion becomes translated into ethics, then the ethics becomes subjective, so people have to worry about how do they urinate, how do they dress, how do they eat, and so on. Those failing to meet those subjective ethics become non-Muslim or the outsiders.

That is where ethics must be primary, according to Khan, in order for the discussion to take place. Finding one more common ground with ethics because his religion is his dealing with God, and ethics is his dealing with everyone.

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2022-04-19

A Look at Vintage Inspired Ethical Designs from Helen Minogue

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/27

I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team.

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Vintage Inspired Ethical Designs is a new eco friendly vintage inspired contemporary fashion label based in Adelaide. The owner/designer, Helen Minogue develops her designs in Adelaide, and after many months of searching finally sourced home workers using traditional methods to weave, dye and print to make the eco friendly fabrics she wanted to work with, in India.

Tell us about your background

I was born and raised in South Australia to Anglo-Celtic parents. I was raised and educated as a Catholic. My father’s parents lived in New Guinea when he was a child and he was sent to Australia to boarding school from young age. My mother was born and raised in Adelaide and her parents were second-generation Irish. When my mother was growing up there was considerable discrimination against Irish Catholics to the extent that job advertisements would place the acronym CNNA – which stood for “Catholics need not apply”.

My mother’s grandmother would tell stories of when the English ‘invaded Ireland’ (as she called it), they stopped population speaking Gaelic and the children from being educated. So despite being raised a white Anglo Celt in a middle-class family I was made aware from a young age of the discrimination that can occur between groups of people and the long term and far reaching impacts this can have.

Tell us about your story and how you got into fashion?

I have come late to the fashion industry and with no formal training or relevant industry experience. I initially trained and worked as a registered nurse before then moving into the field of occupational health & safety. The compulsory purchase of my house and being made redundant lead me to decide to pursue a lifelong dream of having my own fashion label.

Box Pleat Skirt made of 100% Hand loomed Organic Cotton. It is hand dyed using natural dyes and block printed by hand.

How did you get interested in ethical and sustainable fashion?

I have always taken an interest in Human Rights so I was well aware of the ‘sweat shops’ being used by many fashion houses and especially any label that was offering clothing at very cheap prices.

So when I decided I was going to start my own label being ethical was a given and that is why it appears in my label name. It was when I started looking for an ethical supplier that I learned just how bad the fashion industry was in relation to pollution and waste and I felt I just could not knowingly be a part of that facet of the industry. Thus I began looking for organic fabrics and natural dyes.

As my designs are inspired by the vintage era my thinking behind my designs was that they would be more ‘timeless’ and therefore not impacted by the seasonal trends, I also hope that they are pieces that people will want to wear for years thus removing them from the fast fashion stream.

What seems like the importance of ethical and sustainable fashion designers and companies?

These designers and companies have 2 influencer roles, especially as there are more around. Firstly, we can impact upon the consumers by educating them about ethical and sustainable fashion and the benefits for everyone moving forward – this is particularly important for designers of teen fashion because if they can be educated at that stage of their buying journey it can impact them for the future.

The 2^nd way I see us being influencers is upon governments in things like getting new sustainable crops grown, tax reductions on sustainable clothing, supporting initiative’s for used clothing use.

What makes slow fashion better than fast fashion?

Fast fashion is usually mass-produced clothing that has everyone looking the same; it is made from synthetic materials, which come from a polluting factory and are designed to be worn only a few times and then thrown out – as because it is no longer ‘on trend’.

Slow fashion is made from organic fabric using natural dyes and will provide a unique piece that does not belong to a season and people will want to wear them year after year.

What is the importance of animal rights, especially in an ethical and sustainable fashion context?

Just like people animals as sentient beings have the right to be treated in a humane manner, if you are presenting yourself as ethical then by very choice of that word requires the appropriate action.

This is an 8 Gore (panels) Skirt. It is made from 100% hand loomed organic cotton, dyed using natural and traditional dyes and finally the print is added using the same method that has been employed for centuries – block printing.

What is Vintage Inspired Ethical Designs?

A new label that takes inspiration for designs from the 1920’s to 1960’s. It is currently doing ladies daywear. The clothes are designed with a timeless flair so that they can become wardrobe staples

What inspired the title of the organization?

I wanted the title to clearly explain what the label was about (this was before I had become eco conscious) and Vied means struggled/strived which I thought was apt for what I was starting and also for working with ethical companies

What are some of its feature products?

Organic hand loomed, hand dyed and block printed by hand fabrics

What are the main fibres and fabrics used in the products?

Organic cotton, organic linen, organic khadi, organic nettle, wood fibre.

Who grows, harvests, designs, and manufactures the products of Vintage Inspired Ethical Designs?

I design the clothes here in Adelaide, Australia. The growers and the manufacturers of the fabrics are local men and women from a number of villages across northern and north/western India. I choose the fabric and commission a bulk quantity (there is no capacity for sampling you have to commit), once the fabric is ready 5-6 weeks it is taken to the ‘factory’ in Mumbai – this factory consists of only about 7 people and they pay award wages.

Water use in production is an issue. What is the importance of reducing excess water use in the production of fashion?

As water is a precious resource, this is a very important issue facing the fashion industry. I am conscious that organic cotton uses less water than non-organic but it still uses a fair amount of water, so for my next collection I want to investigate the use of bamboo as an alternative but I do have concerns about the manufacturing process so this is what I need to look into further.

Will the fibres and fabrics for the products from the company biodegrade?

Yes, they are all organic so break down quite easily.

What is the customer base – the demographics?

Any age would suit my clothes, however I have specifically designed them for women 35+ and up as they are designed to fit women with realistic figures.

What topics most interest you?

New organic fabric developments, new sustainable crops, up-cycling ideas, ways to overcome the disposable society we have become (like the café in the USA where you can take broken kettles etc. and people will help you try to fix it instead of throwing it out and buying a new one).

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2022-04-19

ATOYAK, Selina Konig’s Ethical and Sustainable Fashion Company

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/26

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Tell us about yourself – family background, personal story, education, and previous professional capacities.

For some years now I have been very interested in sustainability, sustainable agriculture, reducing food waste and healthy nutrition. I try to include sustainability in my everyday life as best as I can. It just happened that for personal reasons I moved from Germany to the Bay Area, where these ideas and concepts have a much broader audience. I got involved with ATOYAK through my sister-in- law who is the founder and CEO. Having a business degree and being passionate about sustainability, and helping other where possible, made me the perfect candidate for helping her with ATOYAK.

Family background: I come from a well-situated German middle class family. I grew up it a rather “protected” environment, or a “bubble” as my husband likes to put it. At 17 I left my family for the first time to study abroad in the US. Since then I have lived, studied and worked in Buenos Aires, Argentina,

Singapore, and now in the Silicon Valley. Through travelling my horizons were broadened and I started questioning things that seemed natural to me. Since my mom implemented this notion of good and healthy food in me, I started my journey into sustainability with food. Through marriage, I have become a part of a Mexican-American family, which is in many ways the very opposite of the family I come from. It has been a never-ending discovery process and introduced me to ethical fashion through ATOYAK.

Education & profession: I hold a B.A in International Business Administration and a M.A in European studies. My B.A was in cooperation with IBM in Germany, where I completed the degree within 3 years while being an employee at IBM and working on 6 different 3 months assignments during that time. I finished my M.A last summer, which coincided with moving to the Bay Area. Here I work for a tech start-up in the network security industry.

What is the importance of sustainable fashion?

We need to use our resources in a smart and sustainable way, and fashion is just one piece of the puzzle.

What about socially conscious fashion and design?

All people behind a product need to be valued. Not only the brand name and designer, but those who actually produce our fashion. If we recognize them and empower them through our products, we give them the tools to delevop themselves, their families, towns, countries.

What is ATOYAK?

ATOYAK was founded with the premise to empower women in small town in Mexico, named Atoyac. This is the town where my husband and his sister grew up in. My sister-in- law, Jackie, had been looking for opportunities to empower the women she knew and found that knitting and crocheting was something most of them knew how to do. Being a designer she came up with a product palette, creating the brand ATOYAK. She wanted to create products that represent her ideas and believes about living sustainable and environmentally friendly.

Its stated mission is to “create sustainable job opportunities that empower women in small towns of Mexico to rise out of poverty and live with dignity.” What are some of the ways that ATOYAK is pursuing this mission?

ATOYAK has given jobs to women who either didn’t have a job, were selling things to make a bit of money, or had other jobs which they could hardly live off. ATOYAK is the best paying employer in town, paying the women wages they would only dream of. It has given them not only economic stability, but also created enthusiasm and hope. Guille, the General Manager was able to send her daughter Fatima, who also works for ATOYAK part time, to finish high school, which otherwise would not have been possible. She also started Zumba classes and was able to spend more time on her health and well-being. But most importantly it gave her the opportunity to go back to school and finish her middle school education.

How can other companies pursue this in general, too?

Every company can weigh the benefits of a bit more profit in its own hands, or investing in society. Because we only become more prosperous in the long run if all of us benefit. Paying fair wages, empowering workers to grow personally and professionally, producing in an environmentally friendly way, stop striving for excess, all these are things every company can implement. In today´s world, most thinks are driven by quantity, not quality. If we go back to owning 3 pairs of good quality and sustainably produced jeans, instead of 10 that are not, we are heading in he right direction.

What other work are you involved in at this point in time?

At this moment only ATOYAK and my full-time job.

With regard to ethical and sustainable fashion companies, what’s the importance of them now?

These companies need to show that ethical fashion can be as trendy, modern and as up to date as the leading fashion companies. They will need to educate especially the young generation and make it ‘hip’ to wear sustainable fashion.

Thank you for your time, Selina.

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2022-04-19

Morgan Wienberg, Shutting Down Corruption and Nuanced Problems

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/24

Morgan Wienberg is the Co-Founder, Coordinator, and Head of Haiti Operations for Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization. She was kind enough to take the time for an extensive interview with me. Please find part 11 below, and 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here, 6 here, 7 here, 8 here, 9 here, and 10 here.

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4. Jacobsen: What is the process to shutting them down? If people are reading this 1, 5, or 10 years from now, what is the general process to shut them down directly or indirectly through support/advocacy to shut them down?

Wienberg: It is important to be in contact with IBESR. If you see orphanages that do not treat children well or up to standards, you should report it. If it is not too severe, they will not shut it down, but will pressure the orphanage to improve its standards. It is important to notify them about it. That is the first step. Also, you can go to the police, UNICEF, or Save the Children.

In terms of prevention, if you want to support abused children, you should know orphanages are more likely to cause more problems. You can consider supporting families or community development projects, foster homes, or support IBESR if you’re going to support an orphanage. IBESR can list the official ones. If it is an orphanage that you are part of now, you can contact IBESR to see if it is registered.

First of all, international sponsors for these orphanages are not aware of the exploitation happening. Also, they might not be aware of the alternatives. Haiti is on another level. Even if an orphanage is well run, the children are healthy. It has sufficient funding. A child raised in an institution is not going to develop the same as a child in a family setting. S.O.S. Village is a good example.

This is a good orphanage that we’ve placed children when they can’t be with their families because it is set up as a family setting. It is broken into different households with a mother and a limited number of kids. I appreciate that some kids need orphanages, but the setup should be in a family dynamic. There is research to prove this. Kids raised in institutions are more likely to be involved in prostitution, crime, and so on.

They feel like they are lacking something. If you look at Haiti as a whole and want to help Haiti advance, I do not see how taking children away from their communities and leaving them in that one spot, and leave them there until they are 18, will help the country advance.

You have teenagers completely disconnected from the community. They do not know how to survive in their own country. They do not have the connections to community for reintegration into the community. I have seen those kids at 18. They grow up well in an orphanage, but are put out on the street at 18. Literally, there have been kids that die because of malnutrition. They do not know how to survive.

Once they turn 18, they can not keep them in the orphanage. They put him on the street. They did not reunite him with the family at that point. If the child has been at the orphanage for several years, who knows if the family will accept them? If they do live with the family, they do not have the connection. They are not used to surviving. A lot of the time, they do not have the skills to look after themselves and the community.

Haiti is lacking in aftercare programs for transitioning youth into more self-sufficient adults. Many people are eager to support little kids. Sometimes, it is difficult to acquire funding for teenagers or young adults. It is important because those are some of the most at-risk people in Haiti. Those young adults. They have the potential to turn the country around and contribute to the economy, and to create industry.

They can look after themselves and other people. Few people are investing in that age group. Those are the people turning to crime or remaining dependent on adults or orphanages, and so on. So, definitely, the investment in families and communities is the way to go; if you have to support and institution, you should have it based in family units with aftercare programs to help youths transition out.

5. Jacobsen: Statistically, those that will become involved in crime, drugs, inability to support themselves, and have a negative impact on society are young men more than young women. The reintegration of young men into families is important for the reduction of those negative impacts. I love your comprehensive perspective. Aside from family reintegration and after care programs, what are the nuanced on-the-ground aspects of the problem?

Wienberg: With the aid coming to Haiti, I notice this does not focus on empowerment and sustainability of the locals. Those giving the aid need to ask the locals what they are not good at and then work on improving that for them. That can help them become more sustainable. Also, it creates a culture of dependents. The Haitian people are receiving handouts or people are coming to them and asking, “What do you need?”

Rather than, “What qualities do you have that we can help you build?” That mentality, even once healthier, they will not realize that they can impact or improve those in their community. They see themselves as receivers rather than contributors. It is about coming with an open mind and being culturally sensitive asking, “How can we help you become more sustainable?” Then, you can invest in that.

When you look at the US aid approach of sending subsidized rice into Haiti, local farmers can not sell rice. The street rice in more expensive than bleached white American rice. Even a portion of the money invested in shipping the rice over here, if those funds were invested in helping local farmer grow crops and training them in effective methods of doing it, it would have an exponentially greater impact here than the standard method.

References

[David Truman]. (2016, March 9). Morgan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbgIF1NO5E.

[DevelopingPictures]. (2012, March 25). Sponsor a Child: Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjzncB3HsmA.

[James Pierre]. (2016, April 5). Morgan Wienberg goes one-on-one with James Pierre. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VMeKKTxkM.

[Morgan Wienberg]. (2014, June 3). Congratulations, FH Grad 2014!. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQ7PB95aYA.

[Ryan Sheetz]. (2015, February 20). Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fdPx1srGI.

Bailey, G. (2013, December 31). Catch Yukoner Morgan Wienberg tomorrow on CBC’s Gracious Gifts. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/airplay/features/2013/12/31/catch-yukoner-morgan-wienberg-tomorrow-on-cbcs-gracious-gifts/.

Baker, R. (2016, March 4). PHOTOS Governor General recognizes exceptional Canadians in Vancouver. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/governor-general-recognizes-exceptional-canadians-in-vancouver-1.3476960.

Broadley, L. (2014, August 1). Meet the Yukoner reuniting Haitian ‘orphans’ with their families. Retrieved from http://globalnews.ca/news/1482839/one-yukoners-work-reuniting-haitian-orphans-with-their-families/.

Bruemmer, R. (2011, April 8). Haiti: Little Paul gets it done. Retrieved from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/haiti+little+paul+gets+done/5214066/story.html.

CBC News. (2015, November 29). Morgan Wienberg awarded Meritorious Service Cross for work in Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/morgan-wienberg-awarded-meritorious-service-cross-for-work-in-haiti-1.3340295.

ca. (n.d.). 23-year-old receives Meritorious Service Cross Medal. Retrieved from http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=804018&playlistId=1.2769055&binId=1.815911&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1.

ca Staff. (2016, February 8). 23-year-old awarded Meritorious Service Cross for work in Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/23-year-old-awarded-meritorious-service-cross-for-work-in-haiti-1.2769013.

Dolphin, M. (2015, December 4). Yukoner’s work in Haiti draws governor general’s attention. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/life/yukoners-work-in-haiti-draws-governor-generals-attention/.

Gillmore, M. (2012, July 18). Helping to reunite families in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-to-reunite-families-in-haiti.

Gillmore, W. (2013, August 16). Wienberg gives New York a glimpse of Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/wienberg-gives-new-york-a-glimpse-of-haiti/.

Gjerstad, S. (2014, April 8). Morgan (22) vier livet sitt til å gjenforene barn med foreldrene sine på Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.tv2.no/a/5852686/.

Joannou, A. (2016, March 7). Governor general gives nod to Yukon’s champion of Haitian children. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/governor-general-gives-nod-to-yukons-champion-of-haitian-children/.

Langham, M. (2012, October 10). Just Like Us: An Interview with Morgan Wienberg of Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from http://aconspiracyofhope.blogspot.ca/2012/10/just-like-us-interview-with-morgan.html.

Little Footprints, Big Steps. (2016). Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.

Neel, T. (2013, May 16). Reaching the Hearts of Children in Need. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/reaching-the-hearts-of-children-in-need/#sthash.YCSvg1aM.oVLAQE3j.dpbs.

Peacock, A. (2016, February 27). Haiti has her heart. http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/news/local_news/article_beb828d0-ddcf-11e5-851b-8b09487f61ce.html?mode=story.

(2014, July 8). Joven canadiense decide gastar sus ahorros en rescatar niños de Haití. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/joven-canadiense-reune-huerfanos-haitianos.html.

Rodgers, E. (2015, January 12). Meet the 22-Year-Old Who Skipped Out on College—to Offer a Helping Hand in Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/01/12/meet-morgan-wienberg-little-foot-big-step.

Schott, B.Y. (2012, September 13). Making a Difference One Child at a Time. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/making-a-difference-one-child-at-a-time/#sthash.CeS656Xm.2r1eJsAW.dpbs.

Shiel, A. (2011, November 17). McGill students host third annual TEDxMcGill even. Retrieved from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/mcgill-students-host-third-annual-tedxmcgill-event/.

Thompson, J. (2011, December 23). Helping Haiti for the holidays. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-haiti-for-the-holidays.

Thompson, J. (August 12). Hope and hard lessons in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/hope-and-hard-lessons-in-haiti.

Thomson Reuters. (2014, July 27). 22-year-old Yukoner reunites Haitian ‘orphans’ with parents. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/22-year-old-yukoner-reunites-haitian-orphans-with-parents-1.2719559.

Waddell, S. (2015, November 27). For decorated Yukoner, home is now Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/for-decorated-yukoner-home-is-now-haiti.

Whitehorse Star. (2016, March 2). Yukoners to receive honours from Governor General. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/yukoners-to-receive-honours-from-governor-general.

Wienberg, M. (2013, November 22). Age Is Not an Obstacle in Changing the World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-wienberg/age-is-not-an-obstacle_b_4324563.html.

Wienberg, M. (2014, January 23). Courage of a Mother. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/courage-of-a-mother/#sthash.hy1QzF0S.ZA1StSZz.dpbs.

Woodcock, R. (2013, September 26). Back to School in Haiti. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/back-to-school-in-haiti/#sthash.TMqQNkLX.dpbs.

Yukon News. (2013, February 6). Incredible acts of kindness in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/incredible-acts-of-kindness-in-haiti.

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2022-04-19

Morgan Wienberg, Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/24

Morgan Wienberg is the Co-Founder, Coordinator, and Head of Haiti Operations for Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization. She was kind enough to take the time for an extensive interview with me. Please find part 10 below, and 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here, 6 here, 7 here, 8 here, 9 here.

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1. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization works from three components: child well-being and development, family and community involvement, and advocacy of child rights.[5] What are some modern examples of this – 5 years into its development?

Morgan Wienberg: Some children have been reunited for several years. We are focusing on education and medical care for the kids. That’s one clear example with child well-being and development. When speaking about family and community development, the community trainings as part of the working group for child protection. Community education regarding child abuse and sexual assault.

Also, education regarding abandonment once people give their children to orphanages. Some children have been reunited longer. We will invest in helping a parent start a small business or raise livestock. That does overlap into child wellbeing and development because the objective is to help that parent be able to care for the child.

In addition to it, that family can invest in their local economy, which can affect the whole community. When we talk abut advocacy, some examples include parents who try to reclaim their child from a corrupt orphanage. They find out that the child has been sold. We met one parent whose child died in the orphanage. We accompany those parents to take legal action and get an arrest warrant for the orphanage owner.

I have been involved in shutting several orphanages down. We have some of the kids involved in advocacy. When we have meetings with certain partners to educate international community about corrupt orphanages and the importance of family reunification, we have some of the youth that went through the phase of living in an abusive orphanage.

Now, they are with their families or in a state house. We have those children speak at the meetings or speak with partners, or on radios. We try to get them involved in that as well. In addition, other advocacy cases include kids who are sexually assaulted. We accompany them to the hospital for medical care. We try to arrange mental health care as well.

We have the child see a psychologist. We have them removed from the dangerous situation. We accompany them to the police system and to court if necessary.

2. Jacobsen: In a prior interview, you mentioned 600 orphanages were corrupt in Haiti. However, it is hard to track them. You posited more.

Wienberg: There are more.

(Laughs)

There are thousands of orphanages in Haiti. Social Services has tried to monitor them. However, when you talk about the entire Southern department, which is equivalent to a province or a state, there are only 7 social workers for the entire region who are with social services. Those 7 social workers don’t have contracts. They haven’t had contracts for the last 3 months.

They haven’t been paid. They go to work because of commitment to the kids. There are only 2 paid social workers at present for the entire region. They have one vehicle. How can they monitor those orphanages? They did try to do some statistics about it. Definitely, I believe there are more than 600.

3. Jacobsen: How many have you been involved in shutting down?

Wienberg: I have been involved in shutting down three orphanages, completely.

References

[David Truman]. (2016, March 9). Morgan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbgIF1NO5E.

[DevelopingPictures]. (2012, March 25). Sponsor a Child: Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjzncB3HsmA.

[James Pierre]. (2016, April 5). Morgan Wienberg goes one-on-one with James Pierre. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VMeKKTxkM.

[Morgan Wienberg]. (2014, June 3). Congratulations, FH Grad 2014!. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQ7PB95aYA.

[Ryan Sheetz]. (2015, February 20). Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fdPx1srGI.

Bruemmer, R. (2011, April 8). Haiti: Little Paul gets it done. Retrieved from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/haiti+little+paul+gets+done/5214066/story.html.

ca. (n.d.). 23-year-old receives Meritorious Service Cross Medal. Retrieved from http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=804018&playlistId=1.2769055&binId=1.815911&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1.

Gillmore, M. (2012, July 18). Helping to reunite families in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-to-reunite-families-in-haiti.

Gillmore, W. (2013, August 16). Wienberg gives New York a glimpse of Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/wienberg-gives-new-york-a-glimpse-of-haiti/.

Gjerstad, S. (2014, April 8). Morgan (22) vier livet sitt til å gjenforene barn med foreldrene sine på Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.tv2.no/a/5852686/.

Little Footprints, Big Steps. (2016). Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.

Peacock, A. (2016, February 27). Haiti has her heart. http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/news/local_news/article_beb828d0-ddcf-11e5-851b-8b09487f61ce.html?mode=story.

(2014, July 8). Joven canadiense decide gastar sus ahorros en rescatar niños de Haití. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/joven-canadiense-reune-huerfanos-haitianos.html.

Shiel, A. (2011, November 17). McGill students host third annual TEDxMcGill even. Retrieved from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/mcgill-students-host-third-annual-tedxmcgill-event/.

Thompson, J. (2011, December 23). Helping Haiti for the holidays. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-haiti-for-the-holidays.

Thompson, J. (August 12). Hope and hard lessons in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/hope-and-hard-lessons-in-haiti.

Waddell, S. (2015, November 27). For decorated Yukoner, home is now Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/for-decorated-yukoner-home-is-now-haiti.

Whitehorse Star. (2016, March 2). Yukoners to receive honours from Governor General. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/yukoners-to-receive-honours-from-governor-general.

Wienberg, M. (2013, November 22). Age Is Not an Obstacle in Changing the World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-wienberg/age-is-not-an-obstacle_b_4324563.html.

Wienberg, M. (2014, January 23). Courage of a Mother. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/courage-of-a-mother/#sthash.hy1QzF0S.ZA1StSZz.dpbs.

Woodcock, R. (2013, September 26). Back to School in Haiti. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/back-to-school-in-haiti/#sthash.TMqQNkLX.dpbs.

Yukon News. (2013, February 6). Incredible acts of kindness in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/incredible-acts-of-kindness-in-haiti.

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2022-04-19

Sustainable Fashion And Future Challenges – An Entrepreneur Speaks

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/10/15

Greg Horowitz is the Founder of Double Espresso Textiles (“Double Espresso”). With a Bachelors Degree in History from Binghamton University and a Masters in International Business from the University of Leeds, Greg leverages his wide range of professional experiences in Politics, Entertainment and E-Commerce to make ethical and sustainable fashion a far more achievable reality.

Here we talk about ethical and sustainable fashion, and Double Espresso.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How is ethical and sustainable fashion moving forward now, especially with more attention to plastics not only on the seafloor but in landfills and other areas?

Greg Horowitz: What I believe is that we are seeing something resembling a consumer-led revolution, businesses are now, for the first time, being forced to consider their customers as not simply judges of price and name-brand, but as educated and engaged consumers who will hold any given product to a higher standard of quality, production standards, and environmental-impact.

I must insert a cautionary note here and emphasize that we cannot feel that the revolution is here and in full swing, there is still a long way to go to make the massive and all-encompassing impact that we all aspire to, but the seeds have been planted. That is a major step in the right direction.

In our business, Double Espresso, we have found that with the rare exception of a large brand such as Patagonia or the occasional line of products produced and made available by a major retailer, environmentally-friendly change is largely driven by smaller and medium-sized brands who have a greater ability to model their organizational image and focus their brand in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way.

They have the ability to play to their customers wants and needs, and continually grow and develop without altering or horse-trading their values with their sales. The fact that there are so many brands determined to continue to grow without compromising their values is an incredibly encouraging development.

While it can be questioned what impact the smaller and medium-sized brands may be able to have, if you ask me, I believe that it is the perfect place to start. We want to see these smaller, ambitious, and aggressive young brands, who not only have the motivation but the upward trajectory of growth, to continually build out their businesses with an embrace for the values they hold most dear to be cleaner and greener. Today’s small brands are tomorrows big brands. If they see consistent success through their promotion and production of green and environmentally-friendly values and ideals, they’ll continue carrying these through as their consumer-base and audience become larger and more viable.

As I like to say, “Cotton is no longer simply cotton,” and a lot of the brands we work with are embracing this idea. Today, we live in a world of endless technological development and environmental awareness, which is fueling an extraordinary amount of innovation towards the re-imagining and re-engineering of old-style fabrics into new constructions and new ideas, which are “clean and green.” It’s amazing the types of products they are producing today. Polyester produced from plastic bottles captured off the seafloor. Leathers made from various types of fruits such as apples and pineapples. Cotton is no longer simply just cotton, but a GOTS-certified organic cotton that meet a wide variety of specifications and “Fair Trade” standards.

Jacobsen: What would you consider your main product at present for Double Espresso?

Horowitz: We work with many different types of brands looking to make their mark in the sustainable fashion industry who need us to handle different types of fabrics for them and get involved with sourcing at different points in their supply chain so it depends. If I had to pick one product that may be our “main product,” I would say that is a classic: GOTS-certified organic cotton.

Organic cotton has been around for a while and many different products use cotton. In the current marketplace, cotton is only acceptable if it is produced and sourced having met a wide variety of specifications and statistics. Brands no longer simply say, “Send me some cotton and make it kind of heavy or light,” it doesn’t work that way anymore.

Now when a brand says they are interested in organic cotton, they will specify the certification they want (usually either GOTS-certified or OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certified). A specific weight range they want it to be in; a specific cutting width range that they can handle. Often, a variety of additional requests such as topical finishes, cloth qualities, and so on. These can be produced using an eco-friendly dyeing solution – which, incidentally opens up a whole other series of questions as there are several variants in eco-friendly dyeing with complications and specifications.

As well, with many of our clients, there is a growing interest in ensuring that their products are produced from situations which are ‘Fair Trade’, essentially ensuring that they are buying their fabric from organizations who pay their workers a fair wage, ensure that their workers are working in sanitary and kind conditions, and that the workers are NOT being dehumanized.

Jacobsen: Who are the main certifying authorities? What are the main certifications now, in terms of the sustainability of the textile?

Horowitz: It seems like every day. There is a new certification floating around the marketplace. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that certifications themselves are a profitable business. As new certifications enter the marketplace and engage consumers on their priorities, brands and organizations will be encouraged to acquire them as consumers begin to look for them. The second reason is that with the advancements of technology and the changes in the marketplace, there is more room for businesses offering certification to build a reputational base and solidify their status as the most important certification that is relevant to a specific technological and/or market advantage, essentially creating their own geographical and market-oriented niche.

But to be clear, it is not simply a matter of signing up and paying for the right to the certification, it is not that easy. These certifications hold their users to extremely high standards and will continually seek to ensure that the user, whether you are a manufacturer, supplier, or end-user, is maintaining the correct standards – the industry risks losing its appeal as contributing the sustainable fashion trends otherwise.

Jacobsen: You mentioned organic materials earlier, just to follow up on that – What is fruit leather?

Horowitz: Fruit leather is one of the finest innovations to come out of the textile industry. For large portions of the fashion and apparel industry, traditional leather is quickly becoming a symbol of yesterday’s fashion interests and is not conducive to a new generation of eco-friendly brands and consumers. From both a fashion standpoint and an animal-rights standpoint, which is a concern which many brands bring to us when discussing various types of fabrics and products, leather is no longer considered “cool” or as “cool” as it once was.

I also think, with the growing acknowledgment among the media and consumers, that we have a problem with the way we handle “food waste” for the first time we are actually seeing a sincere interest and attention from both a political, industrial, and a local level as to how much food is being wasted. With the larger amount of attention being paid to it, the issue has inspired several eco-friendly textile engineers to reevaluate how waste can be reimagined and reincorporated into the sustainable fashion industry. You see it not only with fabric such as ‘fruit leather,’ but also in the dyeing industry where food waste is being reincorporated into the dye used in clothing. Amazingly, they have done a damn good job.

So when you combine the two major issues, you get fruit leather. There are various types of different fruit leather being produced, whether from organic apples, pineapples, banana peels, and others.

Jacobsen: If you look at the political discourse surrounding fashion right now, we see a lot of public concern with plastic. Fascination, but at the same time challenges with the ideas of circular economy and how it changes global supply chains is growing. Does this, basically, imply the need for a multipronged approach to the pollution and production problems currently facing us?

Horowitz: Absolutely, there is no question about it. The environmentally-oriented and pollution-focused problems we are facing in our world are overwhelming. If we are not prepared to seek a multi-pronged and multilateral approach to these problems, the earth will cease to exist as we currently recognize it. Sustainable fashion is only one of the major economics sectors in this fight.

But I do believe, whole-heartedly, that solutions do not lie in singular approaches. Historically, it usually never does. It lies in a multilateral and multi-pronged approach stretching across the boundaries of politics, business, and people, where everyone has to get on the same page and act without question or self-interest. We have to be willing to share the common goals, and make the necessary adjustments to reach said goals.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Greg.

Horowitz: It’s a pleasure.

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2022-04-19

Assumptions of Rationality -Q&A with Dr. Alexander Douglas, Session 7

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/04/20

Dr. Alexander Douglas specialises in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of economics. He is a faculty member at the University of St. Andrews in the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies. In this series, we discuss the philosophy of economics, its evolution, and how the discipline of economics should move forward in a world with increasing inequality so that it is more attuned to democracy. Previous sessions can be found here in part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6.

Scott Jacobsen: With psychology classified as a natural science by you, what are the most substantiated and broad-reaching strong conclusions of psychology relevant to economics?

Dr. Alexander Douglas: I’m no expert on this. Behavioural economics is the main area in which the findings of clinical psychology have been integrated. The major challenge attacks, as Robert Sugden puts it, the notion of ‘integrated’ preferences, according to which each agent is defined by a stable set of preferences that has to be tailored to fit her choice behaviour in all circumstances. So if I choose soup over salad today, and salad over soup tomorrow, then the assumption that I am rational compels us to redefine the objects in my preference-set. It would be irrational to prefer salad to soup and soup to salad tout court, but not, e.g., to prefer soup to salad when I’ve eaten 1000 soups in my life but salad to soup when I’ve eaten 1001 soups.

But is it rational for what I’ve eaten in the past to influence what I choose today? What about the lighting in the restaurant? What about what other people are eating? And then, of course, every soup is unique and every salad is unique: perhaps I prefer this soup to this salad, but not that soup to that salad. But then if the descriptions under which I choose become so specific, economic predictions become impossible: nothing about what I choose today will inform us about what I’ll choose tomorrow, since tomorrow everything will be slightly different.

Economists, it turns out, make a lot of implicit assumptions about what can and what can’t go rationally into what is called the ‘framing’ of a choice: past consumption is permitted to be relevant, but not seemingly extraneous factors like the day of the week on which a choice is made. But who is to say what it is rational to consider relevant to a choice? A lot of behavioural economics is about coming to terms with the importance of framing; people can be found, e.g., to choose to save 98 out of 100 lives but not to condemn two out of 100 people to death. Behavioural economics seeks to know how people typically frame their choices, and how the framing affects what they choose.

In a way, it tries to honour the ideal of ‘value-neutrality’ that underpins modern economics: it looks like a value-judgment to say that past consumption can rationally influence a choice but not the day of the week. Behavioural economists want to get by without even that value judgment. We shouldn’t say that people are irrational just because they take to be relevant what economic theorists take to be irrelevant.\

Sugden believes, by the way, that even without identifying people’s preferences as such we can make some judgments about the sorts of economic institutions that they would rationally choose. I’m sceptical. He believes that people will rationally choose an economically liberal arrangement, in which free agents can engage in voluntary exchange in pursuit of a better allocation to themselves – and so they might, under that description. But how about under the sort of description Thomas Carlyle might give to such an arrangement: an unearthly ballet of higgling and haggling, conducted by little profit-and-loss philosophers; an array of pig-troughs where the pigs run across each other in unresting search of the tastiest slops, etc. etc.? Framing matters when agents ‘rationally’ choose institutions, just as much as when they ‘rationally’ choose goods. Public choice theory, I think, must also come to terms with the centrality of framing.

Jacobsen: How might, or are, these most substantiated and broad-reaching strong conclusions of psychology influence the philosophizing about economics?

Douglas: Once we bring framing into the question, I think the whole way of modelling human behaviour has to radically change. I don’t see how this can be avoided. A standard ‘utility function’ in economics will look something like this: U=f(x), where U is the overall utility or wellbeing of an agent and x is some vector of magnitudes, each representing the amount of a certain good consumed. To take framing into account, we’d need to replace x with a vector of descriptions of goods. These can’t be simple magnitudes, and so the whole project of a mathematisation of human behaviour is undermined. Could you not just expand the vector of magnitudes to have one argument for every good consumed under every possible description? You’d have one magnitude for coffee in the morning on my own, one for tea in the afternoon with a friend, one for tea in the afternoon with a work colleague, one for coffee in the evening with my beloved, etc. etc. The problem, of course, is that every good will fall under an infinite number of possible descriptions. And worse, there are descriptions of descriptions: choosing off a menu isn’t the same as choosing from a buffet, and so on.

Moreover, it is hard to see how we can get solid experimental evidence on how people frame choices. We might, using the above example, find that people will choose to accept the loss of two people but not to condemn two people to death. These framing effects matter a great deal, as our spin doctors know well. But how do we define the difference? That too is far from clear – our spin doctors know that too. I think that properly taking these subtleties into account would make economics into a qualitative, hermeneutic, ‘soft’ science – more akin to anthropology than physics.

Behavioural economists are attempting to walk the tightrope between hermeneutic anthropology and quantitative science, but I believe that the tightrope is of infinitesimal width, and sooner or later they’ll topple over onto one side.

Jacobsen: Do any of the aforementioned strong conclusions influence the treatment of time-inconsistency first considered by Spinoza and into the present with professional philosophers such as yourself?

Douglas: Spinoza has an idea of rationality that, I think, sits very badly with economics in general. For him it is irrational to discount the future at all. I might prefer one marshmallow today to two marshmallows tomorrow, but tomorrow I would, if I could, certainly not give up two marshmallows to have had one in the past. It is arbitrary to identify myself with myself at a particular moment in time. Thus he says that the rational person does not value a good differently depending on whether it is past, present, or future (Ethics 4p62).

When modern economists talk about time inconsistency, they mean something much weaker than this. They’re talking about a time-discounting function that is hyberbolic, or generally non-linear. Only a few concede that time-discounting, in general, is irrational; Joan Robinson calls it ‘an irrational or weak-minded failure to value the future consumption now at what its true worth … will turn out to be’ (The Accumulation of Capital, 394).

If agents didn’t engage in time-discounting, economic explanations of interest rate, profit, and so on wouldn’t work. Economists certainly don’t want to say that economic equilibrium depends on profound irrationality in the agents involved. In fact, I think you could argue that their equilibriums depend on forced labour or coercive extraction of some sort. If I take on a loan today, my future self will have to work to pay the interest. He gets no direct benefit from what happened in the past. Or, even if he does, he is unlikely to set the relative value of the past benefit as high as his past self did. But he simply wasn’t consulted in the decision. My past self can be paternalistic or exploitative towards my future selves, but, in any case, there is a dictatorship of the present. Economists treat as coercive a situation in which the preferences of a select group determine the outcomes for everyone. But that is exactly what happens when, in their models, agents at time zero determine what all their future selves will pay and receive, by negotiating with other agents present at time zero.

We could, of course, identify all the future selves of an agent with that agent at time zero, but then we would have an agent with deeply inconsistent preferences. Again: today I prefer to give up the promise of two marshmallows tomorrow for one today, but tomorrow I certainly wouldn’t give up two marshmallows in order to have had one in the past. So a single diachronic agent with a nonzero time-discounting rate would have preferences that are not just ‘inconsistent’ in some weak sense but plainly contradictory.

This isn’t only an academic exercise; it gets to the heart of why markets can’t plan – an issue rendered very palpable in our day by the climate crisis. James Galbraith points this out somewhere in The Predator State. You shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that futures markets allow markets to plan: what they allow is for present agents to divide up the spoils of what they plunder from future generations by contractual obligations or irreversible natural processes. In this way, as in many others, Spinoza has never been more relevant.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Alex.

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2022-04-19

What Makes a Good Secular Therapist? With Dr Caleb Lack

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/07

Dr. Caleb W. Lack, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Central Oklahoma, and the Director of the Secular Therapist Project. Dr. Lack is the author or editor of six books (most recently Critical Thinking, Science, & Pseudoscience: Why We Can’t Trust Our Brains with Jacques Rousseau) and more than 45 scientific publications on obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette’s Syndrome and tics, technology’s use in therapy, and more. He writes the popular Great Plains Skeptic column on skepticink.com and regularly presents nationally and internationally for professionals and the public. Learn more about him here. Previous sessions can be found here: Session 1, Session 2, Session 3, and Session 4.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What does a secular therapist do in America? How do their methodology and practice differ from the majority of religious practices within the United States?

Dr. Caleb Lack: Overall, a secular therapist and a non-secular therapist have roughly the same goal: to alleviate the distress someone is experiencing. The ideas behind what is causing the distress and how to ameliorate it, though, can vary widely among (and within) these groups. Good secular therapists would look to what the empirical evidence says regarding the causes of, for instance, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and then base treatments on those causes. These treatments should not just be based on someone’s ideas, but instead have been tested out in a well controlled manner. Ideally this means via a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study; this allows us to know that any change a person experiences via a particular therapy is due to that therapy and not to things like the placebo effect or a natural improvement across time (also called regression to the mean). In other words, it’s not enough to show that a person gets better because they were in therapy – instead we have to show that they get better because of that therapy specifically. This is what’s called using evidence-based practices.

It’s important to note that therapists who are religious can and do use evidence-based practices in therapy. In fact, most therapists are religious, and many do not let that aspect of their personal identity impact their work with clients. However, there are a significant number who provide things like “Christian counseling” either explicitly or implicitly, meaning that they bring their religious beliefs or practices into the therapy room. This might include doing things like praying with clients, relying on Biblical teachings to help clients solve problems, and so forth. The main issue with doing this, from my point of view, is that there’s not empirical evidence backing up that these things are actually helpful to reduce certain kinds of psychological symptoms or help improve one’s quality of life.

I’m not saying that they couldn’t help, but I personally would rather see someone who is doing something we are relatively certain will help me achieve a particular mental health goal, rather than just asking me to have faith that something will help.

Jacobsen: How does a practitioner of evidence-based therapy acquire training and earn accreditation different from ones more oriented to theory alone or faith as the fundamental bases for their practice?

Lack: That’s a great question. It’s almost surprisingly easy to become a licensed mental health professional in most states in the U.S., and across the world. In fact, in some countries, there is not any standard types of training or even a cohesive licensing board that ensures anyone calling themselves a “counsellor” or “therapist” has a certain level of education or training.

For anyone interested in becoming a very well trained mental health clinician, the first thing I would recommend is to carefully look at the curriculum being offered and the faculty teaching those classes. In general, you want a curriculum that’s very heavy on courses emphasizing known evidence-based therapies and assessment methods that’s taught by full-time faculty. Seeing what the faculty have listed as their therapeutic orientation is also good; most of our well-supported treatments are behavioural, cognitive, or cognitive-behavioural therapies. In case you aren’t familiar with what an EBP is, The Society for Clinical Psychology maintains an extensive list of known EBPs, while the Society for Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology has great information on what we know works with youth.

I would also talk with some of the core faculty about the training model they employ. I and a colleague recently published an article that outlined a training model for master’s level clinicians. It emphasizes a step-wise model of training where each clinical class builds upon the next one, with large amounts of intensive supervision both by faculty and outside supervisors.

Some red flags in programs that could indicate poor quality of training might be large amounts of classes taught by adjunct faculty and those without a terminal degree in the field (usually a doctorate); a very high student to faculty ratio in a program; low requirements to enter the program (for example, not requiring an undergraduate degree in psychology, taking people with a GPA below 3.0, or not requiring recommendation letters); clinically-oriented skills classes that are taught online; and courses that emphasize feelings or faith over fact.

Jacobsen: What makes a good therapist? Also, what is the typical optimum range of clientele for a therapist before either a) too few clients for them to become sufficiently proficient in their work or b) overdrawn, taxed, and likely to be at or already burned out on all three sides of the proverbial candle?

Lack: A good therapist is someone who is nonjudgmental, doesn’t try to force their particular worldview or ethical stance on you, and who helps you learn new, effective coping methods for the particular emotional, behavioral, or cognitive difficulty you are having. They also should be appropriately licensed or credentialed in the state or country you are in (what this means varies considerably between locations, though).

The second question is a bit trickier. In general, doctoral-level psychologists in the US and Canada have 4,000 or more hours of clinical experience by the time they graduate with their degree. For masters-level clinicians the number varies widely, with some programs only requiring 200 hours and others requiring 800 hours. However, that’s more to deal with being able to become licensed.

In terms of how many clients a clinician sees weekly, that varies widely depending on what kind of work they do. For someone seeing individual clients once a week or so, 25 clients is a fairly typical, non-overwhelming workload. Given that progress notes and treatment planning (not to mention things like billing, potentially) take up a fair amount of time, someone seeing that number of clients would have a full-time workload each week (or more). Of course, seeing more intense clients, or for longer amounts of time each week could adjust these kinds of numbers downward. Or if you are like me and a full-time professor, you might only see a couple of people each week to keep your clinical skills honed, as more is impossible due to time constraints.

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2022-04-19

Angelos Sofocleous: Free Speech, Political Correctness, and Academia

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/05

Scott Jacobsen speaks to Conatus News editor Angelos Sofocleous about free speech and political correctness in academia and society.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Angelos, you got in trouble, recently. It was over a phrase tweeted from an article, an article included in the controversy as well. You, due to the created circumstances, resigned as the president-elect of Humanist Students and were fired as the assistant editor of Durham University Philosophy Society’s journal, Critique, and as co-editor-in-chief of The Bubble, a university magazine. Let’s start: what was the tweeted statement?

Angelos Sofocleous: As part of some gender-critical articles and comments that I had made in the previous months, I retweeted a tweet which read “RT if women don’t have penises”. The original tweet also had a screenshot from an article by The Spectator titled ‘Is it a crime to say ‘women don’t have penises?’ Apparently, as I have experienced, it is a crime. Christopher Ward, who was Chair of LGBT Humanists in the past, tweeted about my retweet, pointing the fact that I, as president-elect of Humanist Students, was tweeting, in his words, ‘transphobic shit’. He had also pointed out that he had faced a lot of ‘transphobic’ behaviour when he was involved in Humanists UK. He did not give any evidence for his claims, nor he engaged into a conversation when I asked him to and failed to provide counter-arguments in the arguments that I had made supporting my position following his tweet. Calling me a ‘bigot’ and as ‘suffering from cognitive dissonance’ was certainly not a way to have a fruitful discussion. I had calmly tried to engage him in a conversation by linking him to a recent article that I had written, in which I explain my position on sex, gender, and the transgender movement. He ignored it, basically revealing that his real intentions were to make a fuss about his view of Humanists UK.

Following that, I was blamed, by Humanists UK officials for ‘disreputing’ the organisation. They didn’t hold any discussion about it and did not show any willingness to engage in a civilised debate about the political statements that I had made. Given their insensible reaction and also the fact that they demanded, in the future, that if similar controversies arise, I have to ask what the official stance of Humanists UK is before I voice my opinion, I felt compelled to resign from my position. This was not a point to which I wanted to reach. However, I couldn’t cooperate anymore with people who, despite their claims that they belong in an open-minded organisation which is driven by science and rational thinking, their actions have proven that, in certain cases, Humanists UK cannot avoid dogmatism.

That week, I had also been appointed Assistant Editor of Durham University Philosophy Society’s journal, Critique. A few days after I was appointed, I received an email from Ryan Lo, the President of Durham University Philosophy Society, telling me that I was fired from my position as my comments ‘belittled trans experiences’.

A few days later, I got an email from my co-editor-in-chief at The Bubble, a student magazine at Durham University, in which I was informed that I was removed from the position of co-editor-in-chief due to the recent controversies.

In October, Durham Students’ Union had ruled that my firing from Critique and The Bubble was unfair and undemocratic, as they did not follow the procedures outlined by Durham Students’ Union, did not give me an opportunity to explain my views, did not gather a vote of no confidence from their members, and did not give me an opportunity to appeal the decision.

The reactions from the three organisations unveiled a big problem with freedom of speech in academia. As shown in a petition started by Conatus News a few days after my firings, dozens of academics expressed their concerns about where academia is heading; academics who had experienced fierce criticism for their views. Political correctness has, indeed, gone too far in universities, especially when it is combined with identity politics.

Jacobsen: What was the intended message of the tweet? What was the interpreted message from the tweet?

Sofocleous: In that tweet, and in my previous statements and articles, I expressed some concerns for the transgender movement, offering, at the same time, some suggestions for improvement. I agree with one basic principle of the transgender movement: that gender stereotypes need to break. But my critique is on their actions; particularly on the fact that the transgender movement makes gender stereotypes more concrete instead of getting rid of them. And that critique was not well-received, evidently.

Therefore, I made the retweet as part of the critical statements in which I pointed out that we need to distinguish between sex and gender. Based on this distinction, I claimed that one could not claim to be a woman solely based on how they feel, or behave, or act, or dress, or ‘identify’.

This is the crucial point in the discussion and in my criticisms. We need to define what it means to identifyas a woman or a man. I have not received a satisfactory answer to that question yet. All answers that I receive are either a) Circular, i.e. ‘a woman is anyone who sincerely identifies as a woman’, or b) Promoting gender stereotypes, i.e. ‘A man is whoever performs/feels/behaves like a man’. This is what I wanted to address with the retweet and my gender-critical statements. Remember, we do not speak about individuals who have undergone surgery and claim to have become women and, thereby, female. Some claim to feel like a woman or claim to be a woman because they behave like a woman or have some behavioural aspects that are normally associated with being a woman. Thus, they enforce the stereotypes. Intersex and transsexual individuals, however, are often left out of the discussion.

So, with this retweet, I wanted to challenge the notion of ‘feeling like a woman’. There is no such thing as feeling your gender, or sex, or age, or any part of our identity. True, you might actually feel some things which are stereotypically associated with an identity. But, I want to say three things here. One, aren’t we supposed to get rid of these stereotypes? If you conform to certain stereotypes, it is damaging if at the same time you claim to belong to the identity group to which those stereotypes apply. Two, in case you claim to not belong to any identity group and be, instead, gender-fluid or non-binary, then you must understand that by leaving your group (man/woman) you actually strengthen the stereotypes that apply to those groups as the only individuals who belong in that group after you left are individuals who satisfy the stereotypes. Three, following from the previous two points, if you are going to challenge stereotypes associated with your identity group, it is incredibly important that you stay in your group while fighting these stereotypes. Women who feel marginalized are not doing any favour to themselves by calling themselves ‘womxn’. If you actually believe that you are oppressed by other women, as a woman, then express these challenges from within your group. By alienating yourself from the group, you only confirm your beliefs about the group itself. But this only takes place because you have decided to alienate yourself from it.

Gender, sex, sexual orientation, nationality, ethnicity, age. We just are those things. There is no separate feeling that is associated with any aspect of one’s identity.

People, I believe, should be able to express themselves in any way that they can. There is no reason to have men’s clothes or women’s clothes, for example. One should be able to wear whatever they want to, without having to worry that they identify as something. Any label you put in your behaviour is restrictive, especially when this label hijacks science.

Jacobsen: Of those individuals who read the tweet and the full article, so far as you can tell, what was the interpreted message by them – those who took the time to understand the arguments and statements within the specific context?

Sofocleous: Unfortunately, those who have read the article were much fewer than those who just saw the retweet. But a general criticism I have gotten is concerning individuals who have gender dysphoria and, even though they are males, for example, they feel like they are women. To deny their claim means, for them, denying their existence. However, no one denies anyone’s right to exist. Trans individuals are human beings and, as human beings, they deserve to be treated with love, respect, and kindness. Me not agreeing on how you label yourself has nothing to do with your existence.

The comments were not at all on the personal level but purely on the ideological level; they were not based on attacking any particular individual.

I believe that the transgender movement would be much more able to achieve its aims not by creating more genders but by eliminating gender as a concept.

Jacobsen: In one of the first responses, you gave the reasons as to the resignations and firings. Outside of the philosophy journal, the student magazine, and the president-elect position, what were other resignations or firings at this time?

Sofocleous: No. But I faced further problems at University. At the beginning of the academic year, I was worried about the reaction of the philosophy department here, and whether the events would impact my studies and academic career, as I know that the department is not particularly friendly to my views.

I met with this lecturer who is an assistant professor. Before the meeting, she had told that she was open to gender-critical views within the department. At the meeting, I realised that that was not the case. She tried to lecture me on what freedom of speech was, and that my retweet did not fall under freedom of speech. This affirmed what I think about some transgender activists. They police some things people think or say.

She had also said, “You had misgendered someone in your Twitter account.” It goes beyond the academic and into scolding someone in a personal capacity based on what they said in their Twitter account. The fact that she actually went back into my Twitter feed and found an instance where I had ‘misgendered’ someone, and told me off about it, is beyond me. Furthermore, when I said that ‘we should distinguish between the personal and the ideological’ she said that ‘it’s easy to say this when you’re privileged’, twice. It’s a tactic of anti-gender-critical individuals, to shut down speech because of someone’s ‘privileged’ position. They start the discussion with a privilege check and they will deny you the right to speak or voice your opinion if they find that you are too privileged.

Of course, she did not care to ask anything about my background, my past, my ideas. It is extremely sad that some people shout ‘privilege!’ on their sight of a white heterosexual male, and discussion stops there.

We need to have conversations on gender, on race, and other controversial issues without having the debate shut down because some people take it personally. Facts do not care about your feelings.

As a threatening act, she also had the Gender Identity Policy of Durham University in front of me when I entered the office. The Policy reads:

Transphobic abuse, harassment or bullying (refusing to use a correct pronoun, ignoring a person because of their trans status, intrusive questions) will be dealt with under the University’s Respect at Work or Respect at Study Policy and may lead to disciplinary action which could include expulsion/dismissal.

It is like going to Saudi Arabia and have them showing you the part in their Criminal Code which says that it is an insult to criticize Islam. It is the same thing. Someone showing you a legal document or a penal code and not getting to the root of the discussion or the debate, of whether it is right to insult the Prophet Muhammad or to have a discussion on gender issues. The radical left’s tactics are incredibly similar, if not identical, to religious fundamentalism. In today’s political climate, the radical left and the far-right are connected through this wormhole of similarity of tactics.

Further to that, I had expressed the view that when a foreigner, such as myself, comes to the UK to study, s/he is often unaware of the beliefs, customs, and traditions of the UK. Therefore, even if Brits disagree with a foreigner on an issue which they think that they are absolutely right, they should take the time to explain why they are right, and not just force their opinion. Their colonial past certainly does not help – they’re used to forcing their traditions and their views. Coming from a country which suffered from British colonialism, and which still suffers from it, it was particularly ignorant of her that she simply dismissed my statement by saying “I know, I’m from Ireland”.

Jacobsen: John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, made a point. He made many points. One of the points made was the idea of someone wanting to restrict the right to freedom of expression of another person. The idea being: the person who wants to restrict the person’s freedom of expression believes they have some absolute knowledge ahead of time about what is a correct answer on the topic to be discussed.

With the threat of expulsion from a university, especially for someone about to enter graduate school, post-graduate work, can be particularly threatening coming from the department. Also, you made a point about a separation between the personal and the ideological. In a philosophy department, in particular, a person should have the capacity to speak on even sensitive issues at an ideological level through critical thinking and logical analysis rather than this being ‘misgendering’.

This is the big separation and the point you’re making insofar as I can tell.

Sofocleous: Exactly, it’s quite worrying and concerning that this took place in the philosophy society and the philosophy department, when the general aim of philosophy is to discover the truth through debate and discussion. I see that their approach was wholly wrong. But, which is the right approach? Let’s take a step back. Let’s say you have a dangerous view or a view considered dangerous in your community. How do you deal with that view? How do you deal with a threatening or an immoral view?

Let’s take someone who is a white supremacist, or someone who argues that women are subordinate to men. Confronting such views is a three-dimensional process. The first is changing the mind of that person and like-minded people. The second is stopping the harmful view from spreading into society. And the third is spreading the right view into society, not through enforcement, but through society itself finding the right approach.

What happens, however, is that white supremacists, for example, are simply punished. Of course, in punishing those individuals we assure that their views are blocked from spreading into society. But, we do not change the mind of those individuals and we do not make sure that the right view spreads in society. Punishing those individuals does not reveal to them what the right position to take is. They are not convinced that their ideas are wrong. In fact, by punishing them, you even make them believe in the ideology more deeply. Getting at the issue in this way, we are not getting to the core of it. Punishing someone does not ensure the idea goes away.

Their punishment, which might just be physical punishment or punishment affecting their mental wellbeing is received in a way in which those who are punished want to fight back.

Dangerous ideas must be taken to be a virus. However, they can’t be treated just like a virus, for the following reasons:

One would think that we need to restrict the idea to a certain area in society in a way that it cannot spread through society, as we would do with a virus. The thing with viruses is that they are not able to organise themselves in a way which is similar to how human societies organise. A virus can simply be marginalised to a certain part of the body where it affects healthy cells at a minimum level, and subsequently be exterminated. The viruses themselves are not going to organise and fight back to the healthy part of the body.

But with human individuals, if you restrict or marginalise a group in society, those individuals are still given the opportunity to organise themselves and fight back against the healthy part of society. Of course, our first inclination when we face a dangerous idea is to punish and marginalise it from society. However, simply marginalising a dangerous view does not help. It helps no one; neither the individuals, nor their groups, nor society.

What is the right approach, then? Education. The right approach is educating those individuals and trying to convince them through healthy debate that they are on the wrong side – if they actually are on the wrong side. There is a caveat here, however. If we debate or discuss with those individuals, where do you put the boundary? Do we need to make this a debate between a creationist or an evolutionist, or a human rights activist and a white supremacist? I do not think it goes to that level where you need to put both in a boxing ring let them fight each other through debate and see which side wins. However, even if those ideas are not debated publicly, individuals who hold those views must not simply be punished, but one should approach them conversationally and convince them of the wrongness of their ideas or show where their way of thinking is fallacious.

There should be a debate or a discussion, or understanding, of my ideas. If those individuals believe I am wrong, I am open to them convincing me otherwise. There is a concern when some individuals are not allowed to voice ideas which some deem controversial. Because you do not know what their controversial ideas or opinions are if you do not allow them to voice them.

You can only attack the ideas when you know what the ideas are. It is important. We cannot treat a dangerous view simply as a virus. We should debate those individuals in the public sphere and the private sphere to convince them of our ideas if we are so confident that we are right.

Jacobsen: Looking forward, what is happening with the student union, the publications, and so on? What is happening with this public dialogue at this point around a particular colleague of mine, Angelos Sofocleous?

Sofocleous: Durham Students’ Union decided to uphold my complaint by concluding that my firings from Critique and The Bubble were unfair and undemocratic. However, the investigation said that my freedom of speech was not violated, which is not the case. Freedom of speech means you are free from consequences related to your speech. There’s no free speech when you face the consequences for what you say.

It is, however, saddening on the personal level as well. I knew the people who were involved in the two publications and considered them good friends of mine. We have a lot of common interests, views, and ideas. This is the first time in my life that I am not on speaking terms with someone. It is simply sad that people reach this level in their relationships simply because they disagree on some issues. I do wish they would be more accepting of people with different views.

As regards other stuff that has been happening, this gave me the opportunity to talk to other organisations or groups about freedom of speech, transgender rights, and where academia is heading. A few weeks ago, I gave a talk in the UK about whether academia has been impacted by political correctness and people who have been policing what has been happening in academia.

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts based on the conversation today?

Sofocleous: I would like to touch on the subject of truth, especially in philosophy. We have reached a point where feelings seem to matter more than facts and conversation on some subject is shut down based on the feelings of some people because the conversation is seen as too controversial.

We should not fear threatening opinions or even dangerous ones, but be ready to oppose them and support our ideas against the ideas of the other. But, sadly, this does not seem to be the case in academia. This environment is creating people who are too fragile. Or, anti-fragile, as Jonathan Heidt puts it as young people today are overprotecting themselves by being scared to be fragile – people are scared to be hurt, to be offended, to have their ideas criticized and their worldview shaken.

They feel that there should be someone who protects them all the time. It is the law or some policy. However, I would say: it is a good thing to be offended. When someone is offended, they know that they have gone outside of their bubble. We will, of course, feel offended outside of our bubble.

It makes you visit other bubbles and try to convince other people of your truth. Even if we can be open, we can be challenged and change our views on some issues. But, of course, this will not happen if we keep residing inside of our bubble. We should be welcoming to other people’s views.

We should value the duty of having a conversation with people whom we have opposing views. Because this is not only an opportunity and to listen to the other person’s views. But if we care about the truth, then we can convince them of what the truth is.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Angelos.

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2022-04-19

Dr. Sven van de Wetering on Augustine, Free Will and Psychological Analysis

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/14

In Part Five of this interview series, Dr Sven van de Wetering speaks to Scott Jacobsen about free will, Augustine and psychological analysis.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do the psychological sciences assume Freedom of the Will? How do you define Freedom of the Will?

Dr Sven van de Wetering: The concept of freedom of will seems to have arisen in a theological context, and was well articulated by St. Augustine. The argument went something like this: God is all-powerful, and therefore capable of making people do whatever He wants.

Nevertheless, people frequently do things that displease God. This makes sense only if one assumes that God creates little zones within people’s minds in which He does not exercise the control of which he is capable. Hence, freedom of will is the ability to make choices independently of God.Psychology has mostly moved away from this theological mode of thought and tends to be materialist in orientation. In other words, the phenomena that laypeople think of as mental or spiritual are the results of processes taking place in the brain, in accordance with physical and chemical laws.

If freedom of will implies a rejection of that materialism or implies that mental processes can somehow violate the laws of physics and chemistry, in the way that Augustine thought that humans had the freedom to violate the laws of God, then I would have to say that psychology does not endorse free will.

If, on the other hand, we mean by freedom of the will that human beings are complex creatures that, thanks to their well-developed prefrontal cortices, are capable of deciding to engage in actions that run contrary to the biological programming postulated by evolutionary psychologists or the cultural programming postulated by many other psychologists, then I would have to say that most psychologists do endorse a version of free will. Although, it is a version that does not create a little gap in the omnipotence of the laws of nature in quite the same way that Augustinian freedom of will creates a little gap in divine omnipotence.

Jacobsen: In the natural world handed to us, through the natural philosophical tradition seen in the sciences and tied to Descartes, we face the passive, naturalistic, and moving world external to our minds connected to the concept of an active but freely selecting – while constrained – mind with various psychological dynamics.

How does psychology link the first conceptualisation with the second? What seems to make sense of the issue more than others?

van de Wetering: This is mostly a levels-of-analysis issue. At the level of neurons, processes are invariable and, in your terminology, passive. At the level of organisms, though, especially of human beings, the very complexity of the interlocking systems allows them to produce the types of processes we call selecting, deciding, thinking, and so forth.

I see the disparity of these levels analysis when I, for example, play a game of chess against my computer. I know that what is happening inside the computer is just electrons running through processors according to the laws of physics, but that does not change the fact that it is actually more useful for my chess game if I interpret the computer as choosing lines of play, deciding on specific lines of attack, and thinking about its options. It is this way of thinking about the computer’s behaviour that Dennett called the intentional stance. The intentional stance is an angle of view, not a rejection of determinism or materialism.

Jacobsen: How does epistemology work in the light of the linkage between these two ideas?

van de Wetering: Thinking of yourself as a deterministic, material system when trying to make epistemological judgments is not going to get you very far (except that it may instil a certain useful humility). You get much further in epistemology if you again take the intentional stance, thinking of knowledge in terms of the goals that are served by knowing.

There will be times when one’s understanding of human beings will be furthered by thinking of them as material systems; I certainly would not want to undo all those lovely fMRI studies. At the same time, the connection between the material substrate and the phenomena we think of as mental or intentional is sufficiently loose that I will continue to endorse the use of multiple levels of analysis in psychology and numerous research techniques based on multiple sets of epistemological assumptions.

Cultural anthropologists and economists both study human beings, but do so using very different epistemologies from most psychologists (and each other); nevertheless, I find that both are a lot of fun to read because their different angles of view allow them to supplement the varied psychological perspectives through which I usually look at human behaviour.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Sven.

Dr Sven van de Wetering is an associate professor at the University of the Fraser Valley. He is on the Advisory Board of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. Dr. van de Wetering earned his BSc in Biology at The University of British Columbia, his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at Concordia University and his Master of Arts, and a PhD in Psychology from Simon Fraser University. His research interest lies in conservation psychology, lay conceptions of evil, and relationships between personality variables and political attitudes. Session 1, Session 2, Session 3, & Session 4 can be found here.

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2022-04-19

We Need to Change How we Think About Refugees and Migration

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/07

Scott Jacobsen speaks to Gissou Nia about migrants, refugees, the international community, climate change, water scarcity, and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Migrant and refugee issues are continually arising along with concerns from the international community relating to these issues. Increasingly, they reveal some problems as well. What are the problems being faced at present by migrants and refugees around the world?

Gissou Nia: I do not mean to be US-centric with this. But the thing on the centre of my mind is a decision issued by the Trump Administration in late September on the refugee admissions cap. In the US, ever since President Reagan, there has been a refugee cap set for each fiscal year, usually announced in September.

It is rubber stamped by the Congress. It is approved. But there is not much deviation from what the administration decides. That sets a limit on the number of refugees who are allowed to settle in the US each year.

For the past year, the decision announced in December 2016 that dictated how many people can come into the US in 2018; that was already at a historic low. It had been set at 45,000 individuals. You could have to compare that to the prior numbers, which were more than twice that.

Now, there was a recent decision only to permit no more than 30,000 people to enter the US; in fact, it has been reduced by 15,000, which makes it the lowest ever. I think there is a sense that what the Trump Administration would ideally want is to reduce the number to 0.

Even from the number of folks who would be permitted into the country in 2018, which was 45,000, we haven’t reached that number in terms of actual people settled. With only a few weeks remaining in the fiscal year – the Administration, they only admitted only 20,000 refugees, so not even half of the number that it said that it would take into the country.

That is what is front of mind for me. As we reduce the number of people who are allowed to come in through the formalised resettlement process, we are denying people from war-torn countries. People who have been persecuted due to their lifestyle, beliefs, and professions, or individuals who have been forced to leave their country as staying posed serious concerns for their life.

We are saying these people cannot legally come to this country. It leads to what is going on at the southern border. Many people are seeking protection. They are allowed under international law to seek protection from the violence they are fleeing from.

The narrative being presented is that people are coming here ‘illegally.’ That they are lawbreakers or doing things that are not allowed. Truly, a lot of these people who are coming are coming to seek protection from violent regimes in their home country.

That is what they are allowed to do under asylum laws. It is something the US has adhered to. Now, we are also seeking to reduce the number of refugees who can come to this country. That is really in front of mind for me.

As our political leaders demonstrate a lack of leadership and stoke the flames of xenophobia and contribute to that with othering rhetoric, we are not really on a track to be able to welcome people and successfully integrate and assimilate people who are truly seeking refuge.

We will need to be focused on what solutions are, because nobody, right now, can say it is a problem that doesn’t concern them. It touches all of us. So, we have to be really mindful of it.

Those who we have had a decades-long history of welcoming. That is a disturbing turn of events. I find in this country. It is something we see across the world as we see countries closing borders and becoming hesitant to accept newcomers.

I am concerned that it is becoming entrenched along political lines. That is, it is not seen as a human or a humanitarian issue. That is of great concern to me. There are the UN Global Compacts of Refugees and Migration.

That should be formally adopted in December if I am not mistaken. That is going to be the first time that there is ever a global agreement on migration. Of course, there have been global agreements on refugees but not on migration.

We have a lack of political will from the Trump Administration withdrawing from the process. I think it is vital that other countries and the international community continue to invest in that process and really come to some logical solutions on how to deal with what is going to be an ever-increasing flow of people – leaving their origin countries.

People are also forced to leave their countries of origin due to climate change. This is going to continue unless we are in a place to reach the political solutions and the solutions needed for climate change to prevent natural disasters and different people from having to leave their different countries due to lack of water.

We will need to be focused on what solutions are, because nobody, right now, can say it is a problem that doesn’t concern them. It touches all of us. So, we have to be really mindful of it.

Jacobsen: With climate change worsening, are the projects such that there will be more refugees and migrants around the world as climate change becomes worse, e.g., as the problem of water scarcity worsens due to climate change, as you mentioned in the response?

Nia: Yes, of course, it is hard to predict the future. But, at the moment, we are on track to have some serious water shortages because that will lead to different people leaving and seeking quite literally greener pastures, because they will be dealing with incredible challenges at home. Already, we see this in Iran with some severe water shortages. It is causing draught and impacting subsistence farmers. We will see that pattern globally.

Of course, there is evidence to show the civil unrest in Syria and the initial protests were stoked by drought and by farmers being very unhappy with certain circumstances. I think there is evidence of that globally.

We see a negative trend when it comes to that. I do not see that resolving anytime soon; unless there are serious global solutions being proposed to counter it.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Gisso

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2022-04-19

Md. Sazzadul Hoque: A Call for Help for an Inhumane Persecution

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/17

Md. Sazzadul Hoque, a Bangladeshi blogger, human rights defender, and online activist, is in trouble. He is a member of the Humane First Movement and the founder of penman.in. Here is his current status.

For activist work and writing, Hoque has suffered on a number of levels, including receiving death threats. In 2017, he was forced to leave Bangladesh out of safety concerns. He has been living in India since May 2017 under inhumane conditions and circumstances.

Despite surviving through those death threats and now living in a relatively safe environment, Hoque faces barriers in his access to education. Hoque was expelled from college because of his activist work. Now, he lives with a stalled academic progress, uncertain about his future.

In a recent encounter, Hoques mentioned, “I don’t know what will happen to me or how long I will survive”, and then stated, “I do not know whether I could ever go back to my country. I do not know when I would be able to meet my mother again.”

Fighting for minorities and the use of freedom of expression lost Hoque paternal connection, postsecondary studies status, and death threats tied to messages of violence. Hoque is now under ‘tourist’ status in India and, fortunately, had his visa extended recently. He is in a tight situation, nonetheless.

Hoque has been on the run from place to place. The Imams or the Islamic Priests from a variety of mosques have been calling for the murder of Hoque. Why?

He is an atheist. He is a kafir. Imams interpret this, through Islamic law, to mean that the death penalty needs to be imposed to Hoque. He has a good relationship with an uncle of his, who informed Hoque of the call made to be on the hunt for him, by the mullahs. Thus, the run continues, and there is a worry that this hunt extends beyond Bangladesh.

“Realizing I could no longer stay in Bangladesh safely – I would be slaughtered like cattle if I did -, I fled the country and moved to India on May 30, 2017,” Hoque states. “On June 6, 2017″, Hoque continues, “I posted an article on Facebook explaining my situation and the post went viral.”

More than one thousand people reacted to the post with about 700 comments on the post. 90% were death threats. Various fundamentalist groups since 2017 continue to make the same threats. The most recent arose on September 17, 2018. What was the result?

His Facebook account was suspended, not those inciting public violence and making calls for murder: either as individuals or as a group.

Hoque continued, “One of the popular online news portals covered my situation with the headline: Blogger Md. Sazzadul Haque was thrust to death, thus he had to leave the country”

Now, the publisher has faced death threats too. The trend is that, those with activism or writings against some Imams and mullahs, and some of the public, become justifications for declarations of violence against the activists and writers, if not outright murder demands on the parts of the followers of the Imams and mullahs themselves.

“Furthermore, now I am voluntarily involved as an administrator in Istishon, a social networking group of a community blog. I am also working as a graphic designer and programmer for the blog’s website,” Hoque said.

Now, Hoque is campaigning through Humane First. The purpose of the organization is to promote the civil liberties and rights of individuals without regard to their identity or background.

This, by implication, works in contradistinction to the efforts of the religious fundamentalist ideas through respectful and civil conversation, discourse, dialogue, and debate.

It can be found through #behumanefirst. With help from the Protecting Belief Fund and the Center for Inquiry, Hoque has been staying in a temporary shelter. His activism and writing, as per the story, left him homeless, as a freethinker.

“My life is in danger due to speaking about Humanism, Secularism and LGBT Rights. In spite of having immense threats, I haven’t stopped my writing,” Hoque concluded, “I have been living in inhumane conditions since May 2017. That’s why I am becoming mentally ill… My family has disowned me due to speaking about the rights of LGBT and other activities. I have no relation with my family since 2017. They do not support me. I can be I attacked by fundamentalist terrorists at any time even in India.”

This is solely the result of Hoques’ activist work, which embodies atheism and secularism. Hoque is just one of many bloggers who has had to flee Bangladesh because of their activism. Bloggers in Bangladesh are being attacked, imprisoned, and executed, for their views.

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2022-04-19

Anti-Vaxxers and the Persistent Myth of Harmful Vaccinations

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/07

In this interview with Conatus News, Claire Klingenberg discusses vaccinations and the “anti-vaxxer” movement.

Claire has a background in law and psychology, and is currently working on her degree in Religious Studies. She has been involved in the skeptic movement since 2013 as co-organizer of the Czech Paranormal Challenge. Since then, she has consulted on various projects, where woo and belief meet science. Claire has spoken at multiple science and skepticism conferences and events. She also organized the European Skeptics Congress in 2017, and both years of the Czech March for Science.

Her current activities include chairing the European Council of Skeptical Organisations, running the “Don’t Be Fooled” project (which provides free critical thinking seminars to interested high schools), contributing to the Czech Religious Studies journal Dingir, as well as to their news in religion website. In her free time, Claire visits various religious movements to understand better what draws people to certain beliefs.

Claire lives in Prague, Czech Republic, with her partner and dog.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The epithet used against those who reject the vast evidence on the effectiveness of vaccines is “anti-vaxxer.” What do they stand for? Why are they a threat to the public health?

Claire Klingenberg: Their idea is that all medical choices should be the decision of the individual or, when it comes to children, the decision of the parent. That is one of their main arguments.

The reason why they are applying this argument to vaccinations is that they believe a lot of misinformation and lies about the harmfulness of vaccinations. They do not understand how serious it is for an epidemic to spread. They don’t understand that it is not just a personal choice that won’t affect anyone else.

Even though, there is an epidemic of measles spreading through Europe right now. Anti-vaxxers do not see that as a consequence of non-vaccinations. They play it off or see getting measles as an inconsequential thing.

Jacobsen: What are the reasons for their pushback to legitimate scientific and public health concerns?

Klingenberg: It is the same as conspiracy groups. They believe the scientists have been paid by pharmaceutical companies or some other secret or shadow organizations.

They believe that true information comes from individual doctors or individuals who are [laughing]no longer doctors or scientists, or even gurus or alternative medicine people. Those people play into that fear.

They are more likely to believe an emotional story of one parent than heaps of data. At the same time, though, it has to be a parent that toes their party line. If it’s a story of a parent who regrets not vaccinating after their child died of a preventable disease, they think that it must be a made up story, or the parent was paid to say that.

Jacobsen: How do parents fall into this other than through emotional appeals?

Klingenberg: There are mainly emotional appeals because there is no cumulative data for vaccine harm. Of course, many people have mild reactions to vaccinations. And yes, there is a small percentage of people who have serious negative reactions.

I do not deny that because to deny that would be to deny reality. But it is such a small percentage, compared to the harm caused by the disease itself. The threat of not vaccinating or of getting a serious disease or of spreading the agents of this disease makes the chances of getting the disease much higher.

There is a big misunderstanding here about the importance of herd immunity. Anti-vaxxers do not understand that it is not just about them. It is not a personal medical choice, but a choice that influences and has an impact on the whole society.

Jacobsen: How can people become more informed about vaccinations in general? How can we contribute to the conversation on anti-vaccination views?

Klingenberg: For quality vaccine information in general, look at the website of the World Health Organization. When it comes to getting information about your nation, it is best to look at the ministry health of a particular country or official health organizations within your particular country. Always use sources which cumulate the most data. Websites and blogs built around one or two stories are not reliabl

When it comes to spreading the message about vaccinations, there is the Twitter campaign: #provaxchallenge. We invite people to take pictures from when they get themselves, their kids, and animals vaccinated. I’m sure you’ll see my tweets there, too.

Now, unfortunately, the anti-vaccination rhetoric has now spread on to concern pets as well. There is talk of autistic dogs, and how rabies is just a puppy disease you don’t have to vaccinate against.

When we talk to people to get them off the conspiracy train, we cannot reason someone out of something they did not reason themselves into.

You can ask them, “When you were vaccinated, did you have any reactions?” You can make them realize that we do not have polio anymore [laughing]. Ask lots of questions. Be gentle when correcting their point. Show them videos of how kids with serious diseases like measles look like. There is this belief that measles and all of these diseases we vaccinate against do not do great harm. Show them it isn’t true.

At the same time, you need to be careful not to manipulate the other person. Of course, showing heartbreaking videos is a type of emotional manipulation, that is why it should not be the crux of your argument, more like an illustration. Make sure all of the information that you are giving is all correct. No hyperboles, no exaggerations, no matter how well-meaning there are.

First, you cannot afford to lie and manipulate the same way anti-vaxxers do. Second, you don’t have to because the facts are on your side. I understand that it is easier and faster to gain a person’s agreement by manipulating them. However, if you are caught once manipulating information or giving false information, you (and not just you) will lose all credibility and never have a chance to convince that person again.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Claire.

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2022-04-19

Black Nonbelievers, Inc: Can Atheist Black Women Beat Back Fundamentalism In America?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/21

Black Nonbelievers, Inc. founder Mandisa Thomas on black atheism, how sexism hurts activist communities, and empowering the next generation.

On Black Women As Nonbelievers

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I want to ask a more personal line of questions around being a black woman in America who is a nonbeliever. I know Maryam Namazie uses the phrase “minority within a minority” to describe ex-Muslims within the Muslim community within the United Kingdom. What are some of the more emotionally difficult circumstances you have had to overcome in that positions?

Thomas: One is the idea that all black women are believers. The culture of black community, particularly the black church, even though it is misogynistic; women have been the backbone of the church.

Women are the ones who organize, but the men are the ones who get the credit. We see the same within the atheist community. As for myself, I started Black Nonbelievers. I am the face of the organization. There has been a significant amount of coverage.

Jacobsen: Do you feel there is a lot of sexism for women who are atheists and want to propagate their message to overcome?

Thomas: Men are viewed as the spokespersons. Our views are obscured as well as our work. I still battle that. Somehow, my voice isn’t as valuable as a black pastor who may have left church, even if they do not identify as an atheist.

You see some men who are detracting from Christianity, pastors leaving religion, but, yet, people are looking into these default spokespersons for atheism.

Their journey out of religion seems more amplified than a black women atheist founder of a national organization.

Jacobsen: What are some other barriers?

Thomas: Some are openly identifying, trying to get people together. So many people have gotten used to this sense of social ostracism. You are afraid to venture out and meet others. We understand that life gets in the way, but it is still a matter of getting people together, as well as help out and volunteer.

The idea of getting people comfortable with that open identification. That is where the open support comes in.

Jacobsen: Are there social tools or epithets in place to derogate or prevent open identification?

Thomas: I wouldn’t say there’s anything in particular. That is, there is nothing in place that inherently prevents people from doing it. There is a lot implied. The fear of the ostracism. The fear of alienation, the fear of people abandoning them.

That is more prevalent. It is a matter of making people comfortable with not simply speaking out, but also finding likeminded individuals and connecting with them. It is overcoming the fear.

Jacobsen: How does being a mother of three influence your long-term thoughts about the prospects for the nonbelieving movement in the future? We are noticing a broad phenomenon of religiosity on the wane in America, but also more open fundamentalism in some respects.

Thomas: Right, I want my children and other children to know that they have choices. This isn’t something that they should have to fight as they get older. Open identification as an atheist shouldn’t be stigmatizing for them.

They shouldn’t have to fight with their peers or other adults if they or their parents openly identify as an atheist or have a different point of view. They shouldn’t have to worry about religious ideals being imposed in a public setting or in their schools.

They have the power to fight that. For me, the purpose of doing this is that whatever they become passionate about, they should have the right to speak up. No one should have the right to silence them. I try to be an example for them.

Jacobsen: Recently, you transitioned from full-time work to full-time activism. You also have a Patreon page to support you in this effort. Where can we find this Patreon page?

Mandisa Thomas: The Patreon website is as follows: www.patreon.com/mandisalateefah. It isn’t a searchable link or a searchable page because it contains adult content.

You can also reach me by email mandisa@blacknonbelievers.org. You can reach me at our website www.blacknonbelievers.org for more information. I decided to resign from my full-time job to pursue activism full-time because there was a need to continue to grow the organization as well as grow my activism to a new level.

Jacobsen: How can people donate funds? How can they provide exposure to your new full-time activism?

Thomas: The most important thing would be to support Black Nonbelievers. We are a 501(c)3 organization. The more you donate, then the more we are able to create full-time positions. In the meantime, Patreon is a donation website where you can pledge as little as dollar a month to support my activism. Or you can do both! [Laughing]

Jacobsen: With the funds people will no doubt be giving or donating to you, what would you hope to do with it in the next 12 months?

Thomas: In the next 12 months, we will be supporting Black Nonbelievers as an organization. We recently launched a chapter in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. We look to establish, on the ground, chapters, where people are hosting meetups, hosting in-person events, and collaborating offline wherever we are needed.

We are always looking for people who are willing to work and volunteer with us. Those dollars would, of course, go to supporting myself and the work that I do.

Black Nonbelievers, myself included, donate to other secular organizations and entities, as well as our members, that need help. There is the potential to support a podcast for us. Also, it will allow me to be able to travel to places where I am requested because I get a lot of requests to speak.

That would keep overhead low. Also, when these presentations are recorded, they are made available for later viewing and for information. There is a lot. I have, hopefully, covered some in that response.

Jacobsen: Also, you are part of a radio program. That should be something people should take note of because you have experience with audio presentation of news of the day and conversation topics, which would make the podcast a natural transition.

Thomas: Absolutely, oh yes.

Jacobsen: What are other ways people can get to know you?

Thomas: You can find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mandisalateefah. Patreon really is the place to get to know me a lot better. I shared a lot of unfiltered thoughts, and unfiltered guidance and advice on leadership and community building.

These come from a more practical standpoint. At my previous job, I was an event services manager, which plays a lot into why Black Nonbelievers has been successful – particularly with interacting with people in person.

I have experience engaging with people extensively. This is something people in the atheist community can benefit from considering a lot of the problems that we’re seeing now with regards to interactions with others, particularly women.

There is a lot of people can learn about basic human interactions, which they are not learning from the regular activism and the intellectual aspect. I bring that to the table.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mandisa.

Thomas: No Problem! Thank you.

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2022-04-19

Secular Therapy: Ending the Dogma of Alcoholics Anonymous

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/20

Dr. Caleb W. Lack talks to Conatus News on the dangers of some cult-like Alcoholics Anonymous groups and how secular therapy can help.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Now, I want to do some systemic comparison between Alcoholics Anonymous and secular therapy. What is the meta-theme, the big sky, that envelopes each practices’ therapy?

Dr. Caleb Lack: The overall theme of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step groups, and this is going to be controversial as they would vehemently argue against this, is that people who have problematic levels of drinking are inherently flawed and bad people who need to rely on something outside of their own abilities in order to improve their lives. AA, and other similar groups, conveniently provide the thing on which you must rely, which is their dogmatic and rigid system of specific acts you must engage in. This is reflected in the ideas they have such as “one drink, one drunk” and the idea that you must abstain from all drinking or you will “fall off the wagon” as well as the insistence of relying on someone else (such as your sponsor or people at the very frequent meetings) to monitor your behavior.

Contrast that idea (that something is wrong with you and will always be, so you need someone else to tell you exactly how to live your life) to the work of evidence-based, secular therapists. In this model, you are taught and practice various tools to use that we know help to achieve particular outcomes. Those tools and skills, when implemented and used regularly, put you back in the driver’s seat of your life, enabling you to cope with the various stressors thrown your way in a healthy manner. My job as a therapist is, as I tell the people I work with, to put myself out of a job. In other words, I’m trying to make sure that you don’t need me any longer, that you have all the skills you need to have a healthy, productive life.

Jacobsen: How does religion become a force for good and evil in each, if at all, in either evaluative case?

Lack: For secular therapy, religion and religious beliefs are aspects of a person’s identity that need to be taken into account, considered, and worked within the larger context of therapy. For example, if someone comes to see me and they are struggling with problematic substance use, I would try and find what support networks they have or can tap into in order to increase their social support. That may be a friend group, a family unit, or something like a church family.

A good, ethical secular therapist would not ignore or discount someone’s religious beliefs, they would find a way to use those to help someone achieve the desired change, if possible. But there would not be any insistence that someone needs to declare a new belief system, or pushing changes onto an existing belief system, with a secular therapist. Instead, the therapist would let the empirical and clinical data guide them in what methods would likely help achieve desired change for the individual.

This is pretty different from a system like the 12-step programs, which declare that you must believe in their system, and their way, and that that is the only way that you can be helped. This dogmatism may actually serve as a new belief system that becomes either grafted onto an already existing one or perhaps even supplants it. So it’s not that religion, or religious belief per se, are in any way “good” or “evil” from these viewpoints (or in life in general). Instead, it’s that you have the difference between “we have good evidence to suggest this will work, so let’s try it” compared to “we believe this works, and if you don’t agree it’s because you are a bad person.”

Jacobsen: How do those who come from deeply fundamentalist religious traditions describe their overall experience going through AA and secular therapy, respectively?

Lack: I’d say that depends on if they are still in the hold of that fundamentalist belief system or they have escaped it. For those raised in and still enmeshed in that kind of environment, then the declarations and rigid, controlled system of the 12-step programs familiar and safe. If you’ve been raised in a system that focuses on external controls for your behavior and decisions, then AA and the like could be like putting on a well-worn glove.

The only difference is the specifics of what behaviors you are allowed or forced to do, and what sort of thoughts would be considered proper rather than improper or “sinful.” For someone who has left a fundamentalist tradition, I would say that moving into AA or a similar program would likely cause a huge amount of discomfort, likely activating negative emotions and thoughts because of the similarities.

On the other hand, someone embedded in a fundamentalist system still would likely be a bit taken aback by some of the concepts used in say, cognitive-behavioral therapy. Ideas such as how we can actively evaluate and challenge our thoughts rather than just accept them as true often lead to questioning other things as well. If you’ve been taught to not question authority or “revealed knowledge,” this can be a big shift in your worldview, and could potentially lead to conflict within the system you are. For those who have left such a system, there really shouldn’t be any inherent conflict, although they may still have some of those beliefs and schemas (such as, “You cannot question authority” or “There is only one true way to live”) that may need to be processed during treatment.

Jacobsen: If you removed the higher power portions from AA, as I believe you indicated before, would you be left with many aspects of secular therapy?

Lack: Taking out the reliance on a higher power from AA would still leave a highly rigid set of rules and guidelines. This is a problem for several reasons. Our secular alternatives to AA – programs like SMART Recovery, LIfeRing, or S.O.S. – focus on providing that new, healthier community via peer support while learning effective coping skills that place the emphasis on increasing your self-efficacy. These are strict rules that you “must” do, but instead flexible skills that allow you to better cope with obstacles that come up, regardless of what they are. Being able to roll with the punches of life in this way typically leaves people more able to effectively navigate any difficulties they face. These programs also emphasize that recovering from addiction to something is a process that will not always go in a positive upward line, and so you need to accept any setbacks for what they are – temporary and an opportunity to push forward using your newly learned skills.

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2022-04-19

African-American Theology Can Serve To Lead People To Humanism. Here’s How.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/15

Professor Anthony Pinn speaks on the intersecting philosophies of African-American Theology and advocates a new approach to spread humanistic thought.

Professor Anthony Pinn is the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities at Rice University. He earned his B.A. from Columbia University and M.Div. and PhD in the study of religion from Harvard University and specialises in African-American theology He is an author, humanist, and public speaker. Among other sterling accomplishments, Prof. Pinn is the Founding Director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning (CERCL) at Rice University.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Your specialisation is in African-American religion, constructive theology, and humanist thought. Where do these source themselves in personal or professional life?

Professor Anthony B. Pinn: I’m not sure what you mean. If you are asking if there is something both personal and professional about these interests, my answer is yes.

Jacobsen: As the executive director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning, what tasks and responsibilities come with the position? What are the main research questions of the centre?

Pinn: I developed the Center some years ago as a way to promote critical thinking skills and effective communication strategies both on and off campus. Our work, both in terms of programming and research – involves recognition of the necessary relationship between the University and the larger city of which it is a part. In this way, we promote active learning and scholarship that is informed by and responsive to the conditions/concerns of given communities.

Jacobsen: You did doctoral work in the study of religion at Harvard University. What was your main research question? What were the main findings from your doctoral research? What have been the general findings of subsequent but associated research initiatives in professional life?

Pinn: My initial concern was with the ways in which Christians response to the issue of theodicy; that is, what can be said about God in light of human suffering in the world. I was particularly interested in how humanism challenges typical answers to this question, and how this mode of humanist challenge to theism develops within African American communities. This initial research interests developed to include attention to forms of cultural expression, such as hip-hop, that tend to receive limited attention, as well as more in-depth examination of the nature and meaning of humanism in the United States.

Jacobsen: What is black religious aesthetics? How does this differ from other religious aesthetic tied to ethnic or race groupings? What are the criteria for demarcation between different types?

Pinn: By black religious aesthetics I mean to highlight the style, the tone, the ‘mood’ that informs religious thinking and doing within African American communities. It is my way of highlighting the importance of cultural production and embodiment for a “think” understanding of religiosity. I think there are cultural codes embedded in the workings of various racial groups – certain styles presentation associated with various groups. One gets a sense of this by examining the cultural production of particular groups. However, it is important to remember that I am not essentialising these various groups. I’m not saying, for instance, that all African Americans do this or that, or, all white Americans do this or that.

Jacobsen: What is the sole definition or soul, if you will, of African-American Humanism?

Pinn: African American humanism is a approach to thinking and doing that privileges materiality and understands life to be confined to historical contexts – no transhistorical realities, no divine forces. African American humanism says “YES” to the humanity, the importance, and vitality of black life within the context of a world conditioned to disregard blackness. It embraces certain elements of the Enlightenment and the Modern world while also pointing out the manner in which modernity also entails deep damage and disregard of non-European peoples.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Pinn.

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2022-04-19

Ghada Ibrahim: Sharia is a Threat to Human Rights and Democracy.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/13

Ghada Ibrahim is a Saudi Arabian activist and ex-Muslim. She speaks to Conatus News about Sharia Law and how it affects Islamic societies.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Could you please define what Sharia Law is?

Ghada Ibrahim: Sharia means ‘law’ in Arabic. In this context, it means Religious Law or Islamic Law. It is a set of laws inspired by the Quran and Sunnah (the life and teachings of the prophet Mohammad), the two primary sources of Islamic law.

Jacobsen: Why do so many individuals in Muslim-majority countries want this form of religious laws implemented over secular ones? I’m curious as to their arguments, rather than more Western/soft interpretations of what preachers and jurists state in an open forum with believers in the faith.

Ibrahim: Because it is the only form of law they have ever been exposed to. They also look at secular laws, i.e. man-made laws, as inferior to divine law, which is, according to them, a law that comes directly from God. Religious law is final and true, as it is the word of an omnipotent God, the Creator, as seen by Islamic theology.

If the religious law isn’t imposed, individuals in Muslim-majority countries think, then all hell can break loose in the world. Some of the things I’ve heard about secular law is that it wants to “Strip your mother’s sister” and “Allow you to marry your mother” among other utterly ridiculous arguments. Of course, they have a misconception of what secular law really is, as they have never been exposed to it.

Jacobsen: How does the public deal with those who do not want Sharia in their lands?

Ibrahim: Public smear campaigns if they are from within the community. They’re usually called ‘Western Agents‘, ‘Atheists‘ – a very derogatory term for Muslims– things along those lines. If they are from outside the community, they are called ‘Dirty‘, ‘or “Immoral“. It is considered blasphemy to speak against God or Sharia law.

Jacobsen: In more secular, democratic countries, it is the case that such people need to live alongside ordinary Muslims. How does this attitude carry over into minority sections of immigrants who live in Muslim-majority communities, when minorities have no intention of integration?

Ibrahim: I think you are referring to minority sects within Muslim populations. In Muslim-majority countries, there are small courts that deal with minority issues. How does that attitude carry around? I don’t really know. I like to think minority sects see the damage a religious law does and how it discriminates against people, but I don’t believe that is the case. There are, indeed, problems of integration for minorities within Muslim-majority communities, as they need to fully adapt to the standards of these communities.

Jacobsen: How does the Islamic system of jurisprudence manage or deal with women?

Ibrahim: The biggest issue with the Islamic system’s treatment of women is in family law. Women are not given their fair share of inheritance due to their gender; divorce is on the side of the man along with custody. Men are allowed to beat their wives and there is no concept of marital rape. I don’t believe an Islamic court system would ever be fair to a woman. This is simply because Islamic courts follow Islamic teachings, mostly the Quran and the Sunnah, which are inherently against the rights of women, meaning that an Islamic court cannot claim to be fair towards men and women if it is Islamic.

Jacobsen: How many women religious jurists and legal professionals are there, and what is their ratio to men? If there’s a difference, is this due to a simple difference of choices based on professional and individual preferences or explicit bias and barriers well-known to objective observers?

Ibrahim: There are no women religious jurists or legal professionals. In Islam, jurisprudence and religious law is a man’s job. One of the requirements of a religious jurist is to be ‘a male of sound mind and age’ and possess religious knowledge.

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Ibrahim: The concept of religious law is not entirely foreign to the west. Religious extremists of all stripes will always want to implement “God’s Law” over “Man’s Law“. They warn people of the evils of secular laws. There are, indeed, cases in Western countries where God’s law is being imposed on top of Man’s law, and some Muslims are no different in this regard.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Ghada.

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2022-04-19

Quebec is Currently Leading a Secular Revolution in Canada. Here’s How.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/10

David Rand, President of the Atheist Freethinkers of Canada, speaks to Conatus News about secularism and the challenges facing secularists in Quebec.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: David, let us start with definitions, what defines “Quebec secularism?” There was the proposed Bill 60 or, otherwise called, “Charter affirming the values of State secularism and religious neutrality and equality between women and men, and providing a framework for accommodation requests”. This encouraged some debate statements relevant to the idea of “Quebec secularism.”

David Rand: When I say “Quebec secularism” I simply mean secularism. I refer to Quebec because it is the only jurisdiction in Canada or the USA where a serious attempt at implementing state secularism has been made. The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which established that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is undoubtedly better than anything in Canadian federal legislation, but it does not implement secularism. As Shadia B. Drury has pointed out (Free Inquiry, vol 32, #3), “The establishment clause is not an endorsement of secularism but of nonsectarianism.”

What Drury calls nonsectarianism, I would call religious neutrality. It means that the state does not favour one religion over others; that there is no state religion. Very good so far. But secularism is much more than that. Secularism starts with religious neutrality and adds separation between religion and state, i.e. rejecting all religious interference in its affairs and legislation. That is, religion’s influence in politics and education is nonexistent. Secularism is universalist: the secular state refuses to recognize religions and treats all citizens equally, regardless of religious affiliation. It does not give religions any privileges and it does not accommodate religious practice.

A simple example will illustrate. Recently a Montreal city councillor suggested that the Montreal police force allow police officers to wear religious symbols such as Sikh turbans and Islamic hijabs while on duty. This is an atrociously bad idea, for many reasons, and Quebec secularists in general immediately stood up and said so. In the vanguard of this opposition was the organisation AQNAL (Quebec Association of North Africans for Secularism) many of whose members lived through the dark days of the 1990s in Algeria. Our organisation, AFT, issued a press release in support of AQNAL.

There are so many reasons why allowing police to wear religious symbols is a bad idea, but the most important is that it violates religion/state separation because police officers are agents of the state and should present a neutral image. Not only would such a measure violate secularism, it would even violate the weaker principle of religious neutrality, unless a similar accommodation were provided for every religion that wants one. If Sikhs and Muslims have their special uniform, why not a special one with a huge crucifix for Christians, or a colander as hat for Pastafarians, or some other accouterment for Hindus, Jews, Scientologists, etc., and why not accommodate Marxists, Friedmanites, and other ideologues too. There is no end to the variants that would be required. But some of these “religions” I have listed are not really religions, you say? Well then, who is to decide which are “true” religions and which are not?

The only reasonable solution is to respect religion/state separation and not to introduce such symbols to be worn by police. They can wear whatever they want when off duty.

But what happened when secularists made this very reasonable point? They were publicly accused of all sorts of sins, just as were those who supported the Charter of Secularism back in 2013-2014. Quebec secularists are regularly demonised. Justin Trudeau and other anti-secularists bring out their usual nonsense vocabulary about “diversity” and “tolerance” – by which they mean exactly the opposite of what those words signify: no diversity of opinion will be tolerated. If you disagree with them then you must be a horrible person. Slander and defamation are the norms because the anti-secularists have no reasonable arguments to support their views.

There is no secular movement in Canada outside Quebec. That probably sounds like an extreme statement, but it is a simple observation. There are some isolated secularists in Canada, and many more who would probably rally to secularism if the subject could be debated openly and fairly, but they are cowed into silence by the very vocal pseudo-secularists who join the chorus of demonization. Secularism in Canada outside Quebec has been neutralized. The only exception I know of is the editorial board of the magazine Humanist Perspectives which dares to publish articles which criticize multiculturalism and discuss related issues. Only in Quebec is there still a truly secular movement, and proponents of cultural relativism (a.k.a. multiculturalism), in an objective alliance with political Islam, are trying to kill it in Quebec too. They have not yet succeeded. The battle is raging.

Has any so-called “secular” organisation in Canada outside Quebec recently (since Bill 60) taken a position against the wearing of religious symbols by public servants while on duty, especially those with coercive power such as police? Did any such organisation outside Quebec criticise the court decision that granted Zunera Ishaq the “right” to wear a niqab during a state ceremony? Did any such organisation criticise Quebec’s Bill 62 for not going far enough (as we at AFT did: Blog 089, Blog 078) in banning face-coverings?

Pseudo-secularists in Canada outside Quebec chose prejudice and conformism over principle. They chose to throw Quebec secularists under the bus.

The final death knell for secularism in Canada federally, as well as definitive proof of the complete incompatibility between secularism and multiculturalism, was marked by the recent publication of the report “Taking Action Against Systemic Racism and Religious Discrimination Including Islamophobia” from the parliamentary committee whose mandate was to study the implications of Motion M-103. This report’s first recommendation is to update anti-racism programs, extending them to include religious discrimination. This conflates religion (a personal choice) with race (an immutable attribute), meaning that criticising religion can henceforth be denounced as racist. Wow.

Did any ostensibly secular organisation in Canada outside Quebec show any opposition to this extremely dangerous recommendation (as we at AFT did)? If they did, I am unaware of it.

Finally, a clarification about the Quebec Charter of Secularism (Bill 60) which was abandoned when the government which proposed it was defeated in 2014. We at AFT supported it, but critically, because it had one major failing: it did not address the important issue of religions’ economic privileges. Also, it did not mention the crucifix hanging in Quebec’s National Assembly. However, the Quebec Liberal Party (QLP), which ferociously opposed the Charter and won the election, took an explicit position, during the election campaign, to maintain the crucifix where it is, an obvious play for traditionalist voters. If the Charter had been adopted, the crucifix would have had to go eventually, because its continued presence is incompatible with the Charter’s secular principles.

Jacobsen: There were responses to the form of secularism, Quebec secularism, enshrined, in part, in Bill 60. One from what you call multiculturalists. Another from what you call Islamists. What is the problem with multiculturalism and Islamism allied there, against Bill 60? How does this intrude on the many decades-long progress towards further secularisation in Quebec?

Rand: Quebec has been secularising ever since the beginning of the so-called “Quiet Revolution” in the mid 20^th century when the right-wing Duplessis government (which put the crucifix in the National Assembly) was definitively defeated. The omnipresence of Catholicism in schools and hospitals was mostly eliminated. A Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms was adopted in 1975, and sexual orientation was added to it in 1977, earlier than any other province in Canada or any state in the USA. The secularisation process is not complete, but major progress has been made.

The Charter of Secularism was a natural next step in this continuing process. The QLP betrayed its liberal principles by opposing the Charter, and it did so with much support from a small number of very vocal proponents of political Islam. Together they have done enormous harm, and they continue to do so. Québécois, in general, are very sympathetic towards secularism. But the QLP has adopted multiculturalism which opposes secularism. This dovetails with the goals of Islamists whose highest priorities include defeating secularism, which is why they particularly target France, for example.

Jacobsen: Can you give an example of how identity politics intrudes on the active work of secularists or impinges on the principle of secularism with the state via, for example, restraint and neutrality?

Rand: There is nothing inherently wrong with having an identity. Valuing identity, like nationalism and populism, can be good or bad, left or right. But all three are currently being denounced and even demonised for a dubious reason: neoliberalism. Weakening the nation-state serves the interests of international free-market capitalism. Political Islam has latched onto this issue as a way to promote its agenda: Islamists demonise Quebec secularists for being “identitarian.” But in reality, no-one could be more obsessed with identity than Islamists themselves; they claim to speak for all Muslims, assert religious identity over all others (such as citizenship) and promote the veil in its various forms to impose that identity, with the goal of making it omnipresent.

Furthermore, being a Québécois or being a Canadian are two competing identities, two competing nationalisms. Choosing one over the other is more a matter of personal taste than anything else. The Quebec identity is just as legitimate as the Canadian identity.

Jacobsen: Parti Québécois (PQ) is a centre-left political party. You describe how the PQ has a sovereignty orientation policy and a secularism policy, but these policies merge. The critics of the PQ proposed Charter used the term “racist,” sometimes. How does the use of the epithet ignore the thrust of the Charter and fail in furthering the dialogue about secularism, Quebec sovereignty, and the Charter itself, as well as acknowledge the individuation of each topic in the larger discussion on secularism?

Rand: Secularism and Quebec independence are two completely distinct issues – or at least they should be. However, they have become inextricably linked. The Quiet Revolution which began the secularisation process also saw the development of a strong independence movement, and the partisans of one are often partisans of the other.

Furthermore, criticism of and opposition to the Quebec independence movement is often highly unprincipled. Instead of using rational arguments to oppose Quebec separatism, anti-separatists often engage in slanderous discourse, accusing separatists of “racism” and similar nonsense. This habit of vilification has been recycled to oppose secularism in Quebec, thus mixing the two issues even further. Islamists have taken full advantage of this for their purposes.

Jacobsen: You also talk about traditionalists in the province. Have they changed at all regarding the perspectives on the PQ proposed Charter or Quebec secularism generally? Or are the main groups – the traditionalists, the purported multiculturalists and some Islamists, and secularists – mostly stuck in their paths?

Rand: Traditionalists still exist in Quebec, but they are marginal. They suffered a major defeat with the 2015 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada prohibiting prayers at municipal council meetings. This was a major victory for Québécois secularists who had been fighting this battle in lower courts for years. However the recent successes of political Islam – which include motion M-103 and the recommendations of the subsequent parliamentary committee – tend to awaken quiescent traditionalists who, whether out of resentment or opportunism, see the successful promotion of one religion as a reason to promote their own.

Jacobsen: You talk about conformity and the overriding of principle, and “betrayal” of the principle of secularism, for the preference of conformism to reign. Can you expand on this point, please? Also, can you provide any relevant updates to the developments of the conversations in the public sphere around Quebec secularism?

Rand: I think I have already answered that question in large part in my previous comments.

Those in Canada outside Quebec who claim to be secularists need to swallow their pride and admit that Québécois are way ahead of them on this one issue: secularism. But so far, many Canadians have not given up their strong attachment to Quebec bashing, a sort of virtue signalling on steroids. Ironically, smearing Québécois by accusing them of “racism” is itself racist; here I am using that word in the general sense of bigotry against an ethnic group, as explained in my article “Racism: Real and Imagined”.

Secularism is a progressive, left-wing political program, but it has been abandoned and is even opposed by the postmodernist “left.” The anti-secular voices in Canada, including some who hypocritically claim to be secular, constitute an expression of that regressive, postmodernist left, a degenerate form of left-wing politics which panders to religion, wallows in cultural relativism, discredits the left and ultimately strengthens the right and the far-right.

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Rand: Several points that need to be stressed:

You cannot have secularism without some restrictions in some contexts. If bans on wearing religious symbols are never acceptable, which is apparently what pseudo-secularists promote, then that means a great victory for religious privilege and a smorgasbord of religious identitarianism everywhere, in particular in public services.
Any attempt to assign collective guilt to Québécois in general for the crimes of Alexandre Bissonnette (the massacre at the Quebec City mosque in January of 2017) is a form of hate propaganda, as odious as blaming the Jewish people for the death of Jesus.
Slander is censorship. The vilification of Quebec secularists has one goal: to silence them by making it difficult or impossible to express their very reasonable ideas in public debates, and thus, to deny Québécois their right to choose secularism.
The term “Islamophobia” is simply the new blasphemy for the 21^st century, but concentrating on one particular religion. The word is unacceptable if used as an accusation, is unrelated to racism and should never be used in government legislation, regulations or programs.
Islamism is indeed dangerous in Canada, although it has not yet progressed nearly as far here as it has in Europe. We have the Atlantic Ocean to thank for that. But it is just a matter of time.
Favouring Islam by suppressing criticism of it will inevitably increase both hostility towards Muslims and the aspirations of competing religions, especially Christianity, for similar privileges. The result will be to strengthen the political right wing, on the far-right of which lies Islamofascism, a.k.a. Islamism or political Islam. The federal government continues to enable Islamism by pandering to some of its demands.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mr. Rand.

David Rand is the president of Atheist Freethinkers (LPA-AFT) based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The organization participates in a local coalition Rassemblement pour la laïcité (Quebec) and is affiliated with two international associations: Atheist Alliance International (AAI) and the International Association of Freethought (IAFT).

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2022-04-19

Biases, Individualism vs Collectivism, and the Philosophy of Psychology

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/03

Conatus News speaks to Dr Sven van de Wetering about ecological validity in psychology, in part 4 of an ongoing series on the philosophy of psychology.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have an interest in ecological validity and critical thinking from a psychological perspective. Psychology requires a Swiss army approach to problem-solving, as you have noted in other conversations with me, which is exemplified in the number of disciplines and sub-disciplines within the field. The external validity amounts to the extent that one can extrapolate and generalise the findings of psychology. Ecological validity is one aspect of the extrapolation and generalisation. It looks at the extensions into the real world. From a psychological perspective, how can the apparent simplicity of a research finding become troublesome when taken into the real world?

Dr Sven van de Wetering: I think your phrasing captures the problem: “simplicity of a good solid psychological research finding” is a delightful phrase because it captures so succinctly what is wrong with the way many research psychologists (including me in my less reflective moments) think of their research findings. Findings in physics are often satisfyingly simple and reliable. Think of Newton shining light through a prism, Galileo dropping stuff off of towers, or Robert Boyle goofing around with a vacuum pump. In this model of science, you find a result, you assume that the physical reality underlying the result is fairly simple. Furthermore, you assume that that physical reality will not change over time, and you feel free to draw sweeping generalisations based on the simple experiment (though it turns out Boyle was pretty cautious about doing that, an example we could probably learn from). That approach has gotten us far in physics, presumably because the assumptions of simplicity and changelessness correspond fairly well to the physical reality. A similar approach seems to be less useful in psychology, and I would argue that that is because the subject matter of psychology, human behaviour, is neither changeless nor straightforward.

To take a straightforward example, any good social psychology textbook, and most bad ones as well will talk about the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which is also called correspondence bias, a term which I much prefer. In its simplest form, FAE is the tendency for people to assume that other people’s actions tell us a lot about their inner traits, beliefs, and values while ignoring the fact that many of the influences on people’s actions are situational in nature. The thing that irritates me about the name “Fundamental Attribution Error” is the word “fundamental” seems to imply that the error is anchored in a core aspect of human psychological functioning, one that is universal across individuals, cultures, and situations. When this assumption is examined, it is found that the tendency fails to occur in some situations, that there are individual differences in the degree to which people fall prey to this bias, and that members of individualist cultures are much more susceptible to the bias than members of collectivist cultures. In short, many investigators of the FAE seem to assume that people’s behaviour in a small number of fairly contrived situations tells us something important about the way they behave all the time. To maybe highlight the illogic of this, it almost looks like many of these investigators engaged in more egregious examples of FAE than the people in their experiments. If I were more psychodynamically inclined, I might even accuse these researchers of projection.

As I said above, I am probably as vulnerable to this tendency as anyone else. I wonder if part of the problem is linguistic. Research psychologists often formulate their hypotheses as universal generalisations, something like “People do X.” It is certainly true that some people, some of the time, under some circumstances, do X; if they didn’t, the results of the experiment wouldn’t have come out the way they did. Researchers are aware that universalism is an assumption, but it’s not problematised as much as it probably should be. Usually, if the phenomenon is replicated with a few slight procedural variations and a couple of different populations, the assumption of universality is considered provisionally acceptable. I don’t really want to be too critical of this; the time, energy, and money necessary to really thoroughly explore the limits of the phenomena studied by psychologists are often not available. Psychologists do what they can, and perhaps are too busy and harried to really take a long, hard look at the intellectual baggage that psychology has picked up that leads to those assumptions of universality.

Jacobsen: What research findings seem to show robust findings – highly reliable and valid – in the ‘laboratory’ but fail to produce real-world results? Those bigger research findings one may find in an introductory psychology textbook.

van de Wetering: I’m certainly not in a position to give a comprehensive list, but here’s one I find a little ironic. One of the cornerstones of the critical thinking course you cited above was confirmation bias, which is a cluster of biases centred around the tendency to selectively test one’s hypotheses in a way that makes it relatively easy to confirm the hypothesis one already has in mind but difficult to disconfirm that same hypothesis. Some of my best students started to look into the literature and found that the whole intellectual edifice of confirmation bias was based on only a small number of experimental paradigms. Snyder and Swann developed one of the research paradigms in question in 1976. They asked people to prepare to interview another person. Their job in that interview was to find out whether the person in question was an introvert or an extrovert. It found that people often used what is called a positive test strategy; that is, if the interviewer was trying to find out if the person was an extravert, they chose a lot of questions that an extravert would tend to answer “yes” to. This has been taken to indicate confirmation bias on the part of the research participants.

What doesn’t get emphasised when most textbooks cite the above study is that the research participants did not create their interview questions from scratch. Instead, they were asked to choose some from a list. My students wondered if research participants would do the same thing if they could make up questions. We ran a small study on this question, and we did weakly replicate the original study; that is, people asked to find out if someone was an introvert were slightly more likely to ask questions that an introvert would say “yes” to, and people asked to find out if someone was an extravert had a nonsignificant tendency to ask more questions that an extravert would answer yes to. What we found striking, though, was that a substantial majority of the questions our participants came up with were not yes-no questions at all, but rather open-ended ones that at least had the potential to be informative regardless of whether the hypothesis was true or false. Thus, confirmation bias was, at best, a minor undercurrent in the test strategies used by most of our participants.

Jacobsen: How can those former examples become the basis for critical thinking and a better comprehension of ecological validity?

van de Wetering: One thing I take from these examples is that human behaviour is highly context-dependent. The issue in these examples is not that people have made a false universal generalization about human behaviour that needs to be replaced with a true universal generalization. The issue is that universal generalizations may not be the way to go in order to explain most facets of human psychological functioning. Nor do I think that we can see people as passive recipients of cultural influences or some other form of learning. Any given person does have neural hardware, an evolutionary history, a history of learning experiences, a social milieu, a set of goals, of likes, of dislikes, of behavioral predispositions, and so on. Most psychologists recognize that this is so, but their hypothesis-testing methods tend to be designed with the assumption that all these different factors operate independently of each other, without interacting. This is probably not a useful assumption to make. I also don’t know what to replace it with, because I’m not mathematician enough to know how to cope with the sort of complexity one gets if every factor interacts with every other factor. I know that some people advocate for a turn from a hypothetico-deductive psychology toward a more interpretive one, but no one has yet shown me a version of this that is disciplined enough to give investigators a fighting chance of overcoming their own biases. So I’m kind of stuck in a methodological cul-de-sac. My own tendency is to more or less stick with existing methodological precepts, but to try to be a little bit skeptical and aware that things may go badly awry. Situations matter, and should be in the forefront of the investigator’s mind even when there is no way of actually accounting for their influence.

Jacobsen: Let us take a controversial example with the pendulum swings within the educational philosophies. Some are fads, while others are substantiated. In either case, the attempt is to make a relatively controlled setting, e.g. a single school’s educational environment in one community or standardized tests, extrapolate into improved school performance on some identifiable markers such as those found on the PISA tests, university English preparedness or – ahem – university preparedness, or even training for citizenship in one of the more amorphous claims, and so on. What educational paradigms, within this temporal and cultural quicksand, stand the test of time for general predictive success on a variety of metrics, i.e. have high general ecological validity for education and even life success?

van de Wetering: I confess I find this a thorny issue. Once again, culture matters. In the US, asking children to work on problems they have chosen themselves is very much more motivating than asking them to work on problems chosen by their mothers. In some collectivist cultures (maybe most or even all, this hasn’t been tested a lot) the reverse is the case. This sort of thing makes me wonder how important something like child-centred education is.

One fad we probably shouldn’t get too excited about is the idea that all important learning is procedural, and that it is, therefore, unimportant to learn about content. In the area of critical thinking, it turns out that the most important single tool (if you can call it that) is lots and lots of domain-specific knowledge. Once a person has that, procedures may increase that person’s ability to use that knowledge effectively, but without the knowledge, all the procedures in the world don’t seem to do any good. Reading an article from Wikipedia doesn’t cut it; those bullshit detectors that are so important to critical thinking only develop as a result of fairly deep engagement with a body of material. That said, procedural knowledge is tremendously important; my issue is with the assumption that because knowing how is important knowing what is unimportant.

Probably the number one most important factor in education is an attitudinal one. If we think of educating our children and young adults as a sacred mission, we have a reasonable chance of success. This goes along with reasonably high social status for educators, though not necessarily money. If we think of education as something we do because it keeps kids off of the streets until they are 18 or because it enhances people’s “human capital” for the sake of the job market, then we may be trouble. Then you risk having educators going through the motions; if your educators are not passionate about what they are doing, it is pretty much guaranteed that your students won’t be, either, and then you’ve got a real problem.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Sven.

van de Wetering: Thank you, Scott. As always, a thought-provoking exercise.

Dr. Sven van de Wetering is an associate professor at the University of the Fraser Valley. He is on the Advisory Board of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. Dr. van de Wetering earned his BSc in Biology at The University of British Columbia, his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at Concordia University and his Master of Arts, and a PhD in Psychology from Simon Fraser University. His research interest lies in conservation psychology, lay conceptions of evil, relationships between personality variables and political attitudes. Session 1, Session 2, & Session 3 can be found here.

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2022-04-19

Science and Faith: Is There Really a Conflict? – A Conversation with Professor Tom McLeish

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/25

Science and faith are often seen as battling each other for dominance. Is it possible for them to coexist?

Professor Tom McLeish, B.A., Ph.D., is Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics and works at the Center for Medieval Studies and the Humanities Research Centre at The University of York.

Scott Douglas Jacobson: Where do you stand on the perceived conflict between science and faith?

Professor Tom McLeish, B.A., Ph.D.: I stand on the extreme non-conflict end of the spectrum. I am off-spectrum because I don’t recognize the question of conflict as a real one, in this sense. I am a scientist. I am a theoretical physicist. I am a Christian. Occasionally, I preach at my local church – but all these things are of one life, not two in conflict.

I have some theological training as well. When I am asked, “How do you reconcile your science with your effects?” it sounds to me like the question, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” There is no good answer to this.

The question presumes a whole mindset. I am not there. The question of conflict doesn’t even mean anything.

Jacobsen: So, we shift that conversation to where those questions become meaningless. It is like people trying to resolve some paradox in philosophy between being and non-being. It shifts the question.

McLeish: How do you resolve a conflict between your religious faith and your gardening? You grow tomatoes. Then you believe this extraordinary stuff about God creating the tomatoes and the gardener and you. Do these conflict? Well, no, they don’t.

Because your story, if I am talking to someone who is a Christian or a Jew, is not a made-up story. It is a real story. It is a true story. It has a beginning and a middle and an end. You are reading it somewhere. You are in it, with lots of other people.

Also, you believe you are here for a purpose. You might think, “Tomatoes are purposeless. Nonetheless, here you are doing your gardening. The reason there is no conflict is that your gardening rests within your largest story.”

Science is from God. So, I see science not as a threat to faith, if you like, or a threat to belief in God. I see science as a gift from God. God is a rather particular, rather advanced, way in which we know the universe in which we find ourselves.

Jacobsen: When it comes to formal argumentation for a god, in particular, a Christian God, what arguments do you find more appealing or convincing?

McLeish: So, I haven’t always been a Christian any more than I haven’t always believed in quantum mechanics either. So, if science is evidence-based, based on reason and experience, then to a large extent, faith must be as well.

Faith is supposed to be believing in ten impossible things before breakfast. Or maybe six. Of course, it isn’t like that to me. It doesn’t feel like that to me. The sense of religious commitment feels like being in the middle of a scientific project.

This is how it works: you have a strong hypothesis that looks very possible, but the only way to test it is to get inside it and start experimenting. So, if that is not a direct answer to your question, it puts it in context. Living the life and thought of a Christian is a bit like doing a large experiment.

On the other hand, you want the truth. Let’s look at four or five categories of things that make me suspicious that theism should be taken seriously. So, the fundamental issue is ontology. Why should there be things? Why should anything exist?

In an atheist’s worldview, that is a non-question. You will never know why things exist. They exist, live with it. But it is entirely legitimate to ask about the reason that things exist. The ground of all being, if you like.

The second, we find mind and structure in the universe wherever we look. It is rather extraordinary, the deeper we look in the atom, the furthest out to the furthest galaxies. Or into the structures of life, we see structures, anticipate structures that can be grasped by our own minds yet are not simply echoes of our own minds.

We’re finding ourselves stretched. Quantum mechanics, whatever it is. Even Feynman says no one understands it! It is a feature of the physical world that we did not expect to find, but we have the mental equipment to begin to approach it. That is miraculous in the old sense of the world. It makes me wonder absolutely.

The third reason is an odd one; not many people quote reasons for believing in God as this, as normally it is a problem for them. But for me, the existence of evil is a strong pointer towards God rather than away.

To the objection that there cannot be a great God out there, in the face of terrible, evil things, I say, “What did you say? How do you know that evil? How is it that one of our human observations is wanting to point to things that are irreducibly bad, horrors that we want to be unrepeatable? Particularly after the 20^th century?”

That is almost like observing the Big Bang. Looking at worldviews that are honest about evil was one of the reasons that attracted me to Christianity in particular. Because it made a realistic account of the existence of non-relative evil.

Another reason I was attracted to Christianity when I began to understand it, was that it is an anti-religion in an important sense. Its whole dynamic is completely inverted to all that is ‘religious’ – rather than humans attempting enlightenment and perfection across a huge divide, God makes the move in the opposite direction. I was rather attracted to that.

Then you have the witness of history. You do have things, documents, individuals through history, the extraordinary creative power of this revolution. The unbelievably humble and never recorded little thousands of miracles a day of people who tell you that they’re doing this in obedience to this pers

This person they might call Jesus or might call God.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor McLeish.

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2022-04-19

Ramin Hossein Panahi – Kurdish Dissident In Iran To Die Today

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/22

As young Kurdish Iranian dissident Ramin Hossein Panahi heads to his death, a look at the desperate efforts, locally and internationally to save him.

According to the Iran Human Rights Monitor, there has been a call to Iran from the United Nations (UN) human rights experts. The call is for an annulment of the death sentence for the Iranian Kurd Ramin Hossein Panahi, who is 24-years-old. There is reportage on Panahi being executed after the end of the month of Ramadan. It was originally set for May 3, but was postponed.

Iran Human Rights Monitor stated that the request for a judicial review has been rejected by the Iranian Supreme Court in late May. Now, the death sentence was referred to the office responsible for completion of the penalty.

The UN human rights experts stated, “The Iranian authorities must now halt the execution of Mr. Panahi and annul the death sentence against him.”

This follows one appeal made by Agnes Callamard, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Callamard explained the concerns about Panahi being given an unfair trial or not being given a fair trial.

In fact, Panahi was put into detention and then “mistreated and tortured.”

Callamard continued, “While acknowledging the postponement of the sentence in May, we regret that Iran seems intent on executing Mr. Panahi, disregarding previous calls to annul the death sentence, and ensure he is given a fair trial.”

In Erbil, Kurdistan region, there have been protests. The protesters released a statement based on their disagreements and frustrations with the case, treatment, and death penalty for their Kurdish fellow in Iran at the moment.

The protestors’ statement stated the purpose for the protests in Kerbil, as follows:

Today we have gathered here to protest and call on the UN to put tough pressure on halting the verdict of the execution of Ramin Hossein Panahi, as in a so-called court and in an unjust way an execution verdict was issued to him and it could be implemented at any time and on any date… All the preparations have been made to carry out the execution.

With the denial of access to medical care and a lawyer, being held incommunicado, and the poor handling of the case with the torture of Panahi, too, UN experts and human rights campaigners echoed many of the same sentiments.

“The experts also stressed their concern that the charges against Mr. Panahi did not meet international standards, which specify that the death penalty must be limited to cases of intentional killing,” the Iran Human Rights Monitor explained, “Mr. Panahi was arrested in June last year for alleged membership of the Kurdish nationalist group Komala. He was convicted of taking up arms against the State, and sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court in January 2018.”

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2022-04-19

What Really Drives Populism? A Conversation with Dr. Frank Mols

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/14

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Your work has focused on a specific paradox between the acquisition of wealth and the “hardening” of attitudes or stances on issues. What does this mean? How is wealth defined in this work and the hardening of attitudes here?

Dr Frank Mols: For many decades, the debate about populism and far-right voting has been informed by three (to date unchallenged) assumptions:

(1) Populist, far-right parties thrive in times of economic crisis (when unemployment surges and people are ‘doing it tough financially’)

(2) Populist, far-right parties thrive when there is a sudden peak in immigration and/or asylum-seeking

(3) Populist/far-right parties tend to be more popular among low-income earners (low socio-economic groups) and particularly uneducated white males

Our book examines all three assumptions (by looking at long-term election results in many different countries) and finds no correlation and no evidence for the first two assumptions: in fact, populist far-right parties have been remarkably successful in times of economic prosperity, low unemployment, and low levels of immigration, and often not successful at all in times of economic downturn and peaks in immigration. In other words, while the first two assumptions are widespread and often treated as self-evident, the evidence is simply non-existent.

The third assumption is only partially accurate. Our research shows that populist parties attract two kinds of voters, namely low-income earners who do it tough financially (who experience Relative Deprivation), and those on above-average incomes (who experience Relative Gratification). The former fit the existing stereotype (poor, working class) but the latter (who often remain in the closet) often outnumber the former. Hence we see that, paradoxically, Trump voters earned more than average, not less than average (Rothwell-Diego Rosell, 2016) and that Brexit ‘Leave’ voters were more likely to identify as middle-class rather than working class (Dorling 2016). The overall picture of two kinds of voters being attracted to populist parties produces what can be described as a V-curve pattern in populist support and voting.

When we were half-way into writing the book, we discovered that similar counterintuitive findings had been reported in the charitable giving and development aid literature. There too we see that low-income earners are more generous than high-income earners. We wrote a chapter about this in our book, and together the chapters of our book point to what we think is a fascinating trend: wealth and affluence are typically associated with heightened anxiety, fear of falling, sense of entitlement, and harsher attitudes towards the less well-off (immigrants, asylum-seekers, welfare recipients.

We did many lab experiments, to delve deeper into the psychology of affluence, and we encountered many more counterintuitive effects. For example, in an experiment in which we made students feel either certain or uncertain about their job prospects after graduating, it was those we felt more confident in their job prospects who were most supportive of measures to curb immigration. I could go on and on, but the counterintuitive findings of these experiments are all reported in the book.

Jacobsen: The common sense, face value, expectation for the increase in wealth would be a liberalisation of attitudes. However, the data and analysis of the trends represent a more nuanced set of findings. What happens? Why?

Mols: The standard explanation of why Relative Deprivation leads to populist voting is well-known (deprivation leading to frustration, aggression, lashing out and scapegoating third parties) – there is no need to revisit or question this side of the V-curve. However, the link between Relative Gratification and populist voting is less well understood, and in our book we propose a number of hypotheses, including ‘sense of entitlement’, ‘fear of falling or slipping back’, ‘fear one’s wealth is a bubble’. Rather than to argue it is one or the other, we propose that future research ought to examine this more carefully

In our more recent research, we also analyze the link between inequality (e.g. using indicators like the Gini Coefficients) and populist voting, and here too we see that there is no simple causal relation between actual levels of inequality and support for populist anti-immigration messages. Rather, at times real inequality is very high, without this translating into support for anti-immigration measures, and at times inequality is very low, and support for anti-immigration messages is high. Indeed, yet another (wealth) paradox!

Jacobsen: Within the frame of reference of the increase in wealth and the hardening of attitudes, what does this imply for advanced economies and pluralistic liberal democracies found in North America and Western Europe?

Mols: Populist parties use a narrative that pits the ‘virtuous people’ against the ‘malicious elite’, and the key message is that the malicious elite have rigged the system and taking advantage of ordinary hard-working citizens. They often go to extremes and use age-old conspiracy theories to create a declinist zeitgeist, and to persuade voters society is at the brink of collapse. This is a real challenge for liberal democracy, as citizens may lose faith in experts and their policy expertise. As public policy researchers will be able to attest, evidence-based policy making is difficult to achieve at the best of times, but under these circumstances ‘evidence’ and evidence-based policy making will become almost impossible.

Jacobsen: What is your assessment of the trends in the increase in wealth plus the hardening of attitudes of the public?

Mols: We all know the expression ‘Wealth doesn’t buy happiness’, and many of us will believe that this is true. Yet, relatively few of us live life accordingly, and most of us (including myself) are somehow caught up in our material and other aspirations. On the one hand, this is positive, because without this drive humankind would not have made the progress we have achieved. However, it is a double-edged sword, because it is this aspirational side in us that makes us vulnerable to greed, harshness, cheating, anti-social behavior and so on.

To appreciate all this, one could begin with research into happiness. We have had more or less continuous growth in material wealth and health since WWII, yet our happiness levels are the same as in the immediate post-WWII years. This phenomenon is known as Easterlin’s paradox. Also, UK researchers examining happiness among millionaires found that millionaires continue to worry about their financial future. As for the hardening attitudes, research by Postmes & Smith (2009) has shown that wealthier people tend to self-stereotype as ‘cold but competent’, and research by Piff and colleagues (2012) has shown that more affluent people are more likely to engage in anti-social behaviour (cheating, ignoring road rules, etc). In other words, we know from existing research that wealth is associated with the hardening of attitudes and loss of compassion for the less well-off, and it is hence not all that surprising to find that more affluent voters are often drawn to parties proposing harsher immigration and asylum policies.

Jacobsen: What are some books or articles that, people can look further into, in order to further grasp the subtleties of this and similar trends in economics and public opinion?

Mols: One way to ease into this intriguing subject is to read Alain de Botton’s book ‘Status Anxiety’. One of the key messages of this book is that meritocracy has two faces. On the one hand, meritocracy enables hard-working individuals to climb the ladder and to make it to the top (i.e. upward social mobility is possible), and most of us will see this as positive. However, the shadow side is that a person’s (good or bad) fortunes become viewed as a reflection of the individual’s ability or inability to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps”.

So, a rich person is considered to be rich because they worked hard and earned it, not because they were lucky to be born in a wealthy family, and a person who is poor is viewed as not having tried hard enough, rather than being unlucky and being born/raised in suboptimal circumstances. In other words, in a meritocracy, poverty is equated with personal failure, and this explains why people in meritocratic societies are not only more prone to become anxious and stressed (since slipping back towards poverty will be viewed as a personal failure), but also more motivated to become protective of their wealth and to view newcomers as a threat. In a society where social class is fixed (e.g. India, or Victorian England) this stress is absent because a person’s class and fortunes are predetermined by birth, and people will hence not fret as much about their status in society.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dr Mols.

Dr Frank Mols is a Lecturer in the School of Political Science and International Studies at The University of Queensland. He is the author of The Wealth Paradox: Economic Prosperity and the Hardening of Attitudes.

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2022-04-19

Universal Pharmacare Coverage: Perspective from the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/11

There are few downsides to a Universal Pharmacare programme, as Professor Gordon Guyatt, university professor and Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences points out.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Who does or would benefit from universal pharmacare coverage? I ask these questions because of the conversation in Canada at the moment. Canada has a national healthcare program, but not a national pharmacare program, unlike other comparable developed countries.

Professor Gordon Guyatt: The answer is most of the Canadian population will benefit from universal pharmacare coverage.

Jacobsen: Who would benefit the most from universal pharmacare coverage?

Guyatt: Who benefits most will be people who are poor, who are not on social assistance, who are under 65, and who cannot currently afford their drugs, these people have real health problems because they are unable to afford their drugs.

Jacobsen: How many people does this include?

Guyatt: It is in the order of 15-20% of Canadians. They will be the biggest beneficiaries. The next group who would benefit would be people who can afford their drugs, but who are currently paying for their drugs either through private drug plans or paying out of pocket.

The reason that they will be beneficiaries is because a national pharmacare program will make them pay somewhat more in taxes, but they will be paying much less overall than at present.

The net benefit in terms of their take-home will be appreciably greater. That is, the amount they have in their pockets at the end of paying for their taxes or drug costs will be more. Those people will be the beneficiaries. A little less of a beneficiary will be someone, like me, where part of the benefits program of the job is a drug program.

I have to pay a bit out of pocket, but some personal drug costs are paid for by my employer. That is, they are in part paid for through the benefits package of the job. I might benefit somewhat less than others, but I will still be better off than others who do not have the program.

You might say, of the potential national pharmacare program: it is not in their interest at all. It is the very wealthy who have no problem currently paying for their drugs and who pay a higher tax rate than other people. A national pharmacare program is of no benefit to them.

The very wealthy can afford their drugs with no problem at the moment. Their higher taxes might be a wash or even a net loss. That would be the one group who would not benefit. The very wealthy would not benefit from a national pharmacare program in Canada.

Put it this way. If you were to grade the benefits, then the scale would be from the poor who cannot afford their drugs who would get substantial benefits.

This would include substantial benefits for most Canadians – middle-income Canadians – who will be paying more taxes, but will be saving substantially on drug costs. Then, at the other end of the sliding scale, the least benefit would be for the wealthy.

What is not, unfortunately common knowledge that there are going to be very large savings for Canadians with a national drug program. I do not think that is common knowledge, and it is important for the general population to be aware of this.

Jacobsen: Why do you think this is the case?

Guyatt: Control of the media. The wealthy, the ones who have the least to gain and would benefit the least from a national pharmacare program both in terms of decreased cost and equity have a disproportionate influence on what people hear and see on television, and read in newspapers and other media outlets, then the benefits of a national pharmacare program – might be more well-known among Canadians. That is something that has to be remedied.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time once more, Professor Guyatt.

We conducted an extensive interview before: here, here, here, here, here, and here. We have other interviews in Canadian Atheist (here and here), Conatus News (here), Humanist Voices, and The Good Men Project. Here we talk about national pharmacare.

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2022-04-19

Q&A on the Philosophy of Economics with Dr. Alexander Douglas – Session 6

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/11

Scott Jacobsen: Let’s move into your new research, as those who have followed the previous sessions know, you have an expertise in the philosophy of economics. Dr. Stephen Law recommended you. How else can social sciences differentiate from and inform society in contrast to the natural sciences?

Dr. Alexander Douglas: I class psychology as a natural science rather than a social science. I think psychological research can serve many important social functions – for example educating us out of moral prejudices, but this is not what you’re asking about.Social sciences can be what Joan Robinson called “an organ of self-consciousness” because they can expose the origins of our social institutions. This can lead us to see them in a different light. And then, sometimes, they exercise less control over us.

For example, René Girard, whom I admire very much, went as far as he possibly could in identifying scapegoating as the hidden mechanism that underlies many of our institutions and social practices. He found that art, theatre, worship, criminal trials, marriage – there are many more examples – have their origin in scapegoating rituals. This is in stark contrast to the more rationalistic functional explanations given by other social scientists.

While I have no expertise to pronounce on whether or not he was right, I admire his work because it inspires us to take a second look at our institutions, to see that they really are what we think they are. It was crucial for Girard that once we recognise a practice as a scapegoating practice, we can no longer commit to it. Scapegoating only works when those participating in it think they’re doing something else, i.e., prosecuting a deserving criminal.

This is, perhaps, an example of what Joan Robinson was talking about. When we become self-conscious in our institutions, they stop working on us. In political economy, when we start to see that what we have been institutionalised to think of as a market composed of individual exchanges might be in fact something quite different, we begin to wriggle loose from an ideology that controls much of our social life. Likewise with many other social practices and institutionalised forms of life.

In future work, I plan to look at early modern theories of society, particularly those of Spinoza, Hobbes, and some of their contemporaries.

Jacobsen: You have a deep interest and have published research on Spinoza. Who was Spinoza? Does his work inform your own on the philosophy of economics?

Douglas: Spinoza was the most philosophically radical thinker of the Early Modern period, at least in Western Europe. He challenged the theological prejudices of his day while retaining the grand and sweeping cast of mind of a religious thinker. He believed in the power of pure reason with a conviction seldom found elsewhere in Europe, outside of the period of ‘Idealist’ philosophy.

His work informs my views on everything, including on the philosophy of economics. One thing I’ve been interested in lately is the treatment of time inconsistency in economic models. A time-inconsistent policy is, roughly, one that determines what it is best to do now versus what it is best to do in the future. The inconsistency arises from what was previously ‘the future’ eventually becoming ‘now’, in which case the same policy delivers a different result inconsistent with the first. Spinoza was one of the first philosophers, to my knowledge, to consider time-inconsistency. The last few propositions of Part Four of his masterpiece, Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order, discuss how a crucial component of rationality is the avoidance of time-inconsistency.

Spinoza also deals with the social aspects of human desire, in a way that I find more insightful than the standard liberal tradition. Spinoza notices how insecure we often are in our desires: we’re really very unsure about what we want. One effect of this is that we both model our desires on those we seem to observe in others and aim at being emulated in our desires. Having others around us wanting certain things confirms our belief that we really want those things. This plays havoc with the transactions that economists treat as basic and standard. Exchange, for example, is profoundly complicated by the tendency of desires to converge on certain goods rather than being spread stably across diverse goods.

This is, I believe, part of the explanation of why one of Spinoza’s chief influences, Hobbes did not believe that any stable allocation of goods could temper the tendency to rivalrous violence in the ‘state of nature’. This insight puzzled his contemporaries, but Spinoza’s psychological account fills in some crucial details. Here I take inspiration from the work of Paul Dumouchel and Jean-Pierre Dupuy, who have looked from this angle at Hobbes, Adam Smith, and other supposed founding figures in the liberal tradition.

Jacobsen: Spinoza had an interest in Ibn Khaldoun, who was the father of trickle-down economics. Why did Spinoza have this interest? What is behind the philosophy of trickle-down economics in past and the present?

Douglas: I don’t know of any evidence that Spinoza read Ibn Khaldoun. I’m not sure Khaldoun was very well known in Western Europe until after Spinoza’s time. But Spinoza was more connected, via the Hebrew tradition, to the medieval Arabic literature than many of his contemporaries.

I don’t really know much about the history of trickle-down economics. Arthur Laffer wrote an article on his famous ‘curve’, showing some historical precedents for the central idea. The Laffer Curve is, roughly, the idea that increasing tax rates up to some point increases overall revenue to the Exchequer, but increasing it past that point decreases overall revenue due to a detrimental effect on national income. It’s often cited as a prime example of an economic idea with very little practical importance, due to the strength of its assumptions and its abstraction from complicating issues.

Spinoza has very little to say about taxation as such. In the Political Treatise (ch.6, §12) he argues that during peacetime there should be no taxation, though all land and housing should be publicly owned and then leased from the government. In this sense, he can be interpreted as an early proponent of the Land Value Tax famously promoted by Henry George in the nineteenth century. But trickle-down economics doesn’t seem to me to appear anywhere in his writings.

Jacobsen: Were there any social and cultural values – including freedom of speech – that Spinoza supported in order for the economic flourishing of society?

Douglas: It’s almost the other way around for Spinoza. He argues that commercial relations foster peaceful cooperation among people so that they can bind together under a common law and sovereign power. For him, the best guarantee of free speech is a powerful sovereign authority, subject to the democratic control of the citizens, which acts to protect freedom of speech from the soft power of religious and private institutions. So long as the citizens know what is good for them, they will insist upon the sovereign power acting in this way.

Commercial relations support the stability of the state, and thus the authority of the sovereign power, which is the protector of freedom of speech and other rights of citizens. Commerce is important because it keeps the citizens interested in each other’s welfare; “everyone defends the cause of another just so far as he believes that in this way he makes his own situation more stable” (Political Treatise, ch.7, §8). And there’s a positive feedback loop since, as Spinoza argues in the Theologico-Political Treatise, support for free speech and other civic rights ends up strengthening the sovereign authority and the rule of law.

On the other hand, Spinoza is well aware that economic institutions can often work to divide people rather than bringing them together. In the Political Treatise he has a few suggestions for ensuring that the institutions work in the right way; also in the Theologico-Political Treatise he speaks favourably of the Biblical debt jubilee. But, as I’ve argued in a recent paper (“Spinoza, money, and desire”), there is always a risk, on Spinoza’s theory, that our economic institutions will foster socially destructive passions rather than working in more pro-social ways.

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2022-04-19

France: The Inability of a Secular State to Protect Secularists

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/16

Despite living in one of the most secular countries worldwide, ex-Muslim secularists in France still face hate speech, death threats, and an idle government.

Waleed Al-Husseini founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of France. He escaped the Palestinian Authority after torture and imprisonment in Palestine, fleeing to Jordan and then France. He is an ex-Muslim and an atheist. We have published interviews in Canadian Atheist (here, here, here, and here), The Good Men Project (here), Humanist Voices (here), and Conatus News (here, here, and here). Here is an educational interview on ex-Muslims in France.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Ex-Muslims in France are in a more secular culture. There is a different sense of secularism in the culture there too, as France can be described as one of the most secular countries in the world, at least constitutionally. Ex-Muslims probably welcome the transition from Muslim home life to a more secular culture. What is French secularism like for many ex-Muslims?

Waleed Al-Husseini: For us, secularism in France; it’s the most important. We like it. We are trying to defend it and go forward with it; we don’t like those who try to reduce or remove it. We do not want to move the dial back, especially with Islamism. Those who use it to spread their non-secular values.

That is why we were against Macron, the French President when he said that French society is not a secular country while the state is secular. The state is the only secular institution. We were against him too when he went to talk to Church officials asking them to become part of and more active in political life.

All these things are taking secularism back, away from us. We don’t like this because it opens a big door for Islamism to come, infiltrating more and more into the country. “French secularism”, and every kind of secularism, actually, means religion is out of politics. That is something we need. We are fed up with religion. All these wars that are taking place worldwide take place in the name of religion.

Secularism came after 400 years of war so we can understand the meaning of it and how much it is important. French secularism, or Laïcité, is what we all need in this world.

Jacobsen: How do ex-Muslims manage the transition into the more secular life in France?

Al-Husseini: Many of us have this value and found it to be the best, so it’s so easy for us to be in this life. People dream of it for a very long time. That is why life in France has never been different than our internal values. It’s just sometimes with extremes things do not work that good.

It’s important to us to feel welcome in France and to feel that our secular way of life can be accepted. Because the extremist Muslims, Christians or Jewish people will never accept our values. To be more direct, especially Muslim extremists are our big problem. We live our life easily in the secular life, but we still take care of our safety.

Jacobsen: Can ex-Muslims feel bullied and harassed by some Muslim communities and enclaves in France?

Al-Husseini: This is one of our main problems, not only from Islamism but even from random Muslims who will recognise ex-Muslims. They will insult or try to beat us, like what happened to me many times when I tried to voice my opinion regarding my values.

The worst threats for us coming from some leaders of Muslim associations or imams as many of them ask their followers and disciples to kill us and that we deserve to die. The religious leaders say that we are traitors.

This type of hate speech against us makes us easy targets for Muslims. The more they speak means that we actually have effect in society, but it also means that death threats and dangers are rising.

Jacobsen: How can the French government better protect the rights and livelihood of the French ex-Muslim population?

Al-Husseini: It is complicated here, but at least they can stop the hate speech against us by arresting those who do it. They can be more strict against these type of imams and leaders who make these unwarranted and hateful assertions.

The French government has a lot to do in general, even in fighting terrorists and fundamentalism. But what should be fast should be to stop and actually halt political Islam, or Islamism, and even ban it.

Islam should be just private relations. That is what should happen everywhere. Religion is a private matter, and everyone should be able to condemn it and, more importantly, it should take no part in politics.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Waleed.

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2022-04-19

Fighting For Secularism with PJ Slinger – Editor, Freedom From Religion Foundation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/28

PJ Slinger, the editor for the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), speaks to Conatus News about his work and activism.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did you become involved in the non-religious movement?

PJ Slinger: It wasn’t until I started at FFRF in 2015 that I “became involved.” Before that, I was a vocal proponent of nontheism, whether it was in discussions with friends face-to-face or, later, on Facebook with “friends.” It got to the point that anytime I was in a conversation and religion came up, people would immediately look to me, like, “Ooh, what do you think about that?”

Jacobsen: What about the Freedom From Religion Foundation? What intrigued you about its activities?

Slinger: I hadn’t heard of FFRF until I moved back to Madison, Wisconsin in the year 2000. (I had lived in Minnesota for about a decade before that, after graduating college from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in journalism.) I got a job at The Capital Times newspaper (where I held various roles throughout my 15 years there), which had a subscription to Freethought Today, the 10-times-a-year newspaper of FFRF. So I glanced through it and found myself drawn to FFRF because it was so in line with my thoughts. I would always look forward to the day that would arrive, and eventually, the newspaper’s editor would just put it directly on my desk when it came in the mail.

At that point, I was less interested in the activism part of what FFRF stood for than the nontheism aspect. I always found a lot of interesting articles and comments that helped me in my discussions with others.

But I also soon learned that fighting for state-church separation was part and parcel of being a freethinker. Before that, I was ambivalent about, say, a Christian cross being on public property. I figured, what’s the big deal? But then I came to the logical conclusion that allowing these small transgressions was no different allowing larger state-church violations. I realised that the small-scale violations were wrong for the same reasons as the bigger ones and that it wasn’t a matter of degree. If it was a First Amendment violation, big or small, it needed to be rectified.

Jacobsen: How did you become involved in the work and activism there?

Slinger: A bit of luck, I suppose. While working at The Capital Times, each reporter and editor (of which I was at the time of this story) was required to interview a prominent or interesting person from the community for an in-depth Q&A. On this particular occasion, I chose Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of FFRF. She came into the newspaper office, and we sat down and talked about FFRF’s activities, the new multi-million dollar building expansion that was happening and where she saw FFRF heading in the future. As we concluded the interview, we discussed FFRF in general, and I brought up Bill Dunn, who at that time was editor of Freethought Today. I had worked with Bill at The Capital Times before he left for FFRF. Annie Laurie then mentioned that he was getting close to retiring and that they would be looking for a new editor. My eyes grew wide, no doubt! About 18 months later, The Capital Times offered buyouts (a sign of the times in the newspaper business, unfortunately) and I took it, completely forgetting about a potential job at FFRF. About a week later, I got a call from Annie Laurie, asking me to come in for an interview. I couldn’t have been happier!

Jacobsen: What have been some of your more recent activities through the organisation?

Slinger: As editor of Freethought Today, I work mostly behind the scenes. Part of my job is to promote, in the paper, the great things FFRF is doing in our battle to keep church and state separate. It’s on me to give our members (33,000 of them!) something that keeps them informed of everything we do at FFRF, give them articles of interest relating to nontheism or church-state issues, and entertain them with cartoons, photos and other items relevant to our mission. I feel it’s a good mix of serious news, information and fun.

It’s amazing how much content there is on a monthly basis. We publish 24 pages, but that number could easily be higher.

Jacobsen: As someone raised Methodist but being an atheist nearly your whole life, you have also spent time as a copy editor, sportswriter and online editor for The Capital Times. How does this inform your work through FFRF and help with the advancement of the secular movements and the church-state separation communities?

Slinger: I feel fortunate to have worked at The Capital Times, a progressive newspaper, where things like state-church separation are important. It’s there that I began to understand minority communities, be they racial, gender, economic or religious. As an atheist, I saw the similarities among those communities in how and why the majorities held power and what was needed to break those cycles of control. While choosing to be an atheist is considerably different than being born black or LGBTQ, just being part of the minority (for now) nonreligious community has helped me understand and empathise with those groups.

Jacobsen: What is the next big step for the FFRF in its battles with those who have tendencies toward the theocratic rather than the democratic?

Slinger: Well, that’s a loaded question! We are currently in a time of great unease about the future of state-church separation. With the administration we currently have in the White House and the beyond-strange Christian evangelical backing of it, it seems as if we are losing ground day by day, even as FFRF continues to pile up victories in our legal battles. It’s clear that in our current political climate, religion — specifically Christianity — holds a more prominent position in governmental decisions and outcomes. More and more states are spending time and money to have things like “In God We Trust” banners put in schools, rather than tackling the real issues that confront public education. There is no shortage of these kinds of things happening all over the country.

But part of me remains optimistic, based on the studies and reports that show the number of nonreligious people in America is growing at a rapid rate, mostly because of the younger generations. I am hopeful that as time progresses, reason and logic will be used as determining factors in governmental decisions rather than religious platitudes.

I feel that the ultimate goal for FFRF is not to have to exist at all. Unfortunately, it appears our work is only becoming more necessary. So FFRF has to keep pressuring politicians to keep religion out of government, and if we have to go to court to do it, well, that’s what we do. But it’s an uphill climb.

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts in conclusion based on the conversation today?

Slinger: I’d like to invite anyone who has an interest in helping FFRF fight these battles to join our organisation. We are a five-star nonprofit that uses your membership dues (only $40 a year!) wisely and judiciously. It’s a great way to support the upholding of our First Amendment.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mr Slinger.

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2022-04-19

Sceptic Amardeo Sarma on Humanism and Rationalism in the West

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/25

German sceptic Amardeo Sarma discusses critically analysing entrenched belief systems, including religion and a shockingly fervent homeopathic movement.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Was there a family background in humanism or rationalism for you?

Amardeo Sarma: No, because both my parents were moderately religious. In fact, to give you an example, when I grew up, my father was a Hindu, I am half Indian, my mother is Christian, German. When I was growing up, my dad was liberal in that sense.

He said you can become whatever you like. If you want to be a Hindu or a Christian, fine. Even if you want to be a Muslim, that’s fine because we lived in India where there were a lot of Muslims. But then I do not think he reckoned with me deciding to be nothing.

In a way, I became a sceptic before I became an atheist or humanist. That’s because of my reading. I used to read a lot of books when I was a kid. When I was 16, 17, I came across a number of books such as Charles Berlitz: The Bermuda Triangle or other of his books.

I found them quite fascinating. One of the books that got me thinking was a book by Larry Kusche, who wrote Bermuda Triangle Solved, and I found it fantastic for somebody to take pains to go into everything and find out that a lot of the claims are wrong.

That got me into scepticism and at some stage I stopped buying into the diffused beliefs that I had before. So, the quick answer to your question is no, there is no family background of it.

Jacobsen: Your parents did not reconcile with you having non-belief?

Sarma: Well, they did in the sense that they accepted it. I do not think they were particularly happy, but they did not make a fuss about it.

Jacobsen: For other friends growing up around where you lived, was it different?

Sarma: Yeah, it was different because most of them stayed religious. My brother had a similar path even though he’s not so engaged in the sceptical movement as I am. He was one of the founders along with me, but he hasn’t been active. He’s been a sceptic even before me and he’s also a non-believer, or whatever you would call that.

Jacobsen: There is plenty of names, irreligious, nones, non-believers, etc.

Sarma: I am not an atheist in the sense that I do not go around preaching non-belief. I am an atheist in the sense that I do not believe in God or any superior being, which is not the same as positively stating that there is no God. It is up to the believers to prove their case that there is a God, not mine to prove that there isn’t. Also, atheism is not my motivation. Being a sceptic is, and that means promoting science and critical thinking, which is what I have been doing for over 30 years.

Jacobsen: And as the leader of the German Sceptics Group, what are some of your tasks and responsibilities that you take on board?

Sarma: I have been responsible for the overall strategy and direction we are going and what topics we choose, as well as making sure that the organization grows. There is a lot of administration as well.

We are quite happy that the last 30 years the organization has had steady growth. We now have more than 1600 members. Additionally, about two and a half thousand people subscribe to the magazine Skeptiker. It is growing steadily. So I try to make sure that the sceptics’ organization is on the right path and keeps growing.

Specifically, I have been involved in some topics as well. In the past, it is been homeopathy and the methods of science: how to do investigations, how to do tests. In the earlier stages of the organization, in the 90s, I organized and designed tests together with James Randi, so that was quite an experience at the time.

So at the moment, I have been looking more into things like climate change and global warming as well, so that’s been one of the new topics. We hope to be taking up broader science issues that are part of the public discussion.

Jacobsen: How is German culture in regards to scepticism? What is its attitude towards it? What is the level of critical thinking too?

Sarma: On face value, everybody says, “Yes, science is good and critical thinking is good,” but when it comes to topics like homeopathy and other forms of alternative medicine, people are not into critical thinking in that sense.

Compared to the US and Canada, there is not as much of a pro-science sentiment in general in the public. It is more difficult to get across that point of view, even though people on face value are in favor of science and critical thinking. Of course, everybody thinks critical thinking is a good thing.

But they seem to look at critical thinking not as scientifically investigating these claims, but being critical about things. Being critical means denying whether something is true or not. It is difficult to get across that we need more than that: Both claims and criticism need evidence and we should not forget that we cannot ignore the rest of the body of scientific knowledge.

But we’ve been making some progress especially as far as homeopathy is concerned. We’ve been able to turn the tide here in Germany. If you look at the reports in the newspapers and some of the magazines, the tone has changed.

Whereas 10 or 20 years ago, many of the reports on homeopathy would be positive, pro-homeopathy, now not just us but many journalists or bloggers have been writing much more critically about homeopathy. Also, sales of homeopathic medicines are down for the first time and medical doctors are getting more reluctant to promote homeopathy.

This is a hard task, but shows you can change things if you bring convincing arguments forward. We are also grateful to the rest of the global scientific and sceptical community that has been effective of late and that has been a huge asset.

And also it is important to be sympathetic in the way your scepticism comes across. Be nice and do not attack people, attack ideas. Make sure you’re firm in your position or scientific standpoint but not trying to insult others, which there is always a tendency for some sceptics to do.

Jacobsen: Also, do you think, because of the nature of these beliefs, that there is a hypersensitivity on the part of – not necessarily practitioners – but believers in the practitioners when discussing these issues?

Sarma: Yes, much so. In particular, in the case of alternative medicine and homeopathy for example, it seems to be almost easier to discuss with a believer in God or a Christian and be critical about the Bible and things like that than to discuss with somebody who is a believer in homeopathy [Laughing].

Apparently people, I do not know about them in the US and in the Americas, but in Europe, theologians and believers have gotten used to being criticized and they still get along with you. Even atheists get invited to church or events organized by the Church to get the other point of view.

They are much more open to critical thinking, even from the point of view of atheists than many believers in homeopathy are. At least they mostly do not yell at you. On the other hand, I have had cases where even friends get up and leave when you start discussing homeopathy critically.

Again the short answer is yes; people are sensitive. Belief in things like homeopathy can be as strong or even much stronger than belief in God. They are held much more strongly, with much more resistance to criticism.

Jacobsen: You mentioned Skeptiker.

Sarma: Skeptiker, yes.

Jacobsen: The name answers itself.

Sarma: That’s a magazine. We started publishing that in 1987, so it has been 30 years now since we started. In the beginning, it was a small magazine but that’s grown now. It is now comparable to any other published magazine. We publish it 4 times a year and the contents are good.

Jacobsen: Not biased on the matter at all?

Sarma: [Laughing] No, not at all. But we get good feedback from other sceptic groups in other countries when they compare it to their own magazines. They say the way it is done up and the topics we address, that it is quite good.

Jacobsen: What are some of your ongoing activities outside of the magazine and work in combatting things like homeopathy and dowsing in Germany through the sceptics group?

Sarma: To give you an example, at the end of every year, we evaluate the predictions of astrologers and soothsayers. We collect, at the beginning of the year, whatever has been forecast to happen. At the end of the year, we show what happened and that’s quite sobering.

At the end you see that the predictions turn out to be wrong most of the time of course. The results are as you would expect by chance. If you would do random predictions, you’d probably end up with a better score than the astrologers because some of the predictions they make are basically impossible.

For example, one of the predictions they made was there is going to be a landing on Mars next year. To make this happen, the spacecraft should have already started. So, some of the predictions they made are completely impossible and they couldn’t ever turn out to be correct unless somebody had sent out a Mars mission in secret or something like that.

But apparently this does not affect the astrologers much. They continue to make their predictions even if they are also faced with our criticism at the end of it. Apparently it is advertising for them. They get attention and they do not care if it turns out or wrong at the end of the year.

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2022-04-19

Atheist Woman Fleeing Persecution in Tunisia Seeks Refuge in Germany

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/20

Trabelsi Zeineb is a bisexual atheist woman fleeing hostility and potential persecution from neighbours and family in Tunisia, seeking refuge in Germany.

Trabelsi Zeineb grew up in a highly religious family in the Tunis suburbs. Her father is a prominent member of the Party of El-Nahda. She spent her early life in this highly religious household. Religious enough that she felt the sting of restrictions and double standards against women. This was simply life in Tunisia for her.

Trabelsi was forced to wear the veil, forced to pray, forced to fast, and only allowed to leave the house to study, which was under the control of her brother or male guardian.

Zeineb lived without rights for a long time as girl, a woman, in a highly religious Islamic home. Then the revolution came, which gave her a chance to get away from her patriarchal household in suburbanite Tunis.

She began to fight for individual rights, for her rights as a non-believer and woman. It was a breath of freedom. She came out as a bisexual at this time as well. However, once her family found out about her bisexuality and atheism, they rejected her. She was threatened by family and neighbours.

In 2013, she got married. Her ex-husband, she reports, mistreated her. She described life with the ex-husband, the few months, as “hell.” After a few months, they got divorced.

She then began to formulate a plan to get out, get anywhere, for a new life: Europe was the obvious choice.

On the 1st of October, 2017, Zeineb got a tourist visa for 15 days to spend a week in Spain. From there, she went to Germany in order to apply for asylum. The German authorities rejected her.

I asked Trabelsi about the treatment of sexual minorities and atheists within Tunisia. She said, “The situation in Tunisia is unstable and we are being threatened because we are minorities.”

“We are threatened with death from the family and the community. And we do not find our right when we want to resort to the judiciary Germany may refuse asylum,” Zeineb explained, “because it considers Tunisia a state of rights and freedoms after the revolution. If they refuse asylum, they will return to Tunisia and face renewed death threats from my family.”

Zeineb is concerned about being potentially returned to Tunisia because, if she does then, she will potentially face penalties for being a bisexual and an atheist in a country with a culture against sexual minorities and unbelievers.

“Arabe Article 226 provides for imprisonment for any person who infringes on good morals and public morals. Article 230 of the Tunisian Penal Code provides for the perpetrator of homosexuality or manslaughter to be sentenced to three years’ imprisonment,” Zeineb said.

She noted that she risks even her family simply killing her. The future is unknown for her, as she is meeting with German authorities today, on April the 20th.

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2022-04-19

Liberal Islam and Migrant Integration with Seyran Ateş

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/13

Seyran Ateş, a lawyer and feminist activist, speaks with Conatus News about law, faith, feminism, and integrating migrants in Western societies.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To begin, what was your background in faith and feminism? Insofar as I know, you are of Kurdish descent.

Seyran Ateş: My mother is Turkish. My father is Kurdish. He died in 2014. My family background is Sunni. I was 6 when I came to Berlin, so I grew up there. Faith or religion was not a primary or daily issue.

My parents used to leave everybody alone with their religious beliefs. They were liberal on this point. I always believed in God. I was never an activist or something like that. I had the chance to see that Islam is a pluralist religion.

Turkey was at this time much more open, modern and plural when it came to religion. The pressure on the people was perhaps because there was no democracy, but never because of religion when I was growing up.

For that reason, faith was never something that I had to run away from or something public. It was interior and individual. Even as a child, I believed in a merciful God full of love. That is the background of my childhood.

Jacobsen: You studied criminal and family law at the University of Berlin.

Ateş: I started studying law in 1983 at the age of 20. I worked parallel to my studies as a social worker in a centre for women. We helped women who were victims of domestic violence and other [forms of abuse].

We taught them to read and write in German, and helped them with their daily life. This is what I did when I was 20. At the age of 21, in the third semester of my study, I was shot there by a man of Turkish origin.

The woman, who was one of our clients, was there that day. She was sitting close. I was translating. She died when he shot the two of us. That experience was bad, but important for my life. Those people are willing to kill women because [the women] are fighting for their rights.

I stopped studying because of my health situation. I was unable to use my left arm. I finished my studies in 1997 and then started my office as a lawyer.

Jacobsen: That ties into your work as a feminist working for equal rights for women and girls, and in particular Muslim women and girls – also work in civil rights.

Ateş: I started identifying as a feminist at the age of 15. I lived in a conservative and traditional family. To see gender apartheid that early, for that reason, maybe [the reason]I became a feminist.

Jacobsen: A violent Islamic reactionary attacked another woman and yourself. Does this reflect the experience of other Muslim feminists and other women Muslim civil rights activists?

Ateş: When it comes to violence against women, I would say it a little different. We have violence against women in every culture and religion, but we have to look at each religion individually.

Especially and unfortunately, in the Islamic countries and especially here in Europe in the Muslim communities, you can find 10 or 20 percent higher rates of violence against women. When you find violence, sometimes, it is much harder to talk about the origin of it, living here.

There is a timetable difference between the societies. That is what I worked out, from more than 30 years’ experience as a feminist.

Jacobsen: You have been critical of an immigrant Muslim society within Germany that reflects an even more conservative view than its counterpart in Turkey. You also wrote a book called Islam Needs a Sexual Revolution. On those two points of contact, I note a non-conservative orientation within the faith from you. What are your areas of critique of the former organisation and propositions for a sexual revolution in the latter example?

Ateş: My critique is not only against the immigrant Muslim society; it is a critique of Muslim culture all over the world. When it comes to the migrants, you can see they are living in Western and modern countries, but they do not want to integrate themselves into the modern values and lifestyles of these nations.

They are coming from Turkey or these other countries and not developing. The migrants are used to building parallel societies, where they are not willing to integrate themselves into the wider community.

On the other side, the country treats them like guests or like foreigners who should one day go back to their home country. That schism is one point that we have to talk about when it comes to problems of integration.

But [Germany expecting immigrants to return home] should not be an excuse for [Muslim immigrants] not accepting gender equality or democracy. So, my critiques against the Muslim societies are that they do not accept that sexuality is an important point, and that we have to talk and debate and discuss this issue.

The answer is that sexuality is such an important thing for the Muslim communities. That they are singing about it the whole day, but it is forbidden to do?

It is recommended in every field. Every time men and women come together, they think that they will have sex together. It is an overlap.

Jacobsen: You went into hiding in 2008 based on threats against you. What were some of the threats? What was a pivotal moment in that process of hiding?

Ateş: I got the death threats in 2006 and 2009, and also now after opening the mosque. It was not only in 2008 because you said in 2008. I got many death threats because of that. I decided not to work anymore in this field. I stopped for three or four years and then started as a lawyer for a bit in 2012.

Jacobsen: Then you started the Ibn Rushd Goethe Moschee Berlin. What was the inspiration for the title and the orientation of the mosque?

Ateş: Ibn Rushd was a man of enlightenment and a bridge builder between orient and occident. As well, Goethe was the first European who had a different view about Islam compared to others like Voltaire and other contemporary writers who mostly explain Islam as a sick religion [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Ateş: It was based on the sexually overactive Prophet. It explained Islam as more like a sect rather than a religion. Goethe was not satisfied with this picture of Islam. Also, he read lots of books from poets. He was extremely interested in the harmony and poetry of Islam, the language and the poetry.

For this reason, I decided one name from the Occident and one name from the Orient. You could ask why I as a feminist do not take a woman’s name. But as a feminist, I can note that some men have done some great things for humans, like Ibn Rushd and Goethe, [who acted]as bridge makers.

Ibn Rushd is one of the most important reformers of Islam. I love his books, reform ideas, and how he explains us, the Quran, and Islam.

Jacobsen: This is the first liberal mosque in Germany.

Ateş: It is the first open for the public, yes. There are other groups, liberal Muslims and Muslim forums, working in the same style – coming together in the same manner. But there is no other place called mosque or liberal mosque.

Jacobsen: The Egyptian Fatwa Council has condemned this at Al Azhar University in Egypt, which is a major university.

Ateş: Not only Egypt but Turkey and Iran also, the Iranian centre from Humboldt, which, as I say, it was a fatwa. We never get it as a paper [Laughing].

We do not get any papers. I am not shocked. We were not shocked. They were so fast. They never wrote a fatwa against the Islamic State or against the terrorists who kill people in the name of Islam.

It is interesting. It was, for me, again, proof that we have to fight against these so-called authorities in Islamic theology, who call themselves the biggest and most important university in the Islamic world.

They did nothing. It has nothing to do with theology. It was political, personal.

Jacobsen: If you take most faiths at a glance and look at the leaders, and if you look at the leaders, most tend to be men. Why is this?

Ateş: It is the patriarchal structure all over the world. It was the same with violence against women and with the religions. Women are always fighting for more rights, not only in society but also in religions and institutions that work wherever.

We always have to fight and say, “We have the same value as humans.” It is the same game. The hardline leaders of religion used to be always men. In most languages, “God” is explained as a man.

Jacobsen: Now, looking forward to the future, what are some projects that you have coming down the pike? What are you hoping to do with them?

Ateş: I have big dreams and visions [Laughing].

One of my dreams is to have a liberal mosque in every European capital and a more prominent place for our mosque here in Berlin, and to be much more connected to liberal Muslims all over the world – and try to be accepted as a part of Muslim society and Islam.

I also have the dream and the wish that Western countries — and especially Left-wing people — [would stop]confusing me when they discuss the issues of Islam, e.g. the headscarf and how Muslim men treat women. They are incredibly tolerant when it comes to Muslims, but they are never as tolerant of the men in their societies. They would never accept so much violence and pressure on women as they accept in Muslim cultures and communities.

It is so sad that it comes from the Left, as I come from the Left and am a feminist. To discuss all of these issues with Left-wing people who call them the good guys makes me tired somehow. The point is that we have to check what is a practice against human rights, what is acceptable, and accepted by our constitutions and rights.

There should be no difference between culture and religion, to call something against women’s rights and forbid it. There should not be a cultural bonus.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Seyran.

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2022-04-19

The Enlightenment, Humanism and Morality with Dr Stephen Law

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/18

In Part 4 of this interview series, Dr Stephen Law speaks to Conatus News about the Enlightenment, Humanism, Morality and more.

Scott Jacobsen: New data and analysis make arguments for humanism and positive progress based on Enlightenment values and scientific discovery easier now. Some of the most prominent humanists, including Professor Steven Pinker in Enlightenment Now (2018) make arguments of these forms. Do these arguments seem valid and more reliable than in previous centuries to you? What are their strengths and weaknesses?

Dr Stephen Law: It’s an empirical question whether the post-Enlightenment world is getting better in various respects. I have not read Pinker’s book or looked at much of the research, so not well-placed to comment on that. I am aware of the fact that you will likely get differing answers depending on exactly which question you ask of the available data, of course.

My interest in the Enlightenment has tended to focus particularly on those who want to blame the Enlightenment for various ills.

There are some post-modern thinkers who do this – who blame the Enlightenment for the Holocaust, for example. Lyotard is one of them. There are also religiously conservative thinkers who blame the Enlightenment for the Holocaust. Journalist Melanie Philips does so quite explicitly, and I seem to remember historian Michael Burleigh made a TV programme which also made that argument. Here’s Philips:

The Enlightenment gave us freedom and liberal values, but it also gave us … The Holocaust.

Philosopher John Gray says about Count Joseph de Maistre, a staunch defender of the Church and Pope and one of the Enlightenment’s most vigorous critics, that:

[w]hen he represents reason and analysis as corrosive and destructive, solvents of custom and allegiance that cannot replace the bonds of sentiment and tradition which they weaken and demolish, he illuminates, better perhaps than any subsequent writer, the absurdity of the Enlightenment faith [for such it undoubtedly was]that human society can have a rational foundation. If to reason is to question, then questioning will have no end, until it has wrought the dissolution of the civilization that gave it birth.

So someone like Pinker, or me, who thinks that reason and the Enlightenment value of thinking independently and for oneself should lie at the heart of raising good citizens will come under attack from two different directions. We are criticised by post-modern thinkers who think that this elevation of reason turns it into a highly oppressive authority. We are also criticised by religious conservatives who blame the kind of independent critical thinking espoused by Enlightenment thinkers for undermining traditional sources of authority, promoting relativism, and unravelling the social and ethical fabric.

Neither of these critiques is correct, of course.

Jacobsen: Continuing from the previous question, how does the humanist framework provide a way in which to think about ethics practically, especially with all of the technology involved at every level of decision-making now?

Law: That is an enormous question. Humanism does not really offer a specific philosophical ethical theory. Some humanists are utilitarians; some are not, some humanists are moral realists, some are not. One thing humanists do have in common is a rejection of the thought that some special texts or people must be deferred to because they are sources of divine guidance.

Hume was probably right that science reveals only what is the case, not what one ought to do, and one cannot rationally support an ought conclusion using only ‘is’ premises. So science alone cannot answer moral questions. Many humanists accept that (not all – Sam Harris disagrees, for example). However, that still leaves a great deal of scope for science to inform our moral thinking. If I believe women should not get the vote because I believe dim people should not get the vote and that women are dim, my moral position can be demolished scientifically, because it’s based in part on a false empirical claim: women are dim.

Almost everyone agrees that, whether or not science alone can justify moral positions, it can be hugely helpful with moral judgements. Almost everyone agrees morality has at least something to do with human flourishing in this life. And it’s an empirical matter what helps humans flourish in this life, so scientific investigation of what helps us flourish will be very valuable, morally speaking. What we think will help us flourish often turns out to be incorrect.

Jacobsen: With these positive gains in the scientific world and the expansion of the moral sphere, what new values that are now fringe considerations in ethical decisions will in the coming decades become mainstream and even central in moral choices?

Law: Well one obvious candidate is genetic enhancement – designer babies. As the technology develops, we will have some hard decisions to make. I was also recently involved in discussion with John Danaher about robot sex. That is already a thing, apparently (robotic sex dolls are on sale). That also raises lots of interesting questions about human relationships, freedom, the law, etc.

In my opinion, what should now come to the fore, but probably won’t, is class. We are all acutely aware that racism, sexism, homophobia are forms of discrimination that hurt our fellow human beings badly. “I’d suggest a form of discrimination that hurts our life prospects at least as much as these other forms is class discrimination: classism if you like.”

Of course, this is controversial. Currently, more on the right are beginning to voice publicly what many think privately – that the lower classes are genetically inferior, and that this is overwhelmingly what explains their lack of social mobility. Whether this is true is an empirical matter, of course.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dr Law.

Dr Stephen Law is Reader in Philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London. He is also the editor of THINK: Philosophy for Everyone, a journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy (published by Cambridge University Press). Stephen has published numerous books on philosophy, including The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking (on which an Oxford University online course has since been based) and The Philosophy Files (aimed at children 12+). Stephen is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts. Our prior article, here, and main interview, here, and sessions in this series here, here, and here.

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2022-04-19

BBC Appeals To The UN To Protect Its Iran-Based Staff From Harassment

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/18

The BBC has appealed to the United Nations to protect the rights of its Iran-based journalists, who allegedly face harassment and intimidation.

BBC News has appealed to the United Nations to protect its journalists’ rights in Iran.

The complaints to the United Nations follow years of allegations of harassment and persecution by the Iranian authorities of journalists as well as their families. In 2017, the complaints had intensified compared to previous years.

The Iranian authorities opened a criminal investigation against BBC Persian Service journalists. Their alleged crime was opposition to the national security of Iran. The BBC World Service owns the foreign language services and received funds from the Foreign Office until 2014.

These facts have been questionable to the Iranian authorities. The BBC has listed a number of complaints about Iran, including arbitrary arrest and detention of journalists’ family members, passport confiscations, bans on travel and especially out of Iran, and the surveillance of the journalists’ families and the journalists themselves.

All of them connected to even further spreading of defamation and fake news. The targets, interestingly, have been female journalists. Tony Hall, Director General of the BBC, explained:

…because our own attempts to persuade the Iranian authorities to end their harassment have been completely ignored…

…In fact, during the past nine years, the collective punishment of BBC Persian Service journalists and their families has worsened. This is not just about the BBC – we are not the only media organisation to have been harassed or forced to compromise when dealing with Iran.

In truth, this story is much wider: it is a story about fundamental human rights. We are now asking the community of nations at the UN to support the BBC and uphold the right to freedom of expression.

The Deputy General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, Jeremy Dear, explained that the Iranian journalists, for several years, have been suffering and forced into exile and hiding to escape punishments, even being caught and arrest, jailed and then given intimidation, routine harassment, and violence.

“Iranians now increasingly turn to the international media to find out what is happening in their own country,” Dear said, “Targeting family members in Iran in an attempt to silence journalists working in London must be stopped. The international community must act now.”

David Kaye and Asma Jahangir, United Nations Special Rapporteurs, received an urgent appeal from the BBC World Service last October. The appeal noted that the corporation’s journalists would address the Human Rights Council in a session in Geneva this week with a call for United Nations member states to act to protect the rights of BBC staff to report freely.

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2022-04-19

Women in Colombia Address Conflict-Associated Sexual Abuse

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/17

The United Nations Refugee Agency reported on Columbian women and their work to combat sexual abuse. Michelle Begue stated that women in Columbia are working through the court system to find justice in sexual abuse and rape cases.

Leonor Galeano and her 12-year-old daughter, for instance, had to flee their homes during fighting between the FARC rebels and the government.

When Galeano and her daughter settled into a new house in Southern Columbia, she befriended a local official. The official, without Galeano’s knowledge, raped her daughter several times.

Galeano’s daughter became pregnant. “Because we are displaced, people believe that we are worthless, that we don’t have the same rights,” Galeano stated.

In the half-century old armed conflict in Columbia, stories like these are common. 7.4 million people have been extirpated from the borders of their country. Mothers and daughters, like Leonor and her child, comprise the more than half of the displaced population.

Women and children are particularly vulnerable in these circumstances. People are concerned about the daily needs of survival, and lack social and familial support networks. This makes refugees of conflict, especially women and children, vulnerable to sexual exploitation.

“There is a deep relation between sexual violence and displacement… But sexual violence isn’t just a cause for displacement,” said Adri Villa, a community-based protection assistant at the United Nations Refugee Agency. “It sometimes occurs during and after displacement, once they have settled in their new home.”

No specific information exists on the total number of children and women victims of sexual violence in the 50+ year conflict in Columbia, but this is linked to a deeper problem: the lack of any official registry.

Individual citizens lack knowledge of their rights, resources, and connections to do anything about it. To combat this, women’s protection collectives have been forming independently.

One is in Putumayo province in the south. It is an umbrella of 66 groups which are advocating and enforcing the rights of women. This has proven difficult in a scenario in which “tens of thousands of displaced women [are]among nearly 146,000 victims of the armed conflict in the region bordering Ecuador.”

“The problem of sexual violence… is most prevalent among families who have been forcibly displaced, because they are in a state of greater vulnerability,” said Muriel Fatima, the President of the Life Weavers Women’s Alliance.

Life Weavers is a pilot project for peace in Columbia. The organisation gives empowerment workshops and counselling to women affected by sexual violence and abuse in the region.

As the Life Weavers Women’s Alliance has allied with the United Nations Refugee Agency, there has been an increased chance for the women survivors of rape and sexual violence to be able to fight for justice in a court system. This is largely due to generous financial resources from the UNHCR.

The UNHCR has been keeping its commitments and promises by doing so. In 2016, there was a peace agreement reached between the FARC rebels and the government. This has temporarily ended the hostilities between the two warring groups.

“I am thankful because with the help of the alliance and UNHCR I have survived,” Leonor Galeano said, “I consider myself a survivor, because I have moved forward.”

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2022-04-19

Student Walkout over Gun Violence Threatened with Disciplinary Action

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/17

Students who take part in a walkout to protest gun violence in America could be faced with disciplinary action by their schools.

Demonstrations against gun violence have been ongoing after the mass school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

In the wake of the tragedy, March For Our Lives was founded in reaction to the issue of gun violence, which has affected many schools.

According to the March For Our Lives website, the tally on the marches around the world in protest against gun violence, especially those in schools, comes to 766 at the time of reporting.

There is an interactive map of the international protests, mostly occurring in the Western Hemisphere and in particular North America, staged on March 14.

Mass murderer 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz sat in court while thousands of high school students took part in the walkout.

The Cruz shooting was one of at least 14 at a public school in 2018 alone, coming to 3 shootings every two weeks. Some have described this as a generation raised on gun violence.

Several Republican politicians made accusations against students taking part in the hundreds of protests against gun violence in National Walkout Day. They claim that the students are political pawns in a Liberal cause.

One Charleston Democratic senator chastised the Republican leaders who made the allegations. South Carolina Governor, Henry McMaster, said that the walkouts over gun violence are shameful. In full, he stated:

This is a tricky move, I believe, by a left-wing group, from the information I’ve seen, to use these children as a tool to further their own means… It sounds like a protest to me. It’s not a memorial, it’s certainly not a prayer service, it’s a political statement by a left-wing group and it’s shameful.
What we should all do and what these students should do — I imagine a lot of them intend to do — is to pray and to hope for the families of those who were slain.

It is a First Amendment right of the students to peacefully assemble and protest. The schools that impeded the protests could face consequences. On the other hand, some students may face penalties for missing class.

Vera Eidelman, a fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that some schools may punish the students who take part in the walkout – for missing class.

Eidelman further explained, “But what the school can’t do is discipline students more harshly because they are walking out to express a political view or because school administrators don’t support the views behind the protest.”

There have been a variety of reactions to the National Walkout Day from support, to denouncement, to lambasting those who spoke out against the students and the walkout, to the students actually being punished for the walkouts.

One case was at Harney Middle School in Las Vegas, Nevada. 60 students are being required to take part in RPCs, or Required Parent Conferences, and were not being allowed to return to class on Wednesday.

Students in Metro Atlanta were disciplined for their participation in the walkouts. Those at Lindenhurst High are being forced to stay afterschool. The largest school district in South Carolina said that it would discipline upwards of 530 students for taking part in the walkouts.

Many students across the United States were given the choice to either walk out and face disciplinary action or stay in class. Some students were allegedly administered corporal punishment for taking part in the walkout.

The full consequences of the National Walkout Day, March For Our Lives, disciplinary action, and the court case for Cruz, are still unfolding.

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2022-04-19

How The World Celebrated International Women’s Day

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/11

International Women’s Day, instituted to commemorate women and their achievements, saw protests, marches and vigorous activism all around the world

On International Women’s Day Spanish women went on strike in protest against gender inequality, in what some have been calling a “feminist strike.” It was not a marginal event, but a historic act involving millions of protesters.

One teacher present at a picket line in Madrid, Concha Noverges, told Reuters, “I lived under the dictatorship, I lived under democracy and we haven’t made much headway… A lot remains to be done and we, in the education sector, have a big role to play.”

The strike lasted for 24-hours and involved an estimated 5.3 million people, according to the major Spanish unions. The march and protest were echoed in other countries, and follow on the heels of the #MeToo movements campaigning for the reduction and eventual elimination of sexual violence and harassment in workplace settings.

Two important people showed up to the event alongside the protestors – the mayors of Madrid and Bareclona, Manuela Carmena and Ada Colau.

“As people in public positions, we have the duty to mobilise on behalf of those who can’t go on strike. This is the century of women and of feminism; we’ve raised our voices and we won’t stop. No more violence, discrimination or pay gap,” The Guardian reported Colau as saying.

As Elisabetta Povoledo and others reported at length in their article in the New York Times, the strike was simply one of the bigger branches of a worldwide movement of people showing up in protest and solidarity favour of women’s liberation and empowerment.

Women also marched in London. The March4Women last Sunday marked the 100^th anniversary of women earning the right to vote in the United Kingdom, making this another historic event. It was the sixth annual march of Care International.

Several major celebrities took part in the march, including Bianca Jagger, Anne-Marie Duff and Natalie Imbruglia. Biffy Clyro and Michael Sheen also joined London’s mayor Sadiq Khan.

Khan said, “It is an honour to walk in the footsteps of the women and men who fought for women’s suffrage, retracing their protest route from Parliament to Trafalgar Square.”

Famed actor Michael Sheen said he would take a pay cut to make a point about equal pay, and stated “I think it’s absolutely imperative that no matter what the industry, no matter what the profession, that people should be paid the same for doing the same work. That’s just a given.”

The protesters called for an end to violence in the workplace and gender discrimination, many wearing sashes bearing the words “deeds not words.”

The Gulf News stated that thousands were present at the protest, with Refinery29 putting the number at upwards of 10,000, which has been taken by some as an uptick in the intensity of the demands for various kinds of gender equality.

“I think we are living in a world where there are some dinosaurs that are trying to take us back. And there are those that are moving together, trying to say ‘that’s not the way we want this world to look’,” Helen Pankhurst, great-granddaughter of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, said.

“Moving us forward, we should be looking at issues around inequality and naming prejudice and all sorts of forms of entitlement, that just shouldn’t be part of the scene of the 21st century,” she added.

The march started in Millbank’s Old Palace Yard and finished in Trafalgar Square with important speeches on the history of women’s right to vote, where women’s rights campaigners spoke in the same place leading up to the Representation of the People Act of 1918.

Women who owned property, through the act, were able to vote if over the age of 30. This eventually paved the way for universal women’s suffrage.

Outside of the west, it looks like voices for women’s empowerment were just as passionate, with The Associated Press reporting, “Demonstrators filled the streets in several Asian cities, including Manila, Seoul and New Delhi. Clad in pink and purple shirts, activists in Manila lambasted Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, calling him among the worst violator of women’s rights in Asia. Human rights groups have condemned Duterte’s sexist remarks, including a suggestion that troops shoot female communist rebels in the genitals.”

The global solidarity movement focused around International Women’s Day continues to grow, and was coordinated and executed highly successfully, which should be a boon to those hoping to change gender dynamics in and out of the workplace.

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2022-04-19

Mina Ahadi: Abuse of Women’s Rights in Iran Calls for a New Revolution

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen (Interviewer) and Stephanie Wimmers (Translator)

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/11

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Mina, what is your family background regarding religion, geography, culture, language, and education?

Mina Ahadi: I was born in Abhar, a little town in Iran. My mother tongue was Turkish but we learnt and spoke Persian in school. My father was active in the Tudeh party in Iran, but he died when I was 4 years old. He was a teacher. My family was Muslim and traditional. My grandfather, my mother’s father, was an atheist.

Jacobsen: Was there a family background in activism?

Ahadi: Politics was always a subject. My father and uncle were in Iran’s communist party, Tudeh, and the student movement was very strong back then in Iran and I witnessed all of that.

Jacobsen: You were born in 1956. So, you have experience with the world and its changes over several decades. What have been some most impactful, even emotionally moving, moments in world history that you have personally been a part of? What about simply witness to by your judgment?

Ahadi: The Iranian revolution in 1979 was a very important and big emotional event. I was an activist back then and have seen and learnt a lot, afterwards I read a lot about revolutions in other countries.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You are a member of the Central Committee and Politburo of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran. What tasks and responsibilities come with this position?

Ahadi: I work with the Communist Worker’s Party of Iran. We are trying to reach younger generations in Iran and have done and achieved a lot up to this point. I’m in contact with women in Iran with whom we talk about women’s rights violations and gender apartheid in Iran. With the Party’s committee, we have campaigned against stoning in Iran and have saved many women and men. I’ve done a lot myself against executions in Iran and aided a movement against executions, too. We’re trying to help the secular and modern movement in Iran and we would like to topple the Islamic regime with another revolution. The party is very important on that level.

Jacobsen: What are the main targeted objectives of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran in the far future?

Ahadi: In Iran, we would like to topple the Islamic regime and build up a democratic and human-rights oriented regime instead. We want to get rid of all Islamic laws and sharia law, we want freedom of speech, and for equality and liberty to be guaranteed for everyone. Every person should be free and happy, and that’s doable with the options of modern science and communication. We think Iran has a large women’s rights movement, workers’ movement and also anti-religious movement, and after the Islamic regime, we will be able to show all the world how, with the help of social media and communication, you can build a direct system that helps people every day to talk and decide about their lives and how their society functions.

Jacobsen: Faith, in many ways, can be seen as a virus, and an oppressive one in general, with some positives such as hope and community-building. Although, this can be seen as false hope, and community can be built in other ways. How does faith enter the law? How is this tangled up with religion?

Ahadi: Faith and religion is a result of fear and powerlessness of people. Religion nowadays, especially Islam and political Islam, has shown the ugly face of religion, and many people, especially women and teenagers, are against those religions, even in so-called Islamic countries. Religion and faith get weaker the more people live better and get enlightened. I believe that freedom of speech should be a right for everyone in the future. Religion has to be a private matter and stay private. Religion should disappear from the state’s matters and from schools. But, everyone who does have a religion should have to option to practice it, religious organisations should work like NGO organisations, and in it should be possible to criticise religion without fear, and enlightenment work and prosperity and freedom helps people to gain even more distance from faith.

Jacobsen: What has been successful in reducing the incidence of religious and faith influence on the law?

Ahadi: Religion has a huge influence on laws in Islam. Sharia is the Islamic law and everything gets defined against women’s rights and human rights, in general. When religion manifests in law, us women lose all our rights, homosexuals lose their rights, and children and people of other faiths have no rights either.

Jacobsen: How can women, and everyone else, benefit from one secular law for all that especially respects women’s reproductive rights?

Ahadi: Secularism is a very important step for women’s rights, and also for all humans. A secular system means the government is neutral and no religion is allowed to interfere with the system. Religion shouldn’t be in the school curriculum and children shouldn’t wear hijabs in school either, no religious signs in the workplace, so also no hijab in the workplace. Secularism is a guarantee that religions cannot split people in the world of work, and that is especially important today.

Jacobsen: Your husband was executed, on the anniversary of you two as a couple. How did this affect you? What emotions arose? Any messages for those enduring that level of pain and coping?

Ahadi: Yes, my husband was murdered on our anniversary, and that was very difficult for me as a young woman. At the end of May 1980, we had guests in our house and I and my husband spoke about those people in Kurdish dress that were at our house, and I told my husband I was tired and that we would talk about this issue the next day. The next day, I was at work, and when I came home I saw the religious police in our flat and I did not go home because it was very dangerous for me, too. After one month I read in the newspaper that my husband and all our guests from Kurdistan had been executed. I cried all night, and cannot forget about it – that your loved one is taken away and executed is very painful and incredibly bitter. Maybe that’s why I have fought against execution my entire life.

Jacobsen: Do you ever heal completely? If not, how much do you heal? How do you use this to motivate change for the betterment of all – based on the loss of a true love?

Ahadi: I have never gotten away from this tragedy. Every year at the end of June, the anniversary of the execution, I fall into depression. I have never had an opportunity to work through this grief, but with much strength I have helped other people to not be executed. The fight against the death penalty is an important part of my life and my work, and that’s very well known in Iran.

Jacobsen: Why is capital punishment a bad thing, an evil? How does the International Committee Against Executions help show this and prevent capital punishment as a norm? When is capital punishment permissible?

Ahadi: The death penalty is barbaric and inhumane. No government or individual should be allowed to take another person’s life, no one must do such a thing to anyone. I think humanity should abolish this barbarism. I am trying to organise a campaign in Iran against the death penalty, by giving these people a face. I work with pictures of those people and conduct interviews with those affected in prison. I am trying to work with various TV and radio shows to publish interviews and reports of the life stories of those affected, and I do more work on women’s stories. For example, we have organised very big campaigns about Nazanin Fatehi or Ryhane Jabbari, and also about Sina Dehghan, an ex-Muslim, people who have or will be executed in Iran, and multiple others, and we have saved many, but also conducted educational enlightenment work against the death penalty

Jacobsen: You are a co-founder of the German Central Council of Ex-Muslims. What was the impetus for its foundation? Why are ex-Muslims so persecuted to the point of death threats and outright murder in secular countries?

Ahadi: The central council of ex-Muslims was founded in 2007. I said back then that we were 4 million foreigners in Germany, and suddenly we all got labelled as ‘Muslims’. The German government arranged the Islam Conference with Islamic organisations and then sold it as integration. I saw that when someone in Denmark made a caricature of Mohammed, the German television showed a man from the Islamic organisation of the Central Council of Muslims who said all Muslims were offended. So, we were against that kind of politics and founded the ZDE (Central Council of Ex-Muslims) because we needed a different voice and a different set of politics.

Four million people came to Germany for freedom and a better life, not for more religious indoctrination or more influence of Islamic organisations. We are an organisation that is for a headscarf ban in the workplace, and for a ban of headscarves on children. We are against religious classes in school, the wearing of the hijab and the building of more mosques, and we are for integration with modern culture and women’s rights-oriented politics.

Apostasy in Islamic countries is taboo and ex-Muslims can be executed in some countries. We want to show that freedom from religion is a basic human right and must not be punished. In a secular country that also mustn’t be punished with death threats. I have received death threats in Germany multiple times and also have to have personal security.

Jacobsen: How can people help what Maryam Namazie calls the “minority within the minority”? Also, women have less status and finances and, therefore, the capability to move away from religion, in general. What can empower women more, and girls too?

Ahadi: First off, it has to be said that we are dealing with a political Islam that is very aggressive and brutal in the 21st century. Stoning and honour killings and human rights violations in Islamic countries is not our culture, but barbarism from the side of political Islam. But you also have to acknowledge that Islam as a religion is misogynistic and has influenced our culture for centuries, so we are dealing with a complex subject. We have to explain enlightenment worldwide, and the reason is that it has helped people and these aren’t just Western values but human rights and have to be accepted and implemented everywhere. Women’s rights are human rights and universal rights, and primarily, Islamic laws and sharia have to be abolished. The headscarf is a symbol of political Islam and has to be banned worldwide, and women in Iran or other countries should be helped against the forced wearing of the headscarf.

Jacobsen: What seems like the main issue in the ex-Muslim community now? What about the Muslim community?

Ahadi: Being an ex-Muslim in Islamic countries is not easy, but there are more ex-Muslims today. Being an ex-Muslim in Iran or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia means that a person is for secularism and for women’s rights and modern culture. Many ex-Muslims cannot stay in their country of origin and are refugees at the moment, we help refugees and also ex-Muslims that are in prison and have been given the death sentence. For ex-Muslims, it is important now to make religion a private matter in the system in our countries, and to get rid of Sharia laws. For Muslims, I have to say religion is a matter of succession, it is inherited. So I have coincidentally been born into a Muslim family, and so I become a Muslim – and many Muslims are cultural Muslims and live completely normally, and don’t agree with Sharia or Islamists, and that also has to be seen. In Islamic countries, many Muslims are victims of these barbaric regimes, and are also opposed to it.

Jacobsen: How can we best fight political Islam and apostasy laws?

Ahadi: You have to see on a global basis which problems we are talking about. We are talking about political problems that have to do with western governments and their politics. In 1979, in Iran, we had a revolution for a better life, and Islamists have only gained power there with the help of USA, and that’s important. I would like to say that it wasn’t that people had become any more religious and that was why the Islamists had come into power, no, Islamists have come into power with the help of Islamic and western governments, and now Islam and Islamism is a very important political tendency. We have to work against political Islam, and first and foremost help people in Iran and other countries who are against Islamic governments. We have to fight women’s rights violations and not play everything down as just being culture. I’m very critical towards traditions of the Left that define Islamism and political Islam as a genuine fight of oppressed people against imperialism. No, political Islam stands for the taking of power by reactionary governments and has to be fought. We also have to be against apostasy laws and against the death penalty for apostasy and help these people.

Jacobsen: Who is Nazanin Fatehi? How did you help her?

Ahadi: Nazanin Fatehi is in Iran and I heard she has married and is living normally. Nazan was 16 years old when she was out with other young girls in Karaj when she was attacked by some young men. Those men wanted to rape Nazanin and she went at them with a knife. She got arrested and got sentenced to death. There was another Nazanin in Canada, Nazanin Afshin Jam, who wanted to save Nazanin – she made contact with me and I helped her find Nazanin in the Iranian prisons, and together we did a very important campaign and saved Nazanin, that was a big discussion, also about women’s rights and death penalty for minors and everything. I am very happy about this fight we have won, and there is a book about this achievement.

Jacobsen: You have been living under police protection. This is common for publicly outspoken ex-Muslims, especially well-spoken, articulate, and thoughtful ones. As the chairwoman of the Central Council of Ex-Muslims, what has been your main challenge?

Ahadi: Yeah, I had six bodyguards for a long time, and also now when I do public events, I have personal security. That’s a problem in Europe as well. When we criticise Islam or show ourselves as ex-Muslims, we have to fear for our lives. But I wasn’t afraid and I also always say I’m not scared of Islamists either because I’ve known those monsters from the start and fought against those monsters. I am a woman who fights against misogynistic laws and culture. I criticise Islam and all other religions, and unfortunately, that’s dangerous today. I also get labelled as a racist by some left wingers in Germany, and that is also a problem. I want to appear worldwide for secular societies and freedom and women’s rights, and my work is enlightenment work and I also want to help refugees and especially women who fled those countries.

Jacobsen: You won the Secularist of the Year from the UK National Secular Society. How does this feel? What additional responsibilities to the community come with this?

Ahadi: It was an honour for me and I was very happy about it. What I do and say now is not in the direction of European governments, and in Europe my work is not acknowledged as integration work, therefore women like me and especially women who are communists do not get any recognition or prizes. In Germany, women who call themselves Muslim and advertise for a moderate Islam get prizes every day… but at least this was my first prize now in the UK and worldwide and it was very good because that way, we can show that our work is recognised and we gain more attention. For me it was very important what Richard Dawkins said there, he said that he always thought that women in Islamic countries will rise up and do something against Islamists, and Mina Ahadi is an important person against misogynistic laws.

Jacobsen: You have two daughters. What world do you hope for them to have into the near and far future? How does this vision extend to all girls, young women, and women?

Ahadi: I have two daughters who are very important to me. I wish for my children for a life free of any form of discrimination or violence. I wish for my children to be free from any form of interference of religion, to enjoy their life. A world without war and exploitation, without reactionary culture and I wish for the millions of girls or women today for better lives, and want to help my daughters and all those other people.

Jacobsen: How can people become involved and see more of your work in the future?

Ahadi: We are a small group and have received no money from the government or other institutions up to now. However, ex-Muslims are a movement now and we help several people who need help each day, or who fight for freedom and secularism in Islamic countries. I think we have to see this movement and those bloggers or writers who, with much trouble, help do enlightenment work in Islamic countries. We need money, television or other communication platforms, and professional help.

Jacobsen: What are the upcoming presentations and ideas that you want to explore in the near future?

Ahadi: I want to invite all ex-Muslims in Europe to organise a congress. We need to show ourselves and everyone needs to see that we’re doing very important humanist work. I want to organise a large symposium over the hijab and would like to present our fight against the headscarf there first. My generation in Iran in 1978 was on the streets, we were thousands of women and we said that women’s rights aren’t eastern or western, but universal, and in the Iran of current times, young people have made a call to go out on Wednesdays without a hijab, and they go out on the streets without the headscarf, and they get insulted by those in power in Iran. I want to show this movement in all Islamic countries. I also want to organise a conference with bloggers from Islamic countries and show that thousands are on social media every day and criticise religion and Islam.

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Ahadi: I thank you very much and hope our voice gets heard even more and our activities will be recognised worldwide, and we aren’t victims anymore, but an alternative for a better future, and rebellious women who have a vision and also a lot of experience, and so far we have achieved a lot as well.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Mina, honour and pleasur

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2022-04-19

Global Secular Humanist Movement: A Reality in the Near Future?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/08

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, founder of Ideas Beyond Borders and the Global Secular Humanist Movement speaks to Conatus News about secularism in the Middle East.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are some initiatives you’re hoping to lay out for 2018 with the Global Secular Humanist Movement?

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar: Global Secular Humanist Movement has been undergoing multiple evolutions. During the Arab Spring in the middle of 2009 and then 2010, I saw potential for a movement that would unite secularists globally. I wanted to share the message of activists within the Arab world, a message I felt deserved a larger audience, to the world.

Initially, I thought I was the only one who thought that way. Then the page grew to 350,000 people. Often, when there is a significant terrorist attack, we hear the question, “Who are the secularists in the region?”

The goal for 2018 is to highlight the incredibly important work of people who are on the frontline fighting extremism in the region. Also, we want to expand beyond Islamic extremism.

We want to speak out against the far Right and the extremists on the Left. We want it to be more of a hub for many of these writers, journalists, and activists the world over – for them to be able to express themselves.

For the Arab world, we have the program called ASAP – Arab Secular Assistance Project –which is part of Ideas Beyond Borders but frequently shared on GSHM Channels. The goal is to introduce progressive Arab voices to the world by translating their material into English and other languages as well.

The goal is to promote the freedom fighters, especially secular freedom fighter in a way that would help the general public as well as policymakers.

We can amplify their voices in the struggle against authoritarians and Islamists. That is the goal of the Global Secular Humanist Movement. The goal is to get their stories viral.

Jacobsen: Who have been some of the more prominent writers to come out of that outlet?

Mutar: Over the past three years, I have worked more as an agent to activists within the Arab world. The goal was not to publish people inside the Global Secular Humanist Platforms but, rather, to publish them on multiple news platforms like The Daily Beast and CNN.

Then we share their articles on the Global Secular Humanist Movements. Of the more prominent cases we have worked on have been those of the Bengali bloggers. They have endured horrendous atrocities in the region, and many of them lost their lives, but we have been publishing their work.

We have been able to publish them on English-language outlets, such as the aforementioned. An organisation I worked for was the hub in spreading these voices as well as figures like Raif Badawi, Secular Iranians, Saudi and women’s rights activists like Manal Sharif, and people like Waleed Al-Husseini from Palestine. He was in prison for ten years for his non-belief.

It became a platform for activists to get to know each other as well. Many friendships are the product of that page! We share articles and spark conversations and use videos, all to highlight the work of these brave activists.

Jacobsen: With Ideas Beyond Borders, what are some initiatives you hope will bring about change in 2018?

Mutar: Our major initiative now is to translate books related to science, humanism, critical thinking, Enlightenment values, and so on, from English to Arabic. What we are doing is getting the legal licenses from these authors, people like Steven Pinker, Sam Harris, and many others to get their books translated into Arabic.

The goal is to do the actual translation, and over the time we will be building partnerships across the Arab speaking world with many social media pages. Now, we are building ones with TV and radio stations, where we promote and make small videos that discuss some of these writings.

We call this the House of Wisdom. In the 13th century in Baghdad, there was a Caliph called the Mamun. They used to translate books from other languages – mostly Latin and Greek – into Arabic.

Our program is called House of Wisdom or Bayt al-Hikma 2.0. We are doing the digital version of what the Caliph did the 13th century. We are doing it digitally because it can more easily be accessible.

We are aiming to distribute these books for free. Getting licenses and such requires money, but we are hoping to make this information as accessible as possible to mainly young Arab-speaking audiences.

Many initiatives originating in the Arab world have aimed to do this. The only difference or the major difference is that I am aiming to do it in a more legal or sustainable way. For example, The God Delusion has been downloaded 15 million times across the Arab world.

The issue is that some of these publishing companies have a problem with that because this is copyrighted material. We are trying to do it legally and sustainably, as opposed to relying on various translators in their basements.

I am inspired by these translators who are living under dangerous circumstances in Baghdad or Syria and disseminating that knowledge. For us, Ideas Beyond Borders is where the idea came from; it is a bridge between the Arab speaking and the English speaking world. This project has never been realised in the West, which is kind of saddening.

It gives Ideas Beyond Borders a niche market. That will be the primary program. But we do have other programs that will be implemented this year. One of them is the “positive counter-extremism messaging.”

The goal is that when there is a terrorist attack like Orlando or something like that, the news media focuses on how bad the state of the world is. What I think is missing, what I think terrorists want to achieve, is to make things hopeless for people to achieve anything. Positive counter-extremism messaging, where we can highlight the positive things happening and the projects and ways people can donate to initiatives that are working to build that counter-narrative.

The positive counter-message would be “look at this LGBT conference happening in Tunisia, here is how to get involved with them.” When the terrorists try to say “give up and it is all meaningless,” we can counter with “no, there is life and reason to hope.”

One message will be a Global Secular Humanist Movement and Ideas Beyond Borders merger, where we highlight progressive Arab voices, translate their books, and build a database. If a journalist or writer like yourself wants to interview people in Syria with a secular and liberal perspective, we will be your go-to people.

We can tell you that we have forged relationships with people. Here is a translation of their work so you can have a backstory of what they do. We can introduce these folks into the world. Also, we are trying to build an art program that matches that as well.

One of the things conservative and ultra-conservative versions of Islam are trying to achieve is to destroy art and music and literature and philosophy. As you know, the Middle East and even South Asia and these other countries have a rich history when it comes to art and music.

We are trying to digitise that art, which itself builds a counter-narrative to the Far Right who are trying to say, “Those people from there are savages without culture and art.”

Also, it is a form of a counter-narrative to Islamists who say the culture is a homogenous Islamic one. We are working with an amazing professor. Her name is Sadif Jaffer. We are looking to build that once we get that proposal into a program with steps, as well as acquire the funding for it.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Faisal.

Mutar: Sure, thank you!

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2022-04-19

Could Research into Synesthesia Lead to a Better Understanding of Autism?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/07

It appears that synesthesia may be the result of abnormal brain connections, as in the case of other conditions, such as autism.

Science Magazine reported on the new research on synesthesia, the ability to directly perceive and experience multiple senses at once, where one of the five base senses are cross-wired. What does this mean in practical terms?

A person with the synesthesia will hear the colour blue and taste G sharp. It amounts to a “mingling of the senses” and sounds eerily like “colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

It is estimated to affect only as little as 3 to 5 percent of the general population. There are different types of synesthesia, too, with grapheme-colour synesthesia, in which numbers and letters become associated with particular colors, as the most commonly studied.

University of Amsterdam researcher Romke Rouw found the results very exciting. A number of genes might predispose individuals for synesthesia. Further research may provide a window into other disorders such as autism.

It appears that synesthesia may be the result of abnormal brain connections, as in the case of other conditions, such as autism. According to Rouw’s analysis, the abnormal brain connections are tied to hyperconnectivity, where the hyperconnectivity influences the brain and so the sensation perception of the synesthete.

Psychologists and neuroscientists were unwilling to research synesthesia for decades. Some even denied its existence. It was highly difficult to study because of the subjective nature of the unusual, and involuntary, condition.

Mutations, which could be tracked in families, may serve to shed light upon the condition. Simon Fisher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands used whole-exome sequencing to find the gene variants responsible for the condition.

This type of gene-sequencing technique only targets DNA meant to encode proteins. Fisher gather genomes from four or five synesthetes, and one non-synesthete, covering three generations from each family researched.

The synesthetes had color-sound synesthesia. 37 genes predicted the family members who would and would not have the inherited synesthesia that causes cross-talk between color and sound in experience. No genetic variant appeared to be shared in the three families studied with no single synesthete gene or gene set assumed to be present based on the new research.

6 of the variants were related to genes associated with the development of connections between neurons and axons. These variants were shown to be active in the auditory and visual cortices.

In has been suggested in previous research that synesthetes have a higher number of connections between brain regions. With this research evidence, it would appear to be supported with hyperconnectivity as the principle and the regions of the brain as the marker for the type of synesthesia.

Rouw cautions, “In the end, replication is going to be key.” That is, there needs to be more research, as research scientists are commonly know to say with good reason, which means the preliminary findings here are a good means through which to further the research into synesthesia and support some hypotheses more than others to carve out the empirical truth of the matter.

Price concluded, “If the findings pan out, studying neuronal connections in synesthesia could be a boon to autism researchers. Many people with autism spectrum disorder also have an enhanced sensitivity to stimuli such as sounds or touch, and there’s mounting evidence that abnormal brain connections—more in some regions, fewer in others—might play a significant role.”

References

Herman, L.M. (2017, February 24). Synesthesia. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/science/synesthesia.

Price, M. (2016, November 15). European diseases left a genetic mark on Native Americans. Retrieved from http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/european-diseases-left-genetic-mark-native-americans.

Price, M. (2018, March 5). Synesthesia’s mysterious ‘mingling of the senses’ may result from hyperconnected neurons. Retrieved from http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/synesthesia-s-mysterious-mingling-senses-may-result-hyperconnected-neurons.

Tilot, A.K. et al. (2018, March 5). Rare variants in axonogenesis genes connect three families with sound–color synesthesia. Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/02/27/1715492115.

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2022-04-19

Tear Gas and Arrests Follow Turkish Women’s Rights Protests

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/06

On March 4, Turkish protesters were on the streets of Ankara, Turkey, for the advancement of women’s rights and were met with arrests and tear gas.

At a gathering ahead of International Women’s Day, which is on March 8, the marchers ignored calls to disperse their protests. This was not taken well by the riot police, as the protests were dealt with force. The force included the arrest of several women protesters and tear gas being fired at the crowds.

15 protesters, all women, were detained, according to The Japan Times. 1,500 women organised in Istanbul in Bakirkoy district on the European section of the society alone. It was a joint protest against the government of Turkey and its leadership’s decisions, especially those of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been a subject of continual controversy nationally and internationally on a variety of topics and decisions, and actions.

Hurriyet Daily News reported that the rioters were mostly from the Ankara Women’s Platform (AWP), a non-governmental organisation devoted to the promotion of women’s rights. These were women’s rights campaigners and activists who were met with tear gas and arrested after refusing to disperse on the demands of the riot police.

One banner raised by the marcher’s said, “We are getting stronger in solidarity.”

The AWP was protesting the opposition to the Turkish military campaign in Syria. President Erdogan considers these people terrorists in Turkey.

One woman in talking to the AFP said, “There is a war on our border. We cannot remain indifferent.” Protests by women rights activists and campaigners are not new in Turkey. There is a noble and honourable tradition that deserves international praise. There was a protest as recent as last summer over dress codes in Turkey

This is the continuance of resistance to the restrictions of and violence of the current leadership of the country.

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2022-04-19

French Embassy in Burkina Faso attacked by jihadist terrorists

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/04

A terrorist attack on the French Embassy in Burkina Faso on Friday, March 3, believed to be targeting the anti-terror force G5-Sahel has killed dozens.

A jihadist terror attack on the French Embassy in Burkina Faso claimed dozens of lives on Friday, March 3. There were two attacks, with one on the French Embassy in Burkina Faso and an assault on the military headquarters of Burkina Faso, which was a meeting for regional anti-jihadist forces talks. These coordinated attacks mark an ongoing struggle of West African nations to contain the continual onslaught of jihadist terrorism.

According to the Burkina Faso government, the attack on the military was a suicide car bombing. A planned meeting of the G5 Sahel regional anti-terrorism force may have been the target of the terrorist attack. There were officials from Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger present, as they are the countries represented in the G5.These five countries have launched a joint military force to combat the growing threat of jihadists in the southern Saharan region.80 people were wounded, and eight members of the Armed Forces were killed in the combined body and injury count of the combined, coordinated attacks on Burkina Faso, according to Security Minister Clement Sawadogo. The eight attackers of the combined Jihadist attacks were shot dead.

President Roch Marc Christian Kabore stated, “Our country was once again the target of dark forces.” According to witnesses, five men who are armed got out of the car and opened fire on people passing by before they began to head towards the French Embassy.

The G5 forces will be comprised of approximately 5,000 soldiers, which will be fully operational by the end of March. The French army will back these forces with additional deployments of soldiers. France has so far deployed 4,000 troops to support the G5 joint force.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) declared that some of its members were involved in the terrorist attacks. France 24 said, “Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Murabitoun group, which was led by the one-eyed Algerian jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar.”

Burkina Faso’s Information Minister, Remis Fulgance Dandjinou described the essence of the attack as having “strong overtones of terrorism.”

There has been an interim United Nations report by the AFP that has warned about the growing threat of jihadist him as ideology and the hottest terrorism. The various insurgencies in the region have caused thousands of deaths in addition to making tens of thousands of people flee their homes. This has continued to deal harsh “blows” to the economy of some of the poorest people in the world.

References

France 24. (2018, February 22). Video: What is the G5 Sahel joint military force?. Retrieved from http://www.france24.com/en/video/20180222-video-what-g5-sahel-joint-military-force.

France 24. (March 3). Burkina Faso attacks may have targeted G5 Sahel anti-terrorism talks, govt says. Retrieved from http://www.france24.com/en/20180303-french-embassy-army-attack-burkina-faso-ouagadougou-target-g5-sahel-antiterror-jihad.

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2022-04-19

Andrew Copson: Humanism and Secularism in Modern Society

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/02/28

Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK and President of IHEU, talks to Conatus News about humanism and secularism in modern society.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I wanted to talk about humanism: the hows and whys, the theoretical and practical. To begin, what is humanism properly defined in its most general sense?

Andrew Copson: In English, since the mid-nineteenth century, when it first appeared as a word, ‘humanism’ has had two main meanings. One is to refer to the cultural milieu of Renaissance Europe (which we now more often call ‘Renaissance humanism’); the second is to refer to a non-religious approach to questions of value, meaning, and truth which emphasises the role of humanity in these areas of life rather than the role of any deity. This ‘humanism’ is the one which has inspired the setting up of humanist organisations and the development, by humanist thinkers and activists, of the more fully worked out approach to life or worldview that we refer to with the word ‘humanism’ today.

Jacobsen: As you are based in the U.K., and you have leadership roles within the U.K. for humanism, how do you mobilise British humanists outside of a faith-based framework?

Copson: I don’t know if it’s that different. Humanists, like anyone else, are motivated to action by their beliefs. Undoubtedly, humanist organisations and leaders don’t have the god-backed power to instruct their fellow believers to do this or that, but then that doesn’t work out well for religious leaders either. I think that leadership in a humanist context is about being clear in public forums about our values and beliefs and the living out and modelling them in practice too. If people agree with your reasoning and warm to your manner, they will consider doing as you suggest.

Jacobsen: Who do you consider the founder of humanistic values, at the individual and societal level?

Copson: Throughout recorded history and around the world there have been humanists, and this is not surprising as humanist beliefs and values can be arrived anywhere by anyone with reason and empathy. There have probably always been such people. The first people who expressed at least some humanist views that we know about and who left their thoughts for us in writing are people like Mengzi in China 2,300 years ago, followers of the Charvaka school in India 2,500 years ago, and thinkers of the Greek and Roman world of 2,500 to 1,800 years ago. None of the societies in which these views were expressed could be described as humanist – they were diverse societies in which there were many schools of thought – but they were undoubtedly more humanistic than, for example, the Christian states of medieval Europe. It was in part the rediscovery and reception of these humanistic thinkers that kickstarted the humanistic trends that have transformed the world and made it modern.

Jacobsen: Who do you consider the founder of modern humanism as a fully fledged alternate, explicit life philosophy?

Copson: There is no doubt that the most apparent English speaking framer of humanism in the specific sense of a defined worldview rather than a general social and intellectual trend is one of my predecessors as Chief Executive of Humanists UK – Harold Blackham. In the early twentieth century, he enlisted great thinkers and reformers to give form to this ‘humanism’ both in the UK and internationally as the first Secretary General of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He was joined in this internationally by the Dutch thinker and activist Jaap van Praag, who I would also want to name in any humanist hall of founders.

Jacobsen: From the perspective of humanists, what are perennial threats to their free practice of belief and living out humanism?

Copson: The biggest threats to humanists have always been those of culture, tradition, religion and ideology. All of these forces, especially when allied to political or state power, restrict the scope for freethinking and the dynamic challenging of authority through our reason, which is the hallmark of the humanist approach. Racism, xenophobia, and nationalism, which all attempt to reduce the types of people entitled to our empathy and moral concern, are the second group of continuing threats to our life stance.

Jacobsen: You represent the young and the old. If there is survey data, empirical information in other words, what are the general concerns of young humanists?

Copson: Survey data don’t seem to suggest that there are significant differences between older and younger humanists. What they have in common is a preference for liberal and tolerant social policies. Younger people tend to be less reluctant to question and critique the beliefs of religious believers in their cohort than older people were or are. I think this is an extension of their greater commitment to tolerance, but I also think it is something of a concern, as it is so important for every generation to be critically-minded to face the perennial threats that target human reason and empathy.

Jacobsen: Tied to the previous question, even without firm empirical data, what are, or at least seem to be, the issues for older cohorts of humanists?

Copson: Older humanists in the UK tend to be surprised that there are still issues around religion and politics in UK society. They grew up in a context where religion was fading from the public agenda and now – primarily due to immigration – it is back on that agenda. So older people tend to be very concerned that the liberal social gains that there have seen secured in their lifetime – around liberal education, the human rights of children, the secularisation of social policy – may be reversed and that this will worsen the lives of their children and grandchildren. If I had to pick one policy issue that concerns them, I think assisted dying would be it. Older people have to deal with a very particular situation that few older people in the history of our species have faced. Modern medicine has preserved their lives and health beyond imagination, but the new problem this raises is how to bring a dignified end to individual human existence when worthwhile life is over. Older humanists don’t see why their freedom of choice and their human dignity should be compromised in the way that religious lobbies and opponents of choice have successfully kept it as being.

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2022-04-19

Fundamentalism and Sex: Guilt, Taboos, and Recovery

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/02/23

Iconoclastic, witty, and insightful, Dr. Darrel Ray’s works are must-reads. In the following interview, he gives readers an inside look into fundamentalism and its warped view of sex.

Leaving fundamentalism

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You grew up in a Christian fundamentalist family in Wichita, Kansas. From a youth perspective, what’s running through a child’s mind as they’re growing up in this environment?

Dr. Darrel Ray: As you’re growing up, you’re being taught a whole lot of things, one of which is the language you’re speaking or you’re going to speak. There aren’t any children that sit around thinking, ‘I wonder why mom isn’t teaching my Chinese, or why am I not learning Zulu.’

Jacobsen: [Laughing] That’s right.

Ray: At the same time, you’re learning a lot of other things–how to have polite manners at the table, how to treat other people, and what beliefs govern the household.

To a child, language acquisition and religious acquisition are happening at the same time and they are not going to question why they are not being taught Catholicism or Buddhism. They accept their parents’ beliefs at this age.

In a hunter-gatherer society–from which we’re only separated by a few thousand years–children are genetically and biologically wired to listen to their parents.

If there’s a lion out there that can eat you, you’d better listen to your parents when they say, ‘Don’t go into that bush over there, because there’s tigers and lions that might eat you.’

If Mom and Dad turn around the next day and say, ‘Don’t go into that bush over there because there are demons that will send you to Hell,’ how does a child know the difference?

Jacobsen: They don’t.

Ray: They can’t. So, by age 10, kids have programmed all those kinds of ideas without the ability to critically analyse them. Once they’re embedded in your brain, they’re embedded deeply and, often, permanently.

Notions like Hell can profoundly scare a child who goes to a Pentecostal meeting where eternal damnation is described in explicit detail.

It can easily trigger responses that are no different than those triggered by the threat of a lion. Your brain is going to respond to that threat, whether it’s the threat of Hell or the threat of a lion eating yo

‘Your brain is going to respond to that threat, whether it’s the threat of Hell or the threat of a lion eating you’

I work, we work, with a lot of people who are dealing with the fear of Hell. They’re atheists, but they were raised in families like the Westboro Baptist Church.

Even as adults, they still wake up in a cold sweat at night from their nightmares. We know now that’s probably related to post traumatic stress disorder.

In fact, Dr. Marlene Winnell, pioneer psychologist over in the Bay Area, renamed it ‘religious trauma syndrome’ because she could see from her work that the post-traumatic stress of somebody coming back from a war zone in Afghanistan looks a lot like the stress people had being raised in religious environments from early on. That’s a long answer to a short question.

Recovery

Jacobsen: Tell me a little more about Recovering from Religion.

Ray: We help people deal with the consequences and trauma of leaving religion. Let’s say a 40-year-old with 2 children now recognises that everything he was taught is a bunch of phooey, what does he do now?

He has already raised his kids religious. His wife is still religious. Who does he turn to? He certainly can’t go talk to his minister. I started Recovering from Religion in 2009 and we’ve since grown phenomenally.

We now have a hotline somebody can call and say exactly what they feel. We get calls from religious people. We get parents. Parents, for example, will call us and say ‘We love our child, they say they’re an atheist now and we found you on the Internet. We want to respect our child, but we don’t know how to deal with it because we’re Catholic or we’re Jewish or we’re Buddhist.’

We have small group meetings all over the world. People meet about once a month, talk to each other about recovering issues. We have many other programs.

But the short answer is we’re helping people deal with the trauma and consequences of leaving religion.

Obstacles

Jacobsen: What personality factors or variables play into the rate at which someone can recover? Is the level of general intelligence, or the degree to which someone can adhere strongly to engaging in executive function behaviour, a factor? Grit?

Ray: I write extensively about that in my book, The God Virus. It has little to do with intelligence. That’s not say to intelligence doesn’t have anything to do with it. There are five major personality components in human beings. Four of those components do not correlate at all with religiosity.

The fifth one, however, does–curiosity, and openness to new experience. The research seems to show that the less curious you are, the less open you are to new experience, the more likely you are to be infected with religious notions of any kind.

On the other hand, children who are raised by parents who are religious, but who are open to curiosity, are going to be constantly asking ‘Why?’

It’s hard to infect that kid or keep them infected because they keep asking the wrong questions. The other child, the one who’s not open to new experience and who isn’t particularly curious, they don’t ask those questions in the first place.

Generally people go through a phase, anywhere from two to three years, where they deal with that dissonance, that conflict between emotions that say, ‘There is a hell,’ or emotions that say, ‘God is watching me all the time.’

Logic says, ‘That’s crazy.’ But it takes quite a while–sometimes a lifetime. Like I said, I got people dealing with it who have been nonreligious for decades.

I don’t think there’s a formula. With Recovering from Religion, we take people where they are. Obviously, we don’t give them personality tests or IQ tests or anything. But IQ does correlate with curiosity and a willingness to have new experiences. There is the phenomena that the more educated you are, the less religious you’re likely to be. 94 percent of all the top scientists in the United States are atheists.

The God Virus

Jacobsen: You use the term ‘infected’ when talking about children. Does that come from Richard Dawkins’ use of the words ‘viruses’ and ‘infections’ to describe religions?

Ray: My book The God Virus was largely inspired by an essay he wrote back in 1989 called “Viruses of the Mind.” This metaphor has been around since he wrote his book The Selfish Gene back in 1976.

Dawkins is a biologist. Daniel Dennett is a philosopher. Sam Harris is a neurologist. None, however, is a psychologist. Nobody is looking at it from an anthropological, sociological, or psychological point of view.

So, I basically stole Dawkins’ notion of a mind virus and applied it specifically to religion. He quite approved of it. I met Richard several times and he likes the book, The God Virus, likes its specific application, from a psychological perspective.

Religious therapists

Jacobsen: Who have been your unexpected, even religious, allies with Recovering from Religion and the Secular Therapy Project?

Ray: With Recovery from Religion, we are appreciative of Unitarians. While they may be somewhat religious, they can be secular too.

Secular Jewish organisations have also been good allies. Other groups include the Satanic Temple and Flying Spaghetti Monster. People like that love us. Those are all groups that we have some alliances with, that we cooperate with.

The LGBTQ community is one of our biggest allies, and vice versa. So many people in the LGBTQ community have been disfellowshipped or thrown out or in some way, ostracised by their families and their community.

As a result, other gay church members start asking questions. How many gay music directors and choir directors get exposed and kicked out of their church because they are gay? Now, they’re looking for a community, looking for a place to land. We’re one of those places that’s easy to find on the Internet.

When they find us, they’re on their way out, or somebody outed them and now they’re searching for answers to questions. We are here for them. If they want to stay Catholic or whatever, all we do is listen and help them find solutions. We aren’t in the business of de-conversion.

The beautiful thing is that in 2009 there was no organisation to call.

The only person you’d probably talk to maybe were psychologists. And you certainly wouldn’t talk to your minister. Now, we are here. We have an enormous resource page on our website. We have hundreds and hundreds of links and resources for people in every walk of life, and from every religion. We’re expanding rapidly as we speak. That’s the first answer

As for the Secular Therapy Project, there are real people out there, real psychologists, real social workers who still believe you can pray the gay away. There are psychologists who went to seminary and learned that homosexuality is a sin, being a lesbian is a sin, being trans in a sin, and so on.

They believe this and they practice it. In their practice, they still use Jesus to heal people. It is crazy and dangerous. If a person comes into a practice and says, ‘I’m depressed’ and the psychologist says, ‘You’re depressed because you’re an atheist. You’re depressed because you turned your back on Jesus,’ that certainly doesn’t help the depression. That’s what we faced, and I faced that in 2010, and 2011. After my book The God Virus came out, people who had never heard of me said, ‘Help me find a good psychologist. The last psychologist I went to sent me back to church, or the last psychologist I went to said I need to get Jesus.’

I started looking and it’s impossible to find a secular therapist–no therapist admits they’re an atheist.

The notion of a Christian counsellor has ballooned in popularity over the last 20 years. Entire programs have been developed around Christian counselling. Some of them are Biblical Christian counselling.

There’s no science behind this stuff and yet these people are getting insurance money. They’re licensed. They’re certified in various states. So, I realised that I’m going to have to do something about this.

I started the Secular Therapy Project in 2012 and got a website and database developed. Now, people around the country, and around the world, are coming to us. We just opened our database to the international community. Now a therapist in South Africa, Germany or any other country, can register with us.

We have four highly qualified therapists on our vetting team. If you were a social worker and you wanted to become a part of our database, you would apply. You’d have to prove two things to us. One, that you’re secular. We need evidence of that. We look at what groups you belong to or descriptions on your webpage. Second, you need to prove to us that you use evidence-based methods and are licensed, if appropriate, in your area.

So, once we’ve established you’re bona fide, we let you into the database. Then if I’m searching for a therapist who is secular, I can go into the database. I can register for free. All of this for free– free to the therapist, free to the client.

I can find out if there’s anybody in my zip code or anywhere close to my zip code, like a Match.com between therapists and clients. But it maintains confidentiality and anonymity for the client and for the therapist.

Jacobsen: What is the perception of atheists in the larger society?

Ray: Atheists are the most hated ‘religious’ minority in the United States, even more so than Muslims. It’s funny, but that’s what the few trusted religious surveys have shown for quite a few years now.

Jacobsen: How has religion infiltrated what should be otherwise evidence-based institutions?

In the United States is, places like Liberty University or Regents University, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson’s institutions respectively, and other institutions, like George Fox University, are all fundamentalist colleges and universities.

They have created new programs for family therapy. They are religious institutions teaching family therapy or psychotherapy methods and requiring people to adhere to their theological perspectives throughout their training.

For example, at Brigham Young University, a Mormon Institution, if you are a Ph.D. or Master’s level candidate, you would have to sign a statement saying you will not masturbate and you won’t have sex outside of marriage.

These folks graduate from that college and go out into the world of practice. What are they going to teach people? How are they going to get over their own hang ups around masturbation and help somebody who’s having a lot of sexual guilt?

Religion and sex addiction

Jacobsen: Is sex addiction a real thing? Why do religions, especially Abrahamic ones, try to restrict and direct the sexual activity of young people, especially the women?

Ray: I believe sex addiction is a religious construct. It is not a psychological or scientific construct. In fact, the definition of hypersexuality has changed precisely because it is so difficult to define. Is somebody masturbating 10 times a day hypersexual? If it doesn’t interfere with his life or her life, then they are not hypersexual. In the Catholic worldview, however, masturbating even once makes you a sex addict.

All patriarchal religions have discovered over the centuries that the best way to control people is through their sex and sexuality. I use the term ‘guilt cycle’ in my book The God Virus.

Religions teach you, from an early age, that sex is bad, that masturbation is bad. If you do it, then you’re going to hell: Jesus is watching you.

There’s a voyeuristic God out there who wants to see everything you do and is going to condemn you. I often tell Christians that if you’re a believer, and you have sex, then you have a threesome with Jesus. He’s watching you the whole time.

Patriarchal religions teach you that your own body is your enemy. Look at the story of Adam and Eve.

Women are temptresses and they succumb to temptation. This is present in many religions, not only Christianity. Control of women’s sexuality is a top priority. It starts early on with girls being taught about the religious concept of virginity.

Virginity is not a biological concept. At all. It’s a religious concept. So, what we do is we teach girls that virginity is precious, God owns your virginity; in other words, you do not own your own body, and losing your virginity is a dangerous thing.

You must guard it carefully. Of course, on the opposite side, it assumes that boys are out to get your virginity; that you must protect yourself; that you keep your legs together with an aspirin between them.

All these messages are present purity culture, especially among fundamentalists, but it pervades our whole culture. And when we have people going into our schools right now teaching abstinence only, it is not only unproductive, but most of the messages are guilt messages aimed at girls.

The guilt cycle is further perpetuated when kids explore their sexuality through masturbation and feel compelled to confess. Mitt Romney, when he was bishop of the Mormon church, most likely had to listen to 12-year-old kids telling him if they masturbated.

Then that kid is handed an 8-page piece of literature, from which I quote in my book Sex and God, that uses euphemisms to condemn masturbation, ‘Don’t tamper with the factory.’

Your genitals are a factory for creating sperm (in the case of a boy). It’s going to do its thing and you shouldn’t mess with it. Don’t touch your genitals. And Mitt Romney was giving this thing to people.

Inverting taboos

Jacobsen: What’s the most bizarre sexual taboo that you’ve come across in your research on sex and religion?

Ray: Oh, that’s an easy question to answer. Most Christians say to secularists, ‘You want to be secular because you want to act like an animal. You want to have all the sex you can.’ Let me tell you something.

There are almost no animals on this planet that can have sex whenever they want to. Humans, bonobo apes, chimps, and dolphins can have sex whenever they want to.

But my dog only mates when she’s ready to procreate. That insect that’s getting ready to hatch out of its larva this spring is only going to have sex to procreate.

Most animals in this planet only have sex to procreate. In other words, when the Pope tells you to have sex only to procreate, he’s telling you to have sex like an animal. He’s telling you to have sex like an animal because most animals only have procreative sex. We and the few species I just named, can have sex whenever we want.

As a human, I have sex whenever I want to, and masturbation is a big part of being human. When the Pope says nuns cannot have sex their entire lives, that to me is one of the most perverted sexual things you can ask a person to do.

Jacobsen: Do most people who become nuns or priests self-select or is there reinforcement or encouragement at work?

Ray: They’re somewhat self-selected at an early age before their hormones start flowing. Many, many priests tell me that they committed their life to God when they were only 12- or 13-years-old.

Self-selection does play a role, though. About one percent of the population probably meets the criteria of being asexual. I am guessing that priests and nuns are more likely to be asexual than the general population.

Asexuality and the clergy

Jacobsen: What are the criteria for asexuality?

Ray: If you are asexual, you have no interest in sex at all. Maybe 1% of the population is asexual.

Jacobsen: That’s a lot of people.

Ray: There is probably a large percentage of that population that is situationally asexual. People have told me after they got divorced that they had no interest in sex for three years. Then suddenly their sex life comes back, their libido comes back.

If that one percent of people, however, are self-selecting to become priests, then they have a huge advantage. They’re not interested in sex and never will be interested in sex. So, they’re going to make great priests. But the problem with that is they’re also going to be great priests standing up in front of everybody else and saying, ‘You can’t masturbate. You can’t have sex.’ It’s easy for them to say!

I have no interest in Game of Thrones but I don’t dictate that preference to others.

The fact is that most of those priests are not asexual, though.

I’ve interviewed so many priests. They commit themselves to the church at 12 or 13, often at the behest of their parents because Catholics love to have a boy in the family who’s a priest. That gives them lots of status in the Catholic community. And so, the kid at 12 or 13, under parental pressure and family pressure, goes to an all-boys seminary and in the all-boys seminary, there’s a lot of homosexual activity going on.

These boys are discovering their sexuality at that time, even as they’re going through their celibate and abstinence-only indoctrination. They are being programmed to sexually respond in that environment. That’s a big part of where the pedophile priest issue comes from. My own research and that of others has verified this.

It is the way they’re being trained as boys, because our brains are designed to look for what is the appropriate sexual behaviour and sexual object in our culture.

That’s why what is attractive and beautiful in one culture is not attractive and beautiful in another culture, because the brain has been programmed for that cultural expectation.

An insect or a bird knows exactly who to mate with. We don’t. We must learn that. If your brained is turned on to learning who to mate with when you’re 13, 14, 15, and you’re in an all-boys seminary, or all girl’s nunnery, and you look around, all you see are boys, or all you see are girls, your brain is going to imprint in that environment.

Your brain thinks you should focus your mating behaviour on the kind of sex objects present at that time in your brain’s development. It’s done at a biological and neurological level.

Sexual selection across cultures

Ray: Every culture seems to have a body type that is more prevalent. An extreme example is something called ‘steatopygia’ in Africa. Women with gigantic bottoms.

Now, why do women in certain tribes of Africa have this? Whereas you go to Wales and you look at women there, who, on average, have much larger breasts than women in other places? Then in Asia, women are very petite in both departments. So, you must ask the question,’Why is there such a massive difference in body types across cultures?’ And part of that has to do with what we’re talking about. We literally are breeding ourselves.

There is sexual selection going on right within our own species and different cultures highlight what is sexually attractive in their culture. Then those people tend to breed more successfully. Their offspring tend to carry those characteristics generation after generation.

It’s fascinating to know we’re doing to ourselves what we do with cattle and what we do with dogs. We’re self-breeding. And it’s because the brain is programmed to look around and say, “What is attractive? What is attractive in my culture?

Males and females, starting from around 12 to 13 years of age, have their brains programmed to ask, 0What is the right thing in this culture?’ Once they’ve locked in on that, then that becomes their sexual focus, probably for the rest of their lives.

It is especially true of men. The research shows that men fetishise much more quickly and completely and for much longer than women do. So, if a man has a breast fetish, he locks in on that. He’s probably going to have a breast fetish for the rest of his life.

Sexual fluidity and monogamy

Jacobsen: What are some universally attractive characteristics?

Ray: I’m not sure I can answer that. Humans are the most sexually flexible animals on the planet. There’s almost no other species nearly as sexually flexible as ours. There’s a good book called Sexual Fluidity. It came out about 5 years ago.

It’s a long term study of women and shows how women’s sexual behaviour changes rather dramatically over a lifetime. A woman who may describe herself as straight in her teens may describe herself as bisexual in her 20s and lesbian in her 30s then back to straight in her 40s.

It’s amazing how fluid women’s sexuality is. Men do not seem to be nearly as fluid, but they are still fluid within that window of time that I’ve spoken about when the brain is being programmed.

Humans want variety, constant variety. That’s partially what drives our consumerist society. We’re always looking for the new thing; we always want the latest technology, the newest car, a different colour or shade of lipstick or whatever.

It’s the same thing that drives our sexuality. One of the problems with religious sexuality is its strict prohibition of fluidity of any kind.

The fact is, there’s no human society on this planet that’s monogamous. There’s never been a time in human history that was monogamous. I give talks about this all the time. I ask my audience. Let’s say there are 400 people in the room.

I’d say, ‘How many of you know someone who is monogamous?’ And I bet half the hands will raise up. Now, I say, ‘If it’s not you, how would you know?’ And almost all the hands go down. People lie about their sexual experience, especially women, because sexual experiences are shamed in our culture. Women are shamed for being sexual.

The one size fits all religious straitjacket works for people who have a low sex drive, low level of curiosity, who are asexual, or someone who buys into the religious stuff about staying married to your spouse for the rest of your life.

The rest of us, we don’t want to have deal with that. That’s why the divorce rate is so high. The divorce rate is higher among the most religious. The more religious you are, then the more likely you are to be divorced.

Religion and sexual guilt

Jacobsen: Do religious people tend to experience more guilt with regards to sex?

Ray: Oh, there’s a lot of shame and guilt that they don’t know how to deal with. So, they act it out and that leads to divorce.

You might look at David Barash and Judith Lipton’s book, it’s a great book called The Myth of Monogamy.

Or read Dr. Marty Klein’s essay called “You’re Addicted to What?” Or you might also be interested in Dr. Marty Klein’s book called America’s War on Sex. It’s an interesting look at politics and statistics and practices of America and sexuality.

And of course, if you’re interested in the sex part of it, go look at my book, Sex and God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality. There’s a lot of people starting to write about it. The reason I wrote both of my most recent books was because I wasn’t seeing anybody talking about this stuff, especially sex.

Nobody wants to challenge the religious notions about sexuality in our culture. And nobody wants to challenge therapists that are using nonscientific approaches to therapy that cause more problems.

The first rule of medicine is ‘do no harm’ and yet psychotherapists out there are exacerbating the psychological problems that people are having that were initially caused by religion.

As a therapist, my colleagues verify this. 80 percent, probably more, are dealing with sex problems directly related to religious training.

Religion, atheism, and community

Jacobsen: Are there any aspects of religion that you find admirable?

Ray: Religion can bring people together as a community. But this is not unique to religion. Humans are social creatures. We want community.

We want a place where our children can be taught, where they can be safe. And churches claim to do that for people. Unfortunately, once you get in the church, then your children are going to be taught things you probably don’t want them to be taught.

Where’s the secular person going to go? Too many secular people say, ‘I went back to church because I wanted a community. I don’t believe a word that minister is saying.’ But the problem is you’re putting your children through Sunday school where they’re being taught some nasty stuff.

God created genocide, killed everybody on the planet through this cute little story about Noah’s Ark or another cute little story like murdering all the children for making fun of a prophet.

Sunday Assembly is a secular movement out of England. It’s sputtered a bit, but it’s working in some places. Oasis started about 3 years ago. It’s bringing secular community together as well. It’s a weekly meeting on Sunday morning at 11 o’clock where mostly atheists, secularists, and humanists, all come together and have a blast listening to a lecture on an interesting topic, hearing some good music.

There is childcare, which is really important. All churches have childcare. We’ve got childcare. The minute you add childcare to the formula, your population doubles or triples. It’s amazing to see how many people come to these things.

We’re getting 200 people showing up every Sunday. Houston is getting 150 people showing up every Sunday. Now, it sounds crazy and people say it sounds like an atheist church. Oh, no, it’s community, like the Rotary Club is a community

Nobody calls them a church. Our focus is on education, science, and philosophy. We have great speakers, people who challenge your thinking process about stuff like death. What does death mean to an atheist?

We have presentations on polyamory. Now, what church is going to let you talk about swinging or polyamory?

Jacobsen: Not many.

Ray: You would be shocked at the number of polyamorous in the atheist community. About 30 percent of our group in Oasis is poly or poly friendly. The fact is, there’s probably poly people in churches too.

They couldn’t say it. Or they’d get thrown it. Does that answer your question?

Jacobsen: That does, and I’m out of them. So, thank you much for your time, Darrel.

Ray: My pleasure.

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2022-04-19

How will Billy Graham be Remembered?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/02/23

Influential Evangelical pastor Billy Graham (1918-2018), who played an outsized role in American Evangelical Christianity, died Wednesday at the age of 99.

Rev. Billy Graham was one of the most prominent American preachers of the 20th century. He died on February 21, 2018, at the age of 99. In his public preachings, he attracted as many as 130,000 people.

Some argue he preached to more people than any single preacher in the history of the world. Through his preaching, he wanted to renew in people their sense of God. He was involved in the Civil Rights Era movement.

His early preachings were more conservative and political, but through the course of his life, he began to preach in an apolitical style and in content as well. His wife, Ruth, found the hard way that his preaching came before anything else in the world.

Bill travelled frequently to preaching engagements. His evangelizing for Evangelical Christianity in particular, and Christianity in general, spanned for more than six decades.

According to Mark DeMoss who is a spokesperson for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, “It was described by nurse and doctor as a very peaceful passing […] He was not in any pain, and he wouldn’t have suffered any.”

Dr Lucian Rice of Asheville, who was the personal physician of Graham, stated that “He just wore out.” The funeral procession for “America’s Pastor” has been planned. Graham, prior to death, long suffered from pneumonia, cancer, and other ailments.

US President Donald Trump tweeted, “The GREAT Billy Graham is dead. There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man… gave hope and guidance to generations of Americans.”

Rev. Graham evangelised to over 215 million people. He was listed as one of the “Ten Most Admired Men in the World.” Most will remember Graham for appealing to broad numbers of people for his Christian faith. Others have called him “evil.” His son, William Franklin Graham III, is the official successor based on the claims of Graham.

Billy Graham was a controversial figure. It is still debated whether he was ahead of his time in the Civil Rights era or whether his positions were weak and some of his integration rhetoric and behaviour, token.

His stance on homosexuality, however, was infinitely more clear, with the pastor saying the following: “We traffic in homosexuality at the peril of our spiritual welfare” and claiming homosexuality to be a “sinister form of perversion.”

He played a fundamental role in uniting the evangelical factions of the Christian Right.

His own wishes were to be remembered as a preacher. His body will be laid to rest at the United States Capitol.

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2022-04-19

Humanism: A Basis for Unity and Accountability?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/02/21

Daniela Wakonigg, Assistant Managing Editor of Humanistic Press, talks to Conatus News about the meaning of and threats to humanism.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Tell us a little about your family and personal background. Where did you grow up? What was the environment like with respect to values and/or religious beliefs?

Daniela Wakonigg: I am Austrian and I grew up in Germany, where I still live today. I was an extremely curious child and still am an extremely curious adult. I’m interested in natural and human sciences, arts, and politics. It’s actually hard to find a topic I’m not interested in!

I was raised as a Roman Catholic but started to doubt and to think about the big questions of life–Is there a god? What will happen after death?–when I was still in primary school. As I couldn’t find answers I decided to study Philosophy and Catholic Theology (and also German Language and Literature, as it appealed to the artistic side in me). I left university with a Master of Arts and as an atheist, after a very lengthy and intense, but unsuccessful, search for convincing reasons to believe in the existence of divine powers.

My personal philosophy involves causing as little harm as possible–to the environment, to my fellow humans, and to non-human animals. I’m also trying to make this world a little better. Fighting for a better world, however, isn’t always possible without hurting someone’s (religious, political etc.) feelings. But sometimes it’s necessary, unfortunately, to hurt someone’s feelings in order to prevent things that are far worse.

Jacobsen: When did humanism ‘click’ for you? When did you decide it was the right path for you?

Wakonigg: After leaving faith, I just didn’t want to think about it anymore. I was simply fed up with it. But over the years, I realised that atheists were again and again attacked or simply not regarded in media, in politics, and so on.

One year, media reported about the Easter Sermon of a famous conservative cardinal in Germany in which he attacked nonbelievers. In his view, all the evil in the world was caused by nonbelievers. I was so angry about it that I decided to find out if there were others like me, nonbelievers, who were no longer willing to accept defamations like that.

So I got in touch with different secular societies in Germany and soon became part of the secular movement in Germany myself. And I found out that I am not just an atheist but also a humanist, which means I do not just define myself by my denial in the existence of a god/gods, but also by my belief that humans should be kind and helpful to one another, uniting through our similarities rather than allowing ourselves to become divided by petty differences.

Jacobsen: Now, you are one of the managing editors for Humanistic Press. Why this name? How did it come about and how has Humanistic Press grown over the years? What are the main activities and impacts of Humanistic Press?

Wakonigg: Humanistic Press was founded in 2006. It’s based on a registered association made up of different societies and private people who promote secular humanism and freethinking in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The registered association “hpd e.V.” is the legal structure that makes our editorial work possible. But our editorial team works independently of the association or its members.

The original idea behind Humanistic Press was to create a press agency that would provide media with secular/humanistic news–just like the Catholic press agency in Germany provides them with news from the Catholic world, and the Protestant press agency in Germany provides them with news from the Protestant world. That’s where the name comes from: Humanistischer Pressedienst (Humanistic Press Service). But the media simply weren’t interested. To them nonbelievers, atheists, and secular humanists, were too small a group to be recognised, although they comprised about 30% of the population even by that time.

So Humanistic Press decided to become a medium itself and started doing what we still do today. We report on the activities and events of different organisations that fight for secular humanism in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. We also report on political, legal, and social issues in those countries from a secular point of view. We offer exclusive stories no other media are interested in–stories about blasphemers, about satirical art that criticises religions, about people who were mistreated or abused in religious establishments, about state money given to churches and the links between church and state in general.

We focus mainly on German speaking countries, but we also consistently report on topics that concern humanism and atheism around the world.

Jacobsen: What have been some of the more moving, difficult, or rewarding experiences in your time there?

Wakonigg: The most moving experience was and still is meeting secular activists from other countries and listening to their stories. These are people whose wellbeing and even lives are in danger in their home countries just because they are raising their voices for humanism and atheism.

When you are constantly working for the rights of atheists in your own country, you start seeing just the negative parts, the things that are not yet in order. Meeting atheists from other countries makes you become aware again about the benefits nonbelievers already have in Europe compared to other parts of the world.

And it personally gave me an insight: atheism/secular humanism is really a uniting force. I remember meeting secular bloggers from Bangladesh who were seeking asylum in Germany. When I talked to them I immediately felt familiar with them. We had the same way of looking at the world– a science-based way, a way that focuses on the wellbeing of people, on the need for education, women’s rights, and human rights more broadly.

Though I had never met someone from Bangladesh before and though we had grown up in completely different countries and cultures, I felt more familiar with them than with a deeply religious Christian in Germany.

Jacobsen: What are the biggest needs of the humanist community?

Wakonigg: Their biggest need is to be heard and to be seen as a growing and already very large group in society, because they are still being ignored by politics and media. But it’s up to them to be heard and seen, by publicly saying that they are atheists, by becoming aware that they are a group and by organising.

Jacobsen: What is the best argument for humanism that you have ever come across?

Wakonigg: Your question actually includes two questions. The first one is: What’s the best argument for atheism that you have ever come across? The second is: What’s the best argument for humanism that you have ever come across? Because atheism and humanism are not the same. But the second often results from the first. And for both, there are many sound arguments.

To initiate an inquiry into atheism, I recommend exploring questions like: Why do people in different parts of the world believe in different gods? How could some gods have vanished (Greco-Roman gods, for instance) and why do you think yours won’t vanish? If you have a problem with the idea that the universe/the Big Bang came out of nothing, why don’t you have a problem with the idea that your god came out of nothing?

To me, the most convincing argument for atheism is the amount of suffering in the world. It’s an old problem theologists and philosophers call ‘theodicy’: How can a benevolent tolerate suffering?

For me, all the answers that make room for the existence of God are either cynical or not convincing. This is of course a question for people who grew up with the idea of a loving, merciful god. After finding out that a god like that is logically impossible, it’s just a small step to finding out that the idea of any god is rather ridiculous.

Once you absorb the logical improbabilities of a loving Creator, you realise that there is exists only one possible way to make this world a better place. And that is by making it yourself. No god will help you, no god brings meaning into this world. The only one who can do it is yourself and your fellow humans. To me that’s a pretty good argument for humanism.

Jacobsen: What turns a believer into a non-believer? Arguments from logic and philosophy, evidence from mainstream science, or experience within traditional religious structures?

Wakonigg: There are different reasons why people become atheists. Some people simply never believed because they weren’t indoctrinated with a faith as a child, like most people from the former German Democratic Republic. Then you have people who were heavily indoctrinated with religion as children and who become atheists because they got kind of an overdose.

There are people who had had very emotional, personal experiences with members of a religion, like child abuse. Others simply find out that there are double standards in religions whereby authority figures say holy things and do quite unholy things, which causes them to doubt. Others are naturally more inquisitive and are exposed to different ideas through their reading.

Most of the older atheists I know became atheists either after encountering negative experiences with religious structures or after exploring philosophy and logic. The younger atheists I know are atheists, generally speaking, because they find the explanations of science more convincing than those religion offers.

Jacobsen: What do you consider the main threat to humanism?

Wakonigg: The fear of people to think for themselves.

For some reason people seem to be afraid of fully taking responsibility for themselves and for the world. They want a strong leader who will tell them what’s good or bad and what their purpose in life is.

This is what a god essentially provides–structure and security. Within this system, my tribal god is of course always stronger than yours! And if he isn’t, he is at least providing me with a place in heaven.

Maybe it’s a heritage from our ancestors who used to live in groups with a strong leader.

But if you dare to think and–very importantly–dare to accept the results of your thinking, humanism is just a footstep away.

Jacobsen: What are some of the demographics of the readership at Humanistic Press? (Age, sex, political affiliation, and so on)

Wakonigg: I’m very glad to say that we are being read by people of all ages. 16% of our readers are 18-24, 22% are 25-34, 21% are 35-44, 17% are 45-54, 12% are 55-64 and another 12% are 65 or older.

Roughly 70% of our readers are male and about 30% female. That’s not too surprising because around the world more men than women identify as atheists or nonbelievers and you have more men than women working as activists in secular humanism–something that will hopefully change in the future.

The political affiliation of our readers is also pretty much average for ‘None’s around the world. The majority of ‘None’s and also of our readers has rather a left wing affiliation and a liberal thinking as far as civil rights are concerned.

About 95% percent of our readers are, unsurprisingly, from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland–German speaking countries. But we do, to our surprise, also have a small amount of readers from countries all over the world, despite the fact that our content is completely in German.

Jacobsen: You can be reached through Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. How else can people become involved, even donate to, Humanistic Press?

Wakonigg: Of course donations are always welcome! Apart from that, everyone is free to become a member of the registered association that makes our journalistic work possible. But the easiest way to become involved is by voluntary writing for hpd or by giving us tips for stories that might be interesting for our readers. You can also write stories or give us tips in English and we will translate them.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Daniela. It was a pleasure.

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2022-04-19

Canada Struggles with Secularism. What Can We Do? – A chat with Dave McKee, Communist Party of Canada

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/02/19

Despite being a secular nation, Canada struggles with promoting secularism, as schools and hospitals are highly influenced by religion. An interview with Dave McKee, Communist Party of Canada, on the country’s problems with religiosity in the public sector.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What stereotypes do you often hear about communism in Ontario and Canadian discourse?

Dave McKee: We certainly hear less of the old Cold War stereotypes than we did 15 or 20 years ago. Some of this change is because a lot of time has passed, but I think a lot of it also has to do with an increasing desire for alternative political views that can help explain the increasingly difficult concrete conditions that people face in their daily lives.

That said, there are some stereotypes that occasionally emerge here in Ontario. One is that Communists are a band of authoritarians who want to impose a rigid, mechanical society that is opposed to individual rights. Another stereotype is that the Communist Party is a political movement that is funded by foreign governments. I even had someone ask if, as a communist, I would outlaw pizza!

These statements aren’t at all true – the Communist Party of Canada is a “home-grown” movement that has fought for over 95 years to achieve socialism in this country. Our vision of socialism includes the profound extension of democracy into all aspects of political, economic, social, and cultural life.

Probably the most common stereotype, though, is that “communism has failed” and so our movement and Party are condemned to be ineffective. This is simply ahistorical. True, socialism was overthrown in the USSR and Eastern Europe, but any honest assessment of socialism in those countries will clearly reveal the tremendous achievements and vitality of a dynamic system that transformed the lives of millions of people for the better. I would never argue that Soviet socialism was perfect, but it was not a failure – it still stands as the bar against which current and future liberative movements must seek to measure up. The fact that socialist and communist movements are growing all over the world suggests to me that it is capitalism, not communism, which is failing.

Jacobsen: The UK is more secular than Canada. This gives more flexibility for secular activists too. What organizations should young politically-minded students look into?

McKee: In Ontario, where I live, the main arena for secular activists is probably public education. The provincial government funds a Catholic school system, parallel to the public school system, and this situation has come under increasing criticism and opposition. There are several avenues for activists to get involved in this area – local school councils (sometimes called parent councils) are a good option, although they are not specifically focused on this question. Another option is the Campaign for Public Education, a coalition of labour and community activists, that has worked for many years on issues of equity, funding, and democracy within the public school system.

Another public institution in Canada with lingering religious involvement is hospitals, many of which maintain an association with a particular church or religious order, even though they are publicly funded. The biggest issue for hospitals and healthcare is opposing privatization, so we don’t see a sharp, ongoing debate around religion and hospitals. There are moments when it springs up, though, as in the recent arguments over whether Catholic hospitals should offer medically assisted suicide. These same hospitals have, at different times, been the centre of debates around abortion services. In Ontario, one of the key organizations campaigning for public healthcare and hospitals is the Ontario Health Coalition.

For young secular activists who have a Marxist or socialist perspective, a good organization to look into is the Young Communist League (YCL). This is an organization of youth and students that is politically united with the Communist Party, but organizationally independent. The YCL is active on a range of political and social issues, in both domestic and global contexts.

Jacobsen: You have taken stances against the separate publicly-funded school system in Canada. What is the situation now? Is it becoming more secular or less so?

McKee: It’s a bit of a tricky issue.

Recent studies show that, over the past 15 years, Catholic school enrolment in Ontario has fallen by around 6%. Through the same period, public school enrolment, in general, has also fallen. We can conclude two things from this: First, the proportion of public school students who are enrolled in Catholic schools is slightly reduced. Second, the proportion of students who are enrolled in private schools has increased –many of these institutions are religious, but information about the proportion is not readily available.

Looking at this, we could say that the publicly-funded system is very slowly becoming more secular, but that there also is a growing religious education sector that is privately funded.

Jacobsen: How did Canada implement this separate publicly-funded school system? What effects did and does this have on the democratic values of the country? What are some warnings for other countries’ young people with similar histories regarding their school system, e.g. the faith schools in the UK?

McKee: The whole genesis of Catholic school funding is rather bizarre. It dates back to the “original” constitution of Canada, the British North America Act of 1867 (BNA), which preserved the education rights of certain religious minorities in Upper and Lower Canada (Ontario and Quebec, respectively). At that time, there were concerns among the ruling class, which was English, about the language and religious rights of the anglophone Protestant minority in francophone Catholic Quebec. These rights were secured through language that pointed to the example of Catholic rights in Ontario, and were preserved. Concretely, Catholics were entitled to a Catholic school in Ontario and Protestants were entitled to a Protestant school in Quebec. This language is so specific to Ontario and Quebec that it is not even entirely clear how binding it is on other provinces in Canada.

Currently, it is generally interpreted as enshrining the right of Catholic schools in Ontario to receive the same public funding as the secular public school system. It is probably the most-used argument against establishing a single secular school system in Ontario.

This is problematic and undemocratic on so many levels. Catholic school funding is based on a constitutional provision that emerged through the desire of English-speaking Canada to protect and maintain its privileged and powerful minority within Quebec. As such, it is a universalized policy that is peculiar to a particular dynamic in Canada – the oppression of the francophone nation by the anglophone nation. But here we are now, a century and a half later, and some basic questions are being asked: “What about the rights of other religious minorities in Ontario?” “How appropriate is a policy that equates religion with national identity?” “Should religious education be publicly funded at all?” “Since society is dynamic, shouldn’t the constitution reflect and respond to changes over time?” “If an institution is to be publicly funded, should it not also be governed and delivered in a manner that is universally accessible?”

In 1999, the United Nations Human Rights Commission considered the issue of Catholic school funding in Ontario and determined that it was a discriminatory practice. The committee stated that, in order to comply with its legal obligations, Ontario should either stop funding Catholic schools or provide education funding to all religious schools. The government chose to ignore the decision, maintaining a policy and practice at odds with international law.

As you note, the issue of public funding for religious schools is not unique to Ontario or Canada. While there are differences between the situation here and, say, that of faith schools in the UK, the current effect of publicly funded religious education is substantially the same in at least three ways:

1. It preserves the dominance of one religion (in this case, Christianity) over all others;
2. It ensures that religious views generally maintain a high profile within society, far out of proportion with a relatively smaller population of actively religious people; and
3. It continually ascribes a sizeable and broad public role to a specific religious institution, thereby hampering the fully universal provision of public services, which can only be achieved through secular institutions.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dave.

McKee: Thank you!

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2022-04-19

Can Contemporary Economics Gain From A Philosophical Perspective?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/02/18

In the fifth instalment of this Q&A with Conatus News, Dr Alexander Douglas discusses economic philosophy and contemporary economic issues.

Dr Alexander Douglas specialises in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of economics. He is a faculty member at the University of St. Andrews in the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies. In this series, we discuss the philosophy of economics, its evolution, and how the discipline of economics should move forward in a world with increasing inequality so that it is more attuned to democracy. Previous sessions of our Q&A can be found here, here, and here.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How is philosophising about economics useful in the development of insights into economics itself?

Dr Alexander Douglas: Many economists doubt that it is. They can argue that they get along just fine without reading any philosophy of economics. And I suppose they do, given their goals. Companies and governments keep on hiring them to give advice and make forecasts. Philosophers can criticise their models for being not scientific enough, or ignore what is of real human value. Anyone can criticise their forecasting record based on whatever external standard they deem appropriate. But the economists can always reply: ‘If we’re so wrong, why are we always consulted?’ I think philosophers of economics ought to think about that question. But doing so would mean moving in the direction of social critique and away from contributing to economics as such.

Joan Robinson claims, in Freedom and Necessity, that the task of the social sciences is very different to that of the natural sciences. It is, she says, to provide society with an organ of self-consciousness. I think contemporary economics fails at this task. Economists build models in which the system works a certain way; they plug in values and predict outcomes, and policymakers and others base their decisions on these predictions. What is left out is the amount of social control required to keep the systems working in this theoretically tractable way. Economists rarely discuss this, as far as I know. Nor do they acknowledge the extent to which their models are self-fulfilling prophecies: the systems they describe work the way that they do because decision-makers unconsciously internalise the models that describe them working in that way. A real organ of social self-consciousness would make us aware of all this. If economists don’t provide one, maybe philosophers will have to.

Jacobsen: How will the economics of the future change – as the implicit philosophy and descriptions around it change into the future?

Douglas: I’m not sure what the engine of change would be. While economics is heavily criticised in certain portions of the media, economists are still, as I said, routinely hired to produce the analyses which government agencies and businesses use to determine their strategies. The analyses are based on models, the basic types of which were developed in the 1970s. Economists criticise some of the types and promote others. But, from the outside, I don’t see a huge amount of theoretical innovation; within the economic profession, improvement is just about making the right upgrades to the classic machines.

To me, this theoretical conservatism goes with political conservatism. We theorise how we govern, and vice-versa. Economic modelling is all about predicting and controlling human actions with increasing precision – winning that little bit more margin by tracking us with better algorithms. Politics works to render us algorithmically tractable. The goals work in a positive feedback loop. The more our political institutions can trap our behaviour into predictable patterns, the better the economic models can track us; the better the models track us, the better the institutions can control us. If we refuse to be described in this way, we can refuse to be governed in this way, but we can’t successfully refuse the one and not the other.

Jacobsen: Do you think the era of individual economic philosophy is almost dead, where a pluralistic approach becomes ideal because of the complexity of an international economy such as our own?

Douglas: Pluralism sounds nice. But the problem is that different approaches are non-diversa sed opposita. They are at odds with each other more than they complement each other.

Take the most fundamental question: how the entire economy, in the most general sense, works. One answer appeals to the idea of a ‘dynamic’ general equilibrium. Households maximise their utility over an entire lifetime, looking over the menu of goods that exist now and will be produced in the future. Firms decide which goods to produce by optimising a profit function, which is partly determined by the household utility functions. The government tries to minimise losses from inflation and unemployment, and this policy can, as Michael Woodford demonstrated, be derived from household utility functions. Samuel Bowles called this picture ‘utopian capitalism’. I think most economists see the real economy as an approximation, though perhaps a distant one, to this utopian picture (some might call it dystopian).

Here is an entirely different picture, which I tried to sketch in my book. Institutions determine the prices, production, and allocation of goods, in a way that is almost entirely independent of household utility. Companies get big enough to hold spare capacity and run operations too complicated for their shareholders to understand. They don’t need to worry about profit maximisation. Smaller firms, rather than competing with the market leaders, simply copy their apparently successful strategies. The government, meanwhile, chooses its policy targets by thinking about what will win votes, not what will maximise household utility. And production decisions are primarily determined by central bank policy.

Here is a concrete example of the latter. If you’re a bank in the UK, and you issue a mortgage, you can swap the mortgage with the Bank of England for pure cash (or a reserve balance): mortgages are on the Eligible Collateral List. Their placement there was a political choice. If, on the other hand, you issue a loan to an entrepreneur, you can’t swap the loan for cash (unless you find someone to buy it), and you’re stuck with the loss in case of default. Unsurprisingly, the financial sector is much more interested in lending to house-buyers and aspiring ‘property asset managers’ than to entrepreneurs in other sectors. And so we get a British economy obsessed with trading in property and doing very little else. Households readily internalise this obsession, but I doubt that it came from them originally. I think this is a pretty clear case of the economy being directed from the top, by political decisions that have nothing to do with maximising household utility.

The first picture is of a traditional free-market economy; the second is of a command economy. I suspect we live in a command economy. For all the rhetoric about free enterprise, the defeat of the Soviet Union by the Western powers was the victory of one sort of command economy over another – one controlled through the monetary system rather than through the industrial system. But whether or not you agree with me depends on which approach to economics you take. I don’t think we can avoid this argument by taking some ecumenical approach.

Jacobsen: Does modern economics imply a certain amount of faith in particular axioms? If so, what is the faith? What axioms?

Douglas: Yes, at the broadest level most economic theory (including Marxist theory, I should say), implies faith in the existence of a market system, in which capitalists pursue profit by producing at the lowest possible cost the goods that people want. I’ve never seen much evidence that our system works like that. Certainly its behaviour resembles that model to some degree of approximation, but then it resembles anything to some degree of approximation.

Above I tried to sketch out another model – not a mathematical model, but a verbal one – that I think our system resembles a greater degree of approximation. The production and allocation of goods are decided by the executive decisions of committees whose members got there by a combination of inherited privilege and blind chance.

Economists can reply that a verbal ‘model’ of this sort is unscientific: it is a satirical caricature with no mathematical precision. But then caricatures and models are the same in one way: they flatten reality by emphasising certain features and ignoring many others. Mathematical models can deliver precise predictions, but caricatures can predict outcomes in a different way – more generic, but perhaps more nuanced in a deeper sense. Which is preferable depends on what our ultimate purposes are: what we want our economic theory for. I return to Robinson: if we are after an organ of social self-consciousness, caricature might be preferable to mathematics. But if we want to sustain the status quo at the lowest possible cost, economists are probably getting it about right.

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2022-04-19

Religion, Secularism, and US Law: A Chat with Andrew Seidel, FFRF

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/02/17

Andrew Seidel, Director of Strategic Response at FFRF, speaks to Conatus News about religion, secularism, and United States law.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: FFRF is sometimes criticised for taking on small issues. Why sweat the small things? Are ‘small’ issues used as wedges for larger ones?

Andrew Seidel: I’ve given a whole talk on this topic. Several actually–under different titles, but always something along the lines of ‘Sweat the Small Stuff.’ FFRF sometimes gets flack for taking on small issues, as if it doesn’t matter to fight for the smaller things. But if you don’t fight the small things–the small violations–they are always used to justify larger violations.

This is particularly important in our system because we are in the common law system. So when a court decides an issue, it is going to look at what courts have said before; it looks at small violations and then uses them to uphold larger violations. You can walk through court decisions going back in time and see small violations being used to justify the government endorsing one religion over another or to justify other state-church violations.

Examples of these small violations are often what courts call ceremonial deism. The little things that are ubiquitous to public religion: ‘In God We Trust’ on currency. Saying, ‘Under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance. Things like that. The Supreme Court saying, ‘God save the United States in this honourable court’ before the sessions. These get trotted out repeatedly to support more significant violations, even governments putting up religious displays or offering a prayer before a legislative session every day.

We are prosecuting a case where a judge has a prayer before his session of court and trotting out these same arguments and saying, ‘We have been doing this for decades and centuries. It is not that different from the United State Supreme Court saying, “God save the United States in this honourable court.” ‘

I think it is less a wedge strategy than that old story of the frog that slowly gets boiled.

Jacobsen: Better to nip problems in the bud, basically.

Seidel: It always reminds me. James Madison wrote a great line. In Virginia, they proposed a three penny tax that would support Christian preachers. James Madison wrote something called the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments.

It is the greatest defence of state-church separation that exists from that era. It is 15 or 16 points. In it, Madison wrote that it is ‘proper to take alarm at the first experiment honour liberties.’

Then he goes on to say that the men of the colonies–the free men of the British colonies of America–didn’t wait until all of the violations of their rights had entangled themselves in precedent and basically become confirmed over long periods of time, making them so much harder to challenge.

That idea is entirely visible in our Supreme Court jurisprudence. One of the biggest cases to come down was in 2005. It was a really bizarre set of cases. There were two separate 10 Commandments monuments. One was in Texas. There were a couple in Kentucky county courthouses. The Supreme Court decided both of those cases 5-4 on the same day. The Kentucky commandment monuments had to come down. The Texas monument could stay up. The one judge who switched his position was Justice Breyer. He changed his position because he said that in the Kentucky cases it was apparent that the county boards intended to promote religion.

The displays were recent and had been challenged as soon as they went up. In Texas, it had been up for something like 60 years without being challenged. Obviously, according to Breyer, nobody thought the monument was meant to be religious—that is, nobody thought it was a constitutional violation—so it could stay up. As far as legal reasoning goes, it is as deficient as you can get. It is one of the worst and most illogical reasons and decisions that I have ever seen.

And yet, it is one of the decisions that govern religious displays across the United States now. If they have been up for a while, they get to stay. Which brings us back to the Madison quote. If the Ten Commandments display in Texas had been challenged at the time, Breyer would not have been able to make that decision.

Jacobsen: How do the FFRF and similar organisations–though they may not be as robust as to focus on the legality of things–make arguments on propriety?

Seidel: Just because something is legal does not at all make it appropriate; especially when talking about a representative democracy, religion is the most divisive force mankind has ever developed.

I think if you marry religion to power, especially power in a democracy or a representative republic where the power comes from ‘we the people’, you’re going to see huge swathes of the population alienated.

It can be used as a weapon for many politicians, who use it to pander and divide deliberately. The thing that has always struck me is that it is so unnecessary. There is absolutely no reason to ever have religion in the government in any way, shape, or form.

To me, the questions always been, ‘Why?’

I think the answer is often simple: to manipulate. Sometimes, it is done deliberately to divide the population. Other times, it is done to motivate the ‘base’, as they call it; other times, it is because the person is a ‘proud believer.’

There is no argument in there that suggests that it is proper—let alone in keeping with the values of inclusiveness and equality that America supposed to hold dear—to marry religious power and governmental power.

One of the things FFRF is fighting to protect is the Johnson Amendment. This is a rule here in the United States that says that tax-exempt nonprofits can’t get involved in partisan politics. I am going to Capitol Hill to keep it in place next week, but we always talk about how important it is. Not just because it is an important common sense rule, not only to make sure charitable donations go to charitable work and not political campaigns, but also because churches really have the ability to alter elections.

If a preacher says, ‘You’re going to hell if you vote for a particular candidate’, then it is difficult for a true believer in the faith to go against that command. We’re talking about severing the power religion has and the power government has in everyday life.

Jacobsen: Are there any instances in the history of the United States in which governmental or state legal power was abused to benefit the non-believing community alone in a similar way others have done for a particular religious sect–often Christian–in the United States?

Seidel: It is a good question. I cannot think of a genuine example of that happening. Now, there are a lot of people on the Religious Right here who say that fighting for a secular government is the same thing.

They argue that we are fighting for an atheist government.

I think it is important to separate those two things or distinguish between them. The example I use to try to explain this to people is coaches at public schools who are praying for their students. We get a lot of complaints about that actually.

So imagine, before a game, the team gathers together. In a Christian government, the coach says, ‘Okay, we’re going to pray.’

Now, if the government were endorsing atheism, the coach would be saying, ‘Okay kids, church is stupid. Nobody pray. Go home and burn your Bibles.’

We have never had that. With a secular government, the coach would huddle the team up and simply say, ‘Okay kids, go out and play the best football game you can play. Here is the plan.’ Just doing their job and not referencing religion at all. That’s it. That’s what we’re fighting for.

The FFRF does not favour atheism or favour privileging atheism and non-religion above others. We are just fighting for a secular government.

Edward Gibbon, who wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, said, ‘The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.’

Jacobsen: I’ve always liked that quote.

Seidel: I love that quote. It is a rough draft of my book, but I have always liked that one.

Jacobsen: As a footnote to that, you and I can agree that any non-believer who desires some superior status to the religious would likewise receive condemnation because our aim is equality.

Seidel: Yes, that is often lost on people. The FFRF is not fighting for privilege. We are fighting for equality. I think you said it well.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Andrew.

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2022-04-19

Jewellery for Atheists? How the Invisible Pink Unicorn is Challenging Stigma

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/02/06

Maija and Tim Ahrentløv, founders of Invisible Pink Unicorn, speak to Conatus News about atheism and starting a jewellery business targeted at atheists.

The classic Invisible Pink Unicorn (IPU) symbol was designed by Tim Ahrentløv in 2003. He published it online and made it free to use, offering free file downloads from the website. Tim then received many emails over the years from people who had either tattooed the symbol on their body, put it on their car as decal, or otherwise incorporated it in their lives.

He made a gallery with the images on the website. Throughout the years, many different people and online shops have sold t-shirts, mugs, hats, and other merchandise featuring the symbol. In 2013, 10 years after Tim designed the symbol, he and I spoke about the possibilities of doing more with the symbol.

The idea for handmade fine metal jewellery was thus born.

We redesigned the classic IPU symbol to make it into an elegant jewellery design. Initial production began in 2016 and we aired the online shop late December 2016. The jewellery is represented on invisiblepinkunicorn.com and on Instagram and Facebook as @ipujewelry. The classic IPU symbol is represented on invisiblepinkunicorn.org and on Twitter and Instagram as @ipuspotting. We use the hashtag #dontbeinvisible for both.

Scott Jacobsen: I appreciate you taking the time today to talk about the Invisible Pink Unicorn. You two founded the jewellery shop, Invisible Pink Unicorn. This seems to be a play off on one of the more prominent examples given in the non-believing community, including the orbiting teapot, the flying spaghetti monster, and so on. What was the inspiration for the Invisible Pink Unicorn symbol back in 2003?

Maija Ahrentløv and Tim Ahrentløv: The Invisible Pink Unicorn story was one of the first stories to circulate the Internet newsgroups. It is a story that atheists tell to make a point. When believers use the ‘God did it’ explanation whenever some phenomena is left unexplained by science, atheists reply with a ‘The Invisible Pink Unicorn did it’ to illustrate the lack of explanatory power behind such reasoning.

Tim wanted to create a symbol for atheism and put it out there. So he designed a stylised representation of a unicorn. It is part the mathematical void symbol and part a reference to the Invisible Pink Unicorn story from the newsgroups. Parody is not part of the design or the intent behind the design.

Jacobsen: How has business been over the years?

Ahrentløvs: The commercial part is a new initiative that we began mid 2016. So we are just starting out on the business side of things.

Jacobsen: Invisible Pink Unicorn jewellery is a niche market, I assume. If so, do you expect there to be a long-term growing sales market for it?

Ahrentløvs: Selling jewellery to atheists must be the definition of a niche market. It will require a lot of patience and effort to grow the business. Selling jewellery is hard. Pitching the idea of wearing your non-belief to atheists is even harder. But we are definitely in it for the long haul.

Jacobsen: What is the purpose of this particular theme for the jewellery? Who else sells similar jewellery?

Ahrentløvs: The symbol just means ‘Atheism’. We would like the jewellery to say: ‘I’m an atheist, but that does not make me a bad person’. To our knowledge. our combination of idea and execution is rather unique.

Jacobsen: As a symbol for atheism–and this is almost a universal for public figures or organizations–any death threats from the self-proclaimed representatives of the religion of peace or the religion of love for being public advocates or proponents of atheism?

Ahrentløvs: All is quiet. We hope it will stay that way. After all, our mission is not to dig the trenches any deeper, to stir up yet another controversy, or to hurl insults at believers. In fact, we are actively working very hard NOT to communicate directly to theists at all.

Our business is first and foremost with atheists. Because we have the opportunity to put a friendly face on atheism and make a conscious effort to change the stigma of atheism. If we can help erode harmful sentiments about atheists–one theist at a time–then maybe later on, the atheist and the theist can have a civilised talk about the other stuff too. About science, evidence, epistemology, and why atheists don’t believe in a God.

Jacobsen: What seems like the best argument for atheism to you? Is this a good alternative means of atheist activism, selling symbols through jewellery?

Ahrentløvs: The jewellery is not about arguments for atheism. We want to be clear about that because we don’t want the jewellery to be associated with that kind of story. We want to leave the arguments for atheism to the atheists themselves. The jewellery is for atheists wanting to show that they are atheists. It is for friendly, everyday, non-activist atheists who also believe that ‘coming out’ could help dispel prejudice about atheists.

All we want with the jewellery is to give such an atheist a subtle and unobtrusive way of expressing: ‘I’m an atheist, but that does not make me a bad person.’ When people find out that this person they like and respect is an atheist, it will challenge their negative notions about atheists. It might help them realise that being an atheist doesn’t say anything about who you are as a person.

Jacobsen: Is there a possibility of expanding the market to selling other atheist symbols for you?

Ahrentløvs: No. We need to focus. But we hope we can inspire others to follow and help us grow this cause and this market.

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion about our discussion today?

Ahrentløvs: We just wanted to thank you for your interest and giving us the opportunity to reach more atheists out there. Thank you so much.

Jacobsen: Thank you for time, Maija and Tim.

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2022-04-19

Q&A on Philosophy with Dr Stephen Law – Session 3

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/02/06

In Part Three of this Q&A with Conatus News, Dr Stephen Law discusses authoritarian philosophies, epistemology and education.

Part 1
Part 2

Dr Stephen Law is Reader in Philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London. He is also the editor of THINK: Philosophy for Everyone, a journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy (published by Cambridge University Press). Stephen has published numerous books on philosophy, including The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking (on which an Oxford University online course has since been based) and The Philosophy Files (aimed at children 12+). Stephen is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts. He was previously a Junior Research Fellow at The Queen’s College, Oxford, and holds B.Phil and D.Phil degrees in Philosophy from the University of Oxford. He has a blog atwww.stephenlaw.org. Stephen Law was Provost of CFI UK from July 2008-January 2017 taking on overall responsibility for the organisation, and particular responsibility for putting on talks and other educational events and programmes.

Scott Jacobsen: In the first session, we discussed faith schools in the United Kingdom (UK) and critical thinking education, and in the second session we discussed religious education in the UK and the critiques of philosophy. You mentioned the threat of purported authorities from religions and did mention the atheist community-party, which leads to the next thought for me. Many religious philosophies turned fundamentalist can become dangerous, delusional, and tyrannical. However, and, at the same time, what about the philosophies of national ideologies including National Socialist fascism in older Germany or some communist tyrannies? Are these more deadly and threatening than religions turned ideologies to you?

Dr Stephen Law: More deadly or threatening? Well, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin each achieved a far higher body count than the Holy Inquisition, so in one obvious sense, they were more deadly. I am not sure what we can extrapolate from this though.

It is worth reminding ourselves that Nazism was not, as many suppose, an atheist philosophy.

Hitler and the Nazi’s anti-semitism was religious, creationist, and anti-Darwinian. The Nazis drew on Biblical sources in justifying their views about race (for an interesting, evidence-led perspective on this see here)

Nazi attitudes to the Jews were not foisted on unwitting German people, but were already widespread. Anti-semitism was rampant, with deep roots in Christian thinking, both Protestant and Catholic. In 1936, the Primate of Poland issued a letter to be read from every Catholic pulpit in the country – a letter that, while opposing violence against Jews, said the following:

“It is a fact that the Jews are fighting against the Catholic Church, persisting in free-thinking, and are the vanguard of godlessness, Bolshevism and subversion. It is a fact that the Jewish influence on morality is pernicious and that their publishing houses disseminate pornography. It is a fact that Jews deceive, levy interest, and are pimps. It is a fact that the religious and ethical influence of the Jewish young people on Polish young people is a negative one.”

Anti-Semitism was also deeply embedded in the Protestant Churches. Daniel Goldenhagen, in his book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, reports that one Protestant Church publication would, in the words of a contemporary observer, “Again and again describe the Jews with great zeal as a foreign body of which the German people must rid itself, as a dangerous adversary against whom one must wage a struggle to the last extreme . . . Dissent was rare . . . One churchman recalls in his memoirs that anti-Semitism was so widespread in clerical circles that “explicit objection [to anti-Semitism]could not be ventured.”

What all these horrific regimes – Hitler’s, Pol Pot’s, Mao’s and Stalin’s – had in common was not atheism, but authoritarianism. All were profoundly opposed to free-thought. All brutally suppressed dissent. If we want to avoid such moral catastrophes in future, I believe our best bet is not the promotion of religion – which can be brutally authoritarian too – but the promotion of free-thought amongst the citizenry and political secularism that protects the freedom of all to practice or criticise religion as they wish. Philosopher Jonathan Glover notes:

“If you look at the people who shelter Jews under the Nazis, you find numerous things about them. One is that they tended to have a different kind of upbringing from the average person, they tended to be brought up in a non-authoritarian way, bought up to have sympathy with other people and to discuss things rather than just do what they were told.”

I think this should be our recipe for raising new citizens.

Jacobsen: Even if pupils are, as per the minimum standard recommendations from Session 2, encouraged to think for themselves, especially on religion, and exposed to a wide range of views, will this necessarily be practised? For example, could the seriously motivated and devout work to subvert the best intentions of these minimum standards?

Law: Of course. In my book The War For Children’s Minds I argued for certain minimum standards regarding moral and religious education that all schools – religious or not – should meet because I thought that the introduction of such standards is practically achievable in the short term. However, they are just minimum standards. Note that I think all schools should ensure that pupils are exposed to a variety of views about religion – including atheist and humanist views – from those who hold those views. This at least would be a counter to the kind of strawman representations of atheism and humanism that might otherwise be presented in the classroom.

Jacobsen: If we take the current, most widely accepted epistemologies in philosophy, and if we take the modern incarnation of the scientific method, what seems like the probable future of epistemology and science?

Law: Greater insight into the workings of the universe, better technology, and so on. However, I am no utopian. I am not that optimistic about the future of humanity. Humanists such as myself are often accused of naive thinking on which, once all embrace science and reason, a Brave New World will open up before us and humanity can look forward to endless peace and contentment. Most of us humanists are not that silly.

Jacobsen: Thank you once more, Dr Law, it’s a continued pleasure.

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2022-04-19

Interview with Dan Barker – Former Christian Minister & Co-President, Freedom From Religion Foundation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/02/04

Dan Barker, former minister and co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation speaks to Conatus News about the organisation and its work.

Dan Barker is a Former Christian Minister and the current Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. His new book Free Will Explained is coming out February 6th. Here we ironically talked about everything about him and his work except his upcoming publication.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen:I want to start from the beginning regarding your participation and finding out about the Freedom From Religion Foundation. How did you find out about it? How did you become involved?

Dan Barker: That process started back in the 1980s. I was a minister for almost 20 years. I changed my mind and became an atheist. Back in 1983, there was no internet. You had to find or buy books, or go to the library. I thought I was the only atheist in the world.

Of course, I knew I wasn’t. I read a book called Wow to the Women: The Bible Tells Me So by Annie Laurie Gaylor. It talked about how our modern laws are based on the sexism of the Bible to a significant degree. I thought, ‘This is fascinating.’

I wrote her a letter. I said I was an ex-minister. Her mother wrote me back. Her mother started this organisation called ‘Freedom From Religion Foundation’ (FFRF) in the 1970s. It went national in 1978. So, in 1984, after they got my letter, Anne Gaylor, who is the principal founder, said, ‘That is a good story. Why don’t you write us an article?’

So, I did. I wrote an article for the FFRF. The producers of the Oprah Winfrey Show thought it was a good article and so invited us on their TV show. So, that is how I found out about it. Three years later, I went to work for the Freedom From Religion Foundation as a PR director.

Jacobsen: Off-tape, we were talking about some of the recent victories for the organisations. For the United States, what are some of the more recent ones?

Barker: Among our recent victories, we have had several court victories in 2017. The housing allowance is a wide-reaching victory because it reaches every single clergy in the United States, including ministers, priests, and rabbis.

Anyone considered the IRS Code calls a ‘Minister of the Gospel.’ When they wrote that back in the 1950s, they were thinking of Christian ministers. They said, ‘We want to reward our ministers for fighting godlessness,’ which is the phrase they used.

They meant any clergy in the United States. I am sure rabbis are surprised to be considered Ministers of the Gospel. I am sure they are happy to take the break. Any clergy who gets a salary or an income from their church allows them to exclude their housing from their reportable income.

It drastically lowers the amount of taxes they are required to pay. There is a law in history for why they did this. When I was a Christian minister in California, I was able to take advantage of that housing allowance tax break.

But now that I work for another non-profit, churches are just other non-profits. In the IRS Code, they are 501(c)3 non-profits, like a charity or a museum or whatever. Now, I work for another non-profit, Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is challenging the idea of God and is fighting for keeping religion and church separate.

I no longer get that break. It seems unfair that the government is taking sides, playing favourites with people who have one particular religious viewpoint. In other words, there is a God and ordained clergy and excluding those of us who don’t agree.

It took us three lawsuits to do it back in 2009. We started in California. We pulled out. Then we filed out again, and we won back in 2013. But the Appeals Court did not overturn the merits of our victory in Federal Court. The Appeals Court ducked the issue by saying, ‘You don’t have the standing to sue.’

One we were told what we need to do to get standing to sue, it took a few years to get it. We got what is called ‘injury.’ The IRS turned us down when we asked for a refund. The IRS said, ‘No, you don’t get it. You are not a minister.’

We go back to court. We won again on the same grounds or merits. We are waiting to see. We assume the US Government will appeal the law and we’ll go back to Chicago in the 7th Circuit of Appeals.

Then this time we decide the case on the merits and not on the standing. This is a big deal. It means every priest or minister who has been taking advantage of this sizeable tax break will no longer have it. It means they will have to pay their ministers more.

Of course, they don’t want to do that when it comes down to money. You think they would do that, and this is not related to our lawsuit, if the ministers are in touch with this all-powerful God who answers their prayers and provides their needs.

Why do they have to go begging for tax dollars?

Jacobsen: [Laughing]

Barker: Why don’t they prove how mighty this God is and pay their priests and ministers a livable wage rather than having to admit, ‘Whoops! We can’t cut it without the taxes?’

Even Benjamin Franklin said, ‘When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its Professors are obliged to call for the help of the Civil Power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of it being a bad one.’

Jacobsen: [Laughing] Speaking more generally, what are some of the activist activities – political, economic, or otherwise – that you are aware of that are ongoing for a potentially big win for the formally non-religious in America?

Barker: We’re seeing some mopping up of blasphemy laws. We used to have some in our states. Free speech and blasphemy are now becoming a good solid win. Although you see in Ireland they still have it on the books. It is embarrassing.

It is embarrassing because Pakistan has blasphemy laws and they are pointing to Ireland saying ‘See, a Western country has blasphemy laws, so we can too.’ Ireland is embarrassed because they are being used as an example.

But I guess, I am not entirely sure of the extent. In general, to address the question of course, the freedom to speak and of conscience. In many countries of the world, you can be jailed or killed for disagreeing with the powers that be.

That often has to do with religion and the subsequent lack of freedom of conscience around the world. In the Western world, we tend to have that. The sociologists tend to point that out. Phil Zuckerman says that the countries with better standards of living, more functional, equality for women, and a working wage with all needs met then religion goes down – way down – when the people are happy.

So, you look at the Nordic countries, most notably Denmark. Zuckerman points out that about 4% of the Danes say that they believe in God. It is tiny, but about 50% or roughly half of the Danes will still consider themselves cultural Christians.

They will get married in a church and have funerals in a church, but they don’t believe in God. It is like North American Jews. Of those that I know, most have it as an ethnic, cultural heritage thing. They don’t believe in God.

They just love their culture. When we see any country in the world where the standard of living is going up for whatever reason, then religious devotion goes down, which leads people like Phil Zuckerman and others to suggest – and this looks like a good suggestion – that religion is viable only in countries that are dysfunctional, where things are bad and there is a lot of misery.

You see in a lot of the developing world where religion is growing. It would be similar to wanting to win the lottery. Your life is miserable. You are hoping for some way out of it. Religion gives them some hope, ‘I am going on to a better life someday. My needs will be met because my life is terrible right now.’

In the global scene, the more equality for women that we can achieve and the more we can take of care each other’s needs then the country has less religion. I think healthcare is one of those needs and many of these countries doing well have universal healthcare and countries like America are envious or jealous of them.

When we went to Scotland, and Annie Laurie had to go to the hospital in an ambulance, they didn’t ask a thing. Think about how much that would cost in the United States here.

Jacobsen: You are looking at the social benefits and community benefits that come from religion in light of that fact that people live in impoverished conditions. Countries without a lot of standards or minimum standards that we take for granted that they don’t have, but the local church might provide – either through community or a hope in the hereafter, even though there is no evidence.

Barker: Yes.

Jacobsen: I do want to note that you do write music. You wrote as a clergy person, as a minister. You also write music outside of it. So, can you plug some of more secular pieces?

Barker: Yes, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has produced four CDs. There are three CDs, and one of them is a 2-CD set. It is more than 50 songs called Freethought Songs for atheism, secularism, or scepticism.About half of those songs are traditional such as the old German anthem called Die Gedanken Sind Frie. Joe Hill’s song Pie in the Sky and John Lennon’s Imagine. The songs we know are general freethought songs. The other half are songs that I wrote.

They go way back to the 1980s when I left the ministry, such as the earlier ones like Can’t Win with Original Sin.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Barker: Another is the Friendly Neighbourhood Atheist. It is kind of like a Saturday morning Mister Rogers children’s show, like ‘What is Atheism?’ A song called Lucifer’s Lament. Lucifer is complaining that he can’t get his work done because of all of these acts of God.

Then some positive things like The World Is My Country based on the words of Thomas Paine. Life is Good, life is unbelievably good. As an unbeliever, it is unbelievably good. It is like a gospel song with non-gospel lyrics.

What was particularly fun for me, a well-known Broadway composer named Charles Strouse who wrote the musical Annie. He wrote the musical Bye Bye Bird. He is in his mid-80s now. He and I wrote a song together, which was a blast.

This was one of the rare times where all I did was the lyrics. I sent him some lyrics and he set them to music. We called it Poor Little Me. I arranged a lot of the lyrics of Yip Harburg to music. Yip Harburg was the composer or the lyricist who wrote Somewhere the Rainbow, and It is Only a Paper Moon.

He sent me some poetry, and I sent music to them. The poetry is nice. I hope my music is beautiful as well. I also set to music the works of Robert G. Ingersoll who is the 19th-century orator. He just really wrote and spoke with just beautiful prose.

One of his recitations was called Love. It was the basic recognition of human love and family. You don’t need a God or religion to have love. Those are a few of the songs on those albums. If you are a musician, you want to do music.

It is what you do. I take atheism and agnosticism and scepticism. I take them as positives and worth celebrating and singing about. It is not like we get together and hold hands, which is very embarrassing and very few atheists want to do that.

We are all musical creatures and love that. I love continuing to use music for a good purpose

Jacobsen: I have one last question, which would be of interest to the readers and of central interest to the Freedom From Religion Foundation. How can people become involved through the provision of skills or talents, donations, or simply becoming a member?

Barker: All of that. We are almost at 30,000 members now. All members have different talents, resources, time, and money. We know students are usually impoverished. So, we actually allow students to come to our conventions for free.

We even have scholarships for students. We have them at different levels. We know students are busy too. Historically, it turns out. The kind of people who join groups like ours. Our group is entirely discretionary. You don’t have to join it.

Our members are often retirees – 1/3 of FFRF members are now retired. They have the time, interest and resources to join. It looks like nonbelievers are an older group but, actually, in the country, about 35% of Americans under 30 are thoroughly non-religious.

But they don’t join groups like ours. We have student essay contests. We have four national student essay contests. The 1^st prize is $3,000 and then $2,000 and $1,000. We have awarded a lot of money to students over the years. There is a high school seniors contest, a college student contest, a grad student contest, and students of colour or minority student contest.

A lot of students entered them. It is amazing. You tend to think blacks and Latinos are believers, but they are not and have broken away and are thinking for themselves. Also, we have the ‘Out Of The Closet’ billboard campaign with your message and face on it.

We post it and then you can put it on social media. We also have unafraid of burning in hell billboard.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Barker: You put your face on a Devil’s mask thing. That comes from Ronald Reagan’s son doing an ad for us. Rachel Maddow had it on her show. It was Ron Reagan who is an unabashed atheist, who is not afraid of burning in hell.

That is catching on, especially in Halloween seasons. That is free. Many of our online offerings are free, especially to students including our new unpleasant God website. It is unpleasantgod.ffrf.org.

Where you can show everybody what the God of the Bible is like, you can look up misogyny and the verses. You can look up jealous and genocidal, and infanticidal. Then you can share that.

You can show people. You can click share and show it on your Facebook or whatever. If anybody has any legal expertise, we make complaints all over the country.

We make complaints in schools all over the country. Sometimes, we need local counsel. An attorney on the ground at that location. We have people at that site that can help you do whatever you want.

They can do the minimal filing stuff. They can even work with us on drafting the briefs and help us to make arguments. We have those resources and that kind of people.

If anybody has extra cheese, that is useful. You can go to the website ffrf.org and look at ‘Get Involved.’ We have chapters all over the country. You can look up if there is a chapter in your area. The chapters deal more with the local issues. Our Portland chapters, for example, deal with the Portland public schools.

North Carolina chapter deals with North Carolina issues. Then they can communicate and compare notes and share resources and find out how best to solve the local problems. There are a lot of ways.

Another thing that is helpful is a group putting us in the will. If we have been around long enough, about 40 years, it can be a nice way for a person to live on after they die. Your inheritance can go to a group that keeps fighting for you after you’re gone.

It is bittersweet. We get these things from people who are dead. They died, but that is what they wanted. They wanted to keep that fight against fundamentalist religion.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dan.

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2022-04-18

Rebecca S. Markert – Legal Director, Freedom From Religion Foundation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/01/20

Rebecca S. Markert is the Legal Director for the Freedom From Religion Foundation. She discusses the association’s work and more with Scott Jacobsen.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have formal training in political science and international relations, and earned a Juris Doctor as well. How did you come to find an interest in those particular topics? How have these qualifications assisted in personal life?

Rebecca S. Markert: I was interested in international relations after I spent my senior year of high school as a Rotary Youth Exchange student in Hamburg, Germany. After that year abroad, I became interested in studying German and working in international affairs. During the course of my undergraduate work at Wisconsin, I discovered I really enjoyed my political science coursework. I started taking more of those classes and ended up with a triple major.

I wasn’t originally planning on going to law school. I thought I would get my Master’s in international affairs, but started working on Capitol Hill and became really interested in domestic issues. Then I worked on a campaign for the U.S. Senate doing compliance work with federal election law and realized how useful a J.D. would be.

These experiences have been incredibly useful in my current job as Legal Director for the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FRFF). Obviously, my legal training helps with FFRF’s legal work, but my experience on the hill also helps when we’re looking at legislative efforts to dismantle the wall of separation between state and church. Also, my experience working with a diverse constituency helps when working in a membership association.

Jacobsen: How did you find the Freedom From Religion Foundation?

Markert: Once I graduated from law school and decided to settle with my husband in Madison, Wisconsin, I started looking for attorney jobs. I was lucky to find that FFRF posted for its first in-house staff attorney the same year I passed the bar in Wisconsin. I applied and the rest is history.

Jacobsen: Why did you choose the Freedom From Religion Foundation?

Markert: I loved constitutional law as a law student and was drawn to civil rights or criminal law because of that. Working for FFRF allows me to work in constitutional law every day – something not a lot of other attorneys get to do often if ever in their careers. I work on issues of national importance. It’s very exciting to work on issues that have real significance.

Jacobsen: What do you consider some of the more pertinent, bigger goals for the Freedom From Religion Foundation? How can other organizations help? (How have they helped?)

Markert: One of FFRF’s main purposes is to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state. The biggest goal for FFRF is to keep that wall, as Associate Justice Hugo Black stated, “high and impregnable.” The biggest area of complaints about breaches of separation between state and church are in our public schools. This is astonishing given the clear case law that’s existed for decades about what is permissible and what is not in public schools. FFRF prioritizes these cases because of the age of school children affected by religious intrusion in their schools and the rights of the parents to direct their children’s religious or irreligious upbringing.

Jacobsen: Your main work is on the First Amendment caseload including areas of public schools, religious symbolism, and electioneering. All about the intrusion of religion in public life, whether overreach or utilization as a political tool to rally votes. What are some of the more notable cases, your work on them, and the eventual outcomes of them?

Markert: Some of the notable cases I worked on are as follows:

In 2013, FFRF along with the ACLU of Ohio sued Jackson City School District in Jackson, Ohio, to remove a portrait of Jesus that hung in the hall of honor at Jackson Middle School for decades. During the course of litigation, the district moved the portrait from the middle school to the high school. This complaint originated with FFRF, and when it came across my desk, I didn’t believe that it was true. There was strong precedent in the Sixth Circuit, of which Ohio is part, that found these displays in public schools unconstitutional. I thought it would be a quick victory and could be resolved with a letter of complaint. The superintendent refused to remove the portrait without a court order. Later that year, he got one. The case was victoriously settled with a consent degree on Oct. 4, 2013. The court order mandated permanent removal of the portrait and parties agreed to a financial settlement requiring the school to pay the plaintiffs a combination of damages and legal fees totalling $95,000.

I also work on a lot of religious display on public property cases, notably cross displays. This year, I was involved with two lawsuits involving crosses on public property. The first was in Santa Clara, California, where a large granite cross was erected in a public park, named Memorial Cross Park. The 14-foot cross apparently commemorated the 1777 Catholic mission that founded the city. The cross was donated in 1953. I wrote to the city requesting removal of the cross in 2012. The city agreed the cross was constitutionally problematic but continually delayed removal. In January 2017, FFRF sued, and the cross was removed quickly and the case settled in March 2017. The city agreed to pay attorneys’ fees totaling $6,500.

The second cross case involved a 25-foot tall cross in Bayview Park in Pensacola, Florida. A cross, in one form or another, has been there since 1941. In 2016, after unsuccessful attempts at getting the City to remove the cross through non-litigation efforts, FFRF along with the American Humanist Association sued the city for its removal. In June of this year, a federal judge agreed with us that it was unconstitutional and ordered the cross’s removal. That order stayed pending appeal. The City has now retained the Becket Fund, a religious right legal group, to represent them on appeal. The case is currently pending before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, but FFRF is confident the lower court decision will stand.

Jacobsen: You are the President of the Legal Association for Women in Madison, Wisconsin. What is the purpose of the organization?

Markert: The purpose of the Legal Association for Women is “to promote the rights of women in society and advance the interests of women members of the legal profession, to promote equality and social justice for all people, and to improve relations between the legal profession and the public.” LAW offers monthly luncheons which include Continuing Legal Education programs, and annual events. You can find out more here: http://www.lawdane.com/

Jacobsen: How can citizens donate and become involved in the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Legal Association for Women?

Markert: You can donate or become a member of FFRF at our website: https://ffrf.org/donate

Donations to LAW are also welcome and information about those can be found here: http://www.lawdane.com/#/contact/

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Rebecca.

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2022-04-18

2017 In Review: Shrinking Space for Freedom of Thought

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/01/03

Bob Churchill, Communications Director for The International Humanist and Ethical Union speak to Conatus News about the 2017 Freedom of Thought Report.

Bob Churchill is the Communications Director for The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), Editor of The Free Thought Report. He is also a trustee of Conway Hall Ethical Society and a trustee of the Karen Woo Foundation.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The new Freedom of Thought Report (2017) by the IHEU, looking at discrimination against the non-religious on a global scale… Let’s talk about it: What big changes took place since the previous report?

Bob Churchill: There’s lots of new information about specific cases. In the Editorial Introduction we focus on seven key incidents which occurred since the previous year’s edition. This includes murders of humanists or atheists in Pakistan, India and the Maldives, and a series of anti-atheist pronouncements by government officials in Malaysia, also a new upsurge in ‘blasphemy’ hysteria again in Pakistan which saw several secular activists forcibly ‘disappeared’ and men accused of running atheist social media channels arrested on ‘blasphemy’ charges. And there were cases in Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Mauritania in which men who have faced ‘apostasy’ charges have been faced with possible death sentences for being atheists.

In Sudan an extremely brave atheist activist Mohamed Al-Dosogy was forcibly subjected to a psychiatric test before before being released, in Saudi a death sentence for apostasy against Ahmad Al-Shamri was upheld, and in Mauritania a writer called Mohamed Cheikh Ould M’kheitir, who’s been jailed since 2014 for writing about religious hypocrisy around caste discrimination, looked set to be released in November after his sentence was downgraded to two years, which he’s already served, but no – it appears the prosecution is demanding yet another re-trial.

As I say, this is all in the editorial, and there’s more information on specific cases in the country entry for each place. Our ratings system for countries is based on big issues, like whether a specific kind of law exists, or whether a particular kind of discrimination occurs, therefore the ratings themselves don’t change radically from year to year as you can imagine. But still, there were a few changes in 2017! Most notably was a positive change which is that Denmark scrapped its ‘blasphemy’ law, which in that country had a potential prison term, which we consider a ‘serious’ problem! So the rating for Denmark in the category of free expression fell from ‘serious’ to one place lower. That’s happened in a few countries over the past few years including Malta and Iceland.

Jacobsen: What countries remain the worst for the non-religious? What countries left that category?

Churchill: No country left that category this year. We apply boundary conditions to each country across four thematic areas, and each boundary condition has a different severity level. The worst severity level is ‘grave violations’. In most cases, if a country has a boundary condition in one thematic area at the ‘grave violations’ level then it probably meets another few boundary conditions at the same level, so it’s going to be rare that a country moves out of the position of having at least one of the worst conditions. That would require, for example, a country which currently has a death-for-apostasy law getting rid of it, or a country which currently derives all its laws from religious edicts to stop doing that, and also to stop doing whatever else it’s doing at the same severity level.

In fact, in the six years we’ve been running the report I don’t think any country which met any of our most severe boundary conditions has lost any of those worst conditions. I’d interpret ‘the countries which remain the worst’ as any which meet one or more conditions at the ‘grave violations’ level, which is – if I just consult my list here: Afghanistan, China, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Comoros, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.

Jacobsen: What countries remain the best for the non-religious?

Churchill: Very few countries have a clear slate across all four thematic areas of the report, but they do exist: Belgium, Netherlands and Taiwan. Now this isn’t to say that it’s impossible for an atheist to be bullied or persecuted in those countries, of course it is. And we know for example there are some problems with the treatment of atheists living as refugees or seeking asylum in otherwise well-performing European countries, where essentially the lack of a litmus test for atheism is leading authorities to discount the concerns of atheist asylum seekers, or for example putting liberal, non-religious people in detention centers with sometimes very conservative and threatening fellow refugees. That’s a problem we are concerned about. But formally speaking Belgium and the Netherlands in Europe and also Taiwan do very well.

It’s interesting to note that, maybe contrary to the expectations of some, Belgium and Netherlands both have what is called ‘pillar model’ secularism, and Taiwan is similar, although that’s a country entry that we need to expand on. The point is, rather than church-state separation as such, there’s a promotion of equality and state neutrality between religious or ‘lifestance’ groups in these countries, including humanists. So if you’re a separationist-type secularist then this isn’t wholly satisfactory, but in terms of non-discrimination which is what our report focuses on then their equality of treatment is very positive. Interestingly, Norway was heading in that direction, but very recently there’s talk of a new law which would privilege the Church of Norway including giving them a larger slice of public funding than other religious and other lifestance groups, so that’s a rating to watch that could slip back next year!

Jacobsen: What positives and negatives come from the report in the big picture?

Churchill: The most serious concern for any humanist or progressive should be that we live on a planet where over 80 countries have some ‘serious’ or worse problem for the non-religious. In 30 countries – a list which at this moment in history is entirely predominated by Islamic states or countries with predominantly Muslim populations or regions – there’s a detriment to your freedom of thought so severe that we would call it a ‘grave violation’. This includes countries that can take your children off you if you declare your atheism, or where you can be murdered with near impunity and the government will blame the victim for the murder because posting something satirical on Facebook was ‘incitement’, or where the state could hand you a death sentence for ‘apostasy’ just for saying ‘I don’t beThese are huge violations. Of course many religious minorities face other kinds of control and suppression, but I think the international community has been overlooking the extremeness and severity with which the non-religious are treated, to the point where they are often almost invisible. When a government shrugs and says ‘there aren’t any atheists here’ that should be as laughable and absurd as when they say ‘there are no gay people here’ or similar. In all but the very smallest of island nations for example, then it is obviously wrong, obviously a symptom that people are socially marginalised, or not free to ask questions or to express themselves.

So I think that should be one of the big take-away messages of the report: that there’s this huge swathe of the planet where many people will openly demonise atheism and non-religious persons, where religious criticism and humanist values are seen, wrongly, as a western imposition or even a plot to destroy culture, and where the non-religious are denied their right to freedom of thought and expression.

There’s a lot that’s negative in the report, but one thing I do try and point out is that the non-religious are not going away. Even in some of the very worst countries, or the countries we’ve focused on in 2017 like Bangladesh, Maldives, Sudan, Pakistan and so on, and I can think also of Egypt and many MENA region countries, the backlash against atheists is often very explicitly linked to the perception of spreading atheism. Again and again the concern is that social media and a globalised world, and also the spread of Jihadi terror, is turning some proportion of the population away from religion, especially the young.

Now, at the same time, some religious identities are hardening, turning more conservative or fundamentalist. But the perception of what they call ‘creeping atheism’ is usually borne out by the statistics: very slowly in most countries the world is secularising. And my personal view – though I recognise I can’t really derive this from the data as such – but I think a lot of the resurgence in anti-atheist rhetoric and even the murders we’re seeing is a backlash against this secularisation. It’s a conservative religious mentality that is losing the argument, that is losing ground as ideas and information find their way to every smartphone and campus, and then they have this violent, oppressive reaction to it.

It’s doubtless not much of a comfort if you live in a country where your life is at risk if you champion humanism or atheism or secularism, and it’s not intended as such, but it is a cause for some hope. The backlash gets more violent because of real progress. And that progress isn’t going to stop I think: the non-religious aren’t just going to go away once they’ve seen behind the curtain! So it’s absolutely vital now that we get the human rights of the non-religious recognised, enshrined, and made an international touchstone issue. That is what we’re trying to do with the report – make it known, put the issue in front of international institutions and ensure that national delegations know that their records will be tarnished if the abuse or ignore the rights of their non-religious citizens.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Bob.

Churchill: Thank you!

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2022-04-18

Clinical Psychology and Secular Therapy with Dr. Caleb W. Lack – Session 3

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/12/23

Dr. Caleb W. Lack Ph.D, Professor at the University of Central Oklahoma, speaks about clinical psychology and the misconceptions about secular therapy.

Caleb W. Lack, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Central Oklahoma, and the Director of the Secular Therapist Project. Dr. Lack is the author or editor of six books (most recently Critical Thinking, Science, & Pseudoscience: Why We Can’t Trust Our Brains with Jacques Rousseau) and more than 45 scientific publications on obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette’s Syndrome and tics, technology’s use in therapy, and more. He writes the popular Great Plains Skeptic column on skepticink.com and regularly presents nationally and internationally for professionals and the public about clinical psychology and secular therapy. Learn more about him here.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are common misunderstandings about secular therapy?

Dr. Caleb Lack: I think that many people, especially the religious, would hear “secular therapy” and think that it would only be something that a non-believer would engage in. In fact, all of the evidence-based therapies that we have for mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and the like are “secular”, or developed without the use of supposedly supernatural aids and interventions. Almost all therapists who are religious (as opposed to “religious therapists”) use secular therapy in their practice. In other words, they are not using prayer, or exorcism, or invoking some religious concepts to heal a person of their mental health problems. Instead, they are using our “secular” therapy techniques.

Jacobsen: Is secular therapy more effective than prayer, ritual, attendance in places of worship, AA, and 12-step for recovery and improvement of general wellbeing?

Lack: That’s a good question that’s difficult to answer. We know, for instance, that regular meditative practices can provide a huge boost to well-being, as can regular social interactions. If your meditative practice is prayer and your regular social interactions are church-based, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. You’re likely to be healthier than someone who doesn’t do those things. However, you’re not more likely to be healthier than someone who regularly engages in mindfulness exercises and engages in regular outings with their bowling club or board game playing friends. In other words, it’s the type of things you do (e.g., positive social interactions), not whether they are secular or religious in nature.

On the topic of AA and 12-step programs, it’s a bit easier to answer, and I actually did a debate on this subject last month. Overall, our most evidence-based treatments for substance abuse and other problematic compulsive behaviour (which is what AA and the 12-steps focus on) are all secular in nature. Self-help group-based programs like SMART Recovery or Moderation Management don’t use any religious overtones or practices. Despite this, they show much better outcomes than AA, especially when paired with individualised therapy such as motivational interviewing or cognitive-behavioural therapy.

Jacobsen: How does clinical psychology provide complementary tools for secular therapy, assuming different domains given different titles for them?

Lack: Related to what I mentioned before, all evidence-based therapies are secular in nature. That doesn’t mean that clinical psychologists like myself who aren’t religious can’t work with people who are, or that clinical psychologists who are religious don’t work with those who are not. There’s a significant amount of research taking place that looks at how we can adapt particular evidence-based therapies to those of particular faiths. I’m actually leading a clinical round table at a major national conference later this year on that topic, and we have panellists speaking about how CBT can be most effectively used with patients who are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and non-religious.

What our clinical outcome research does is inform us what the most effective techniques are to help a person who has a particular form of psychopathology or a specific behavioural, cognitive, or emotional difficulty. Once we have those basic understandings down, we can then work on developing modifications of those for other groups, whether by age, developmental level, racial/ethnic background, or religious belief.

Jacobsen: If someone believes in a god, does any evidence exist to support better mental well-being in the clinical psychology literature? If any, is this outweighed by any opposing literature? Or is the evidence pretty neutral for belief or non-belief?

Lack: There’s actually large amounts of literature examining this very issue! Most of the early work appeared to show that being religious was a protective factor, meaning that it helped your overall well-being to stay higher (like this major review article). However, more recent work has dug deeper into this area, and has found that it’s not actually the “religious belief” that’s providing this boost. Instead, newer research has found no differences between the religious and non-religious. Other studies that have compared mental health outcomes point to the strength of a belief system, regardless of if it is religious or non-religious, as the best predictor of positive mental health. It actually appears that the positive effects of religious belief in early studies is due to social engagement and being in supportive groups, and has nothing to do with religious belief, but instead with the trappings that often accompany it. So, if you’re an atheist who has a supportive community you belong to, you’re just as well off as a religious person in the same. If you don’t have that, you need it! That’s why the work that larger national groups such as Recovering from Religion, Oasis, or Sunday Assembly and local organisations (such as Oklahoma Atheists, where I am) is so important, as it helps build those communities

Jacobsen: What is the consensus view in the clinical psychology community of those who believe in ghosts and angels, and prayer and speaking in tongues? Are these viewed as coping mechanisms for stress and anxiety, as delusions, as core to mental well-being, and so on?

Lack: Generally speaking, a key component of any definition of someone who is suffering from a mental disorder or psychopathology is that the symptoms they are experiencing have to be causing them distress, or impairing their ability to function in their environment. So, if someone believes in intercessory prayer, speaks in tongues, or other things and it’s not causing them problems in their environment, or emotional or cognitive distress, most mental health professionals would say “Okay, that’s fine. Come back if they are making you feel scared or worried, or causing conflicts with the people around you.”

I will say, though, that some new research coming out of my lab indicates that paranormal beliefs outside of the “typical religious belief” spectrum is related to higher levels of mental health problems, although it’s someone we need to do much more research on.

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2022-04-18

Over 15,000 Scientists Issue ‘Warning to Humanity’ on Climate Change

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/11/15

As Earth’s biosphere undergoes its sixth major extinction event, 15,000 scientists have issued a stern warning regarding climate change.

The signatures were gathered as part of a collective effort to warn humanity about the detrimental effects a warming planet will have on the survivability of the human species. Forestry Professor William Ripple from Oregon State University came across a similar warning from 1992 and decided to relaunch the campaign on its 25th anniversary.

Ripple identified the following trends in ecological decline over the past 25 years, since 1992, including:

A decline in freshwater availability
Unsustainable marine fisheries
Ocean dead zones
Forest losses
Dwindling biodiversity
Climate change
Population growth

Despite this, efforts by the global community have brought about one positive outcome: There has been a decline in the depletion of the ozone.

The signatures aim to raise awareness about the negative impact our industrial activity is having on the our planet.

Scientists around the world are highly concerned about climate change and the effects it will have on societies in the coming years. As more countries industrialise and others develop, there will be an increase in global consumption patterns, which will lead to a heavier global carbon footprint.

Development will bring more people out of poverty and raise living standards, but it will likewise increase carbon emissions, creating a threat for the survival of our species.

Science and Technology Professor at Virginia Tech, Eileen Crist, said:

Sometimes people miss … the most significant event: the rapid rise of the global middle class, which is now more than three billion people in the world and it’s expected, by 2050 or so, to rise to five billion people.

This swelling of the middle class raises the potential for ecological disasters. One of the biggest factors is, simply, population growth. If family sizes were to decrease, and if consumption patterns were to be reduced per person, then the net carbon footprint could be reduced.

Global carbon emissions, however, have risen 62% since the original warning issued in 1992.

This has produced profound effects. In many major cities, thousands of people die each year due to respiratory issues brought on by high levels of pollution in the air.

The very young and the very old are the chief victims of air pollution due to physical vulnerability.

Crist went on to say:

We are in the throes of a mass extinction event that is anthropogenic. This is not something we can fix. If we lose 50 to 75 per cent of the species on the planet in this century — which is what scientists are telling us what will occur if we continue to operate as business-as-usual — if this happens, this can not be fixed.

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2022-04-18

Interview with Ibrahim Abdallah – Muslimish Co-Founder

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/11/02

Ibrahim Abdallah is the co-founder of Muslimish. In this interview he discusses his stance on religion, how Muslimish facilitates a safe environment for Muslims and ex-Muslims, blasphemy laws and threats to free speech.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your current stance towards religion? How does this impact your personal life?

Ibrahim Abdallah: I think religions are false primitive ideologies and I am against them as a system of governing people in our times.

It affects my life positively. It generally has to lead me to act rationally, guided by scientific information and data; it makes me aware of my primitive origins which help me deal with their pre-wired impulses more efficiently; and above all, it makes me a better father for my children since I don’t teach them lies as truth.

Jacobsen: In order to create the support and space for the free exchange of ideas, how does Muslimish facilitate this environment for Muslims and ex-Muslims?

Abdallah: By organising meetings, real meetings, on the ground, where people meet each other. This is not a Facebook group. We meet in person, we practice having a discussion, we find common objectives, and we enjoy having our culture back without all the primitive ‘hocus-pocus.’

Meeting intelligent, questioning believers has taught me to focus on people’s actions and not what they say they believe. Besides terrorists, no one really believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible or the Quran, everyone else picks and chooses. Also, Muslim believers meeting ex-Muslim atheists and hearing their issues with the Islamic faith helps to normalise former Muslims in the American-Muslim community. Our hope is that this interaction will lead the entire community towards a more pluralist, pragmatic, rational, and secular approach to its unique problems.

Jacobsen: Why do blasphemy laws need to be abolished? How do they violate human rights?

Abdallah: Muslims in Muslim-majority countries are not allowed to change their religion in direct violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With that said, blasphemy laws are older than modern laws and what we now understand to be the basic human right of free speech.

Blasphemy laws in Muslim-majority countries are the main reason millions of atheists and secular people are not able to publicly advocate for equal rights for women or even criticise unhealthy or unethical religious behaviour without fear for their freedom and safety.

Jacobsen: How are the irreligious silenced in Muslim-majority countries?

Abdallah: Actual state laws prohibit criticising Islam with punishments ranging from imprisonment, in Egypt; to beheading, in Saudi Arabia. And that is if the person opposes certain aspects of Islam and is not silenced in other ways through family and community pressures.

Jacobsen: What are some of the more egregious penalties for those who are viewed as ‘not ‘Islamic enough,’ insufficiently Muslim, or nonbelievers?

Abdallah: Execution is the most egregious penalty there is.

Jacobsen: What are some of the more promising movements that expand the conversation for ordinary Muslims and ex-Muslims?

Abdallah: There is a group in London called Faith To Faithless, and there are now Muslimish groups in NYC, Detroit, Atlanta, Toronto, and Chicago, with plans to expand to all major US cities.

Jacobsen: What are the larger impediments to the free practice of ordinary Islam and for those who have left Islam to live peacefully without threats to life?

Abdallah: State laws and fear of community terrorism.

Jacobsen: What are the 3-year plans for Muslimish?

Abdallah: We don’t have a 3-year plan. We continue to hold meetings, grow our community and strive to strengthen its connections. Our 20-30-year plan is to be a large enough group that can represent the former Muslim and secular Muslim voice in the American-Muslim Community. We cannot allow terrorist enablers to be the only voice of Muslims in America.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Ibrahim.

Abdallah: Thank you for giving Muslimish a platform.

For more information, visit: http://www.muslimish.org/

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2022-04-18

Q&A with John Perkins on Australian Secularism – Session 1

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/11

John Perkins is the President of the Secular Party of Australia. The party is intended to promote secular humanist ethical principles in Australia as well as advocate for the separation of church and state. Scott interviewed John Perkins in April on the Secular Party of Australia, and the associated ideas, policies, and initiatives. In this educational series, they discuss secularism in Australia.

Scott Jacobsen: What is the current state of secularism in Australia? How does secular culture benefit Australian society?

John Perkins: Secularism exists in Australia in the sense that there in no state religion. However, Australia offers generous benefits and tax concessions to religious organisations. Australia would majorly benefit financially from a more secular culture, whereby religions are not supported, subsidised and promoted by the government. Currently, billions of dollars per annum are expended supporting religious schools. Religious organisations are tax exempt, costing further billions in government revenue. “Advancing religion” is, of itself, considered a charitable purpose, whether there is a public benefit or not, which is the core problem.

There would be an even greater benefit from a secular culture by creating a more harmonious society without the sectarian divisions which religious ideologies create. These divisions are intensified by religiously segregated schools that promote indoctrination of children into particular religions. This happens to a much greater extent in Australia than other comparable countries. Enrolments in religious schools, especially Islamic schools, have increased.

Jacobsen: What are some major ongoing threats to secularism’s survival?

Perkins: Paradoxically, as the population has secularised over recent decades, the state has increasingly advanced religious causes. As government social services have been privatised, religious organisations have been granted supervisory roles. Education is the main area in which secularism is threatened. While chaplains have been introduced at government schools, it is private religious schools where the main threat lies.

Religious schools have proliferated, with government support, and in the case of Islamic schools, with Saudi seed funding. Apart from teaching the standard curriculum, there is no control over what is taught in private religious schools. Hence a whole generation may pass through these sectarian schools, which may indoctrinate extremist views, without contact with students of other religions. The secular nature of society is thus eroded.

Jacobsen: You want to bring about “true” separation between church and state. What might be the negative outcomes if the culture was largely non-secular – where the church and state separation is nearly non-existent?

Perkins: The negatives can be observed when separation of church and state is absent. A few countries have strong constitutional separation of church and state. In most non-Muslim countries, however, there is little separation and the consequences are mainly in terms or inequity and wastage of economic resources, as in Australia. In all Muslim majority countries, however, religious law challenges or dominates civil law. Many Muslim counties constitutionally enshrine sharia law, which is the antithesis of secularism.

There are strong blasphemy laws in most cases. Freedom, human rights and democracy are undermined, as civil law is subservient to religion. As a consequence of the rise in global Islamism in recent decades, we have witnessed many countries fall into dysfunction, violent dystopia and failed state status. Few people, however, are able to recognise this as being an inevitable consequence of the loss of secularism, an essential ingredient of modern civilisation.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, John.

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2022-04-18

Clinical Psychology and Secular Therapy with Dr. Caleb W. Lack – Session 2

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/11

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How does evidence-based therapy work?

Dr. Caleb W. Lack: There’s not one way that an evidenced-based practice works, because that’s more of a general name than a specific model of treatment. Evidence-based therapies are those therapies which have been shown to work via clinical trials that are placebo-controlled, blinded or double-blinded, and that make use of control groups. Our gold standard trials (randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled studies) allow us to have great certainty that any improvement someone makes is due to the treatment itself, and not just placebo effects or regression to the mean (where people would naturally improve over time, regardless of what treatment they do or do not get).

Jacobsen: How does cognitive behavioural therapy work?

Lack: CBT is the broad name for those therapies that attempt to change how we either act or think, in order to change the way we feel, think, and act. Depending on what’s bringing a person into therapy, the focus can shift between working on thoughts and cognitions, working on actions, or often by targeting both at once. The general idea behind these therapies is that many people develop maladaptive ways of thinking about situations or interpreting information, which then changes our behaviour in ways that cause us to feel sad, anxious, fearful, and other negative emotions. What a good CBTer does is work with clients to identify what behaviours are maintaining or reinforcing these negative emotions and thoughts, and then develops highly specific interventions designed to address both the maladaptive thoughts and behaviours.

To give an example, let’s say that someone comes in and reports symptoms typically seen in major depressive disorder, things like a lack of energy, avoidance of previously enjoyable activities, irritability, feelings of sadness, and so on. A CBTer would work to identify several things. First would be what types of automatic negative thoughts the person was having. These are thoughts that just “pop” into your head, so to speak, and often then cause you feel sadness or worry, even fear. After identifying these, you could begin work with what we call cognitive restructuring, which is working with the client to have them start questioning the validity of such thoughts, comparing what the thought is to reality. In doing this, one begins to see that their depression is causing them to have a skewed view of the world, one that doesn’t match up with objective reality. At the same time this is happening, you could also begin to target the behaviours which are maintain their depression, and those tend to be escape and avoidance behaviours. Using what we call behavioural activation, you begin (in a very progressive, careful fashion) to stop avoiding activities and instead engage in them as you did when you weren’t depressed. The therapist then helps the client learn these new skills (cognitive restructuring, behavioural activation) both in session and via between-session assignments and tasks, often referred to as homework. Before too long, the person will find themselves more easily able to both engage in activities they would have avoided and to catch those depressive thoughts and fight back against them.

Jacobsen: Why do you use these therapies over others?

Lack: For me, as a scientist-practitioner, I place my trust in what works for the treatment of any health problem in repeatable, verifiable, empirical evidence. Just as I wouldn’t want my physician giving me medications that I don’t know works, or a surgeon doing an operation that isn’t supported by research outcomes, I would hate to be a mental health practitioner who relies on intuition or hypotheses that are unproven when I’m working with someone. By relying on evidence-based therapies, whether that’s CBT, or interpersonal therapy, or applied behavioural analysis, we can provide our clients with the greatest chance of improving and being able to have better lives.

Jacobsen: Will there ever be a point at which a therapist is only needed minimally for the recovery into healthy living of a patient?

Lack: That’s a great question. We actually have a fairly good amount of research into both traditional bibliotherapy (taking evidence-based interventions and turning them into self-guided books) and technology-assisted therapy (using computer programs, either alone or in combination with therapy) across the past three decades. I would summarise it by saying that, if a book or program is based on a good, well-studied therapy, then by following it you can often see notable improvements. Here are two great lists of such books; software options I recommend include e-couch and Mood Gym, and here is a nice overview of OCD treatment technology. However these improvements tend to be a) less than those seen when working with an actual therapist and b) the greatest among more mild cases of depression, anxiety, and so on. For those people who have moderate to severe levels of impairment in their lives, seeing a therapist is certainly the first step to take.

Jacobsen: How do you approach the individual needs of the subject as they first enter the room, shake your hand, and sit down – whether literally or metaphorically? Is it more listening and helping them help themselves or assertive engagement in the moment with the tools of the trade, or both, or others, etc.?

Lack: My first rule of working with someone is understanding that people are people, and we are all more similar than we are different. By that, I mean that everyone who comes in wants and deserves certain things from me. First is that people want a non-judgemental atmosphere, where I don’t try to push my personal beliefs or some personal agenda onto them. Second is to be treated as an individual, not as a disorder or a symptom. I can have two people come into my office with a diagnosis of OCD and they can have very little in common, both in terms of demographics and in terms of what types of obsessions or compulsions they are struggling with. Good treatment begins with a good case formulation – understanding why this person, right here, has OCD or depression or what have you – and then moves into the application of evidence-based modalities that have been show to help with those problems. Third is using methods that are most likely to help achieve a particular goal. A key aspect of being a good provider is what we call “flexibility within fidelity.” This means that we need to use and stick with those treatments that actually work, while at the same time being able to mold the treatment to the individual, taking into account characteristics like religion or lack thereof, social support, education, developmental level, and much more. So, although I may use the same overall treatment, like exposure with response prevention for OCD, the application of that treatment may end up looking a bit different depending on who I am working with.

Stay tuned for more from Dr. Caleb Lack!

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2022-04-18

Interview with Cynthia Todd Quam – President of ‘End of the Line Humanists’

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/17

Cynthia Todd Quam is the President and founder of ‘End of the Line Humanists’, and writer and poet. In this interview she talks with Scott Jacobsen about all things humanism.

Scott Jacobsen: What is your family and personal story – culture, education, and geography?

CTQ: I was raised in a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant family, originally from Pennsylvania. We moved to the Chicago area when I was two. My mother was Presbyterian and involved in the church, though not particularly devout. My father, a commercial artist, simply ignored religion; he never attended church but never openly disparaged it – I suspect because of the social norms of the time. I’m the elder of two children; my sibling is an evangelical Christian, and has been, more or less, since her teens. I attended public schools, where I was an introverted child and a reader. Not sure what I wanted to study, I dropped out of state college at nineteen to live on my own and work in downtown Chicago.

I grew sceptical of religion at an early age and spent most of my life as a nonbeliever, except for a brief period in my mid-twenties when, after attending a “Jesus rally”, I was “born-again” and identified as a Christian. Shortly thereafter, I married a Catholic and took classes to join the church, culminating in what they ironically called the “grand slam of sacraments”: baptism, first communion and confirmation, all on the same day.

Fortunately, none of that stuck. By my early thirties, I was divorced and finished with religion. I was a single parent for ten years. During that time, I went back to college as an adult, earning a BA in English, and then an MFA in Writing and Literature. I remarried, and my husband and I adopted two teens internationally, bringing our combined total to six children, who are now all grown. I spent some years teaching college-level English courses, but now devote my time to writing, family, and our humanist group. I have lived in the Oak Park, IL area, a proudly diverse community with a strong cultural and intellectual base, for the last 20 years.

SJ: When did humanism become self-evidently true to you?

CTQ: I remember at seven or eight being told that people who were not Christian – including those who had never heard of Christ – were going to hell. That didn’t seem fair. When I learned there were people of other faiths who in turn thought Christians were sinful and doomed, the whole concept fell apart for me. It was obvious, even at that age, that one religious claim was as subjective as another. The only part that made sense to me was the Golden Rule, and my personal ethics evolved to approximate that. Years later I found the website for American Humanist Association, which supports being “good without a god.” The idea was to live an ethical, compassionate life without religion. That was the “Aha!” moment for me. I understood that I had been a humanist for most of my life.

SJ: You are a writer and poet. What is the typical content and inspiration for the poetry and the writing?

CTQ: When I first began writing poetry, I wrote about my personal life: love won and lost, interpersonal relationships, life experiences. My poetry chapbook, The Letter Q, is mostly concerned with those subjects. I’ve also always been interested in mysteries, first as a reader and then as a writer, and I’ve focused some of my work in that direction and continue to find it engaging. I have a mystery novel in progress, and one of my poems in that vein was recently anthologised in the Nancy Drew Anthology, Silver Birch Press.

Some of my earlier poetry was about falling away from faith. Later, as the Religious Right began to rise to power, my writing changed to reflect concerns for social justice and the separation of church and state. My humanism began to inform and inspire my writing, and also the reverse. I began work on a humanist novel, which is still in progress. When I came to the part of the story where my protagonist meets a humanist group, I realised that I had little real experience of that sort. So, I gathered other like-minded individuals and formed a local organisation, End of the Line Humanists (so named for the two elevated train lines that terminate in our town), a chartered chapter of the American Humanist Association. Not only did it give my writing the depth of actual experience, but in the process, I found my philosophical community. In the end my novel took a back seat to my real-life humanist work.

After the 2016 election I, like many others, found I had a lot to say. I began to write and publish articles on the current political climate, and humanism has given me the context for that work.

SJ: You wrote An Action List for the (Un)Faithful on November 29, 2016. You outlined things for activist humanists to do, if they so choose, to get some change going. Of those listed, what are the top two or three more effective ways to advocate for humanist principles and values “in the immediate wake of Donald Trump’s victory” and for the next four, possibly eight, years?

CTQ: Humanist values are humane values, and so the obvious answer would be to work on social justice issues in whatever ways we can. However, since so many of our rights and values are threatened because of religion, or religion’s alliance with corporate money, it becomes essential to address the source of these attitudes.Toward that end, I feel that coming out as a nonbeliever is one of the most effective things a humanist can do. Of course, there are times and places, even in this country, when it isn’t safe to do so. But it’s crucial to make ourselves visible on a personal level and insist on inclusion and acceptance. As the Trump campaign has shown – to unfortunate effect in his case – normalisation actually works. LGBT rights have come a long way in a seemingly short time, but that rapid progress could not be made until gay people were willing to identify themselves, band together and demand that they be heard. The same was true for the disabled. Only after we are accepted will people listen as we point to the out-sized influence of religion in government and its effects on our social order.

Another way to highlight humanist values is making art. The artistically talented among us need to bring our ethics and philosophy into our work. Very few books, plays, movies, or songs have specifically shown atheists, agnostics, or humanists in a positive light, though that is changing. If we want to be heard, we need to be acknowledged by and reflected in the culture. Prominent humanist characters and role models will do more toward the acceptance of non-theists than anything we could preach. Some claim that a few seasons of “Will and Grace” did more to further the LGBT cause than all the years of gay activism put together.

SJ: What is the importance of humanism in America at the moment?

CTQ: Humanism shows people a way to be moral without worshipping a deity or participating in religions with draconian social agendas. I feel for younger people who’ve been sold the idea that you’re either religious or you’re sinful. Popular music is filled with their angst: “it’s where my demons lie,” “don’t want to let you down, but I am hell bound,” “‘we were born sick,’ you heard them say it.” Many give up, finding it impossible to think of themselves as honourable people without a religious framework. Humanism is one answer to that. It allows us to make being decent to one another our most important value.

Also, in what many are calling the “post-truth” era, humanism is one of the few evidence-based life philosophies. It provides a model at a time when a return to evidential truth is essential for the survival of our democracy, our culture and our planet.

SJ: What is the importance of secularism in America at the moment?

CTQ: Secularism is crucial at this moment in history, and in particular danger, as those now in power are desperate to legislate their archaic values before they are further outnumbered. Separation of church and state is the only way to ensure fair representation for all. It protects both believers and nonbelievers from coercion by institutions which may become more popular or powerful. Secularists fight to ensure our children’s education will be based in fact; that we may follow our own consciences in matters of love, worship, marriage, and reproduction; that the dangers to our environment will be acknowledged and mitigated. The importance of secularism in the coming years will be as a watchdog to safeguard American values and constitutional rights.

SJ: What social forces might regress the secular humanist movements in the US other than Trump alone?

CTQ: That depends on what you mean by “regress.” Trump’s election and the Republican ascendancy are actually energising humanists and other secular groups. The AHA reported a large bump in donations following the election, and we’ve seen the will to action rise in our own organisation. Young people are increasingly more secular, and their ranks are growing. Religion can’t hold out against this reality forever.

Trump, of course, is not the only problem. Mike Pence is a Christian nationalist who would be even worse for humanists. And with so many branches of state and federal government controlled by conservatives, who – let’s face it – owe their jobs to evangelicals, there is no doubt that secularism will be under wide attack in the coming years. Congress will try to repeal the Johnson Amendment, allowing churches to endorse candidates from the pulpit and involve themselves in political campaigns. Some state legislatures are already proposing and passing more “religious freedom” laws, allowing businesses and organisations to discriminate against people who don’t share their religious point of view. I believe we’ll see prominent individuals spotlighted and judged on the basis of whether their religious views correspond to those of fundamentalist Christianity, particularly in upcoming elections. But those are really political forces.

The biggest social hurdle for humanists is how we are perceived by the public. Recent polls show that Atheists, humanists and non-theists in general are held in lower regard than virtually any other group. We need to work on visibility, educating the public about ourselves, and improving and normalising our image. We also need a few brave souls to run for office.

SJ: What tasks and responsibilities come with being the founder and current president of the End of the Line Humanists? What is the current size of the ELH?

CTQ: End of the Line Humanists is only three years old. We are a small but growing organisation. As president, I plan activities, convene and lead meetings, write and handle most communications and promotion, book venues, coordinate with other officers, and represent ELH to the public and our parent organisation. Since our officer elections in June of ’15, I have helped with some of those tasks.

ELH has 60-70 people who come to our events; about a third of those are dues-paying members. Usual attendance is around 20, more for special events. We have over 150 on our mailing list and over 300 members on our Meetup group, so it seems that many are watching what we are doing and saying, perhaps waiting for the right moment to join us, perhaps just learning and thinking. We don’t have a building and must hold our meetings and events in public spaces. However, we are growing every day and have a stronger core group and more enthusiastic members as we evolve.

SJ: ELH is run out of New West Suburban Chicago. What is the humanist culture like in Chicago? What activities, campaigns, and initiatives take place there through the End of the Line Humanists?

CTQ: The American Humanist Association has two charter chapters and one affiliate chapter in the Chicago area. Each has its own mission and character. We occasionally attend each other’s functions and/or work together, as we did when we were host chapters for the national AHA conference that was held in Chicago this past summer. Being a large metropolitan area, there are chapters of other non-theist groups including American Atheists, Secular Coalition for Illinois, and Freedom from Religion Foundation, to name a few, and a number of independent non-believer Meetups and gatherings.

Job One for our group, which is new and small, has been to build a local humanist community. We hold social events, present speakers, discuss important issues, disseminate information about humanism, and run an annual food and funds drive for the local food pantry. We volunteer at the annual library book sale and are currently working with the Oak Park Homeless Coalition to set up volunteer nights for our group.

Since the election in November, our membership is more enthusiastic and more inclined toward activism. The timing is right for us. Having built a base of mutual values and trust, we are now ready to engage. We have formed a humanist action committee to seek out and recommend various issue-based actions that our members can take, both together and individually, in order to make a difference and bring more humanist light to the world. For example, we will be attending the March for Science in Chicago on April 22nd. We have also put together a speaker series for this spring and summer. Our first event will be a panel discussion held at the Oak Park Public Library on March 26th: Wide Awake: Progressive Rights Watch for 2017 and Beyond. Representatives from local rights and environmental organisations will participate to update us on what is happening in their areas, and what we as citizens can do to safeguard our rights and freedoms. (Details of the event below.)

SJ: You were interviewed in The Wednesday Journal too. You told the story of gathering humanists from the local areas such as Forest Park and Oak Park. In becoming more acquainted with humanism, you noted some principles were “tolerance, service to others, making the world a kinder and gentler place.” Also, the ELH membership are ambivalent about organised religion and not by necessity atheists. Other than these principles and dual-nature (religious or irreligious, inclusive “or”) of humanism, what makes humanism appealing to you?

CTQ: Actually, the ambivalence to organised religion statement came from a former ELH member who was also quoted in the article. I would say her opinion is not the norm for our group members. Identifying as atheist or agnostic is not required to join our organisation; but nearly all of us eschew religious belief. Humanists by definition are people who believe in living ethical lives without the supernatural, and that is pretty clear-cut as we practice it, not really dual-natured. It is actually this clarity that is appealing to me – the idea of good for its own sake, rather than for heavenly reward, or to avoid divine punishment. Humanism falls under the atheist umbrella; the difference is that the emphasis is on what we believe in rather than what we don’t. I find that positive focus inspiring.

SJ: What informs humanist beliefs for other humanists in general based on interactions with them? Some might note ecstatic/transcendental experiences, improved relationships, disillusionment with established religions, or something else.

CTQ: Just like religious believers, humanists have an entire spectrum of reasons to be involved. Many people are, as mentioned, disillusioned with religion; many are simply looking for like-minded individuals or social engagement that doesn’t involve a church. Most find that letting go of the Big Brother aspects of traditional faith gives them substantial relief from guilt and anxiety, and the development of and reliance on their own personal ethics is empowering. Many more seek a way to contribute to society that is not funnelled through a faith-based organisation. Most humanists tend toward liberalism on social issues, sharing a respect for the planet and the humanity of all the people living on it. In practice, we live for the same things that religious folk do — relationships, family, jobs, hobbies, interests – minus the gods. And we value many of the same things: good health, freedom, honesty, integrity, kindness, etc.

The humanist approach has traditionally been more rational than emotional; however, that is expanding as we explore new ways to express the joys and trials of life within the context of our philosophy. As to ecstatic experiences: one of the much-debated questions in humanism is if humanists can by definition be “spiritual.” Some say ‘yes’, others ‘no’. Some find transcendence in things like nature, yoga, meditation, or the arts; others strictly refute that any higher state is possible or real. We may sometimes disagree, but we value open discussion first and foremost.

SJ: Also, what makes humanism seem more right or true than other worldviews to you – arguments and evidence?

CTQ: The humanist value of doing good for its own sake is hard to argue against, even for the religious. Also, I think the fact that one’s intellect and emotions can be in sync really helps. No mental or semantic contortions are necessary to function as a humanist. We don’t have to disavow obvious realities or twist our lives to follow the often-contradictory rules in one 2,000-year-old book in order to feel secure. As for evidence, we have the evidence of the world: the fossil record, scientific method. However, in the case of an invisible deity who allegedly created the universe and controls our lives, the burden of proof is clearly on the believers. As we nonbelievers like to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

SJ: For those that want to work together or become involved, what are recommended means of contacting you?

CTQ: Those interested in our organisation can email us at beings@ELHumanists.org and ask to be added to our mailing list. Others ways to keep up with our activities are to visit our website at www.ELHumanists.org or join our Meetup or Facebook group. The best way to get to know us is to come to one of our events. We’re very friendly and always happy to meet and welcome new people.

SJ: Thank you for your time, Cynthia.

Event details:

Wide Awake: Progressive Rights Watch for 2017 and Beyond

A panel discussion on safeguarding our democracy, rights, and environment

Oak Park Public Library

834 Lake St., Oak Park, IL

Veteran’s Room

Sunday, March 26^th, 1:30 – 4:30 p.m.

Featuring:

Brad Bartels, Oak Park Area Lesbian and Gay Association
Anthony Clark, Suburban Unity Alliance
Terry Grace, Move to Amend
David Holmquist, Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Ian Wagreich, American Immigration Council
William Zingrone, Secular Coalition for Illinois

Join us as we discuss issues of critical concern in the coming years. Learn which of our rights, policies and programs are currently vulnerable; what congressional, judicial and executive actions to watch for; and what we as citizens can do to protect our civil liberties.

This is an informative program intended for the general public. The audience will have the opportunity to ask questions and join in the discussion.

This program is sponsored by End of the Line Humanists, not the Oak Park Public Library.

www.ELHumanists.org

beings@ELHumanists.org

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2022-04-18

Clinical Psychology & Secular Therapy with Dr. Caleb W. Lack – Session 1

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/11

Dr. Caleb W. Lack is a licensed clinical psychologist and the Director of the Secular Therapist Project. Here, he discusses these topics with Scott.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What separates clinical psychology from other domains of psychology?

Dr. Caleb W. Lack: Clinical psychology is one of the most applied sub-fields in psychology, as both research and the practice in this area are focused on understanding, preventing, assessing, and treating psychological distress and impairment. For most clinical psychologists, this means working with people who have cognitive, behavioural, or emotional difficulties, but in further specialities like behavioural medicine or paediatric psychology, it may mean working on one’s behaviour or thoughts to help decrease a chronic or acute physical health problem.

The closest other psychology sub-field to clinical psychology is that of counselling psychology. The primary difference is that clinical psychology tends to focus on more severe, less common psychological problems (such as schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder) while counselling psychology often is focused on more normative life stressors (i.e. marital problems, stress from typical life changes). Research foci and methods are also often different. While counselling programs (in the U.S., at least) are starting to have more of a focus on severe issues, the two are still distinct.

Jacobsen: What common terms can readers expect to encounter here? What defines them, with examples, please?

Lack: Two major terms that I will often use are evidence-based psychology (EBP) and cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT). EBP refers to therapies and assessment methods that have a solid grounding in scientific research which has controlled for both placebo effects and regression to the mean. This means therapies that have had multiple clinical trials published in legitimate, peer-reviewed journals. Such trials will optimally be randomised, placebo controlled, double-blinded trials, which are the gold standard for treatment outcome studies. Therapies which have lower levels of evidence (single-blinded, wait-list controlled, small N designs, and so on) must have a sufficient amount of studies to be considered EBP. Anecdotes and the number of people who use a particular therapy do not matter, just the evidence showing it actually works.

CBT refers to a wide collection of therapies that focus on changing the way that we think or act in order to change our emotional state. Depending on what a person is struggling with, a therapist using CBT may focus more on thoughts by using techniques such as cognitive restricting or on behaviour using techniques such as exposure with response prevention. Most CBTers, though, will work on both cognitions and actions, as well as incorporating relaxation or mindfulness techniques. CBT is distinct from other types of therapy in several ways, most notably, in that it tends to be briefer and time-limited, as well as highly structured and directive. While the therapeutic relationship is seen as necessary for making change, it is only a starting point and not the focus of therapy. There are many distinct types of therapy that fall under the umbrella of CBT, including parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT), dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), parent management training (PMT), and many others that are developed for specific problems such as depression, OCD, anorexia, and more.

Jacobsen: Who seem like some of the foundational names and associated theories in the field?

Lack: That depends on your theoretical orientation! As a psychological scientist and cognitive-behavioural therapist, my big list focuses on those who have contributed to a scientifically informed, evidence-based view of human behaviour and the treatment of disruptions to our functioning. Historically, Lightner Witmer is regarded as the father of clinical psychology, as he coined the term and opened the world’s first psychological clinic in 1896, following that up by founding the first journal of clinical psychology. Other major figures in the early part of the field were those who were first laying out the laws of behaviourism, such as Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and E.L. Thorndike. In the middle part of the 20^th century, researchers like B.F. Skinner had their experimental work turned into clinical applications by people like Joseph Wolpe and Ole Ivar Lovaas who rejected the pseudoscientific underpinnings of most people doing therapy, which were based on psychoanalytic or psychodynamic views of human nature. In the 1960s, pioneers such as Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck began incorporating new work on social cognition into working with mental health problems, setting the stage for a unified cognitive-behavioural therapy movement that has steadily built increasingly effective therapies for most major mental health issues over the past 50 years. Over the past 30 years especially, clinical scientists such as Judith Beck, Alan Kazdin, Marsha Linehan, Scott Lilienfeld, David Barlow, Edna Foa, Phillip Kendall and many others have massively improved our understanding of origins and treatment for mental health problems.

Jacobsen: When patients come to secular therapy, what is the respectful, constructive attitude therapists take in working with the patients to help them build the tools to overcome their problems?

Lack: The best advice that I can give anyone when choosing a mental health professional is to see someone who practices evidence-based psychology. Stated simply, EBP is a guiding principle that means a therapist, whether that person is a psychologist, counsellor, social worker, or psychiatrist, is guided in the treatment and assessment methods they use by the current best practices as defined by scientific evidence. Unfortunately, many therapists have not been trained in these methods and instead, rely on intuition; what they think has worked well, or what they were trained in, regardless of the evidence or lack thereof for its effectiveness. Asking a potential therapist what their primary therapeutic orientation is, and how they know the type of therapy they do works, are great ways to find out if a therapist uses EBP.

The second piece of advice is that you need to be sure that your therapist does not attempt to push their own personal value system onto you. While this is both an unethical and inappropriate thing to do, from my own experience with clients, I can tell you that a large number of them report this happening (and it was a major impetus behind the creation of the Secular Therapy Project). While this does not mean that you need to find a therapist with your exact religious, political, ethnic, and cultural background, it does mean that your therapist needs to respect what your beliefs and values are and recognise that their job as a therapist is not to convert you. If you find yourself in a situation where this is occurring, I would recommend giving the therapist a warning that you are becoming offended by their actions. If they continue to push their own agenda at the expense of your mental health, a report to their licensing board would be appropriate.

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2022-04-18

Interview with Arifur Rahman on Being an Atheist in Bangladesh

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/28

In this interview, Arifur Rahman talks to Scott Douglas Jacobsen about discovering blogging and how this provides freedom of speech to minorities, who would otherwise not be heard. Arifur Rahman also talks about how the Bangladeshi government fails to protect freedom of speech, while atheist and secularist bloggers keep being murdered.

Arifur Rahman is a London-based Bangladeshi atheist, humanist, and secular blogger who has long campaigned for secular values. Dozens of people were killed in Bangladesh since 2013, under accusations of ‘blasphemy’.

*This interview has been edited for clarity and readability.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was your moment of political awakening and political activism?

Arifur Rahman: When we started, we didn’t think of this as a political activity, at all. Now, we realise that in some way it was, but we didn’t see it that way. The definition of political activism we knew didn’t involve what we were doing. To answer your question, how did I get involved? It spontaneously happened. I was in the UK. I was here for the last 12 years. I came here to study. Eventually, I got a job. I stayed back.

While I was here, it was an interesting phenomenon happening across the globe, blogging. People could write their own thoughts, express their own mind, using some sort of internet platform like WordPress or community blogging. To us, that was something new.

Before that, anything we’d see written would be either a newspaper, which was going through an editorial process, or a book. People would reprint some material. It would not be an individual’s thoughts. People would write stuff. When we found out about the Internet, we saw an opportunity to write our own thoughts.

We took it on. We began to express our minds. For us, it was a way to connect like-minded people across the globe. I was an expatriate in of like mindthe UK. There are a lot of people like me. Obviously, being outside of Bangladesh, you don’t get to meet everybody like you used to in person.

We discovered this digital presence. We discovered that if we get involved with blogging we can express ourselves. We could find like-minded people in Bangladesh and other countries across the globe. What made me start writing and blogging is more of a reaction to what we’ve seen in our language and in our country: we saw a rise in Islamist narrative spreading.

Islamists were using the power of the Internet to spread their ideas. We see it around us now, but we saw it rising 10 years ago. We started protesting. We started countering their narrative, as it should be. There are lots of details surrounding it. In summary, that is the answer to your question.

Jacobsen: As a platform with blogging, people call you bloggers, but, in essence, you are writers. In a way, it is digital protest when other ways aren’t necessarily available without significant, sometimes physical, harm to the writers. What are some more prominent cases that are more tragic of people who have had physical altercations because of their being a Bangladeshi blogger or writer?

Rahman: This physical violence is something very recent in Bangladesh. It only started in the beginning of 2013. Before that, all sorts of threats were often like death threats. Islamists and extremist Muslims, whatever category you put them in, were doing death threats quite regularly. “What you are writing boils our blood and you are doing it behind the anonymity of the Internet, and we dare you because you would not actually come to meet us in real life, and if we see you in real life, we are going to sort you out.” We used to hear and read this very often.

We never realised that we would ever get really, really seriously hit by that. In early 2013, a colleague of ours, a great satirist, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was murdered in front of his house. Then, we realised something was going to happen. That was the first murder of that year. In 2013, there were more murders, but the government, as a result of Islamist uprising, took a stance of appeasing Islamist methods or strategies. The government initiated the passing of some laws, which criminalised atheist practices; not atheism per se, but vilifying religion or critically talking about religion.

Then, 4 of our colleagues were sent to jail. Everything was surrounded by serious media activity by the Islamists because they own a lot of news outlets and television channels. The general view of the people was that they fell for the narrative that the Islamist media were spreading. In 2015, 2 years later, a Bangladeshi-American citizen who lived in America and who was almost like me, was murdered. I was there on that same day.

I met him an hour before, in person, alive, and we were walking around the book fair that he was visiting. Then, an hour later when we all went to the hospital he was dead, as he was brutally murdered by the Islamists. That was surreal. Following that, a month later, one of our colleagues was murdered, at least, in Bangladesh. Niloy Chatterjee, among others, was also murdered.

We had other murders too. Non-bloggers, like teachers, were murdered. General activists were murdered as well. Most of the time, after every killing, the media would not come out and denounce these killings. The media would be more interested in trying to find the reason why they were murdered. They were trying to find out what these murdered people were writing about. They would target any critique of religion and amplify it in the media to make it okay for the murders to happen in the public mind, whether the prophet was “insulted” or otherwise. So, religion somehow allows that sort of recoil.

Jacobsen: You mentioned two phrases before: “extremist Muslims” and “Islamism”. Are these differentiated terms to you?

Rahman: We never used to differentiate between them, at least in Bangladesh. Recently, I have seen all of these killings happening. In July, there was an ISIS-style attack, which took place in a restaurant where almost 14 people were killed in an ISIS-style murder. Literally a murder; they took over the restaurant. They locked themselves in and slaughtered people. Interestingly, these killings were not of bloggers. These were foreign nationals, like Japanese and Italian expatriates visiting Bangladesh.

This happened inside a diplomatic zone, the most secure area of the country. After that, the government and the whole country seemed to have come to their senses or, at least, pretending to come to their senses. Obviously, the excuse-giving actions were just starting. They said, “Oh, these are some few bad apples”. So, the Muslims who were very much eager unanimously say bloggers should be killed and should be sorted out. Now, they are distancing themselves from these killers.

Now, they’re saying, “These are Islamists.” We can’t really argue with them because we don’t have much media firepower. They are saying some are Islamists. My definition of an Islamist is: One who thinks of Islam as a source of law which can be inflicted in political life and structure of a country; whereas, extremist Muslims are the same people, but who would not violently act upon their belief. That’s how I would vaguely differentiate them.

But, given the chance, an extremist Muslim can become an Islamist. An Islamist is an extremist Muslim, by definition, but an extremist Muslim is not always an Islamist. In the core, everybody wants to believe that Islam is a way of life and Islam is something that needs to shape the existing structure of a society, in general.

Jacobsen: What are the numbers that you know – estimated – of those protesting through blogging about their being ex-Muslims or atheists being in Bangladesh, the UK, or elsewhere?

Rahman: We are always the minority. We are never the majority for a variety of reasons. The predominant religion in the UK is not Islam. Here, Islam itself is a minority. And then, we, apostates and atheists who have an Islamic background, are a minority within a minority. So, the numbers are not visibly high. However, there are a lot of closeted atheists out there who would not voice their opinion or identify themselves because of fear based on ostracisation, recoil, or being chucked out of family or society.

In the UK, the situation is like that. In Bangladesh, even though it is predominantly an Islamic or Muslim country, the Islamism we face is a new phenomenon. Bangladesh was not like that, even 30 years ago. It was formed in 1971 by kicking out a relation between Bangladesh and Pakistan. We separated from Pakistan; we used to be one country. Surprisingly, it was separated by India in-between Pakistan and Bangladesh, which was something weird the British did. We wanted to be a Bengali nation rather than a Muslim nation.

Bengali is a secular identity. It is based on language, culture, literature, etc. It refers to the more human side of things. Pakistan is more Islamic. It is no surprise that it’s referred to as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. I don’t have to tell you. You know. Because of global politics and intervention of the United States inside Bangladesh, the situation started to change. Saudi Arabia took an interest of rooting out the cultural element within Bangladesh and tried to terraform Bangladesh into a predominantly Muslim country. It the past 30 years it has become more Islamic.
That is the history of the situation.

Jacobsen: You mentioned a phrase: “minority within a minority.” Those are groups that aren’t necessarily considered by the larger populace in general. They might actually be subject to worse discrimination because if you’re within a minority that is already discriminated against. If you’re in a minority within a minority, your discrimination might be worse based on ostracisation within that minority, and not being considered even within the mainstream discourse. Does that seem correct to you?

Rahman: The term “minority within a minority,” is a term coined by Maajid Nawaz. He is saying that within the Muslim community there is a bunch of ex-Muslims. I am not originally from the UK. If somebody is breaking away from a minority community, and that minority community is a religiously identified community, their becoming an atheist (or even their becoming a humanist or identifying as a human), indicated that they’re becoming part of the bigger pot. If we’re leaving Islam and become atheists, we are not creating our own community. We are blending into the larger community.

Unfortunately for Maajid Nawaz and people like him, for some reason, they want to keep us. We have even broken away from the minority community. They want to keep us tied to the religious identity, which I don’t personally like. Earlier, you were saying about the numbers. In Bangladesh, there is a huge number of people who are of an atheistic disposition. Unfortunately, because of social pressure and peer pressure, and the same fear of recoil from their family and their immediate social groups (even direct threats of dying), a lot of people are closeted.

When we started our movement, our goal was to create a snowball effect. It worked. We saw a lot of young people declaring themselves as atheists. They were losing their fear of religion. It is not love for their religion that keeps them in the religion. It is fear. A lot of young people came out of their closet, it was creating a critical mass of atheists. After that, the deaths started.

The killings started to reverse the effect that our actions had. The killers are successful because the media and the killers together started this campaign against us. They were, and still are, quite successful. Fear is embedded in everybody. Nobody would openly claim that they are atheists. Even if they do, they would be careful to not welcome the wrath. In Bangladesh, there are many atheists, but you can’t just report their number through a census.

Jacobsen: Now, since we’ve covered the terminology and some of the background, and your own becoming politically active, I want to cover some of the content that the writers or bloggers write about, whether based in Bangladesh or elsewhere. What are some of the critical thoughts that they are putting forth about religion in particular?

Rahman: This is a good question. It goes back to the fundamental question: why? Somebody who came from an Islamic background has seen how it works and how in Islam, or in any other religion for that matter, through indoctrination, teaching, and parental teaching, people are guided towards the faith and religion. We have seen that. We can see that religion is actually crippling us. It is taking away a lot of human values and capabilities. Values and capabilities which a human should be allowed to fulfill and pursue.

In Islam, the beauty of love is not allowed or it is heavily restricted and guided. So, Islam would say, ‘You can love your wife, but you cannot fall in love with somebody before you are married.’ That is a restrictive direction. Love is not just platonic. Love has no strict definition, no boundaries.

That is defined as a crime. If you fall in love with somebody, if you express your love more than platonically, then you will have committed a sin, in Islamic terms. It is completely inhuman and medieval. We started talking about those things. That is only the tip of the iceberg. So many injustices happen within this minority community in the UK, or any other pockets of Muslim ghettos throughout the world, because they are autonomous systems. They managed differently than what is in the larger society. We don’t know what goes on inside. It is almost like the mafia.

We saw the way the rest of the world is like. If we use a bad analogy of race and colour, we try to be white. It is a bad way to say this. For example, the white Christian culture that has polished and furnished their own culture, has included all of these human elements. Maybe, they have weaponised them to make the world more capitalist, but that is a different discussion. But it looks like the design was supposed to be that ‘you guys are brown people and Muslims, so you should have a less than human life; whereas, the rest of the world can enjoy the beauty of life, express themselves and enjoy music, art, literature, and poetry, and so on.’

Anything that is about people being creative and happy is a no-no in Islam. Their goal 24/7 is to please their God. They are told by their mullahs that this is their purpose. It is to be partly a human. You can live the life in this world, but your ultimate goal is the afterlife. We saw this, in our terms, as bullshit. We started talking about it. If somebody is maintaining a system, they will not like that sort of divergence.

Jacobsen: More often, men run the system. Is that correct?

Rahman: Absolutely, all of the time.

Jacobsen: Are the restrictions, therefore, more stringent on women than on the men?

Rahman: Oh! (Laugh) It goes without saying.

Jacobsen: (Laugh)

Rahman: Like the medieval times, Islam is a male-dominated, patriarchal system. In fact, it is so literal in Islam that it reflects in Islamic law. In Islamic law, the so-called Sharia Law, a woman is equal to half of a man. So, that means two women equals one man. If you ask to give evidence in Islamic law, if you’re bringing one male witness, you cannot bring one female witness. You have to bring 2 female witnesses. That is a simplification, but that is the fact.

If you need to sign a deed, or a contract, and if you need a witness, you cannot have one male and one female witness. You need one male and two female witnesses. This principle has a lot of various different manifestations. For example, another version of this is if a woman gets raped then it is her fault for getting raped because she was not supposed to be going out of her security boundary, which is maintained by the male guardian. A woman cannot be her own self in the Islamic system, ever. A woman is primarily owned by her father, then when she is ready to be wed, she would be handed over to her husband, who would then literally use her for sexual purposes, for breeding purposes, and for house maintenance purposes.

When she is old, she will become and go under the security boundaries of her son. She cannot be her own person. She is property. Women, in Islam, are just property.

Jacobsen: There’s another system called triple talaq, which is, basically, a one-word say of the man to divorce his wife, within Islam.

Rahman: Yes.

Jacobsen: What are some of the more astute critiques of Islamic law that Bangladeshi bloggers have written that you have seen or have written yourself?

Rahman: I never bothered with debunking Islamic law itself. My focus was primarily about modern life and how Islam does not fit into modern life. Because it was a big team, there were some of us writing in that manner. Some were talking about science. I, primarily, tend to bring the fight in my own daily life. For instance, we talk about how the world should be and how Islam does not fit in the ideal world. One of the critiques I have done of Islamic law is that it does not follow the correct way a law should be created and accepted, in whoever the subjects are, e.g. the common law the world runs on. A law should be formed and then should be ratified through some democratic processes. Ideally, the proposal would go through some system like a parliament, depending on the country. Εventually it should go through a process and become accepted as a law and be enforceable.

Islamic law, fortunately or unfortunately, does not follow this. Its stem or root would be the primary book, the Qur’an, then the hadiths or the sayings of Mohammed, and then the rest would be determined by so-called Islamic scholars. There is an international standard for them and for how an Islamic law can come into effect. It is more of a council-type thing. There is no method. You cannot challenge or question an Islamic law. The choice is always based on the qazi, a representative of the Islamic power culture.

This is how an Islamic law comes into effect. There are other things also. Inside Bangladesh, even though it is not 100% Islamic, there are aspects that govern parts of life. For example, there is a law for family law, as they call it. That is governed by Islamic sources. When somebody dies, and if they have property, and if they have male and female children, the way that property gets divided is decided by Islamic law. It is not equal. Women always get less than men. It is imbalanced.

We criticise it. To give another example, inside Bangladesh, when the government and people wanted to change the unfair family law, the mullahs, the enforcers, came down to the streets and started protesting. Since they have leverage, they used that leverage to revert the government decision. So, inside Bangladesh, that law is not there. There is the education system too. We have a triple education system: English system, Bengali system (mainstream), and a huge madrassah education (huge Islamic education). The madrassah education is a bunch of people who don’t know how the world works, have zero knowledge of English, history, science, mathematics. All they know is the scripture and different incarnations of it. The madrassahs only work to build another mullah.

It is a mullah-production facility. The only purpose of a mullah is to lead a prayer in a mosque. That is all they are good for, all they can do. They are not trained for other social or national services. For example, anybody coming out of a madrassah are not even accepted in the services. There is a huge number of people who are a worthless piece of junk. Bangladesh is a severely densely populated country. Within 6,000 square miles, we have 117,000,000 people.

If you can imagine that, if you can put that in perspective, it would be shocking. It is one of the most densely populated countries. The Bangladeshi government cannot enforce family and birth control measures. Mullahs come out and say somebody’s life is a gift from God. It is almost like the Christian churches saying to not use contraception. Those are a few examples I can think of right now.

Jacobsen: That segues into something personally important: women’s rights – international women’s rights, empowerment, and general advocacy, when I think about it, many of the cases that you’ve noted are mostly run by men. Men are the religious leaders. The madrassahs are training mullahs, who will be men. The restrictions in marriage, social, and personal life are more stringent on women than on men. In that sense, at least within the Muslim community in Bangladesh, and based on what you’re saying, international women’s rights are not well-respected or implemented in those areas.

Rahman: Interestingly, Bangladesh is trying to keep its image. It is a highly advanced chameleon, at least the system. It has recently become a dictatorship. What I mean is that it is not the military dictatorship that you know. It used to be a bipartisan system, but now, the majority party has made ties with the majority Islamist party. Thereby, they gained a lot of support and power by supporting Islamists. This highlights the power of the media. Another Islamic state, Saudi Arabia, owns a lot of media throughout the world, and the power of lobby is not something I need to explain to you. A good example is the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Saudi Arabia is a member. At some point, it was the chairperson of that council. It’s an oxymoron that Saudi Arabia can become a chairperson of the Human Rights Council. The reason I say Bangladesh is highly supported by Saudi Arabia is that in the whole world there are only two countries that declared the day King Abdullah died a national mourning day. One was Bangladesh. The other was the United Kingdom, which is quite unusual. All of the reasons I am saying this is the image of Bangladesh as highly managed by media in the rest of the world.

There was a report recently that said Bangladesh has achieved, among all of the other South Asian countries, better gender equality, as they call it. However, the reality is more and more women are getting raped because the male psychology inside of Bangladesh is predominantly becoming a rapist psychology. Historically, because Bangladeshi women were not always having to wear the burqa or Islamic veil, they did not have to go to school – not all of them – but Bangladesh did a better job of having women going to school and getting educated. This has all changed.

Violence against women is becoming more prevalent. There are activists inside of Bangladesh who are working for women’s rights, such as Sara Hossain, who also works for human rights and women’s rights. She is a well-known, renowned lawyer. In our generation, Marzia Prova, in India, is working on having girls use sanitary napkins, and also to have them used in the garment industry where most of the workers are women. With women being there, they tend to use unhygienic methods for this. That is another good thing, I would say.

Jacobsen: Is you work causing trouble?

Rahman: We are causing trouble. We thought we were causing trouble, but society thinks of us as troublemakers because the majority of the people are actually, in some form or degree, Islamic-minded within our societies. They don’t think much. They don’t want to think much. They haven’t been taught to think. Most of the people are subject to the Islamic system. We thought the businesses and the modern world might help us free them from the shackles. But we realised the Islamic system has become today’s monster because of the help from the bigger system.

That is a revelation for us. No matter how much we try to break free or change, we will always be seen as fringe. Even if we want to become the mainstream, the whole system with enough firepower came down so hard on us that we became completely scrambled and a lot of our friends have to hide, seek asylum in other countries, and deactivate their social network accounts and completely rethink and reshape their life.

So, inside of these communities, and inside non-Bangladeshi communities where Islam is not the main problem, it is even more difficult because of the white Christian or the secular white societies, as I mentioned earlier. They have been trained to see Muslims or ex-Muslims and other cultures as just brown people rather than different shades and cultures. It is an Islamic way of looking at people, Brushing them with the same Muslim stroke makes things even more difficult. Even if we come out, we are seen as ex-Muslim. I don’t like the term. Some see it as a temporary strategy. That means, even if we left Islam, that hangover still haunts us.

Even if we try, we will still not be able to be a human without any colour of background. The system is still very interested in cutting people up by colour and religion. Even if you just want to become a human, they are still getting a lot of help from the world.

Jacobsen: In a way, you are playing by the religious fundamentalist rules by having the label “ex-Muslim.”

Rahman: Correct, correct, I fight with some of the ex-Muslim leaders sometimes because I come from Bangladesh. When we came out of Islam, we became gnostics. Gnostic means atheist. Unfortunately, those in North America and Europe that come out as ‘atheists’ come out as ex-Muslims, as if the divide is still continuing. I don’t know for whose benefit.

Jacobsen: In a way, some of that might reflect fear relative to the country’s quality of life, and so on, from reprisals in the country.

Rahman: Right.

Jacobsen: Atheism does not have a positive valence in any country. It might be tactful in one’s family, community, and country to label oneself gnostic rather than explicit atheist (though gnostic means atheist). How did the fundamentalist religious leaders view countries in Western Europe, in North America, compared to their own? What is their perspective there? You did mention white seculars and white Christians in Western Europe and North America, say, viewing much of the world as simply brown people rather than different colours, different ethnicity, different religions, and so on.

Rahman: The Islamic leaders class them as kafirs, which means non-Muslims. They don’t differentiate between America or Europe. To them, they are all kafirs. When the concept of discussion about these countries comes up, they focus on the social life of a white person, and on their interpretation of how life should be; so they are more focused on drinking, premarital sex, or fornication, and they have a very dim view of alcohol altogether. They have trained their disciples and subjects’ minds towards Western and white people saying that these people are kafirs. These kafirs drink, have sex with people they aren’t married with, and these things combined are used to portray a picture of the devil or near-devil.

That’s the social discussion, but when they obviously blend in with political aspects. The Middle East comes into the narrative. They have killed Muslims in Palestine. They have bombed a lot of countries. In that discussion, they blame the whole of the Western world in one sentence or container. It doesn’t matter if the USA, France, or the UK has bombed. They say, “The Western kafirs have bombed a Muslim country.” They simplify things for their subjects. Most of the time, the mullahs are more interested in managing the minds of their subjects.

They aren’t interested in a mindful discussion or the content of the debate. Their interest, most of the time, is in how they can present the discussion in front of their subjects so that the subjects respect them because their system is based on authority. The mullahs are in a position of authority. Whatever they say, their subjects consume and adhere to.

Jacobsen: I notice another thing as well, which has had, at least in America and the UK, been thrown around: “Islamophobia.” Of course, there’s anti-Muslim, anti-Christian, anti-atheist bigotry. Even when individuals critique particular ideas within Islamic doctrine, they will be termed racist. There is a confusion to me between criticising a set of ideas and a group of people. If one critiques a set of ideas, then this becomes a critique of people. Do you notice this?

Rahman: Oh yes, it is part of the system. It is not by chance. It is by design. It is a defence mechanism of the idea itself. A defence mechanism being that it would infect their subjects with the ideology, and then, thereby, multiplying in numbers. When the ideology is under scrutiny, it would hide behind the subjects and would declare that the subjects are being targeted. It is a very smart way of defending itself. Essentially, it is using the subjects as its shield against criticism. So, there’s a parallel narrative between racists and them.

There is a number of uneducated people in the population who are subject to the same type of simplification. There is xenophobia against migrants in the white population, cheating benefits, taking our jobs, and so on. I did the Rubin Report once. In that interview, I said it was my suspicion that the Christian white supremacists may be working behind the screen together with the Islamists to feed the hate between the two silos. My suspicion was that nobody is trying to set the record straight.

Everyone is creating more and more confusion, then gaining political benefit and other benefits from it. Islamists are interested in hiding behind Muslims and then anybody criticising the ideology, they call them Islamophobic. But, then again there are people like Donald Trump in America or UKIP in the UK, and Pegida in Europe. All of these are white supremacists. They are not worried about Islam. They are more annoyed and critical about other races because their narratives are not defined properly; they blend them together. Muslims become either brown people or brown people become Muslims.

Jacobsen: For a last question, we talked at length of Sharia Law/Islamic Law. In the UK, there are segmented areas with Sharia courts. What are your own thoughts on this? Do you see this as a problem? What are some solutions, if so?

Rahman: It goes back to what I said earlier about it being by design. The government and the state wants to keep the Muslims inside of the ghetto. Maryam Namazie and a few others like her did a petition to repeal or investigate the Sharia courts inside of the UK. Unfortunately, Theresa May, who is a very Christian person, decided that she is going to investigate and employ the very same people who are behind the Sharia courts and who are proponents of the Sharia courts to investigate the Sharia courts. As you can see, the government and state have not changed their mindset and are going ahead with their own strategy of empowering the very same people who are not just part of the problem, but they are the problem itself.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Arif.

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2022-04-18

An Interview on Losing Religion and Finding Humanism in Ghana

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/23

Kwaku Adusei is the founder of the Common Sense Foundation in Ghana. He has been involved with the Humanist Association of Ghana. Here, he talks with Scott Douglas Jacobsen about the Common Sense Foundation, his discovery of Richard Dawkins, losing religion and becoming an atheist, and finding humanism and becoming a humanist.

Scott Jacobsen: How did you first become involved in Humanism? What makes it more or less true to you as a worldview?

Kwaku Adusei: It has been a long time. Somewhere in 1999, I was interested in the Bible. I started reading the Bible, trying to understand what is really in that book. The more I read, the more I come across something. I went to read the books of Exodus and Genesis. That was the Jews’ starting point. That means that the Gentiles are not part of God’s family. Some Israelites were ordered to go to Amalek and killed the Amalekites.They slaughtered them all. I thought, “What kind of God is this?” A God who can kill a mass group of people. A God who can create even with word of mouth. That God cannot kill by himself, but only through others. I thought some propaganda is behind the story. Some political propaganda. They are seeking to achieve a political end, to achieve something by trying to use the Word of God to cover it up.

You get my point; it is something used to deceive people. The more I read the Bible, I thought, “This isn’t making sense. Why don’t I go and get other books?” So, I started reading the Bhagavad Gita. The holy book of the Hindu people. I read books of logic. I thought, “These books aren’t making sense as far as logic is concerned.” Then, I started making the transition from the religious life to the humanistic life.

I started reading Richard Dawkins’, The Selfish Gene. I read Christ Conspiracy. I read Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ. After reading all of these books, I thought, “This thing we call God is nothing but something designed to deceive or enslave the masses. So, that is what took me away from the religious life.” Now, it was not easy for me. The books began to shape me. I became demonised. I said, “Hey, I know what I am doing.”

My family and my loved ones, they all neglected me. I said, “No, I still have to be strong and live my life.” So, every day I make sure I read my logic books and anything that has to do with science. Unless, it can be scientifically proven, then I will not believe it. If people say, “If it’s God’s will, it will come to pass.” If I say this, I will not be applying logic and reason. In 2002, I became a full atheist.

That’s where I started moving into atheism. After atheism, I thought, “I need a step forward.” For one, we are humanists. Without human beings, it will not be easy to do whatever you want to do. If you are calling yourself irreligious, how do you work together with them on this particular planet? I started looking for others who were also thinking like me. It was difficult to me. I hid my humanist ideology for more than 5 years.

Maybe, it was 6 years. In 2010, I found 4 people who were also like me. We would get together on a weekly basis to discuss humanist ideas to make sure we made a meaningful life for ourselves without adherence to supernatural forces or higher powers. 2 years ago, I was trying to find humanist groups across the company. I saw it on Facebook and connected with IHEYO. They said they had a group in Accra, in Ghana.

I also got my friends involved, who were humanists in Kumasi, Ghana. I started to form a humanist group associated to the one in Accra. So, we agreed and formed a humanist group in Kumasi here. When I formed the humanist group with Roslyn, I figured, “We cannot hide in the darkness. There are people outside willing to hear from us. So, why don’t we go outside?” Others can understand that the religious people are not what they are hearing about.

So, I joined one of my friends, who is a radio presenter. He was preparing something for all atheist people. The programme features people from Hare Krishna. People from Christianity and Islam. So, I joined that programme. The outcome was [Laughing], I got a lot of backlash. People tried to even kill me. Some people got to understand me. As I talk to you, I have 59 members on my platform, where we interact each and every day on humanist ideas to get more people involved.

Jacobsen: You also founded The Common Sense Foundation. What is the target audience and the purpose of it?

Adusei: Yes, The Common Sense Foundation. We are an organisation of the Humanist Association of Ghana. First of all, it is one part of my plan. I want to make a radio programme. I started to realise there are more people who are willing to hear our message. I put my phone number on the radio station. People started calling me and saying they wanted to learn more from me. That’s where I created a WhatsApp platform and then had some direction with them on daily issues.

I thought, “Why don’t we have a platform to spread the news across the country?” If that is what we are proposing, then we can do that. Then we formed the humanist community and The Common Sense Foundation. Our main target is the youth because the youth are more open to information. The youth have now come to realise that religion is killing people. Religion is dehumanising people.

Religion is making people slaves. The youth have the mindset, but they don’t have the courage to come out of that mess. We have come to give them that boost. We have come to encourage them. So, they can be strong, be bold, and can move from religion to the secular world, which is what we seek to do — to build a critical thinking centre where we can organise a forum to encourage them.

That way, they can realise things without panic or being hypnotised by the religious people. We cannot teach logic to some of the adults because they have already made up their minds. The youth is always looking for new information. The Common Sense Foundation is there to give them the information that they need, to help encourage them to live their lives, and tell them that they can do whatever they want to do without adhering to any spiritual forces.

We realise they have the doubts, but that they are now free to move to another level. We talk to them. So, that is what we are doing now; we go to the radio stations and talk to people. Those that want to talk to us, contact us, and then we put them on the WhatsApp platform to share ideas and have fun. That’s all. It is difficult for us because sometimes we don’t organise very big programmes, so that we can also invite people from outside it.

Eminent and experienced humanists come to give lectures, but we are moving in that bigger direction. Especially with the critical thinking centre, the work with the young people, it is difficult for us. We are talking to other friends who are humanists in their work. We will see if they can try to help us. The target, though, is for the youth.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time. It was nice talking to you, Kwaku.

Adusei: You too.

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2022-04-18

Government Crackdown on Ex-Muslims in Malaysia

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/07

Malaysia’s religious departments could take action against a group of Muslims if proven that they have been involved in “atheist activities”.

The Malaysian government says it will investigate claims on social media that Muslims attended a recent meeting organised by international group Atheist Republic in Kuala Lumpur.

According to the Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Dr Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki, the government will investigate if there are Muslims who have joined the Kuala Lumpur Atheist Club

According to Asyraf Wajdi, jurisdiction on Islamic faith is under the Syariah Criminal Enactment of each state, while at the Federal Territories level it is under the Federal Territories Islamic Religious Department (Jawi). He told reporters after officiating the Indera Mahkota Division Umno Youth Delegates’ Conference:

“If it is proven that there are Muslims involved in atheist activities that could affect their faith, the state Islamic religious departments or Jawi could take action. I have asked for Jawi to look into this grave allegation.”

The issue first came to light after several Islamist blogsites posted a photo of the group’s gathering in Kuala Lumpur.

News coverage led to a lot of Malaysians also calling for apostates to be fired, jailed, and even beheaded.

In many countries across the world, social rules disallow public displays and conversation about atheism, so the atheist communities can be disparate, which can leave many atheists feeling isolated.

The Atheist Republic (Twitter, Facebook, and website) is the largest public atheist Facebook page.

The page has more than 1.7 million likes, making it the most popular atheist community on any social network. It uses that platform mostly to post memes that criticise religion – though stresses that it doesn’t intend to attack religious people.

The Atheist Republic has consulates throughout the globe in the major cities of the world.

The Atheist Republic does work within communities through activities, including helping people in the midst of natural disasters and in fundraising, such as the Atheist Republic Metro Manila.

It also helps to bring non-believers together, ensuring that atheists, who tend to be disproportionately demonised, ostracised, and stigmatised, can feel a sense of belonging and community.

Despite the dangers, Atheist Republic continues to help those who leave or want to leave their religion through fundraising, community-building, and providing other help in times of need.

Atheist Republic has received numerous comments online.

Founder of Atheist Republic, ex-Muslim and member of Conatus News, Armin Navabi, said,

They are now asking for me to be beheaded for simply starting a group where Malaysian atheists can meet each other. Atheist Republic’s Malaysian consulate is now being targeted by their government. Our Indonesian consulate is also under attack. Tell me why is our Manila consulate not under such attacks? It can’t be the economy since Indonesia and Malaysia have a higher GDP per capita than the Philippines. It can’t be western colonialism. They are all in the same area. Can it possibly be that Indonesia and Malaysia are Islamic and the Philippines is Christian? Weren’t Indonesia and Malaysia supposed to be examples of “moderate” Islamic countries?

In response to the controversy, Rev. Gretta Vosper – a United Church of Canada minister – wrote to Chrystia Freeland, who is Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, urging her to reach out to Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak. Vosper said,

I write with deep concern for atheists and secular humanists in Malaysia. Recently, whether intentionally or otherwise, one of Malaysia’s Government Ministers, Shahidan Kassim, who is reported to be close to the Malaysian Prime Minister, incited extremists to violence against atheists, secular humanists, and ex-Muslims by challenging Malaysians to hunt them down “vehemently” and return them to the Islamic faith.
The statement from the government official was to a photograph of several young people who are members of a Facebook group, The Atheist Republic. They had gathered together to meet one another and build friendships. It was a casual and friendly gathering and, as so often happens when joy is present, photographs were taken and posted to social media.
The founder of the Facebook group is Armin Navabi, copied on this letter. He is a friend and an ex-Muslim who lives in British Columbia. Subsequent to the posting of the photograph, Armin has been the subject of threats, including a call for his beheading. Others have called for the burning alive of the members of The Atheist Republic pictured in the photograph.
In 2013, Bangladesh, despite its status as a secular state, refused to placate extremists calling for the execution of secular humanists, instead choosing to label them atheists and further incite hatred against them. In 2015, Avijit Roy was murdered by machete-wielding attackers while in Dhaka for a book fair. The editor and publisher of Avijit’s book, The Philosophy of Atheism, were both subsequently murdered. Avijit’s co-author, Raihan Abir, is a good friend. He was recognised as a refugee by the Canadian government in 2015. He and his family are now helping grow Canada and make it a better place.
The congregation I serve has received permission to bring to Canada as a refugee a Bangladeshi atheist and his family. We chose this family because the father’s photograph has been so widely distributed across Bangladesh and elsewhere that he cannot be seen outside of the place he now hides, fearing for his life. The photograph of the happy gathering of atheists in Malaysia will be used to imperil their lives and to “hunt them down vehemently” as Minister Kassim has urged Malaysian citizens to do. All their lives are now in grave danger.
We cannot stand idly by and watch Malaysia become another Bangladesh, indifferent to or even supportive of the murder of atheists and secular humanists. Canada has had a long and friendly relationship with Malaysia, dating back to the earliest days of that country’s founding. We continue to build on our sixty year history and share our Canadian values within our relationship. Those values include the protection of marginalized groups and advocacy for religious freedoms. The right to refuse religion, the freedom from religion must be just as strongly defended as the right to believe.
I urge you to reach out to Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak, and remind him of his democratic obligations to protect all Malaysians, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof. I urge you also to request that he publicly and swiftly denounce the words of Minister Kassim before they are used to spread fear, sanction violence, or lead to the murder of innocent civilians.

The Malaysian Consulate released a long statement tonight explaining the “hidden crisis of ex-Muslims” and the legal form of freedom afforded to religion in the country:

“Many Muslims who have attempted to convert or leave Islam have received death threats. Those who have converted or left Islam, lead a secret double life. The civil court claims that conversions are under the jurisdiction of the [Sharia] courts, but converts contend that as they are no longer Muslim the [Sharia] courts hold no power over them. Authorities only allow Sunni Islam to be practised, arresting those who stray from those beliefs. Converts taken to be rehabilitated by Islamic authorities are forced to dress and act as Muslims.
If ever there was a phobia that we’re experiencing in Malaysia, it’s not Islamophobia. Its Apostophobia (fear of apostates). A fear or hateful stand that is usually swept under the carpet since everyone is bent of protecting the sensitivities of Muslims…”

Any crackdown on non-believers in Malaysia will affect its global image as a moderate Muslim-majority country, international non-profit group Atheist Republic said.

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2022-04-18

Interview with Doug Thomas – President of the Secular Connexion Séculière

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/06

Doug Thomas is a secular activist and Canadian agnostic humanist. His academic background is in North American Constitutional History and North American Literature. He is both the president of Secular Connexion Séculière (SCS) and an active member of the Society of Ontario Freethinkers. Interview edited for clarity.

Scott Jacobsen: Would you say you come from a humanist family background?

Doug Thomas: I suppose I did, in a way. My parents were what I would call practising Christians; that is, they followed the ethics of Christianity, or the humanist ways of dealing with people and situations, but they weren’t particularly religious and certainly weren’t people who quoted the Bible at every turn. When I decided I didn’t believe in the divinity part of Christianity, their only concern was that I maintain the set of ethics.

Jacobsen: What work did you do before entering into professional humanism and did this previous work help you in your current path?

Thomas: By way of clarification, I try to maintain professional standards in my work with SCS, but it is a voluntary position.

My academic background includes a degree in research and communication and another degree in methods of teaching those skills. The university calls it a degree in History and English, and it can carry on with its delusion if it wishes. Perhaps it is relevant that the core of the History degree was North American constitutional history—an insight into the structure of governments.

I taught secondary school intermittently for twenty years and this certainly gave me experience with all kinds of social and cultural backgrounds and with how people perceive things based on those parameters. Communication skills are vital to keeping thirty or so individuals who would rather be doing something else engaged. At the same time, I was developing theatre and co-operative education programs in the school system so I gained considerable experience in working with senior school board officials.

I also spent a number of years in the business world, quite a bit of it selling manufacturing management software. To be successful, I had to find out more about the client’s business than they usually told me and then explain why I thought my company’s solution was the best for them. Again, communicating abstract ideas and benefits gave me applied experience with the research and communications skills I acquired at university.

The third useful endeavour has been working on various boards of directors and community committees over the years. These include the local Chamber of Commerce and several liaison committees between local businesses and the community.

As a result, I am comfortable contacting and communicating with government officials at all levels, from school boards to the ministries of governments. They have particular concerns about how they can get their job done. Knowing how to detect those concerns and bring forward ideas that help them rather than challenge them is very useful.

Jacobsen: Now you’re the president of the Secular Connexion Séculière. What tasks and responsibilities come with this position?

Thomas: When we founded SCS in 2011, I think we had the idea that secular humanists in Canada were looking for a group that would work actively to represent the secular humanist perspective and concerns to governments and to society in general. Certainly, we heard people speak enviously about the Freedom From Religion Foundation in the US. and I guess we assumed people would welcome SCS with open arms.

One task, however, has turned out to be getting the attention of secular humanists who are scattered across a large geographical area, with two official languages and many different social and cultural backgrounds.

Most of my task has been to establish SCS as a presence in the secular humanist landscape, differentiating it from the other two national organisations and gaining the confidence of secular humanists. We began that differentiation by refusing charitable status. That separated us from other groups in two ways. First, we had to explain why donors could not have income tax deductions for donations, and second, we had to make the point that we could speak to governments in ways that the other two groups could not if they wished to keep their charitable status.

My other task, more serious than I originally thought, was to establish communication in both official languages, English and French. Even the basic terms of secular humanism do not translate well through the cultural filters of these two languages even though, historically, they are welded at the hip.

Communication within the secular humanist community has been a continuing challenge and I still spend considerable effort to find ways to do it. The social media tools that mesmerise everyone are surprisingly ineffective in getting people’s attention, and, frankly, they are full of so much chaff and static that much of their supposed effectiveness is wasted.

In addition, Canadians are transfixed like moths to a flame by American events. Often Canadian issues, even those that directly affect them, sit in the shadows and are less exciting than American ones. This phenomenon is not unique to secular humanists, but it is a major challenge in getting Canadian secular humanists’ attention.

Of course, the central task has been to get the attention of politicians and bureaucrats. They are busy people and getting through the various bubbles around government agencies is a challenge. Consistent and persistent efforts pay off, but they take a great deal of time. This frustrates most secular humanists so getting them to write their MPs or Senators on a regular basis is difficult.

That is one reason that, recently, I became a registered lobbyist with the federal government. This has helped develop confidence in SCS with secular humanists since it can now claim recognition from the government and it helps do the same with bureaucrats because they see SCS as a serious representative of secular humanists—one that is open about its contacts with them.

Jacobsen: What seem like the perennial threats to the practice of humanism? Who have been unexpected allies?

Thomas: The most persistent and perennial threat is the sense of entitlement that religions have in Canada. Religious people assume their philosophy is the norm and the anything else is a threat to civilisation itself. This is largely a matter of historic presence. Since the late 16^th and early 17^th century, Europeans have been coming to this part of the world, declaring that their religion, primarily Christianity, is the only moral path. Since they have dominated the government and social structure since then, encountering secular humanist unnerves them and they tend to push back.

Christians, for example, assume that their right to freedom of religion includes the right to impose their religion on others over PA systems and in public ceremonies. They tolerate the presence of other religions and will accommodate them because they think theism of any kind provides some kind of moral base. When secular humanists speak up against this imposition of religion, the reaction is often negative and we are accused of denying them their freedom of religion.

Since following a known religion is accepted as the norm, and since most politicians do claim a religion as their own, getting politicians to change the discriminatory legislation in Canada, or even recognise that it exists, is difficult. Sometimes I can tell that they are sympathetic, but that politics won’t let them really act.

Religions already have representatives on every parliamentary committee for the simple reason that most MPs are religious and those who are not keep their political heads below the rampart. For example, when the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Physician Assisted Dying met, it chose to hear from four religious advocates, but from none of the three national secular humanist organisations. SCS has raised this inequity with members of the federal bureaucracy and continues to attempt to appear as witnesses before parliamentary committees.

The other threat is complacency. For the most part, discrimination against non-believers in Canada is pretty benign. However, that results in a “don’t ask-don’t tell” society that keeps social discrimination under the radar. For example, non-believing university students do not put their involvement in secular humanist organisations on their resume as religious students do because they know it will be taken negatively, but it is difficult to take that to a human rights tribunal.

The systemic discrimination that the International Humanist and Ethical Union has identified in Canada, is also problematic, partly because it gives permission for theists to promote their philosophy in O Canada, for example. The blunt truth is that several Canadian laws, including the Criminal Code of Canada and the Income Tax Act discriminate against non-believers.

Surprise allies have included almost all Canadians to whom I have explained the two offending sections of the Criminal Code of Canada: the anti-blasphemy libel law (section 296) and the clause giving religious people permission to publish hate literature (section 319, 3b). Most people, religious or not, are unaware of these clauses and are shocked and supportive of change when they hear about them.

Jacobsen: As a humanist organisation meant to facilitate communication and dialogue among Canadian humanists, how does Secular Connexion Séculière accomplish this?

Thomas: This is may be our biggest task and challenge. SCS tries to work in both official languages and we work on keeping an informative website up to date and attractive. I must admit to carpet bombing Facebook groups when an issue seems important enough, but that is surprisingly ineffective.

SCS is proactive in attending conferences like the Imagine 7 Conference in Toronto this spring. We are one of the sponsors and hope to raise our profile with the humanists who attend.

Recently, we have appointed provincial advocates covering 9 out the 10 provinces so that we have direct representation. These advocates will be contact points for secular humanists who feel that their right to freedom from religion has been compromised. SCS can offer advice and, when appropriate, intervention in these situations. For example, there have been a number of cases where religious groups have managed to get religious materials into public elementary schools in violation of that right. SCS has intervened successfully to get school board officials to enforce their policies against this.

SCS also has a new SCS Forum for people who contribute more than $20 annually to the organisation. This will let interested secular humanists participate in guiding SCS policy and priorities.

Listing SCS with web pages like Atheists Enlight Ontario Network (www.atheistsenlight.network) and the Secular Directory (www.Seculardirectory.org) will, hopefully, raise people’s awareness of SCS.

Jacobsen: The Secular Connexion Séculière has a number of goals and principles. It does not seek governing powers in the humanist community in Canada. It wants to assist the efforts of Canadian humanists. What are some of the main educational initiatives and social and political supports provided by the Secular Connexion Séculière for the Canadian humanist community?

Thomas: I mentioned the new provincial advocates. These are an addition to SCS’ work in teaching secular humanists how to deal with situations in their community and, of course, supporting them in their efforts.

SCS has focused for some time in educating politicians about the right to freedom from religion. Sometimes, this has meant informing local politicians about Supreme Court decisions like the Simoneau v. Saguenay decision that clarified that opening prayers at municipal council meetings are unconstitutional. Some of those councils thought the decision applied only to Québec.

Informing the federal government and its bureaucrats of our secular humanist concerns about systemic discrimination and sensitising them to these concerns continues to be a major task. The hard truth is that there is no magic way to do this. Consistent and persistent emailing and writing campaigns are the only truly effective way to work on this.

We are developing Skype and You Tube presentations to bridge the geographical gaps in Canada. Given the cost of travelling across the country, both in time and money, these may become staples in our education and awareness campaign.

SCS is embarking on a new fund raising campaign, albeit a modest one by most standards. Even though SCS is a completely voluntary organisation, we need funding to operate. For example, we are working toward getting media releases published in major media outlets. Since Canada’s so-called free press is actually a vertically integrated capitalist system, no major outlets will publish independently sent news releases. We have to pay a media company to run a campaign for us at a cost of about $1,500 per campaign.

Jacobsen: I like the new O Canada non-theist and non-sexist lyrics from Secular Connexion Séculière. What was the inspiration for the new lyrics? How can these be implemented throughout the country and replace the lyrics biased towards one grouping– the theists– of the country?

Thomas: I have long been interested in the concept of having a national song that all Canadians can sing and have watched the amazed faces of the American women’s hockey team when the whole arena of fans sang it during the gold medal ceremony in Calgary. As a university student in the 1960s, I was an active participant in a protest that got movie theatres to play O Canada at the beginning of movies instead of God Save the Queen. When Pierre Trudeau proposed the current theist version of the song in English, I actively opposed it and advocated for restoration of “in all of us” into the second line.

The current motivation is simply that non-believers, immigrants, and women should all be able to sing O Canada without being hypocrites. Neither of the official versions allow that. The National Anthems Act of 1980 does not provide for any penalty for singing other words. It simply declares the current words as the official version.

Implementing the new words must have two approaches. One, get as many people aware of and singing the new version as possible, and two, continue to make Senators and MPs aware of the deficiencies of the current version. To this end, SCS recently sent emails to all Senators encouraging them to consider the new words while they debated a minor change in the words – “all thy sons command” to “all of us command.”

Jacobsen: What is your philosophy in running Secular Connexion Séculière?

Thomas: SCS should be the voice of secular humanists speaking to governments and it should be the go-to organisation when secular humanists need support in situations that affect their right to freedom from religion. SCS should focus on eliminating both systemic and social discrimination against non-believers in Canada.

Jacobsen: What are the upcoming initiatives for Secular Connexion Séculière? What are the new battlegrounds, and the most controversial ones? How can they be tackled and won?

Thomas: SCS is broadening its approach to include provincial matters through its provincial advocates and increased intervention in local situations. SCS is developing a plan to make all school boards across Canada more aware of the right to freedom from religion and to encourage those boards to review and enforce their policies on inclusion and equality to include non-believing children.

The new battlegrounds, or at least the ones we are now ready to tackle, are the provincial governments, school boards, and business that are not aware of or choose to ignore the rights of secular humanists.

O Canada will certainly be a wedge issue since people just assume that it has some kind of special constitutional place in our heritage when, in reality, it has been rewritten several times and doesn’t deserve an argumentum ad antiquitatem (appeal to tradition).

In the background will be the struggle to stop the practice of parliamentary committees selecting witnesses to support their own biases. Achieving more openness in this selection process will take some serious lobbying.

Again, there are no magic bullets. While some members of the secular humanist community are frustrated that SCS does not look like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, SCS actually does pretty much the same thing without the money that their 30,000 or so donors provide. Billboards are effective in motivating non-believers in the social discrimination atmosphere of the US., but probably have much less effect than the letters that the organisation sends to governments—the kind of letters that SCS sends regularly.

Jacobsen: Folks can donate and contact Secular Connexion Séculière. How else can people become involved with Secular Connexion Séculière?

Thomas: SCS is still looking for advocates in Québec, Nunavut, The Northwest Territories and Yukon Territory. For that matter, SCS would like to have advocates in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island rather than covering all the Maritimes from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Secular humanists should report incidents they think are violations of their right to freedom from religion to their provincial advocate (http://www.secularconnexion.ca/provincial-action/).

Secular humanists should write their MPs. This is like voting between elections. I can guarantee that religious groups are doing this all the time. One should not expect immediate feedback, but MPs tally emails like votes and every vote on the secular humanist side of an issue helps.

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion about the conversation today?

Thomas: Well, first of all, thank you for the opportunity to give people an insight into SCS. Merci bien.

I often feel that I am trying to sell abstract ideas to people who do not perceive any immediate threat to themselves. If they could hear and understand the frustration of Canadian secular humanists whose children have religion imposed on them; of those who live in fear of dismissal if their boss learns of their secular humanist life stance; of people who must feel left out of ceremonies, then perhaps they would be more inclined to step up. My challenge, regardless of how SCS can do it is to raise awareness and sensitivity to the problem both within the secular humanist community and with the general public and government.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Doug.

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2022-04-18

Interview with David Rand, President of Atheist Freethinkers

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/03

David Rand is the president of Atheist Freethinkers. He participates in a Board of Directors and several affiliate coalitions including Rassemblement pour la laïcité (Quebec), Atheist Alliance International (AAI) and International Association of Freethought (IAFT). Here is his story. Edited for clarity.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To begin, do you come from an atheist family?

David Rand: No, I grew up in a devout Christian environment. There was a certain liberal aspect to my parents’ religiosity, but they participated religiously (pun intended!) in their church and donated regularly to it and to other religious organisations (for example the Bible Society). My mother’s side of the family was also staunchly monarchist. I rejected Christianity in my early teenage years. In my early twenties I realised that I was an atheist and had been for many years. I also realised that I was against the monarchy, although that issue was less significant.

Jacobsen: What sort of work were you engaged with prior to your involvement in professional atheism? Did it help with your current work?

Rand: Well, I would not call what I do “professional atheism!” I don’t get paid for it and never did (and surely never will). But I do engage fully in movements to criticise religious obscurantism and to fight against its influence in society, especially its political influence. In the 1970s and 1980s I was very active in the gay rights movement, first in Vancouver and then in Montreal. That was where I learned about political activism. There was, in fact, a clear link between my gay activism and my atheist activism: in the 1990s I was very concerned about the founding of various gay Christian churches and groups. Talk about an oxymoron: “gay Christian!” So I wrote an article about the dangers of embracing the ideology of one’s oppressor, and it was published in the American magazine Free Inquiry. Thereafter, I started an atheist web site (now located at www.davidrand.ca), and that was the beginning of my work for atheism and secularism. Subsequently, I was involved in various organisations, in particular several years on the board of a Quebec secular organisation. Then in 2010-2011 I helped found Atheist Freethinkers.

Jacobsen: Now you’re the president of the Atheist Freethinkers. What tasks and responsibilities come with this position?

Rand: It involves managing, in collaboration with our Board of Directors, our internet presence (two web sites, discussion groups for members, Facebook pages and groups, Twitter, etc.) and organising our monthly meetings. My responsibilities involve a lot of reading and writing – blogs, speeches, press releases, position papers, etc. Most of what we do is bilingual, French and English. Atheist Freethinkers is affiliated with several coalitions including Rassemblement pour la laïcité (here in Quebec), Atheist Alliance International (AAI) and International Association of Freethought (IAFT). I am also a spokesperson for the IAFT. I occasionally travel to speak at various events: for example, in March/April of 2017 I spoke at Days of Atheism in Warsaw and in September I will be speaking at an IAFT congress in Paris.

Jacobsen: What are the perennial threats to atheists? Who have been unexpected allies?

Rand: Undoubtedly the greatest threat for atheists is politicised religion, when religion obtains political power. This is most obvious when that power is exercised by Islamists, who promote a medieval theocratic totalitarianism. However political Christianity remains very dangerous, for example in sub-Saharan Africa, the United States and Poland. The current pope is a silver-tongued obscurantist. I recently stumbled upon a caricature comparing him with a pile of excrement sprinkled with brightly-coloured sugary confection. I think that image expresses very well what the Vatican is all about.

I must also point out that one of the greatest threats to secularism (and hence indirectly threatening atheists) in the current political climate is the so-called “regressive left” (I am not satisfied with that term, but have yet to find a better one) which is ferociously anti-secular – so much so that regressive “leftists” tend to demonise secularism by falsely associating it with racism and xenophobia.

As for unexpected allies (although this is not completely unexpected) persecuted religious minorities are potential allies. A year and a half ago I spoke at an interfaith event organised by Ahmadiyya Muslims. The theme of my talk was the complete vacuity of religious morality or “divine command theory” as it is called formally. Of course the Ahmadiyya (who are sometimes horribly persecuted by Islamists) have a completely different worldview from ours at AFT, but they welcomed our participation in a very friendly manner and did nothing to prevent us from expressing our point of view. On the other hand, I would question their support for secularism.

As a Montrealer, I must also mention that there is strong support for secularism among Quebec nationalists and so they are, or should be, allies of atheists. However, the demonisation of Quebec nationalism (mainly by Canadian nationalists) is a serious impediment to that alliance.

Jacobsen: Your blog covers a variety of topics: atheism, LGBT, women, Islam and Islamism, Canadian multiculturalism, and so on. What guides the selection of topics? Can people become involved with the blog? If so, how can they help out?

Rand: The selection of topics is guided by our basic concerns as atheists (as expressed for example in our Manifesto, www.atheology.ca/manifesto/), by current events (for example the niqab or Motion M-103) and by whatever the individual author would like to write about. Our members are encouraged to write for the AFT blog. I have written many blog entries, but so have other members of AFT or signers of our Manifesto. (I also have a personal blog at blog.davidrand.ca)

Jacobsen: What are some of the main educational initiatives, and social and political supports, provided by Atheist Freethinkers for the atheist community?

Rand: On the educational front, I would say that our greatest strength is our criticism of communitarianism (a.k.a. multiculturalism) and its extremely deleterious effect on any movement towards secularisation. Being based in Montreal, we are acutely aware of this dynamic. The infamous “two solitudes” must be taken into account in order to understand the fight for secularism in Canada.

There are many in Canada outside Quebec who would call themselves secularists but whom I would call pseudo-secularists. If you do not question communitarianism, if you instead promote so-called “open secularism,” if you fail to recognise the importance of republican secularism, then you are on the wrong side of the fence because you are facilitating religious privilege.

There are obvious measures we can all agree on, such as removing “supremacy of God” from the preamble to the 1982 Constitution, repealing the law against “Blasphemous Libel” and eliminating all financial exemptions and privileges for religious organisations. However, in my opinion, a complete and consistent secularisation of Canadian federal legislation would necessarily involve at least the following measures as well:

Repeal of the religious exception in the Hate Propaganda legislation.
Elimination of line 17(1)b) of the Citizenship Regulations.
Repudiation of Motion M-103 and any other motion against so-called “Islamophobia.”
Banning all religious accommodations (e.g. the Sikh head covering in the RMCP).
Repeal, or at least substantial modification, of the Multiculturalism Act.
Banning religious symbols in public services, including those worn by public servants while on duty (but not by citizens using those services).
Banning face-coverings everywhere in public services (both employees and users).

Jacobsen: How can atheists better mobilise politically and socially in societal and communal life, and emotionally and intellectually in individual life?

Rand: A complex and very open-ended question. If atheists constitute a community, it is a very heterogeneous one, if a community at all. I remember an article from a couple of years ago where the author promoted the idea of atheists as an “ethnic group.” I am totally opposed to such an approach. We are not just another religious or ethnic group. We must not fall even further into the multiculturalist trap, increasingly essentialising people’s religious affiliation, dividing society up further into clienteles, even more easily manipulated by unscrupulous politicians. If we followed that route, then atheism would, paradoxically, become just another religious identity.

Rather, we must organise and unite on issues we share with other atheists: that is, an uncompromising criticism of religion, recognising that supernatural religious beliefs are utter nonsense, unworthy of our respect. Just as believers have a right to practice their religion, we non-believers have every right to live without having others’ beliefs shoved down our throats. But we must also ally with others who may not identify as atheists in order to promote secularism, which means that believers too would be protected from the religious excesses of their co-religionists and of those who follow other religions.

It would also help to stop being so timid about recognising what atheism and secularism have in common. They are different concepts, but they share one major aspect: both involve a refusal to accept divine authority. The atheist makes his or her moral decisions without reference to a god. Similarly, the secular state must base none of its laws or procedures on so-called divine command. That does not in any way prevent religious believers, as individuals, from participating fully.

Finally, I’m not sure what you mean by “emotionally,” but intellectually we must continue (and here is some good news) what atheists have already undertaken with enthusiasm: the analysis, criticism and deconstruction of religious beliefs, dogmas and practices in order to become stronger in our resistance to the ever-present and sometimes overwhelming religious propaganda that floods our society. But that criticism must not stop with Christianity. We must be just as critical of other religions such as Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, etc., which are minority religions in Canada.

Jacobsen: What are the upcoming initiatives for Atheist Freethinkers? What are the new battlegrounds, and the most controversial ones? How can they be tackled and eventually won?

Rand: Our priorities are; I think:

continuing and deepening our criticism of communitarianism.
rejecting modern forms of old restrictions on freedom of expression such as so-called “Islamophobia” which is the new recycled blasphemy.

Both are controversial, especially the first, at least in Canada. The initiatives would involve:

Educational work to explain to atheists (and to the general public) the importance of the above priorities, and
On the federal level, working for the legislative changes that I listed in a previous answer, starting with repeal of the religious exception in the Hate Propaganda law.
On the provincial (Quebec) level, working for numbers 6 and 7 of the legislative changes listed above, i.e. banning religious symbols and face-coverings in the public service, and eliminating the religious component of Quebec’s Ethics and Religious Culture programme, which imposes compulsory religious instruction on children throughout elementary and secondary school.

And, as always, the money aspect must not be neglected: opposing all financial privileges enjoyed by churches and other religious organisations.

Jacobsen: People can look at the Atheist Manifesto and sign it, and can become members of Atheist Freethinkers, and even can donate. How else can people become involved with Atheist Freethinkers?

Rand: They can:

attend our monthly meet-ups (www.meetup.com/lpa-aft/). For the time being they are held only in Montreal, but we would like to offer them in other centres.
join our Facebook group (www.facebook.com/groups/librespenseursathees/).
subscribe to our Twitter feed (twitter.com/lpaaft or twitter.com/aftlpa)
consult one of our web sites (www.atheology.ca or www.atheologie.ca)
consult one of our Facebook pages (www.facebook.com/atheology.ca or www.facebook.com/lpa.aft)

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion about the conversation today?

Rand: The immediate future looks bleak. Religions are enjoying a comeback, thanks, in part at least, to the so-called regressive left. We must persevere. We also need to analyse the role of neo-liberalism in this sorry situation.

But in the longer term I am more optimistic. I think the current outbreak of religious fanaticism is part of the death throes of religion. The treachery of religious institutions and the utter vacuity of the extravagant nonsense they promote are becoming increasingly obvious to more and more people. Religious believers, including Muslims, are abandoning their faith, sometimes quietly (because they fear reprisals) and sometimes more openly. But sooner or later, that house of cards must crumble.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, David.

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2022-04-18

Q&A on Ex-Muslims with Waleed Al-Husseini – Session 2

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/02

Waleed Al-Husseini founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of France. He escaped the Palestinian Authority after torture and imprisonment in Palestine to Jordan and then France. He is an ex-Muslim and an atheist. Here is an educational series on ex-Muslims in France.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: With the foundations laid in Session 1, and in our interview, how does the Council of Ex-Muslims in France help ex-Muslims not feel alone?

Waleed Al-Husseini: To speak about this in France, the situation is complicated for many ex- Muslims because they experience threats. That’s why they don’t show themselves in public. But they always take the risk to meet in coffee shops, or restaurants, to try to make friends. They don’t want to feel alone. Also, such meetings and being with other ex-Muslims gives them some courage. At the Council of Ex-Muslims in France, we provide conferences in public wherein many can get support. Also, we as ex-Muslims recently had a big secular conference in London – a conference in which many Ex-Muslims came together.

What we do for society is the main fight for us – to show that we exist and that we are active, to work for laïcité – I intentionally use the French word because it’s different than secularism. I prefer to use it, always.

So, we work for that. That’s why we are with all the organisations who work for laïcité, and are also a part of the segment of French society who fight for these values.

We speak Arabic. Islam is Arabic. We know all these Islamist movements. We know how Islamists work. We have important knowledge about a problem which has become truly international.

Jacobsen: Maryam Namazie is an articulate, passionate, and insightful voice of ex-Muslims in Britain. Has she been a beacon of hope and inspiration for the Council of Ex-Muslims in France? And has she helped the council in any way?

Al-Husseini: Yes, of course, we created Ex-Muslims in France with her. She always supported us. We are all part of an important group of ex-Muslims, a group that has people in Germany, UK, France, and North America. We all work together and support each other. In the conference in London, we were are all there together.

Here in France, we have more than 100 ex-Muslims involved with our organisation. We have many friends and supporters as there are many other French people fighting for the same values; this gives us the power to feel that we are not alone!

Jacobsen: The Council of Ex-Muslims in France calls for equality and universal rights including the right to criticise religion, the right to atheism, the right to secularism, the right to freedom for women, to right to protection of children, and the right from intimidation tactics by religion. How much success has your organisation had on each of these fronts?

Al-Husseini: Acquiring these things are long processes. We want our voice to be heard on these issues. In Muslim countries, we try to help those who are arrested, make their story known, and contact governments, especially if it is an atheist or activist who has been arrested.

All the movements for rights in Islamic countries, such as the one we did in Tunisia this week for not fasting during Ramadan, are a stance of solidarity. For them to admit that we exist is a success, because they never admitted that before, but we still need more effective and ubiquitous successes.

Jacobsen: Have there been murders of ex-Muslims in France for their renouncement of Islam? Does this happen as often with another religion’s faithful becoming faithless? Or does this happen mostly with Islam?

Al-Husseini: At this point in time, it’s only Islam that does this. The other religions are past this; only Islam still closes on itself after 1,400 years, and doesn’t accept anything modern.

Jacobsen: What can improve the state of free speech for ex-Muslims in France? What can build bonds between ex-Muslims in other countries? What can help build a community/coalition of ex-Muslims in countries in the Middle East?

Al-Husseini: Many things can be done to improve the situation. Firstly, we need more opportunities to talk – they need to give us the space to speak our minds and to not limit free speech or speech in general in the name of “Islamophobia”. This word has always been used to stop people like us, and to stop others from listening to us. Why? Because we can stop terrorists through discussion and showing many things. If you want to stop terrorists, then listen to ex-Muslims.

What can help build communities is to first put pressure on the government, to stop all the blasphemy laws and stop treating ex-Muslims as threats and criminals; through this, people may stop attacking us. Then many of us will be more open about who we are in public and speak more freely without so many threats from the religious communities and the government. I can tell you that there are ex-Muslims in every family in Muslim countries, but they can’t speak.

Jacobsen: Thank you for taking the time once more, Waleed, always a pleasure, my friend.

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2022-04-18

Interview with Ian Bushfield – British Columbia Humanist Association

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/01

Ian Bushfield, M.Sc. is the Executive Director of the British Columbia Humanist Association (BCHA). He earned an M.Sc. in physics from Simon Fraser University and a B.Sc. in Engineering Physics in 2009. He is the Events and Development Coordinator, and has been the Director of Development, at the Cerebral Palsy Association of British Columbia. He was the Founder and President of the University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics. He is an Ambassador for Dying with Dignity. He grew up in the “Bible Belt” of Alberta – Southern Alberta. He fought to reduce the influence or mention of God at the University of Alberta convocation ceremony. Here is his story.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Thank you for taking the time to be interviewed. Let’s start the interview talking about your background. Do you have a family background in humanism?

Ian Bushfield: Not formally. I was raised in a fairly non-religious household. It was basically areligious in that we didn’t really even talk about religion. I joke that I first learned about religion from The Simpsons.

SJ: When did humanism become the philosophical and ethical worldview for you?

IB: I think like most secular people, Humanism was always my somewhat default mindset, even if I didn’t really come across the term and context until university. I was raised with the idea of being good to others because it’s the right thing to do and, at its core, that’s all Humanism is. So as I got involved in atheist activism in my undergrad, I came across Humanism in my reading and I naturally gravitated to it as an identity for my worldview.

SJ: What seem like the more pressing topics for humanism in British Columbia at this time?

IB: BC is a pretty nonreligious province, yet we still retain a few specific privileges for religion. I think the most egregious are the public funds that go to religious private schools, through our own sort of voucher program, and the fact a number of our public hospitals are still run by religious institutions. Both these schools and hospitals are able to turn people away who don’t conform to the institution’s narrow dogma. For example, some evangelical schools require students to be able to speak in tongues, while Catholic hospitals in the province refuse to provide abortions or medical assistance in death, both of which are legal in Canada.

Beyond that, BC is no more immune than the rest of the world to the rising xenophobic, misogynistic and anti-Humanist populism we’re seeing around the world. We’re lucky in Metro Vancouver to have a fairly tolerant and multicultural society, but there are still white nationalist groups and anti-immigrant sentiments bubbling under the surface.

SJ: You made a video about the Big Bang, which was great. I recommend it. You work as the executive director of the British Columbia Humanist Association (BCHA) in British Columbia (BC), and for a better world through compassion and science. It begs the question: what is the “better world”? Also, how, and why, are compassion and science the two best tools to reach that better world?

IB: Thanks. My concept of a ‘better world’ is somewhat utilitarian – that is, one with more flourishing and less suffering. Compassion in this case is shorthand for being empathetic to the plight of others and seeking means and paths to improving as many people as possible, both alive today and in consideration of future generations.

I say science is one of the best tools we’ve discovered to learn about the world as I think it’s empirically true (and yes, I realise that’s a bit circular). Science at its core asks us to test our ideas against the real world. So if we have a set of propositions about why apples fall from trees, science gives us a path to figure out which one is closer to reality. The same process works for solving more human problems, like how to tackle an overdose epidemic. Here in Vancouver, science has shown that a supervised safe-injection site and related harm reduction policies save more lives than the sort of “war on drugs” mentality. Of course, science on it’s own is not enough. We need compassion or some kind of value system to guide what and how we use that tool.

SJ: What tasks and responsibilities come with being the executive director of the BCHA in BC?

IB: My job is basically to handle the day-to-day operations of the organization. Whether that’s lining up programming for our events in Vancouver, giving advice to local groups across the province, working on any of our campaigns or even answering interviews like this, no two days are the same.

SJ: The BCHA had a recent success with the biblical texts, Gideon Bible distribution, in some schools in the province. Some of the story, in general, is in the article. What are the next battlegrounds for the BCHA in BC? Why?

IB: As I mentioned, I think two of the big challenges are going to be around the public funding of religion in our private education system and in our public healthcare system. Those are going to be long fights as none of our politicians want to upset those constituencies at this time.

Our other challenge is working to get recognition to perform marriages in BC. Humanists in a number of countries around the world and in the province of Ontario are able to perform weddings but the Government of BC doesn’t consider us qualified under the law here. We’ve put out a report documenting the differences between these jurisdictions and believe we can press the government to either change the law or take the case to court.

SJ: You work for the ‘Politicoast’ podcast. What tend to be the political themes discussed on the podcast? Why?

IB: PolitiCoast is more of a hobby in my spare time than a job in of itself and it’s completely independent of anything else I do. Mostly, my friend Scott & I wanted to get more discussion about BC politics out there as it’s somewhat neglected in the broader scene of politics podcasts. We met through Vancouver Skeptics in the Pub so I think we both try to bring a bit of that sceptical approach to our analysis, even if we come from slightly different partisan bents.

SJ: “Terahertz” is a common theme, e.g. Terahertz Atheist. Why this title throughout some work for you?

IB: I took on the moniker back in undergrad when I was working in a terahertz spectroscopy lab and kept it as I continued to work on similar technology in my graduate studies. Basically it refers to the band of the electromagnetic spectrum between radio waves and infrared radiation. We’ve only recently been able to generate those kinds of pulses and they’re incredibly useful for analysing the properties of semiconductors and are actually also used in some kinds of airport full-body scanners.

SJ: You contributed to the Canadian Atheist, Pharmaceutical Journal, Postmedia Network Inc., St. Catharines Standard (Letter), Terahertz Atheist, The Province (Letter), and the Vancouver Humane Society. You spoke for the Secular Student Alliance, on Afternoons with Rob Breakenridge, and Left at the Valley, and at the Café Scientifique Vancouver, South Fraser Unitarian Church, and Leeds Skeptics. You are a founding donor for Bad Science Watch. You have been featured in Humanist Action and Indi in the Wired. What inspires this activism and writing in multiple domains through different outlets and organisations?

IB: I think it’s just a curiosity that extends to a wide array of different interests. I spend a lot of time, probably more than I should, reading things I come across through social media and that forms different thoughts and ideas in my mind. Perhaps it’s my privilege, but then I guess I’ve just felt confident enough to express them anywhere people are willing to hear me. I do like to think that it’s all tied to a common thread of Humanism though, whether it’s promoting better science, equality and liberty, scepticism or even a politics that puts people first. That’s not to say all Humanists will necessarily agree with me on everything of course.

SJ: You provided “significant support” for E-382 (Blasphemous Libel), which argued for the removal of blasphemy libel. As e-382 stated in full:

Whereas:

It has been eight decades since the last conviction under Section 296, and thirty-five years since the last charge of blasphemous libel was laid;
Blasphemous libel serves no purpose in Canadian law or modern-day society, and would likely be found to contravene section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects freedom of expression;
In Canada and elsewhere, blasphemy laws have been abused to suppress minorities and stifle inconvenient speech;
Authoritarian states point to Canada’s blasphemous libel law to defend their own laws criminalizing blasphemy;
Repealing Canada’s blasphemy law would demonstrate, at home and abroad, Canada’s commitment to the value of free speech for all; and
Freedom of expression is the foundational human right in our society. Many others, including freedom of assembly and freedom of conscience, are derived from freedom of expression.

We, the undersigned, residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to repeal Section 296 (Blasphemous Libel) of the Canadian Criminal Code.

Was it a success?

IB: The campaign is still in progress. We’re lucky that this government was elected in part with a promise to reform the justice system, including the Criminal Code. So in her response to the petition, which received over 4700 signatures, the Justice Minister said that the blasphemy law would be included in the review of the Criminal Code. We’ve seen one bill come forward to strike sections from the Code that the courts have ruled unconstitutional and frustratingly the blasphemy law wasn’t included in that draft. We expect the government is still working on other bills and we’re optimistic that this section will be repealed in one of those.

SJ: You weighed in on the Trinity Western University LGBTQ+ issues:

“It represents a shockingly outdated view of the discrimination faced by the LGBTQ community,” said Ian Bushfield, director of the B.C. Humanist Association, another intervener.

Are there similar cases outside, even inside, of BC?

IB: This case is relatively unique in Canada. We don’t have many private religious universities in the country and TWU is the first to really push the limits of how many programs it can offer while still maintaining very strict anti-LGBT policies. So as this case moves forward to the Supreme Court of Canada it will really be a litmus test of what approach our courts take to religious freedom as an organisational right. In the USA, the courts have opened the door wide and allowed religion to trump a lot of other concerns with rulings like Hobby Lobby. We’re hopeful that the courts in Canada will take a more balanced approach and include other considerations, like the equality rights of women and the LGBTQ community, in their ultimate decision.

SJ: You spoke on the “Urgency of Humanism.” In BC, this seems like an easier message to disseminate with the ‘oasis’ of non-believers, the Nones, or those with no formal religious affiliation. What, still, is the urgency of humanism?

IB: While BC is overwhelmingly non-religious, and our polling suggests as many as 70% of British Columbians don’t practice a religion or faith, Humanism is more than just rejecting organised religion – it’s that positive and progressive framework that gives life meaning. With rising intolerance and open bigotry, I think we, even in BC, need an open and inclusive Humanism more than ever.

SJ: You can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter. Any other recommended means for people to be involved with or contact you?

IB: I’m not sure whether it’s a blessing or curse, but as far as I can tell I’m the only Ian Bushfield to ever exist, so I’m pretty easy to find online. I’m most active on my personal Facebook page, where anyone can follow my public posts, and Twitter.

SJ: Thank you for your time, Ian.

IB: Thanks for the questions Scott.

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2022-04-18

Q&A on the Philosophical Foundations of Psychology with Dr. Sven van de Wetering – Session 3

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/29

Dr. Sven van de Wetering has just stepped down as head of psychology at the University of the Fraser Valley, and is a now an associate professor in the same department. He is on the Advisory Board of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. Dr. van de Wetering earned his BSc in Biology at The University of British Columbia, and Bachelors of Arts in Psychology at Concordia University, Master of Arts, and PhD in Psychology from Simon Fraser University. His research interest lies in “conservation psychology, lay conceptions of evil, relationships between personality variables and political attitudes.” Here we explore, as an educational series, the philosophical foundations of psychology. Session 1 & Session 2.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the epistemology underlying statistics in psychology? Where does psychology begin to find its statistical limits?

Dr. Sven van de Wetering: I think the more or less explicit epistemological assumption underlying the use of statistics in psychology comes right out of Skinner and his notion that the human organism can be thought of as a locus of variables. In other words, human cognitive, emotional, and behavioural propensities can be meaningfully studied as dimensions that can be expressed numerically, as can environmental events likely to influence those propensities. Furthermore, the task of psychology is conceived of as being to figure out ways of measuring those underlying variables and of inferring how they influence one another. We depart from Skinner, though, in rejecting his absurd claim that one can explain all variability, that the concept of error variance is meaningless. Because error variance is a fundamental feature of the complexity of human organisms, and the even more complex environment in which they operate, inferential statistics then become an important tool to separate incorrect hypotheses from correct ones. Also important in all this is the assumption that human beings are very good at finding patterns in any sort of data, including pure noise, and that safeguards are needed to prevent us from inferring patterns where none exist. Human beings are seen as very fallible creatures, and inferential statistics are seen as safeguards against that fallibility.

Jacobsen: What are some of the most embarrassing examples of statistical over-extension in psychology studies ?

van de Wetering: I’m not sure, I routinely get embarrassed by over- or misapplication of statistics, but I do sometimes think people don’t know what inferential statistics means. Two patterns frequently bother me, though I can’t think of particular examples off the top of my head. One is people who conduct a study with a small sample size, fail to find a statistically reliable difference between treatment groups, and then blithely proclaim that the null hypothesis is true, as if the study’s lack of statistical power is some sort of virtue. The second pattern is almost the opposite of the first: people who conduct studies with enormous sample sizes, find a statistically reliable difference between groups, and then trumpet the finding as an important one. They don’t bother to report effect sizes, probably because to do so would be to acknowledge that the effect they have found, though statistically reliable, is too small to have a lot of real-world significance.

Jacobsen: We did some preliminary work in an interesting area, environmental psychology. You have an expertise in political psychology. How can statistical knowledge about political psychology influence knowledge around issues of environmental psychology, e.g. climate change denial – as opposed to scepticism?

van de Wetering: Many people who are very concerned about anthropogenic climate change are baffled by the large numbers of people who deny that human actions are having an appreciable effect on the Earth’s climate. The scientific evidence appears to be so overwhelming to those who accept it (not that most of them have read much of it) that the only explanation that they can fathom for climate change denialism is that it is rooted in sheer ignorance of the scientific facts. Statistically, though, scientific ignorance does not appear to be a major factor in climate change denialism, given that the correlation between belief in anthropogenic climate change and general scientific literacy is close to zero. Instead, we find an extremely strong correlation between belief in anthropogenic climate change and measures of ideology. In the US, people who strongly identify with the Republican Party or who self-identify as very right-wing are very likely to deny that human actions are responsible for changes in climate, regardless of how much they know about science in general or climate science in particular.

Jacobsen: The statistical approaches often come in conjunction with “folk psychology.” So, some Folk psychological explanations for a phenomenon exist, then they either become supported or not through scientific studies. Why is this the basis of lots of research? How is it weak? How is it robust?

van de Wetering: We use folk psychology as a heuristic because we don’t really have standardised procedures for hypothesis generation. If we don’t have a formal theory that acts as a source of research hypotheses, then informal theories (i.e. folk psychology) are the next best thing. The primary strength and primary weakness of folk psychological theories are the same, namely that they are fairly easy for us to understand with our limited cognitive apparatuses. This is a strength because theory is always under-determined by data, so if multiple theories are possible, we might as well go with the ones that are easy to understand. This is a weakness because there is no a priori reason to believe that true theories of human psychological functioning are easily comprehensible. An example of this is connectionist modelling of human cognition. Connectionism has some pretty substantial explanatory successes to its credit, but has not caught on as well as might be expected just because it is so absurdly non-intuitive that nobody really has a good gut sense of what connectionist models are actually asserting.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Sven – pleasure as always.

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2022-04-18

Q&A on the Philosophical Foundations of Psychology with Dr. Sven van de Wetering – Session 2

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/18

Dr. Sven van de Wetering has just stepped down as head of psychology at the University of the Fraser Valley, and is now an associate professor in the same department. He is on the Advisory Board of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. Dr. van de Wetering earned his BSc in Biology at The University of British Columbia, and Bachelors of Arts in Psychology at Concordia University, Master of Arts, and PhD in Psychology from Simon Fraser University. His research interest lies in “conservation psychology, lay conceptions of evil, relationships between personality variables and political attitudes.” Here we explore, as an educational series, the philosophical foundations of psychology. You can find the first session of our Q&A here.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What philosophy best represents the opinion of most psychologists regarding the means by which human beings think, feel, and act?

Dr. Sven van de Wetering: I think we are still very far from a consensus on this issue. My personal take would be to still use the metaphor of the human as a computer. The gross outlines of the computer’s programming have been laid down by the process of evolution by natural selection, and the fine tuning done by various forms of learning. Feelings are part of the overall system, not some sort of exogenous factor.

These ideas are all at least several decades old, and to my mind, they work well together, but each component of the triad of information processing, evolution, and learning is rejected by some psychologists. Some psychologists find that thinking of cognition as information processing is unhelpful, others believe in information processing, but consider the human information processor so general in its functioning that evolutionary psychology has no heuristic value, and some are happy with the concept of the mind as an evolved computer, but think that learning processes only do some very minor tweaking around the edges, and are not really worth worrying about.

I guess what I am trying to say is that psychology is a fundamentally pluralistic enterprise. No single theory answers your question because the human mind is a very complex device that can be fruitfully described at many different levels and from many different points of view. Pluralism is an uncomfortable and cognitively demanding stance that is not for everyone, even among people with PhDs in psychology. Furthermore, even pluralists get things wrong (a lot), so one sometimes wonders what the payoff is. Other than psychology being fun, of course.

“Certain statistical procedures need to be taught because academic psychologists expect one to know them, and one therefore needs to know them because it is expected, regardless of the intellectual merits of doing so.”

Jacobsen: What is the worldview, and statistical outlook, that you try to inculcate in students and in mentored pupils such as myself?

van de Wetering: As with several other aspects of psychology, I find that it has to be taught in two ways. One is at the level of the community standards of academic psychology. Certain statistical procedures need to be taught because academic psychologists expect one to know them, and one therefore needs to know them because it is expected, regardless of the intellectual merits of doing so.

The other is to do whatever it takes to find out what the data actually means. This often entails doing more descriptive work than what you see in many journal articles. In some really egregious examples, I have seen published articles where authors claimed their hypothesis was supported because some test said p<.05, but when I actually looked at the group means, the difference between them was in the opposite direction from the one predicted.

This is an extreme example, but something I see much more commonly is people writing things such as “Variable y induces people to produce behaviour x.” But when I look at the actual data, I find that both groups actually tended to avoid engaging in behaviour x, but members of the experimental group were slightly less likely to avoid behaviour x than members of the control group, and therefore people actually engaging in behaviour x made up a fairly small proportion of the overall sample.

Still more frequently and less egregiously, people will write about a difference in means as if everyone in every group was behaving in the exact way that the group mean indicates they are behaving. There is often little or no acknowledgment of variability in responses, even though the reported standard deviations indicate that this variability is substantial.

If I can summarize this paragraph, let me say that p values are given too much attention at the expense of descriptive statistics, and descriptive statistics are often being treated as if they describe everything, rather than being highly aggregated summaries that throw a lot of information away. It is of course right to summarize and to ignore individual cases in our research reports (because to do otherwise would invite cognitive overload), but we should try to avoid conventions in writing that make it seem like the individual cases don’t even exist or that the summary statistics contain all the information of interest.

We of course go into research with hypotheses in mind, but if we don’t spend many hours playing with the raw data, we don’t get to find out what the data are actually telling us. It’s always exciting when p<.05, but that’s always only a small part of the story. Playing around with the raw data, graphing them, noticing anomalies, etc. helps keep us alert to the complex messiness of human behaviour, and helps steer us away from unjustified formulations such as “variable x causes this change in variable y” when really all we know is that in one study, on average, variable x was associated with that change in variable y, and there is seldom evidence that variable x had that effect on variable y for every single person in the study, or even for a majority of people.

Jacobsen: Between rigour and relevance, where has there been the most fruitful growth of real data about people?

van de Wetering: I am very hesitant to pronounce on this, because I am more attuned to developments on the side that emphasises rigour. That being said, I think developments have not been entirely positive on my end of the playing field, given the replication crisis and all. It may be that things are even worse among those who emphasise social relevance, but my personal opinion is that no branch of psychology is in a great place right now.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Sven – always a pleasure.

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2022-04-18

Q&A on the Philosophy of Economics with Dr. Alexander Douglas – Session 4

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/17

Dr. Alexander Douglas specialises in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of economics. He is a faculty member at the University of St. Andrews in the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies. In this series, we discuss the philosophy of economics, its evolution, and how the discipline of economics should move forward in a world with increasing inequality so that it is more attuned to democracy. Previous sessions of our Q&A can be found here, here, and here.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Dr. Douglas, as previously discussed, a gap in knowledge, theory, and predictable consequences have developed in economics. When did this occur?

Dr. Alexander Douglas: Economics didn’t always seek status as a precise empirical science. Adam Smith famously declared disinterest in what he called “political arithmetic”. He might have been thinking of William Petty’s Political Arithmetick (1690), which attempted to advise the king on the specific economic effects of various policies. Smith, at least as I read him, was more interested in the moral psychology of economic activity, such as the sorts of motivations that drive people into economic interaction and the psychological effects of being engaged in it. I think he was closer to a novelist than a scientist. He sought to dramatize capitalism and present the sorts of character that inhabit it. There is a world of difference between this, and the ambition to use economic theory to forecast the specific effects of various policies or institutional changes.

The mania for the latter sort of calculated forecasting took off with the innovations in national accounting statistics that began with the development of the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States, and in other similar departments around the globe, in the middle of the twentieth century. Now economic aggregates are treated as the report card for the standing government. The government takes credit when the numbers look good. The opposition blames the government when the numbers look bad. Both agree to propound the illusion that the government somehow controls these numbers.

Jacobsen: What might be the upper limit in predicting human choices?

Douglas: I don’t know. Neuroscience might one day discover some algorithm that predicts precise behavioural outputs from easily-sorted classes of inputs. We’d then have a precise method for predicting behavioural responses of human agents to environmental changes. But, again, even if this were possible, who knows whether it would be of any predictive use. Huge differences in behavioural outcomes might be made by differences too small for the instruments to measure.

At any rate, I don’t see why we should be trying to predict human behaviour – or what I’d rather call human action. The eighteenth-century materialist Baron D’Holbach dreamed of a day when the government could “hold the magnet” to move its citizens around like iron filings, after having developed a complete science of psychological “magnetism”. He was, in other words, an early advocate of governance by manipulation of incentives – perhaps an ancestor of today’s proponents of “nudge” theory. I find this idea disturbing. I believe that the unpredictability of human action is a precious thing that should be preserved, and instead of trying to render human action predictable and thus controllable, I’d rather we strove to develop an ethics and a politics that fully embraces uncertainty. Maybe if we stopped trying to control each other so much, we’d find that the world is becoming less dangerous rather than more.

What really worries me is that in developing a theory that treats people as cipher-like “pleasure machines” – to use Geoffrey Hodgson’s term – and in designing our institutions on the basis of that theory, we will end up reducing people to what the theory treats them as being. Economists often say that their theory is value-neutral, that they aren’t telling us how people should be, but merely telling us how people are. They treat opposition to their project as a superstitious reaction against scientific enquiry. But they don’t consider that the prevailing theory of human nature can end up transforming human nature. For example, if you regard humans as little more than consumers, you might cover the landscape with advertising, seeking to tap into this lucrative monomania. Then when the advertising becomes so abundant that people have nothing else to look at, they really do become the monomaniacal consumers they were assumed to be. This is, I think, what Ruskin was getting at in the first part of Unto This Last. A key job for philosophers is to fight this tendency that degrades the human spirit in practice by underestimating it in theory.

Jacobsen: Could the rules for economic behaviour – exchange of products and services – become looser with weakened social ties, and thus loosen the Wittgensteinian view on “rules”?

Douglas: In the ‘Wittgensteinian’ view that I proposed (which may not really have much to do with Wittgenstein), rules are instantiated at the level of communities, not individuals. Certainly we could explain the exchange of products and services by identifying the various social rules that drive these exchanges, beginning our analysis at the level of the community rather than the individual. But in doing so we would be giving up a crucial principle of mainstream economics, namely methodological individualism: the principle that the unit of explanation for economic behaviour are individuals. Individuals, in mainstream economic theory, are supposed to have preference-orderings, which are rules governing their behaviour (“swap one apple for two or more oranges, but not less”).

The ‘Wittgensteinian’ argument I hinted at has the conclusion that preferences can’t pertain to individuals on their own. A rule requires a crowd in order to be concretely instantiated. A rule that isn’t properly binding has no concrete reality; it exists as a mere abstraction. But a rule that I impose on myself isn’t properly binding. I always have absolute power to exempt myself from the rule. The same holds for a small group, who can always conspire to excuse themselves. But a crowd develops an inner tendency towards conformism, exercising peer-pressure and the “tyranny of public opinion” to keep its members in the fold. If (concretely existing) rules are peculiar to crowds, then so are preferences. Individuals explore and experiment; it is the crowd that gives rise to the rigid preferences from which economists begin their analyses.

“Critics of capitalism often focus on the exploitation of the worker, but, as Joan Robinson said, it is often worse under capitalism to not have your labour exploited – at least not in the labour market.”

Jacobsen: How do economic choices (tendencies) change over the course of an individual’s life?

Douglas: Well, it is only in the middle of our lives that we can expect much from the Invisible Hand – and that’s only for those who are able and legally permitted to sell their labour. During childhood and old age, we can only count on what others are obliged to give us. I believe that our societies pitifully under-provides for the non-working population. Young children are packed into classrooms in ugly buildings, often taught by inadequately-trained assistants. The elderly languish in miserable and understaffed care facilities, or are left alone at home. Provision for the disabled is always strongly urged as it is inadequately funded. For centuries the domestic labour of women, unrecognised as a commodity by the market, was at best remunerated with a bare subsistence living; and to some extent this remains true. Meanwhile, income-earners get to enjoy the highest material standard of living in history: things that used to be luxury commodities – holidays abroad, designer clothing, exotic cuisine –are now mass-produced for widespread enjoyment by the waged.

John Kenneth Galbraith once depicted an American family meditating on “the curious unevenness of its blessings” – an engorgement of private consumer goods alongside threadbare public services. Today this unevenness translates into a massive inequality between income-earners, who can access the consumer goods with which the market is gavaged, and non-income-earners, who are stuck with the vanishing trickle of public services.

There is no reason to expect anything different according to standard economic theory. Why would a market society produce anything for those who have no commodities to offer in exchange, or are not permitted to exchange what they have to offer, or offer a sort of value that is not recognised as a legitimate commodity by the market? Critics of capitalism often focus on the exploitation of the worker, but, as Joan Robinson said, it is often worse under capitalism to not have your labour exploited – at least not in the labour market.

Jacobsen: Thank you once agin Dr. Douglas.

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2022-04-18

Interview with Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/10

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka (EMSL) is an organisation devoted to the representation of a minority within a minority – ex-Muslims. This is an educational interview with direct, frank answers on serious questions for a widely unacknowledged persecuted community: the ex-religious, and in this instance the ex-Muslim. I feel personal impetus to research, interview, and present these minority within a minority interviews. So here we are.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Within the ex-Muslim community, there are so many stories discussing the discrimination, prejudice, hate crimes, physical violence and attacks, and so on, against the ex-Muslim community, usually from the Muslim community at large. What is the state of irreligious freedom in Sri Lanka?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka is a non-Muslim country, and being irreligious (even though there are only a very few individuals) is not considered as a serious crime by the majority i.e. the Buddhists and the Hindus. Yet Muslims are concerned, of course, as it is considered the ultimate betrayal of and attack against the community and the religion. As far as our members are concerned, knowing these realities that happen everywhere, most of them have chosen to remain closeted. Very few of them have decided to openly discuss their non-belief with the family and friends. They have to face physical violence, discrimination and isolation, and these have taken a considerable psychological toll on them.To our surprise, while working towards forming the Ex Muslims of Sri Lanka, we found out that there is not even a single irreligious, atheist organisation for the Ex-Buddhists or Ex-Hindus existed in Sri Lanka, even though the two religions do not prosecute those who desert the faith, unlike Islam. So, we are the first of this kind to be formed as an organisation / group at the national level.

Jacobsen: Maryam Namazie is an articulate, passionate, and insightful voice of ex-Muslims in Britain. Has she been a beacon of hope and inspiration for the Ex-Muslims in Sri Lanka? Also, has she helped the Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka in any way?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: Yes indeed, she has been a considerable motivational strength as far as Sri Lankan ex-Muslims are concerned. When the founder of the EMSL decided to form the group, he contacted many ex-Muslims around the world and she was one of the very few who responded and provided guidance. We are very grateful for being accredited as one of the affiliated bodies of Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB). We were also invited to participate in the International Conference on Freedom of Conscience and Expression in the 21^st Century. But unfortunately we were compelled not to submit our visa applications in order to protect our identities from being exposed, considering the British visa applications are handled by a VFS office (third-party entity), not by the British High Commission.

Jacobsen: There is a foundational need for equality and universal rights, including the right to criticise religion, the right to atheism, the right to secularism, the right to freedom for women, to protection of children, and from intimidation tactics by religion. What success stories have there been in relation to each of these fronts for ex-Muslims in Sri Lanka?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: Since none of our members have declared themselves publicly as ex-Muslims (except the few exposed themselves to their intimate family and friends), we are not in a position to provide a definitive answer to this question. But we can recall an incident when a female Muslim writer named Shameela Seyyida was forced to flee the country in the face of violence after expressing her liberal views whilst being interviewed for BBC radio with regard to protecting the rights of the women who are involved in prostitution.

Here in Sri Lanka, Muslims marriages and divorces are governed by a special law that is in accordance with Sharia law, known as the Muslim Personal Marriage Act. The law allows Muslims to marry little girls, girls even lower than the age of 12. There are voices against the law and demanding to amend the law on par with present day civil societies, but the clergies-controlled local Islamic Authority, All Ceylon Jamiyathul Ulam, refuses to accept the necessary changes to the law – including defining a minimum marriage age for Muslims. Many of the educated Muslim women are unhappy with the law, but they are afraid to raise their voices in the fear of being labelled as either women with “loose characters” or “evil and wicked women” or even slut-shamed by local clerics.

Jacobsen: What have been notable murders of ex-Muslims in Sri Lanka for their renouncement of the faith? Does this happen as often with another religion’s faithful becoming faithless? Or does this happen mostly with Islam?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: Even though we have received a substantial amount of death threats online, So far we have been fortunate enough not to have encountered any lynchings, beheadings or torture so far. It is so disheartening to recall that one ex-Muslim from the state of Tamil Nadu, India, named Farook – a 32-year-old father of two – who was brutally murdered a few months back by pious, bearded Muslims for becoming an apostate. We have not heard anyone being punished or murdered in this century for leaving a religion other than the religion of Islam.

As far as we know, Islam is the only religion that commands to kill those who leave the religion. But it is widely witnessed that Muslim apologists (apologists often identified as moderate Muslims) try to twist the matter by bringing up some earlier Qur’anic versus to show the world that Islam has no compulsion. They do their best to bury the fact that Islam has barbaric law against those who leave the religion.

We have to understand something important from the history of Mohamed to understand the whole picture clearly. The apologists ask us not to take Qur’anic verses out of context, but it is they who cherry pick the peaceful verses to mislead people.

At the time, Mohamed claimed he was the prophet of God, he was 40. He spent the first 13 years in his hometown Mecca, gradually inviting people to follow him, but the vast majority rejected him. After 13 years of failure in his home town, he moved to another city named Medina, situated 450 km away from Mecca. In Medina he became a success as he gained more followers and unlimited power. He lived his next 10 years in Medina till his death at the age of 63.

His prophetic career can be divided into two parts. The first one is the 13 years he spent in Mecca with no power plus his first two years in Medina. The second part is his last 8 years in Medina as a powerful leader, ruler and warlord. The first part is 15 years, while the second part is 8 years – a total of 23 years.

During the first part of his prophetic career, he had lived a non-violent and generally peaceful life, and his preaching was primarily about tolerance, non-violence, and peace. He had lived only with two wives during this period. He married his second wife only after the demise of his first wife. He did not even have two wives at the same time during the first phase of his religious career.

The second part of his prophetic career spanned around 8 years until his death. Having gained all the necessary power in Medina, he started to exhibit his true colours during this period. He even had 10 wives at a time, until his death, including a few teenage girls and an underage child. He waged wars against non-Muslim and Jewish tribes. He carried out mass murders, genocides, lootings, sex-slavery, slavery-trading, and other violent and disgusting crimes.

Now let’s come back to the subject of killing apostates. During the first part of his prophetic career, he did not command any such punishments, but the second and the last part of the career he clearly gave orders to assassinate those who leave Islam. According to Islamic principles, when a new rule is introduced which contradicts an earlier one, the earlier one would be invalidated even if it remains in the Qur’an or Hadith. A good example of this principle is the Qur’anic verse about prohibiting alcohol consumption. The earlier Qur’anic versus ordered Muslims not to drink alcohol while praying, but later on the order was overruled by the complete prohibition of consuming alcohol. Both these orders are found in the Qur’an to date and they are recited by Muslims all over the globe, but it is the second rule that is accepted by Muslims.

So we understand that if there is an order or guidance that is contrary to the earlier one in Islam, the latest one would be the valid one. Muslim apologists have successfully misguided the world by using the preaching from Mohamed’s first part of the prophetic career to build up a fake image of Islam that finds expression in that old chestnut “Islam is the religion of peace”. In reality, of course, the religion is not a “religion of peace”.

Jacobsen: How can people be protected from being misguided by using only the preaching of the first phase of Mohamed’s Islamic life?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: People should be either educated or made aware of the two parts of Mohamed’s religious career, at least in brief. We are not certain that every Muslim understands this so seldom-discussed fact. We believe that if they really know this, the real peace-loving Muslims would have to make a strong decision about continuing to follow and view Islam as a “religion of peace”.

Jacobsen: What can improve the state of free speech for ex-Muslims in Sri Lanka? What can build the ties for those ex-Muslims in other countries?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: We feel within the Sri Lankan context, as well as the world in general, we need to promote questioning, challenging, opposing ideas and tolerate and respect opposing ideas. Moreover, we need to cultivate open-mindedness and critical thinking from a young age to accept self-criticism. According to a survey by the Daily Telegraph, as far as Sri Lanka is concerned, it is one of the top 5 countries in the world with a ratio of 99% of people who think that religion is very important. With this background, improving free speech in our society is an uphill task.

Jacobsen: What seems like the best argument for atheism and against Islam to you?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: To be frank, we do not promote atheism as an alternative to Islam. Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka is a platform for those who have left Islam under various circumstances and not following any other faiths. They can be atheists, agnostics or irreligious.

But with regards to Islam, we clearly think Qur’an is a not a divinely revealed book. Instead, we think it’s a man-made one. Likewise, we also think Mohamed is not a perfect role model for humanity. Our best argument against Islam is Mohamed and his life. If you understand the timeline of events about his life, you will see him as the person he really was.

Jacobsen: For those that renounce the faith outright, have family and friends disowned them? What were the most hurtful comments that you’ve heard? How do they cope?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: As we said earlier, many of our members remain closeted. Despite that their obvious irreligiousness itself has caused them emotional distress. The rest who are courageous enough to admit their faithlessness to their close family and friends are forced to endure depression, isolation, and at certain instances even physical abuse.

The common accusation is that we are conspiring against Islam and Muslims for monetary objectives with support of Zionists and the west. Furthermore, we have been labelled devilish and other not-so-favourable names.

Jacobsen: Are these typical responses to leaving Islam?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: Yes indeed, and you find this only among Muslims.

Jacobsen: Why is the reaction so seemingly disproportionate – against even a son, a brother, or a friend?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: Nearly all children born in Muslim families are indoctrinated with religious beliefs from a very tender age. Starting with evening religious schools (Madrasa), regular general preachings, Friday’s Jummah preachings, sponsored programs on state own media – including hours of preaching on national radio etc., all brainwash Muslims, especially children. They are taught to think, act and live in a particular way – approved by Islamic teachings. The local Islamic Authority, All Ceylon Jamiyathul Ulama, and foreign-funded (Specially Arabic countries and Turkey) Islamic movements, make this scenario even worse.

Jacobsen: What is the best way to combat far-Right ideologies such as ethnic nationalism and Islamism?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: Nowadays, here in Sri Lanka, we are experiencing politically motivated Buddhist extremism, but luckily most of the Buddhists did not rally behind such extremism. Providing a secular-based education would be the best way to encourage critical thinking and inquisitiveness. Moreover, teaching children to respect each other’s views and to promote secular humanitarian values would start a better tomorrow.

Jacobsen: What do the most technologically advanced and democratic, and developed, societies take for granted with respect to free-speech?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: In the majority of Western countries, free speech is more or less guaranteed by a constitution and they have learnt their lessons during the Enlightenment era. There was no such thing, even remotely, experienced by people in countries such as Sri Lanka. Though free speech is nominally mentioned in the Sri Lankan constitution in writing, religion, at the same time, has also been given prominent place. Therefore, religious beliefs overpower free speech.

Jacobsen: Waleed Al-Husseini of the Council of Ex-Muslims of France wrote on the conspiratorial perspective of some Muslims. That is, individuals leaving Islam can be seen as an agent of a Western or Jewish State. What seems like the source of this conspiracy view?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: Scott, once again, we have to go for an answer that is similar to the one of Waleed Al-Husseini. The Qur’an and the Hadiths are the main reason for this conspiracy standpoint. There are a lot of Qur’anic versus and Hadiths said by Mohamed during the latter part of his prophetic career that spread hatred towards Jews and Christians.

Muslims are made to believe that every failure they experience and every failure within the religion can be explained by pointing by Jews, Israel or Mossad. Most Muslims can’t even think that a Muslim can leave the religion by his or her own will.

We are often accused of working for Israel, but we are the only ones who understand the struggles in operating the EMSL. For the past three months, we are struggling a lot to find a place to have a meet-up for our members, but we are still unable to locate a place that is convenient and safe for us. Also, a general look at our official website will make anyone aware that it needs a lot of development and updates, but we are not even in a position to do the necessary developments. Muslims are made to think that people of Israel do nothing but sit and spend their whole time thinking of ways to conspire against Islam. Let’s be honest, we had the same mindset during our days as Muslims.

Jacobsen: How was the organisation formed? Why was it formed? What are its current educational initiatives and social activist works?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: It started as one man’s idea. Originally, it was meant to be a meet-up with his old friend who had also become an ex-Muslim a few years ago. Once they realised that both of them were in the same boat, they strongly felt the need to meet each other. But the plan took a different shape when the founder felt a responsibility to bring all other individuals who had left Islam under one umbrella. That was when EMSL was formed, in December 2016.

Following months of online and live discussions, social media campaigns were carried out to create the dream of forming Sri Lanka’s first irreligious organisation at a national level. The funniest situation was when some hardcore Islamists who were well-known by some of our members tried their level best to join us as spies by pretending to be ex-Muslims. We had to give them cold shoulders and ignore them completely.

We have many plans for online activities and we will do them when the time and resources permit us. Currently, we share other’s materials on our official Facebook page.

Jacobsen: There are a series of planned resolutions from the Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka (or, maybe, they have come out, but in any case). What is the state of them? What will be their content and purpose? What is the most important one? How will these improve the livelihoods of ex-Muslims in Sri Lanka, especially with the political activism pointed at the Government of Sri Lanka?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: With regard to the proposal, they are still at the draft stage. Our objective in bringing such a proposal is to ensure equal rights of irreligious people, atheists, secular humanists, freethinkers, and LGBTIQ communities, and also to enlighten the public with regards to the very existence of such people and communities in Sri Lanka.

The present system of segregating the schools on the basis of race and religion should be abolished. The mind of the children should not be poised with racist and religious fanaticism.

We think the above one is the most important resolution. If the minds of growing children are not poisoned with racist and religious ideologies or when the idea of either following or not following a religion is made as freedom of choice, children will view the world around them differently. That would improve everyone’s lives, including ex-Muslims – at least in the long run.

Jacobsen: What are the upcoming and ongoing initiatives for the Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka? You can be reached through the website, Facebook, and email.

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: We have made steps to prepare video testimonies of some of our members. We have also prepared a message to Sri Lankan Muslims. We hope that message would have reached the media by the time this interview is published.

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion based on the discussion today?

Ex-Muslims of Sri Lanka: We are grateful to Conatus News for giving us this great opportunity. Scott, we appreciate your time and efforts in making this interview a success. We hope that this interview would make awareness about Ex-Muslims among local Muslims.

Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to invite Sri Lankan ex-Muslims who have not yet joined us. We know there are a few players in Facebook & Twitter with their own identities as well as concealed identities. We are hopeful that they also join us.

Thank you very much.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time.

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2022-04-18

Interview with Annie Laurie Gaylor on Religion’s Battle on Women’s Rights

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/09

Annie Laurie Gaylor is the Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) with Dan Barker. She has been part of the fight against the encroachment of religion on secular culture, and human and women’s rights for decades. Here she talks with Scott Douglas Jacobsen about the FFRF and some personal history.

*This audio interview has been edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To begin, was there a family background in non-belief? Or if there was a background in religion, in family, how did you come to not believe in a formal faith?

Gaylor: I am a 3^rd generation freethinker on my mother’s side of the family. My brothers and I grew up without any religious indoctrination. We consider ourselves very lucky. My father was brought up in a religion but didn’t become too devoted. So my parents were of accord, and felt very strongly that it is almost child abuse to indoctrinate small children into scary concepts like original sin and everlasting torment, guilt, shame – before they can even understand abstractions.

In the same office building where my mother worked, the dentist said, “Oh, you have such well-behaved children. How do you account for that?” She suggested that you should not indoctrinate children. It shocked him quite a bit.

Jacobsen: But, growing up at a time when religion was taken for granted in the US, did you not have questions of your own?

Gaylor: Yes. When we would bring up religion to our parents, it was clear they did not believe, but they did not impose it on us. It would come up in the conversation naturally. We got the idea that religion was not for us, that it’s a bit ridiculous. But we knew that it was serious topic that we would one day be expected to make up our own minds about.

Jacobsen: Were you aware of the lack of status of women, in general, within religions at a young age?

Gaylor: Actually, I was, because my best friend was Catholic. My friend once complained that the only reason we had to go to school was because of this woman, and I realised much later she was referring to Eve. I knew vaguely who Adam and Eve were, and only realised belatedly that my friend was blaming school on Eve as if it were a sentence.

Women, or Eve, in her worldview were responsible for everything bad in the world. In that respect, that was a little wake-up call. I grew up free from all of the God stuff. I was, of course, surrounded by religion. As I grew a little older, I realised very quickly, in school, that we were the odd ones out for not having a religion.

Interestingly, there were two main reactions. One of them was envy. That was the most prevalent: “Oh! You don’t have to get up on Sunday to go to Sunday School at church.” It was a clear envy. The second reaction, “But how can you be an agnostic? Because you’re a good girl.” I was well-behaved. I didn’t get into trouble. So early on, I was encountering this ridiculous stereotype, which dogs non-believers still today: That you can’t be good without God, or that our morality must come from religion. So if you’re a moral person, it doesn’t equate that you could be a non-believer. I was the only agnostic girl in the class. There was one Jewish girl and one non-believer in a class of about 30 kids. So I was aware that I was in a great minority, but I never felt the least bit apologetic about it. I felt that this was a very natural way to be.

Jacobsen: This conviction continued with you throughout?

Gaylor: When I later studied women freethinkers in history, I was very struck by Ernestine L. Rose.The daughter of a Jewish rabbi in Poland, she was born behind a wall. She was a rebellious little girl by the age of 5 who didn’t take with religion and ended up coming over to the United States. She became the first woman to lobby for women’s property rights in New York State. In 1848, New York became the first state to enact property rights for married women. It had been introduced by a freethinking judge. Ernestine had come in by 1836 and went door-to-door trying to get women to support this legislation. It took 12 years. She was a famous feminist and an atheist. She was invited to speak, and very celebrated in infidel societies.

One her main speeches talked about how every child is born an atheist, and would remain so unless they are otherwise inculcated. I think she’s right. It doesn’t mean everybody’s born rational and necessarily able to critique religion based on reason, but, of course, dogma has to be inculcated in you, all of the religious concepts and stories. You are not born with those. So I feel like I was just given a head start.

Jacobsen: Of course, one of the most well-known female freethinkers in our history was Hypatia. There were severe consequences for her.

Gaylor: Yes. Of course, even later I think women freethinkers had to be very brave because we only see atheist and freethought in the 1500s, 1600s, and after the Enlightenment in the Western culture. They were still killing women as witches in the 1500s, 1600s, and into the 1700s. So these women were all aware of this terrible history of women being put to death as witches. In the face of this hostile climate, I think the fact that women caught up very quickly as leading exponents of freethought is very meritorious.

For eg., Mary Wollstonecraft from the 1790s, Ernestine L. Rose in the 1830s etc. In the 1820s, Frances Wright became the first woman to speak to mixed audiences of men and women going after the clergy. So women have been very leading advocates for free-thought. All these women were simply subject to all kinds of situations by the clergy. Ernestine gave one speech where 700 theology students mobbed the speech and turned off the gaslight. She was cute. She said, “There is one thing true in Bible. Let there be light.” Or something like that.

Jacobsen: That must have been quite a time to live through.

Gaylor: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was very active in the 1840s and was an agnostic, said, “The Bible was hurled at us from every side,” when they were talking about women’s rights. The feminist movement was largely initiated by women freethinkers, which makes sense because women were told that they had to be in silence and servitude. So it took heretics and infidels to be willing to brave the wrath of the clergy and to violate the strictures of the New Testament.

But I think the feminist movement owes an enormous debt to women freethinkers. I don’t think that’s as publicly known as it should be. That’s one of the reasons I put together this anthology: Women Without Superstition, the first anthology of women freethinkers. It was clearly a theme. It wasn’t what I necessarily started off with as a preconceived notion. But it came up over and over again.

The earliest women freethinkers and writers were also the earliest feminists.

Gaylor: My influence, besides my mother, was Bertrand Russell. Russell was the one that I had read. Even in the 1960s and 70s, when there was very little in the libraries about freethought, you could almost always find Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell. His popular writings from the 40s and 50s, almost single-handedly kept freethought alive in this country.

When everything else was being taken off the shelf, for eg., Ingersoll wasn’t there, but Russell’s writings remain very influential. So I would say that my personal hero, when I was growing up as a junior high school student, was Bertrand Russell. I didn’t really read Asimov that much. But I was pleased to meet him because was always an outspoken freethinker. His wife continues that tradition. I think he was more influential to someone like my husband Dan Barker. Dan. who was raised fundamentalist. would still read science fiction.

Jacobsen: Then you co-founded the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) with your mother.

Gaylor: Yes, we co-founded it in 1976.My mother and I started FFRF because we became aware of what it meant. She was the principal founder and was asked to go national with it in 1978. . I was in college when we founded FFRF. It was partly when Jerry Falwell was in ascendancy. We felt nobody was speaking out against his lies. His historic lies. What opened our eyes was my mother’s work for abortion rights. She wrote the first editorial in favour of legalising abortion in 1967, in Wisconsin.She was a statewide. well-known abortion proponent and I would accompany her to her interviews and speeches.

The capitol in Madison would be filled with nuns and priests and bussed-in school children. Every statement they made against contraception and abortion would start with “God”, for eg, “God says abortion is murder.” It was very obvious to us who the organised opposition to women’s reproductive rights was. My mother felt that the work done by women’s groups were great, but unless they were going to get at the root of the problem, which was religious sway over our civil law, that we would never make progress. So that was one of the main reasons we founded FFRF. It was our feminist experiences. Unfortunately, we are still fighting the same battle today.

Jacobsen: That’s right. Now, the current battleground on the issue of abortion and reproductive health rights is with the “Religious Right”. How do you think your mother would feel in the light of actions such as the “Global Gag” rule, which was enacted by the current Trump administration?

Gaylor: I think she would be completely vindicated! I mean, she would feel that we’ve sounded the alarm. She would feel how important it is to carry on. She felt that the enemy of women’s rights was religion. That unless we would actively confront that threat our rights were always going to be in jeopardy.She would feel even more strongly about how important it is that separation of church and state be honoured. Of course, she was dismayed that since Roe vs. Wade, we’ve been on the defensive almost from the beginning.

Here’s what she (Anne Nicol Gaylor) wrote:

In working for women’s rights I fought in a battle that would never end, because the root cause of the denial of those rights was religion and its control over government. Unless religion is kept in its place, all personal rights will be in jeopardy. This is the battle that needs to be fought. To be free from religion is an advantage for individuals; it is a necessity for government.

Something that she wrote in 1987, still very completely relevant and true.

Jacobsen: How do you feel about that?

Gaylor: It just proves how important this battle is. We’ve pointed out how important it is to keep religion out of government if we’re going to protect women’s rights. We knew we weren’t taking this victory for granted. We’ve lost a lot of ground. That we can never have freedom while we’ve got religion in government. Wherever you are, and whatever the religion is. I feel that FFRF is really, at base, working for the Enlightenment, or working to keep it going. It is a very important job. We’ve lost so much ground since the 50s. That’s the decade that I was born in. Ironically, I spent most of my life trying to undo much of the bad precedent that was passed by Congress in the 1950s.

Jacobsen: In the formation and evolution of the United States, what do you think has been most influential in rooting religion in this country?

Gaylor: This idea that we’re a Christian nation has really changed the perception in our country. In fact, we have a godless and secular constitution, but there have been many actions of Congress that have mis-educated the public, such as inserting “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. putting “In God We Trust” on the currency, then adopting it as a second national motto, when we had a perfectly good one, “E. Pluribus Unum,” which celebrates diversity – “Out of many, one.”

That was chosen by our Founders: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams. Thomas Jefferson chose that motto.

Jacobsen: But would you say there are other ways in which American history allows for religion to play an important role?

Gaylor: The National Day of Prayer, which directs the president to direct citizens to pray every year. It has created so much mischief. We sued over that. We had a victory, then it got turned around. We sued over the housing allowance law passed in the 1950s, which is the IRS advantage for clergy. The Internal Revenue Service gives churches the right to pay clergy with a housing allowance that they can deduct from their taxable income. They only good thing I can think out of the 50s is the Johnson Amendment. That’s what Trump keeps talking about overturning. It is codifying that tax exempt groups can’t engage in politicking. He had his executive order last week during the National Day of Prayer. We sued over it. Essentially, he said the IRS is not to enforce the anti-electioneering provisions against churches.

Of course, FFRF is a tax exempt group. So churches are being treated preferentially. So that gave us injury to sue. We sued over this before.

Jacobsen: When was the last time, in your opinion, that separation of church and state has been as much under threat as it is now?

Gaylor: The 50s were the Red Scare. After wars, it was a bad time for individual liberties. We haven’t really recovered from those inroads in the 50s, even though the population – the demographics – have changed a great deal. We’re talking about a quarter of the population that is non-religious. But the politicians and the courts haven’t caught up with the population. We’ had this ‘coup’ with the religious Right with the last election.

But they are not going to acknowledge the changing demographics. They are quite the opposite.

Jacobsen: What countries would you say we can look to as a model? What influences people’s departure from religion?

Gaylor: Iceland is ahead of the game in every way. Although, things can change quickly. The economic side, they really took a beating in 2008. They are very isolated. But they have been good at fighting off the evangelists who want to come and visit them. They used to be a very, very religious and austere place in the 50s, 60s, and in the 70s — the poverty level was part of that, but I think it’s an amazing country.

I guess, you can never completely count on things. The pendulum can swing quickly, but that’s also true in our favour. I think the election in 2018 could be quite pivotal in this country in stopping some of the assaults that are ongoing right now.

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion about our conversation today?

Gaylor: I would say that we’ve got our work cut out for us. I truly believe the motto that FFRF has: Freedom depends on freethinkers.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time today, Annie.

Gaylor: I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.

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2022-04-18

Interview with Houzan Mahmoud – Co-Founder, The Culture Project

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/04

Houzan Mahmoud is the Co-Founder of The Kurdish Culture Project or The Culture Project and the valued partner of Conatus News in the Conference on Defending Progressivism. She is a women’s rights activist, campaigner and defender, and a feminist. In this wide-ranging and exclusive interview, Mahmoud discusses the Kurds, Iraq, women’s rights, and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You are a women’s rights activist, feminist, and an anti-war activist. You were born in Iraqi Kurdistan. What were the moments of political awakening for you?

Houzan Mahmoud: One of the things I’ll never forget is the break-out of war between Iraq and Iran. I was only six-years-old at the time. Iraq’s bloody dictator Saddam Hussein coming to political power in 1979 changed our lives in Kurdistan and Iraq forever. Being Kurdish poses all sorts of problems as it is, and living under the fascist regime of Saddam made things incredibly hard for my family. Prior to Saddam coming to power, my brothers took up arms during late 70’s against Iraq’s regime, I was too little to remember the particulars. However, what I do know is that from 1973 to 1991 I grew up and lived under one of the most horrendous regimes in modern history.I am forty-four years old now, but I still live with the horrors I faced during my childhood and adolescence years living in Iraq. From the day I was born, all the way to this moment, all I have witnessed is war, a never ending war in Iraq. That’s why even my life in London is very much shaped and affected by the events that have and are still unfolding in Iraq and Kurdistan. I have many shared memories with my own people from the region, memories of struggle, loss of loved ones, horrors of genocide, and the pain of having to leave our homes again and again. I live like a nomad; even if I live in a home I always think to myself “I am not sure how long I will be living here – where next?”

Jacobsen: How did you come to align with the principles inherent in feminism and anti-war activism?

Mahmoud: I grew up in a war zone, a climate of long lasting and bloody wars, a constant exodus and displacement. I am strongly opposed to war because it only brings devastation and abject poverty. It destroys homes, it destroys entire lives. However, I wouldn’t say that I am a pacifist largely due to the environment in which I was born. As Kurds, we are always subjected to the horror of war, occupation, and repetitive cultural, linguistic and physical genocides. For example, I support the armed struggle of Rojava against the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS). In such cases, you can have one option: you either take up arms or be ruled by the monstrous forces of ISIS.

As for my feminist principles, there were various reasons that are personal, social and political. Of course, when you grew up in a socially-conservative society, a place in which every move you make somehow amounts to either shame or honour, if you adopt progressive views there is considerable backlash, you become a ‘rebel’. The mentality that women are ‘inferior’ and men are superior is somehow imbued within almost every aspects of daily life – politics, art and literature. The language we speak carries a great deal of words that reinforce women’s subordination. I must admit that from a very early age, I was aware of my own position in my society, I felt trapped, powerless and lonely. I felt stranded on a small planet that was destroyed by war. Making the smallest demand for women’s rights felt like a crime. Everything was about war, killing, survival and political-struggle against the enemy. There was little room for feminist ideas. Even when I joined a leftist political party, hoping that it provide the equality I sought after, I felt it was a man’s club. I left it and started reading feminist books intensively, as well as the history of feminism and the different schools of thoughts. I found within feminism a home, a place in which an ideology truly spoke for women. So, yes, going through a painful life journey full of loss and being a woman was and still is not easy. That’s why feminism is vital to me, to my thinking, activism and worldview.

Jacobsen: What are the more immediate concerns for women’s rights relevant to the Iraqi Kurdish community?

Mahmoud: There are many issues to fight against, such as so-called ‘honour killings’, female genital mutilation (FGM), forced and arranged marriages, and other forms of violence – like many other societies in the world. Kurdish women are fighting against all of these issues, and they’re fighting outside invaders too – such as ISIS. So the problems are not limited, but are changing and are varied in addition to the political instability that, as we know, forays into the lives of women and their rights.

Jacobsen: You co-founded Culture Project, which is a platform for “Kurdish writers, feminists, artists, and activists.” What inspired it – its theme and title?

Mahmoud: I am one of the founders of Culture Project and have supported it, as well as having worked with various organisations and campaigns that highlight and assuage violence against women. One thing that was missing was a holistic approach to the important need of raising awareness about gender and feminism and challenging cultural productions that are patriarchal and male dominated. So I discussed the idea with a couple of friends and supporters about creating such a platform, a platform that supported those people who have non-conformist views, as well as challenging regressive/conservative norms and values which are “traditional”. This platform is open for all regardless of sex and gender. We would love to bring forward new faces, young writers and others in order to create a debate and produce new knowledge that challenges the old schools of thought. As for the name, I thought that if we give it a name that gave our organisation the appearance it is female-only, it will just limit our scope of work. We decided to call it Culture Project in order to be inclusive of all people: activists, writers, philosophers, feminists, novelists, poets, etc.

Jacobsen: What have been some of its more popular articles – title and contents?

Mahmoud: We have various writers on both our Kurdish and English websites – websites proving to be very popular. Of course, on the Kurdish website we have far more writers, poets, feminist writers, philosophical essays, art and cultural reviews, etc., as well as short stories. On our English website we have a very well-informed new generation of young Kurds who are active politically and are critical of the status-quo in Kurdistan. They challenge existing gender relations. You can find some very interesting poems, short stories, artistic-writing, and essays. One of the important pillars of our project is that we have gender and feminist awareness at its core. We promote and motivate our writers to be gender sensitive and champion feminist positions. When we were in Kurdistan in May, we hosted a debate on Feminism and Art, which was very well attended and created a very interesting debate.

Jacobsen: As a secular feminist have there been threats to your life, or others involved with the project?

Mahmoud: There have been several threats directed at me when we launched our Anti Sharia Campaign in Kurdistan and Iraq back in 2005. Even now when I write and criticise Islamism and advocate for feminist ideals I get hate mail, threats and expletive diatribes on Social media. Also, one of our writers who openly writes against Islamism received letters containing death threats. The fact is that those of us who are non-compromising and are open in our criticism of Islam and Islamism our lives are automatically in danger. We are not safe in either the Middle East nor in the UK.

Jacobsen: What are the unique concerns of women and girls in war, in contrast to boys and men?

Mahmoud: One of the major features of all wars is the use of rape as a weapon. Most of the times women in war situations end up becoming victims to rape, trafficking, sexual slavery and dealing with the consequences of the devastation that war brings to their societies. For example, women who become widows in socially conservative societies who have very little welfare are living in dire conditions. Conversely, men and boys, who are fighting, face death, injuries and other war traumas. However, in some cases men who are caught as prisoners of war are sexually assaulted as an act of humiliation in order to breakdown their ‘manhood’. The case of the Yezidi genocide committed by ISIS symbolises this horror. Women were taken as spoils of war; they could be raped, sold and turned into slaves. Men who did not convert were killed.

Jacobsen: Looking into the past a bit, you were one of the speakers for the March, 2003 London, United Kingdom anti-war rally. What was the content of, and the reaction to, the speech?

Mahmoud: I used to take part in anti-war demonstrations against US-lead wars in Afghanistan. Later on, when the US and its allies decided to attack Iraq in 2003, I became more involved and active in the anti-war efforts in UK and elsewhere. I asserted my opposition to the war on Iraq, despite the fact of being Kurdish and someone who has suffered immensely under Saddam’s regime. I still didn’t think that any foreign intervention was going to improve our lives. I also emphasised that this war will only bring more terrorism because it will strengthen political Islam, i.e. Islamism. Some people on the political Left liked my opposition to the war but disliked my opposition to political Islam, as they view them as an “anti-imperialist” resistance. To me, however, this is absurd – how can a terrorist force that kills, beheads, and oppresses women have anything to do with resisting imperialism?

There is no doubt that we all wanted an end to Saddam’s totalitarian regime, but I was opposed to foreign invasion. In this region we don’t have a good experience with foreign interventions and colonialism throughout history. Imperialist powers invade, destroy and support or install puppet regimes to serve their interest only. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan – since the invasion we are faced with much more terrorism, instability, poverty, displacement and mass migration of people. There is a humanitarian disaster and an endless tragedy of war and bloodshed.

Jacobsen: You have also featured on major news outlets such as The Guardian, The Independent, BBC, CNN, NBC, and Sky News. You have campaigned strongly against Sharia law in addition to the oppression of women in Iraq and Kurdistan. Does this campaigning against Sharia law extend into the international domain?

Mahmoud: Yes, because political Islamist groups are now everywhere seeking to impose Islamist ideals on people and restricting freedom of speech and expression. Even in UK we have problem with religious schooling, Mosques that advocate for Jihad, and hate speech. We have Sharia councils that violate women’s rights. I am part of the One Law for All coalition that seeks to expose these violations and influence government policy makers. The struggle for women’s rights, secularism and universal values is an international struggle. I always felt I was part of this worldwide struggle even if we are confined to local issues, but we fight with a universal vision for rights, gender equality, secularism and an egalitarian alternative to patriarchal capitalist system.

Jacobsen: What religious/irreligious and ethnic worldview makes the most sense with respect to the proper interpretation of the world to you?

Mahmoud: I am not interested in any religions that seek to convince me of another world. I live here in the now, that is what it matters to me. I take a stand against injustice, class division and the gender apartheid that is currently taking place. We need to replace the horrendous climate that has been created by capitalism and corporate profit-making by creating a heaven on this earth, one in which we are all treated equally, fairly and with justice for all. I have no time for tales of heaven and hell in another world. There is no evidence of such realms. However, I have experienced very similar places here in this earth. After having lived in war zones and having had fought for survival, being in London is to me like heaven. I felt human again. I can enjoy the freedoms I am entitled to as a woman. I owe it to the struggle of generations of powerful feminist movements in this country.

Jacobsen: Does this comprehensive activism – women’s rights, Kurdish culture, feminism, anti-war, and, I assume, others – come from the religious/irreligious worldview at all?

Mahmoud: To me, they come from an irreligious worldview. This is because religions limit our imaginations and they limited our freedom of thought. Religion restricts human creativity, it restricts our freedom of ideas. It subjects people to an outmoded dictates – be they from the bible, the Quran, or any other holy book. The notion of sin, guilt, shame and honour create a gender divide and it imposes a hetero-normative narrative that is shamefully discriminating. As a woman, I felt I was half human when I was religious. I felt everything I do was loaded with guilt, and that I am somehow inferior to men. When I started to question and dislike all the restrictions I realised that religion is not for me and that it is a man made and merely in the service of men. The more I read into world-religion, the more I realised it is extremely patriarchal and oppressive towards women.

Jacobsen: How can people become involved with the Culture Project, or in the advocacy and promotion of Kurdish culture?

Mahmoud: Well, we really need help and support from talented people, people who have editing skills, who can review and analyse art work, who can write reports, proposals, and we need people who have design skills. Any support through volunteering would be deeply cherished.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Houzan.

Mahmoud: You most welcome, it is my pleasure.c

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2022-04-18

An Interview on Humanism and Superstition in Lagos

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/02

James-Adeyinka Shorungbe is the Director of the Humanist Assembly of Lagos, Nigeria. It is a secular congregation in Nigeria. Here he talks with Scott Douglas Jacobsen about the Humanist Assembly of Lagos, the impediments to both critical thinking and humanism in Nigeria, pervasive superstition, the general perception of those attending the Humanist Assembly of Lagos, and more.

*This audio interview has been edited for clarity, concision, and readability.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, you are the director of the Humanist Assembly of Lagos. What are some tasks and responsibilities that come along with that position?

James-Adeyinka Shorungbe: Essentially, organising the affairs of the organisation, charting annual programs to promote critical thinking in Lagos (Nigeria), maintaining relationships with other organisations such as IHEU, IHEYO, NHM. HAL is also a founding member body of the humanist movement in Nigeria so I was actively involved in that regard.

Jacobsen: What are some of the impediments to the education and advocacy for both critical thinking and humanism within Nigeria?

Shorungbe: First, Nigeria is a society highly entrenched in superstition. So that is a major, impediment, to promoting critical thinking. In order to address that, education and awareness has to be done. While the government is trying to improve the literacy level from its current level of just under 60%, a number topics that promote critical thinking are not being taught in schools.

Evolution is not being taught in schools. Anthropology is not taught in schools. History is not taught, and so on. So there’s education but low application of critical thinking to challenge the norm. Creationism is the only story taught in schools. So this creates an entire mindset of citizens who are highly superstitious. You also have the movie industry churning out a lot of superstition which the citizens all buy into and believe literacy as factual.

As a major impediment, superstition is a big, big problem. To address this, not enough of our message is getting out there. To be honest, I don’t think we’re doing enough to get our message out there in terms of awareness and enlightenment. We have barely scratched the surface in terms of addressing superstition in Nigeria.

Jacobsen: With a large portion of the population having a superstitious mindset, what is their general perception of the Humanist Assembly in Lagos?

Shorungbe: The few people who we have interacted with, they generally do not understand humanism or humanists. Their perception is anything that doesn’t recognise any divine being is straight evil, paganism, evildoers, etc. People we’ve had interactions with, often ask shocking questions like, “So you mean you don’t believe in God?”

When you try to get across the message that human problems and human situations can be solved by humans and are best solved by human efforts, we always get push backs, “No, no, no, you need to have divine intervention.” It is something strange to them, to the society — very strange.

Jacobsen: If you were to take a survey of public attitudes and beliefs, how many humanists can one expect to find in Nigeria, or even Lagos specifically?

Shorungbe: Because Nigeria is a very conservative society and a lot of people do not openly identify as humanists, atheists, and freethinkers, agnostics, etc. it is a bit difficult to count. Many official forms and data gathering applications usually only have the two main faiths as beliefs. However, when you go to online forums, when you go on social media, there are quite a lot of Nigerians who express themselves as nonbelievers.

There was research conducted by the Pew organisation. It stated that as many as 2–3% of Nigerians are humanists, freethinkers, and nonreligious. In a population of 180 million, 2–3% would come to 3 to 5 million Nigerians, but many are not outspoken. But in terms of the outspoken ones, we have very few humanists who are openly affiliated with humanism and agnosticism online and offline.

Jacobsen: Do you think that having an umbrella organisation will play an important part in solving issues like teaching correct scientific theories in the biological sciences and evolutionary theory in schools?

Shorungbe: Yes, definitely, it is. With an umbrella body, you have a louder voice. You have more clout. That is one of the reasons why in Nigeria a number of associations are all coming under the umbrella of the national body, ‘Nigerian Humanist Movement.’ Aside from the online community of The Nigerian Atheists and a couple of chat groups, we are still fragmented in Nigeria.

The Humanist Assembly of Lagos is one of 2 organisations that is formally registered and trying to break barriers and putting the voice out there for other humanists to appreciate that they are not alone. That you can be different. That you can be good without any divine belief. The importance of having an umbrella body is very critical. Now, with an umbrella body, we can have representation to push through the Nigerian National Assembly, through government bodies, etc. We can better organise ourselves to ensure the adoption of more scientific methods in schools — for example, becoming advocates for the teaching of evolutionary theory in school curricula.

Jacobsen: What are some future initiatives of the Humanist Assembly of Lagos? How can people get in contact to help or donate to the organisation?

Shorungbe: For the future, we will be looking to organise events that can showcase and promote humanism as well as critical thinking. Events such as film screenings, lectures, debates etc. We are also toying with the idea of a radio show to enlighten the general public and kick-start discussions within the public sphere. A radio where speakers would come on and talk about everyday human issues and how these can be addressed without thinking they are caused by divine or superstitious means.

Just to enlighten the public of the various challenges one has in life and how they can be addressed by practical action, which do not require divine intervention.

Essentially promoting humanism, freethinking, atheism, agnosticism on a national level.

To get in touch with us, you can contact us via email: humanistassemblylagos@yahoo.com. We also have a page on Facebook, Humanist Assembly of Lagos, and Twitter under @humanistalagos.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Adeyinka.

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2022-04-18

Interview – Rev. Dr. Paul Knupp, Jr on Humanist Activism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/20

Rev. Dr. Paul Knupp, Jr. is the Co-Founder & President of the Humanist Society of Iowa. He is a Chaplain for the American Humanist Association and trained in theology and psychological dynamics. Here we discuss some of his work and background and thinking. The interview was conducted by Scott Jacobsen of Conatus News

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is there a family involvement that led you to becoming a member of humanist groups in general, and more involved in humanistic judaism? When did this become a philosophical life stance, for you?

Rev. Knupp: No prior family involvement. It became a more ethical and practical stance for me six years ago, when I became a Chaplain for the American Humanist Association.

Jacobsen: You acquired professional training at Drake University, Princeton Seminary, Roberts Wesleyan College, and the University of Iowa. What was the purpose and content of this training?

Rev. Knupp: My training was in ministry, educational psychology, education, and psychology of religion. But this training later greatly helped with humanist work. Theological and psychological dynamics are inherent in all Humanism work.

Jacobsen: What is the general treatment and perspective of humanists in America? For example, some countries’ populations don’t care because they’re integrated in their acceptance of them. Others express open vitriol and prejudice. Others simply don’t know what those terms mean, so don’t know who those fellow citizens in their respective general populations.

Rev. Knupp: All of the reactions you cite here, we have experienced. However, since Gallup polls religious “nones” now at 25% of the population, our acceptance grows daily.

Jacobsen: You are the co-founder and president of the Humanist Society of Iowa. What tasks and responsibilities come with this station? What inspired its founding? Who was the other founder?

Rev. Knupp: A Humanist chapter must have five AHA members sign to form a local body. I garnered this support and we submitted it to headquarters in DC. We formed a set of bylaws and submitted to the state. We originally formed a chapter at the Iowa State Penitentiary. I thought it too ironic to not have our own local chapter, so I helped institute one. I wanted to call it the Lyle Simpson Humanist Chapter, after the 12th AHA president and one of our members, but he would not hear of it.

Jacobsen: What are the demographics of the society? Who is the most likely demographic to be a humanist?

Rev. Knupp: Our ages run from twenties to eighties. We are equally mixed between sexes. We have numerous LGBTQ members. We have some members of colour. We have many atheists and freethinkers.

Jacobsen: How does the Humanist Society of Iowa, if at all, advocate and promote humanism in the public sphere?

Rev. Knupp: We participate in public events, e.g., The Women’s March, The Gay Parade, the March for Science, Darwin Day, the National Day of Reason; we advocate legislatively for our ideals and concerns.

Jacobsen: As a chapter of the American Humanist Association, an affiliate of the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers, of the First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, and a member of the Central Iowa Coalition of Reason, what benefits come with the memberships?

Rev. Knupp: We increase our numbers for direct social action, as well as our knowledge and information base.

Jacobsen: How do these assist in the coordination of local, states and national efforts for societal and cultural acceptance of humanism, knowledge of humanism, and inculcation of humanist values?

Rev. Knupp: We share national days of protest and direct action, as well as accurate information of national concerns.

Jacobsen: Can you tell us a bit more about your work with prisoners and detainees? How do you feel called to service in this way?

Rev. Knupp: I have written for The Humanist on humanists “behind bars.” The Humanist Society of Iowa is in regular correspondence with the Humanist Community of the Iowa State Penitentiary. I am a monthly external chaplain and sponsor there as well as an attendee with the Humanists at Fort Dodge Correctional Facility. WSome of the most marginalised in our society are those behind bars. They wrote to Mr. Lyle Simpson, and asked to start an AHA chapter. Mr. Simpson sent me to assist them. We formed a chapter at the state penitentiary almost six years ago. One of the members transferred to Ft. Dodge and asked for a chapter there. Mr. Tom Harvey, AHA Celebrant, has assisted me in this work. In terms of priority, those marginalised deserve foremost my time and efforts.

Jacobsen: What are some of the more touching stories for you? How can humanists become involved with the prison population?

Rev. Knupp: The men, offenders, report that Humanism has aided their lives immensely. Every person in the age range of 30+ at the state penitentiary exemplifies a life better lived due to Humanism. The same is true for the Ft. Dodge offenders who are in their twenties. In all cases, the men report a happier and more fruitful existence due to Humanism.

Jacobsen: What are the valuable lessons in life that gathered from this experience and public service?

Rev. Knupp: Never count anyone out, no matter what horrendous deed that has been committed. We all have an embedded potential waiting for self-actualisation. We are born good, for good.

Jacobsen: What have been some of the main campaigns, initiatives of the Humanist Society of Iowa?

Rev. Knupp: Our new president, Gwen Harvey, initiated a training of lobbying for legislative action. She keeps our eyes on important legislative events and rallies our input.

Jacobsen: Who are some of the most unexpected allies for the advancement of humanists in the US?

Rev. Knupp: My own church, in which I was originally ordained, the United Church of Christ, is a surprise supporter.

Jacobsen: In general, what are the perennial threats to the practice of humanism in the US?

Rev. Knupp: Religious dogmatism is a perennial threat. In the US case, right wing fundamental versions of christianity, and evangelical christianity are perhaps most important to be wary of. Other prominent members of the AHA have spoken more about this.

Jacobsen: How can people get involved with the Humanist Society of Iowa, even donate to it?

Rev. Knupp: Go to our Meetup page.

Jacobsen: Any closing thoughts or feelings based on the discussion today?

Rev. Knupp: Thank you and it will take us all to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Paul.

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2022-04-18

Interview – Emily Newman on the Benefits of Ethical Culture

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/19

Emily Newman is the Communications Coordinator at the American Ethical Union and a member of the Americas Working Group for IHEYO. A staunch humanist and deeply involved in ethical societies, Scott Jacobsen sat down to discuss her story and some of her views. This interview was previously published in Humanist Voices

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Your whole family is steeped in ethical humanism, and ethical societies. Where did your family first come into contact with ethical humanism?

Newman: My parents were married at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture by an Ethical Culture Leader (our form of clergy) and became active members after having children. My father had been raised Jewish and my mother had been raised Catholic but both identified more as humanists/non-theists and had heard of Ethical Culture. They wanted their children to be part of a caring, multi-generational community in the neighborhood. My brother and I both graduated from the Sunday school and became teacher assistants as teens. It was reassuring as a kid to learn about the other Societies and the national organization, American Ethical Union, to know that I was not alone.

Jacobsen: Ethical Culture started with Felix Adler. When was your first encounter with his ideas? What definition really stood out for you?

Newman: I learned about Felix Adler, the founder of Ethical Culture, and his colleagues as well as various freethinkers and social justice advocates. We use Ethical Culture and Ethical Humanism interchangeably so I’m not specifically aware of how “Ethical Humanism” began. I define Ethical Humanism as a philosophy that uses reason and ethics to shape our relationships with each other and the world.

Jacobsen: What does IHEYO mean to you, since you’re on the Americas Working Group, together with other youth activists?

Newman: IHEYO is a way to expand my knowledge of humanism and its impact on the world. As individuals we are always developing and as local communities we are always sharing, now we can learn and do more by connecting with each other internationally. I worry that we too often stay in our bubbles because they are safe and familiar, but by participating with IHEYO we become aware of the many ways in which humanists are similar and different across the globe and how we can inspire each other.

How does ethical humanism better deal with the profound moments of life — birth, rites of passage, death — than other ethical and philosophical worldviews?

Newman: From my experience, Ethical Humanist ceremonies are more personal than religious ceremonies. There aren’t traditional passages or rituals you must follow. The event is developed by the teenager, couple, or family to best represent what is needed and wanted for the people celebrating. That makes each celebration unique and special. We add our talents, we add our quirks, and we add our creativity to make it about that moment with those people.

Jacobsen: Who seems most drawn to ethical humanism? What are the main demographics?

Newman: We draw people who strive for equality and human rights. Politically we have mostly liberals and progressives. I think ethical humanism is attractive to all ages, ethnicities, genders, races, abilities, and people from various socio-economic strata but that is not always reflected in our organisations’ membership due to restraints on transportation, time, and money.

Jacobsen: Who/what remain the main threats to the free practice and advocacy of ethical humanism to you?

Newman: I think we need more strong humanist leaders, spokespeople, advocates to broadcast the message and organise the communities. If we don’t join together to strengthen our voice we will be drowned out by the voices of others who disagree with us, misrepresent us, or push their own agendas. I’m proud to work with The Humanist Institute to train such advocates and promote the humanist life stance.

Jacobsen: What are your hopes for ethical humanism within your lifetime?

Newman: I hope that Ethical Humanism becomes more widely accepted and promoted across the world. I’d love to not have to explain humanism to people because it is being taught and discussed openly in schools, government, communities, etc.

Thank you for your time, Emily.

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2022-04-18

Interview with Anton van Dyck , Secretary General of IHEYO

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/17

Anton Van Dyck is the Secretary General and Interim Treasure of the IHEYO, the youth wing of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and a non-profit umbrella with dozens of member organisations and serves as the connecting link between Humanist organisations with young members around the world. They help young humanists (age 18-35) become and stay connected through our programs and annual events. The interview was conducted by Scott Jacobsen.

*This interview has been edited for clarity and readability.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Tell us about your background in humanism or ethical societies.

Dyck: I think it all went quite naturally since both of my parents are non-religious and verbal in their political views. In Belgian education, we have a special subject. If you want to take religious studies like Catholicism and Protestantism, you can. But we also have a course specifically for freethinkers. As soon as you’re in elementary, you can take it. My dad was an educator who took such classes and so I was vaguely aware of the movement.

When I was abroad on an exchange programme in South Africa, I became aware that being an atheist — which not all humanists are, but most of them are — was not a common thing in many places. It was at that time that I started wondering about ethics, society and life stances. Once back in Belgium I decided, that I wanted to start studying and becoming politically active without picking a colour.” A buddy of mine who was the leader of the Green party for the youth section told me to check out a group called Free Inquiry. “They’re a bit of a special organization”, he said. One Monday night, I stopped by, went into a meeting, and never left. Now, five years down the line, I’m very active.

Jacobsen: In terms of defining humanism, bigger organisations such as the American Humanist Association come out with their own definitions, and documents such as the Humanist Manifesto. Within that paradigm, humanists will obviously define it a little differently. How do you define humanism or freethought yourself?

Dyck: I had a pretty interesting conversation about that with the founder of the Church of Bacon. You might have heard of him, John Whiteside. We agreed the declarations for humanism weren’t very accessible because they are very precise and can be overly complex. After a brief discussion we decided to describe it in the following way – generally, as not being too much of a selfish individual, but reserving the right to be somewhat self-interested when it’s necessary.

At the same time we must be aware of what we’re doing and saying, which refers to the first part of that definition. We’re currently facing a huge problem on both sides of that spectrum. On the one hand we have those that are mocked as social justice warriors that fight for “intellectual safe spaces” and on the other hand we have a bunch of trolls who push buttons to push buttons. Since ideas that aren’t allowed to be challenged downright scare me, I’d consider myself more on the side of the provocateurs. Unfortunately, the interaction between both sides today is often without any positive result and could even be considered intellectually impoverishing. Tolerance is both an active and a passive process. So in order for that debate to be fruitful, we need to find the balance between not being offended by everything and treating each other with a modicum of respect. And by “a modicum of respect” I mean phrasing, not censoring ourselves.

Jacobsen: That’s a very valuable point you make – about respect. I’m thinking of comedy, for instance. Good comedy wouldn’t work without it. A good comedian knows exactly where the line is, crosses it deliberately, makes the audience laugh, and has them happy they crossed the line with them. But regulating comedy is not a solution either.

Dyck: A State without comedians or where comedians have to be regulated is not a democratic state in any way. According to Montesquieu you have the three state powers. Do you know this? The power to create law, the power to execute law and the power to enforce law. So you have judges, government, and parliament. But then, especially in modern western society, you have other very important powers such as the media, which plays an important role in a participating democracy. You also have the critics and the cynics. They all play the role of independent opposition, which you need, to transcend partisan politics. Those last two however, are wild card. The independent checks and balances that keep the other three in check are absent when it comes to critics and cynics, who have an amplified voice now. They act more like independent judges today – however their function is more akin to administrative law, in that they are supposed to be checking on good governance by holding politicians accountable to the principles of a transparent democracy.

Jacobsen: With respect to IHEYO, what is your position? What are your tasks and responsibilities?

Dyck: Right now, I am the Secretary-General. I do a bit of the administration and the executing work. When our president Marieke who has also been interviewed on this forum, says, “I think it would be good to go in this direction,” I have to think of how it would be best to go about it. I think that’s the best way of putting it. I also do some of the secretarial work like write up the minutes, do some follow-up, and general tasks of running the organisation.

Jacobsen: And your educational and professional aspirations lie in the direction of..?

Dyck: I am finishing law school. In Belgium we have a general forming bachelor, which is 3 years, then you have 2 years for specialisation. I chose economic law, which is something very, very different from what might have been expected given my involvement in humanism. But for me, I have a strong fascination for how people unify themselves within organisations. You see the same thing in corporate law.

Big companies have legal entities. They structure themselves so they become effective organisations and that’s something I want to apply in my pro bono work and hopefully, professional career. I’ll see what comes my way. But it is definitely my intention to continue what I am currently doing on a voluntary basis but more professionally.

Jacobsen: What are ways for people to become involved in or with IHEYO?

Dyck: Well, we have our own publication on Medium, where we offer people a forum to put their ideas out there and to motivate them. That does come under the condition that they will get responses of people who have different opinions. By contributing to that, they are contributing to an international community of humanism, which we aspire to be. IHEYO has decided to focus more on providing the platforms for multi- and bi-lateral cooperation between all of the member organisations of IHEYO and IHEU.

We only have a few mandates, but there’s plenty of ways people can join and contribute. First, by looking up your local organisation, and seeing what they’re all about. Maybe, if they don’t have any activities in international humanism, they can start them up, contact us about it, and we’ll help them partner up with other organisations and do projects to size. There are lots of possibilities. They can also join our working groups. We have one per region in the world (Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe) plus a communications group.

Jacobsen: Recommended books? Or, if not books, authors?

Dyck: I have a nice collection of books but my favourites are:

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. The movie is very good as well.

In addition to those two, there are other notable ones. Then there’s Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. This one formed my views while in South Africa because the perspectives of Mandela are simply invaluable. Another one is by Jonny Steinberg called The Number: One Man’s Search for Identity in the Cape Underworld and Prison Gangs – which talks about a very strange tradition in crime culture, and how gangs have their own strange form of religion, culture, and language. It has elements of the mafia, tribalism, the military and is a really fascinating insight into how group identities work in our society as well.

Jacobsen: What is the strongest argument you have ever come across for atheism or humanism?

Dyck: The strongest argument for humanism would be that the existence of god is irrelevant for the question on what we should do when we’re alive. We should care for each other and try to be good people because it’s the right and rational thing to do, not because we need to save up “goodness-points” so we can go to heaven.

If you want to be truly humanist, it doesn’t matter what comes after life. It matters what you do here and do now.

Thank you for your time, Anton.

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2022-04-18

Interview – Professor Tim Whitmarsh, Professor of Greek Culture on Atheism in History

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/13

Professor Tim Whitmarsh is the A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge, Professor of Ancient Literatures at the University of Oxford, and an honorary fellow at the University of Exeter. He is a leading classicist. He has been the A.G. Leventis Professor since October 2014. His research focuses on the Greek life under the Roman Empire, as well as atheists in the ancient world. Here Scott Jacobsen sits down to discuss atheism and its history.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I want to distinguish between two streams of thinking. First, the common historical conceptions of atheism. Second, the deep history of atheism outside of “common” narrative. When is atheism assumed to have started?

Professor Tim Whitmarsh: These are the crucial questions to begin with. I think if you ask most people, they would say atheism is a product of the modern West. It has its roots in the European Enlightenment, in the rise of science and the Industrial Revolution, and in the formation of modern secular democracies like the United States. There is much truth to this picture of course: atheism as we understand it today is a modern phenomenon. But it’s that qualification ‘as we understand it today’ that is critical. Why should we understand atheism only from a modern perspective? The words atheos (‘atheist’) and atheotēs (‘atheism’) are over 2000 years old. The job of someone like myself, a classicist, is to try to change the angle of vision, and to jolt people out of their assumptions that their own categories of analysis are the only ones possible.

Jacobsen: What are some of the earliest historical records of atheism in the ancient world? And how does this change the conversation from the common perspective?

Whitmarsh: The word atheos is first used in the sense of ‘one who doesn’t believe in the gods’ in a text of Plato from the early fourth century BCE. It was in a speech supposedly given by Socrates at his unsuccessful defence against charges of introducing new gods and corrupting the young. The context suggests it was routinely used in Classical Athens to describe a fashionable philosophical movement. We know for sure that there were people in this era who argued that religion is a human construct designed by legislators to control societies; or that the idea of gods was rooted in a primitive misunderstanding of the natural elements; or that the existence of widespread injustice in our world proves that there can be no divinities. Whether these people called themselves atheoi (literally ‘the godless’ ones) or whether it was a slur on them by others, we don’t know – perhaps a mixture of the two, just as labels like ‘queer’ are now used in both ways. Anyhow, over time, these ideas inspired many among the Greek people to come up with many different forms of arguments against the gods, some earnest, some playful. I argue in the book that the idea of atheism – of a coherent set of non-theistic beliefs that define a cogent worldview – first appeared in the second century BCE, when philosophers were taking stock of their predecessors’ views and trying to organise them more systematically. There was a strong librarian’s mentality during this era (the Library of Alexandria is only the most famous example of a widespread phenomenon): and thinkers tended to generate new ideas in part by putting together pre-existing ideas into new packages. You asked how this changes the conversation: well, it shows for a start that you don’t need the modern West to have an idea of atheism. And more importantly, for me at least, it challenges the presumption that human beings are by default religious, and have been throughout history until the modern West. There’s a peculiar vanity – at once self-serving and self-hating – to this idea that the modern West is fundamentally different in kind to everything that is not it. I am fully with the French philosopher Bruno Latour on this: ‘we have never been modern.’

Jacobsen: By how long does atheism predate Abrahamic faiths such as Christianity and Islam?

Whitmarsh: There are two ways to answer this question. First, I can give you a literal answer, in terms of the story I tell in this book. The story of ancient Greek atheism begins in the fifth century BCE, although its roots lie earlier, in the sixth century, when new structures of scientific and philosophical thought were challenging the established mythologically-based views of the world. So, broadly speaking, Greek atheism emerges around the time of monotheistic Judaism (although some would date that earlier), half a millennium before Paul and his colleagues were establishing the first churches, and just over a millennium before Gabriel revealed his prophecy to Mohammed. But let me stress my second point, which is crucial. The story I tell in the book is just one possible history of ancient atheism, an important one for sure, given that the word ‘atheist’ is Greek in origin, and Enlightenment thinkers like Hume and Voltaire were steeped in the Classics. But it is only one possible history. If you take seriously the idea with which we started, that shifting the angle of vision opens up new ways of looking at the world, then you have to acknowledge that there are other versions of the history of atheism, which remain to be mapped out systematically. An Indian school of philosophical materialism known as Carvaka flourished, and indeed, early Hindu and Buddhist thought was largely free of deity. The same has been said of Confucianism. And indeed, the more you start looking, the more new possibilities open up. The crucial point is, I think, that we should not assume that humans are by default ‘religious’ (whatever we mean by that – but that is a different question). There are different personality types in every culture. It’s particularly important to stress this, since many will want to spin this story as a Eurocentric one, about how those clever old proto-European Greeks got there before the Enlightenment. That is a complete misreading: there was nothing ‘European’ in antiquity about the Greeks, who in fact had their most enriching cultural dialogues with Egypt and the lands we now call Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Iran.

Jacobsen: How was atheism, in essence, wiped out of history after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire?

Whitmarsh: It’s a more complex story than that. In fact, some of the evidence I use for pre-Christian atheism comes from Christian sources. At one level, the earliest Christians embraced the atheists warmly, because they assumed that their arguments applied only to pagan deities. ‘Look!’ they said ‘Even the Greeks themselves didn’t believe in their gods!’ It never occurred to these Christians that there might be more troubling implications in these atheistic ideas for their own faith (or at least if it did, the thought was swiftly repressed). Another aspect to bear in mind is that Christianity was not a monolith. It was fundamentally reshaped as it was adopted by the Greco-Roman elites, and took on a lot of philosophical ideas. All of the big arguments in the fourth and fifth centuries about the nature of Christ – how could he be both divine and human, and in what proportion, and so on – came out of a dialogue with what was a fundamentally materialist strain in Greek thought. So in a sense (a very, very extended sense) a form of atheism survived Christianity. Christology was a kind of schizophrenic debate between absolute faith and a philosophical realism that could never be fully adapted to the idea of a god made human. But I am not arguing that the Church fathers were crypto-atheists! You are right, fundamentally, that the Christianisation of the Roman Empire (and the concurrent Romanisation of Christianity) changed everything. You see it in the late-antique law codes, which show an unprecedented desire to impose Christian belief on everyone. And not just Christian belief, but the right kind of belief. The imperial law-makers reserved their harshest strictures for Christian heretics. Atheistic views can still be glimpsed in the penumbra, as I have said, all societies have their sceptics, but it became much harder to express them in public. In fact, the word atheos was cooped for a different meaning in this period: to mean one who didn’t believe in the Christian god, irrespective of whether they believed in other gods.

Jacobsen: What was life like for Greek people living under the Romans during the time of the Roman Empire?

Whitmarsh: Mixed. By and large, the Empire raised living standards massively, and ensured peace in the heartlands. How much the economic benefits of Empire actually changed life for peasants and slaves is open to question, but many would say that these people were now in drier, warmer houses, using imported goods of higher quality and so forth. For the elite, Romanisation gave new opportunities for travel and cultural enrichment. The Romans weren’t always perceived by the Greeks as an occupying power, in the same way that the British were in India or the Russians in Afghanistan. Identities were not exclusive in antiquity, nor were they racialised. It was perfectly possible to be Roman and Greek simultaneously: there was no contradiction at all, since they referred to two different aspects (they were respectively legal and cultural identities). Over time, Roman citizenship was extended, until in the early third century it was offered to all free male inhabitants of the Empire. And remember, most people operated in local contexts, in city-states, which still functioned in the same way as before, with Greek people taking decisions and publishing their decrees on Greek inscriptions. But of course it wasn’t rosy, far from it. The Romans were unforgiving when it came to insurrection and insubordination, and their response was often arbitrary and brutal. There are stories of Roman soldiers beating up male peasants; and no doubt, it was worse for the women. And the Roman policy-makers could be particularly harsh towards ethnic groups they viewed as trouble-makers, like Jews, particularly after the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 CE, which the Flavians spun as a triumph over a monstrous foe. It was Jews who resisted Rome the most fiercely, both on paper and militarily. And remember – since you were asking about Greeks – that many Jews were also Greeks, and (again) that did not have to be a contradiction. Some, like the apostle Paul, were Roman, Greek, and Jewish, all at once. Aside from the Jews, others tended to be more acquiescent, although you can find plenty of resistance to aspects of Roman rule, to the idea of one-man rule, to the cult of the emperor, and so forth. Christianity absorbed a lot of that Jewish sense of being fundamentally opposed to the Roman state, but there was also a powerful, contradictory, belief that their faith was entirely compatible (‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s’ – all of that). Again, remember that the vast majority of Christians, for the first two hundred years, were also Greek. So it is a tangled, complex picture, which would take a long time to paint properly; what I have given you is just a snapshot.

Jacobsen: You have classified some work as atheistic, or straight atheism, including those found in Xenophanes of Colophon, or Carneades. Was the term “atheism,” and its associated ideas and relationships, seen as good or bad, positive or negative, in the ancient world?

Whitmarsh: Actually, I wouldn’t classify either of those two as a straight atheist. Xenophanes claimed that the Homeric gods are nonsense, so he was powerfully opposed to traditional ideas of divinity. But he did say there was a single god, who was a cosmic principle. Why he belongs in the story is because he redefined divinity: he said that a ‘god’ is not an anthropomorphic deity, nor a being that humans can interact with, but a single and coherent explanation for all of the diverse features of observable nature. It was that intellectual shift that created the space for a kind of naturalism, i.e. a belief that there is nothing in our world but material nature (what the Greek call physis), which has regular principles that can be explained rationally – which is, I think, a fundamentally atheistic principle. Few ancient thinkers actually went so far as to argue that nature is all there is, but some did. And it would be good to be able to quiz people like Xenophanes directly on the question of what kind of god he was positing, and whether ‘nature’ would do just as well as a substitute. We just don’t know, and modern philosophical terms like ‘naturalist’ or (even worse) ‘deist,’ are in any case misleading. But certainly one of Xenophanes’ intellectual successors, Anaxagoras, was prosecuted in Athens for ‘not believing in the gods’ and for having materialist views of the celestial bodies. So … sorry for another complex answer, but it’s important to be precise in these matters! Carneades, meanwhile, was a Sceptic philosopher: he believed that you cannot make dogmatic assertions about anything in the world. So him and his successor Clitomachus, head of the Platonic Academy, went about inventing and compiling arguments both for and against the existence of gods. What is particularly interesting is that the arguments against the existence of gods were then separated off and circulated independently, and used by groups who defined themselves by their non-belief.

Jacobsen:What was one of the more powerful arguments compiled by Carneades?

Whitmarsh: Clitomachus was the compiler, if we’re thinking about written texts; Carneades didn’t write anything himself. But yes, we can think of them as a kind of double-act. My favourite argument is one that proves that gods cannot be associated with morality. Human morals imply a choice between at least two alternatives, and usually to be ‘moral’ implies that you take decisions that are right but which cost you. So if you are faced by a terrifying enemy in battle, it is easier to run but harder and better to stay and fight. That is an example of the moral quality of bravery. Similarly, defending the poor against the depredations of the rich and powerful – an instance of ‘justice’ – involves personal effort and risk. Yet gods, as perfect beings, are never faced by such decisions. Gods would never feel fear in battle, since there is no chance of them losing. They would never even contemplate making an unjust decision on the part of the rich, since it costs them nothing to weigh decisively on the right side. So we should accept that morality exists only in the human sphere, and reject any claim that associates it with divinity. Not only does this attack an important component of conventional theistic argumentation (‘how can you have morality if you do away with religion?’), but it is also an insightful comment on the nature of morality: being moral is not just about avoiding wrongdoing, it’s also about putting yourself on the line.

Jacobsen: What about ‘pre-history’? Should we reasonably extrapolate into the past the existence of atheists in times with little or no recording found to date?

Whitmarsh: Good question! We are in the realms of complete speculation here, but it is fun, and even sometimes useful to speculate. Let’s zoom out a little, and try to reconstruct the history of religion as a whole. None of what I am about to say is ‘true’ in the sense of being provable, and I am far from being an expert in prehistoric religions. So please run with this, and take it in the spirit in which it is intended. The evidence for something that we might call religious worship begins to appear around the time of the end of the last ice age, around 11,500 years ago. That is when we begin to see signs that survival into some kind of afterlife is on the cards, and that humans may be able to broker some kind of deal with higher powers. But what that ‘religion’ – if that’s the right word – was like in practice is very hard to know, as is what was going on in people’s heads, because all we have are material remains. So of course, it is impossible to say whether it was universally accepted as obviously true, or whether it was sometimes resisted. I personally believe, as I have said, that humans are diverse, and that some form of scepticism is probably found in all cultures: that animates our questing inventiveness. There is certainly plenty of anthropological evidence from modern pre-industrial cultures for people who dispute the efficaciousness of deities and their human ambassadors. But for prehistory, who knows? Something closer to what we understand today as religion – an organised, reflective, ritual system, with clerical hierarchies, based around places deemed holy and certain times of the year, honouring gods who exist in comfort independently of humanity – seems to come with settled habitation, and particularly with urbanisation. In particular, you now begin to get the strong sense that the community who inhabit a particular place is protected by a special deity that has a special care for that people and that city. That process began, very roughly, 6,000 or so years ago: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) has the best evidence in the region covered by West Asia, Europe and north Africa. I would see Greek antiquity as a late manifestation of that process, by and large. Greek gods are not so very different from their older cousins in the near east: the Olympians are primarily gods who care for human cities. But with urbanisation comes imperialism too, real or desired: this is when one city or locale becomes or wants to become dominant over others, and so you get a sense of hierarchy or even transcendence in the divine sphere too. One deity is better than the others, or superior in kind. That military-political hierarchy may or may not map onto familial hierarchies: sometimes you get a top imperial god who is also a patriarchal father-god or a matriarchal reproductive deity, but sometimes not. Somewhere in this competitive world emerge both the idea of a ‘top god’ (or even ‘the one true god’), the awareness that gods come and go, and that divine power is not necessarily cosmic. I would speculate that atheism in the stronger form – the conviction that deities are human social constructs (as opposed to the weaker form of scepticism in the effectiveness of ritual) – emerges, historically speaking, out of a kind of relativism, when cities protected by local deities began to interact and compete. But as I stressed at the start, this is a very schematic map: the reality was much messier and more complex! Once again … Schematic maps are useful for navigation, but the world always looks very different at ground level. And let me stress again that the pattern will look very different elsewhere in the world.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time today, Professor Whitmarsh.

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2022-04-18

Q&A on the Philosophy of Economics with Dr. Alexander Douglas – Session 3

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/06

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is there a lack of consistency in the terminologies used by economists?

Dr. Alexander Douglas: There’s a question about whether economists use terms consistently. But there’s another pressing issue, which is the gap between the language academic economists use and the language of public discourse.

I wonder if the retreat of economics into higher- and higher-level mathematics has done damage to democracy. Although there was a near-consensus among macro-economists in Britain that first austerity and then Brexit were bad policies, the government received popular support for both. The problem was that the macro-economists could say what they believed, but they couldn’t really explain why they believed it. The official argument rested on some of the most complex mathematics in the world, and there was no convincing ‘entry-level’ version.

Effectively, macro-economists have to ask the public to trust their expertise, even though we can’t see into their black boxes. It was easy for the media to portray the economic experts as elites with hidden agendas and vested interests. Normally the way to fend off that sort of ad hominem argument is to say, “Never mind me or my motives, just look at my argument”. But you can’t do that when the simplest compelling version of your argument consists of hundreds of differential equations.

I think this is a major problem. There is no bridge between the concepts of academic economics and the concepts we use to think about our day-to-day lives. Politics happens in the domain of the everyday concepts.

Jacobsen: What do you think of neuroeconomics?

Douglas: Neuroeconomics is very interesting and something I know little about. Philosophically, it raises more ‘conceptual bridge’ puzzles, this time between the scientific study of brain-events causing behaviour and the ordinary explanations we give for human actions. Some philosophers call this “folk psychology”. There are a range of opinions on this. The most extreme , “eliminative materialism”, suggests that our ordinary explanations, e.g. “Jane crossed the road because she prefers to walk in the sun”, are simply wrong and will one day be entirely replaced by explanations at the physiological/neurological level: Jane’s body moved in such-and-such a way because such-and-such events occurred in her brain. Standard choice theory in economics is, in my view, a regimented version of “folk psychology”. So one interesting question is whether the end game for neuro – economics is to entirely replace standard economics or whether it can somehow be fitted into the existing paradigm.

Jacobsen: What is the healthy perspective – the accurate view – on human economic decisions? What drives us?

Douglas: I’m not convinced that the individual economic agent is the right starting point. You can start instead at the sub-personal level, as the eliminative materialists propose. You can also start with institutions, which have their own ways of behaving that sometimes seem independent of the agents composing them. J.K. Galbraith’s entertaining book, The New Industrial State, is full of plausible-sounding claims about how committees, boards, and so on have their own strange ways of making decisions, which differ from the ways that individual people make decisions. His book on the 1929 stock market crash contains equally plausible descriptions of crowd behaviour, which can be very unlike the behaviour of individuals on their own.

Academic economists are beginning to study institutions in more formal and rigorous ways. The ‘New Institutionalists’ build models to explain why (rational) individuals might submit to the authority of an institution in order to avoid the transaction costs that accompany free exchange in the market. Economists like Herbert Gintis use models from evolutionary biology and game theory to model social norms and other emergent properties of social systems (properties that can’t be explained in terms of facts about the individual agents).

I’m sometimes tempted towards a much more radical view. There is philosophical literature that emerged from the work of the later Wittgenstein, concerning the nature of rule-following behaviour. One central claim is that rules can’t exist for an individual on her own; they can only exist for a whole community. Another is that the relation between a rule and the behaviour it governs can’t be captured by any causal relation – it is not the case, for instance, that knowledge of a rule causes behaviour in accordance with that rule. Rather, the relation is more akin to a logical connection: the rule and the behaviour stand in a similar relation to that of the premise and conclusion in an argument. I believe that preferences are effectively rules: a preference for A over B is a rule: choose A over B. This theory of preferences-as-rules, combined with the Wittgensteinian ideas about rules, suggests to me that both methodological individualism and the search for causal explanations of choice-guided behaviour might be mistakes. If so, much of modern economics would rest upon a mistake.

Jacobsen: Can you imagine a future with ubiquitous artificial intelligence where mathematical models and algorithms could accurately predict all human behaviour?

Douglas: To the extent that the physical world is determinate then there should in principle be a system of equations that could accurately predict all human behaviour. Of course, the physical world might not be determinate. And even if it is, the finding of the relevant equations might be beyond not only our cognitive capacities but those of any cognitive system capable of existing.

Moreover, there is no reason to expect that any workable model will look anything like the choice theory used by economists. The perfect explanation of human behaviour might make no reference to choices at all; again, it might just track the motion of particles around the human brain and body, or it might track patterns at the institutional level. We don’t know what sorts of causes the perfect model would quantify over. Thus you don’t have to believe that there’s a perfect mathematical model of individual choice, even if you think there’s guaranteed to be a perfect causal model that explains and predicts all observable human behaviour.

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2022-04-18

Q&A on Ex-Muslims with Waleed Al-Husseini – Session 1

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/05

Waleed Al-Husseini founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of France. He escaped from the Palestinian Authority to Jordan and then to France, after torture and imprisonment in Palestine. He is an ex-Muslim and an atheist. In this educational series, we talk about the situation of ex-Muslims in France.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To begin with, what inspired you to start the foundation for ex-muslims in France in the first place?

Waleed Al-Husseini: You know, if I want to speak about the inspiration, it will be from the things I have been through. I mean my story, what we explained in the last interview, because it makes me feel that there are a lot of us, and that we need to be united. We need to be united in our voice to speak about us and our problems, to make others feel not alone, and also to demonstrate to Europe and the United States that there are people who leave Islam.

All of these things were reasons and inspiration. Then the work of Maryam Namazie, who is the founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims in Britain. We chose the date of chevalier de la barre, the young French nobleman who got killed for blasphemy here in France during the Dark Ages, to show that we are all chevalier de la barre, but from a Muslim background instead of Christian. These are the things that inspired me.

Jacobsen: What are the main social, political, and educational, initiatives of the organization?

Al-Husseini: We are a group of atheists and non-believers who have faced threats and restrictions in our personal lives. Many of us have been arrested for blasphemy.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of France has the following aims:

We call for universal rights and full equality and oppose tolerance of inhuman beliefs, discrimination and ill-treatment in the name of respecting religion and culture.
Freedom to criticise religion. Prohibition of restrictions on unconditional freedom of criticism and expression using so-called religious ‘sanctities’.
Freedom of religion and atheism.
Separation of religion from the state and the educational and legal system.
Prohibition of religious customs, rules, ceremonies or activities that are incompatible with or infringe people’s rights and freedoms.
Abolition of all restrictive and repressive cultural and religious customs which hinder and contradict woman’s independence, free will and equality. Prohibition of segregation of sexes.
Prohibition of interference by any authority, family members or relatives, or official authorities in the private lives of women and men and their personal, emotional and sexual relationships and sexuality.
Protection of children from manipulation and abuse by religion and religious institutions.
Prohibition of any kind of financial, material or moral support by the state or state institutions to religion and religious activities and institutions.
Prohibition of all forms of religious intimidation and threats.

Jacobsen: More to the central discussion, for ex-Muslims – whether atheist, agnostic, another religion, secular humanist, and so on – in France, what is the general day-to-day situation for them?

Al-Husseini: They are in danger not only from governments, but more from the people. Many of us get killed simply because of the usage of some liberal words – for example – look at what happened in Pakistan a few weeks ago or what happened to the bloggers in Bangladesh last year. Or in Saudi Arabia and Mauritania for example, where people have gone to the streets asking the government to kill the apostates. So those in our situation know that we will get killed. Even here in France I am in the same situation. I’m in danger.

Jacobsen: If any, what percentage of ex-Muslims would you say undergo severe discrimination in France? And if so, what are the forms of the discrimination?

Al-Husseini: Here in France, many avoid saying anything because they will be attacked at their work, or perhaps fired if the owner of the company is Muslim. Many of them will not say anything because they are living in areas with many Muslims, who will attack them. Some of us can’t even give talks at universities, as you must have seen with what happened to Maryam Namazie last year. When they use the term “Islamophobia,” which hasn’t as a label before by the way, it is just used to shut us up. This word is used to protect Muslims. It is what I call the modern fatwa.

Jacobsen: What is the one of the biggest misconceptions that French Muslims have about French ex-Muslims?

Al-Husseini: It is the same everywhere, they think that ex-Muslims are Zionists, or that they are working with them to destroy Islam. It’s always the same. They never think that it’s a free choice.

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2022-04-18

Q&A on Philosophy with Dr Stephen Law – Session 2

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/02

Dr. Stephen Law is Reader in Philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London. He is also the editor of THINK: Philosophy for Everyone, a journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy (published by Cambridge University Press). Stephen has published numerous books on philosophy, including The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking (on which an Oxford University online course has since been based) and The Philosophy Files (aimed at children 12+). Stephen is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts. He was previously a Junior Research Fellow at The Queen’s College, Oxford, and holds B.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees in Philosophy from the University of Oxford. He has a blog at www.stephenlaw.org. Stephen Law was Provost of CFI UK from July 2008-January 2017 taking on overall responsibility for the organisation, and particular responsibility for putting on talks and other educational events and programmes.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In Q&A on Philosophy with Dr. Stephen Law – Session 1, we talked about the desperate move in debates called ‘Going Nuclear;’ faith schools in the United Kingdom (UK); and early education in critical thinking. These bring another question to mind: how should religion be taught in the UK?

Dr. Stephen Law: I think it is important for young people to be taught about religion. Religion has hugely shaped, and continues to shape, our world.

What I am opposed to is what I call (in my book The War For Children’s Minds) the ‘Authoritarian’ teaching of religion – in which young people are supposed to accept, more or less uncritically, what they are told about religion by some supposed authority – whether that authority be a priest, a rabbi, an imam, or their local atheist communist-party official. Authoritarian religious schools are such a part of our traditional cultural landscape that they benefit from the anaesthetic of familiarity. We think they’re harmless, perhaps even socially necessary.

In order to see just how pernicious many really are, consider this analogy. Suppose authoritarian political schools started opening up around the country. A conservative school opens in Swindon, and is followed by a communist school in Slough for instance. In these schools, portraits of political leaders beam serenely down from classroom walls. Each day begins with the collective singing of a political anthem. Pupils are expected to defer, more or less unquestioningly, to their school’s political authority and its revered political texts. Rarely are children exposed to alternative political view points, except, perhaps, in a caricatured form, so they can be sweepingly dismissed.

What would be the public’s reaction to such schools? Outrage. These schools would be accused of stunting children – of forcing their minds into politically pre-approved moulds.

My question is: if such authoritarian political schools are utterly beyond the pale, why are so many of us prepared to tolerate their religious equivalents? The answer, I suspect, is inertia. Authoritarian political schools would be a shocking new development. But there have always been authoritarian religious schools, thus familiarity, and perhaps a sense of inevitability, has blunted the sense of outrage we might otherwise feel. I think it is time we got that sense of outrage back.

Jacobsen: How can we move things in that direction in the UK educational system?

Law: It seems to me that all schools should meet certain minimum standards when it comes to religious teaching – (i) every child should be encouraged to think for themselves and make up their own minds about what religion to accept, if any. It is very important that they are reminded that they are entirely free to accept or reject atheism, Roman Catholicism, Islam, etc., (ii) every child should be exposed to a range of views about religion, including atheism and humanism, preferably explained by those who actually hold them. Unfortunately, many schools, including many state-funded schools, fail to meet these standards. Children are told not to befriend those of other faiths. Children are told that they have no choice – that they are followers of Islam, or Judaism, or Roman Catholicism, and will pray, and engage in devotional activities, and recite creeds, like it or not.

Children are often also given little exposure to say, atheist, humanist, or other religious points of view, except perhaps in a rather caricatured form. As a result, we have a situation in which, for example, roughly a third of young British Muslims leave school believing that the appropriate penalty for any Muslim that leaves the faith is death. We have young British folk leaving our education system having never heard such views questioned or challenged, thinking that they have no choice but to accept a particular religious faith.

Jacobsen: Currently, ‘philosophy’ as a term seems to have expanded, and now includes the natural sciences. Natural scientists, whether knowingly or not, are teaching natural philosophy. So while philosophy is still relevant, but this branch (natural philosophy) is currently enjoying most of the success and recognition. What’s your view on the contemporary importance of philosophy?

Law: Well, the term ‘philosophy’ now tends to be reserved for a sort of armchair intellectual activity – not the sort of thing that empirical scientists engage in (they perform observations, engage in experiments, etc.; while philosophers can work while sitting in a comfy chair with their eyes closed).

I think a lot of people are suspicious of philosophy, and even consider it a grand waste of time, because they think: ‘Well, if we want knowledge of how things really are – of the reality as it really is – then we need to engage in the observation of reality. We need to apply scientific methods, pull out our microscopes and telescopes, and so on. We are not going to get far just sitting in a comfy chair and relying on pure reason and philosophical intuition alone. Indeed, aren’t our philosophical intuitions about what reality must be like (about the nature of space, or matter, say) notoriously unreliable?’

Now, I actually have a lot of sympathy with that criticism of philosophy. I think philosophy is actually pretty useless when it comes to uncovering the fundamental characters of reality. But that’s not to say that philosophy is without value. I still think philosophy is immensely valuable actually. For what philosophy can do is, for example:

(i) reveal that our theories about reality cannot be true because they involve or generate logical contradictions. So, for example, if someone claims to have discovered a four-sided triangle in the rainforests of Brazil, mathematicians won’t bother mounting an expensive expedition to find out if that’s true. They can know, from the comfort of their armchairs, that no such triangle exists out there. Not all contradictions are quite as obvious as that – sometimes we need to engage in some pretty deep thinking to excavate them. That is a job for armchair philosophy, not empirical science.

(ii) reveal that, say, our fundamental moral commitments have consequences we had not recognised. For example, we may discover, through armchair reflection, that our moral commitments require that we treat women, or other races, or other species, very differently from the way they’ve traditionally been treated. By means of armchair philosophical reflection, great moral progress can, and has, been made.

(iii) solve conceptual puzzles. Many traditional philosophical puzzles, such as the mind/body problem, appear to be essentially conceptual in nature. For example, it seems that mind must be material in order for it to have any physical effects; yet, on the other hand, it seems to many that there’s some sort of conceptual obstacle to identifying mind and brain, or mental states, or events with neurophysical states or events. Whether there really is such a conceptual obstacle will require, not empirical science, but armchair conceptual methods to figure out.

Philosophy may be useless at revealing how reality fundamentally works, and I believe that the traditional metaphysical role associated with philosophy should actually be left to the natural sciences, but philosophy, nevertheless, remains hugely important.

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2022-04-18

Interview with Professor Phil Zuckerman – Sociology and Secular Studies, Pitzer College

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/01

Phil Zuckerman is a Professor of Sociology and Secular Studies at Pitzer College. He wrote a number of books including, most recently, The Nonreligious: Understanding Secular People and Societies. Here we discuss secular studies from the personal, and expert, perspective of Professor Zuckerman.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I appreciate you giving us your time today. Your specialty is in secularism. Was secularism always a topic of interest for you? Were people in your family a major influence? Or was this simply the natural trajectory of a curious mind reasoning things out?

Professor Phil Zuckerman: I am a third generation atheist. All four of my grandparents were non-believers. My father’s folks were very poor Jews who grew up in the ghettos of Warsaw, Poland. As teenagers, they took to socialism as the best route to make the world a better place; they saw religion as hindering human progress and keeping the poor duped and pacified. My mother’s parents were upper-middle class Jews from Bohemia who found literature, art, theatre, cinema, music, and hiking much more satisfying to the soul than religion. So my Dad was a clear-cut atheist and my mom was more of an agnostic or apatheist (just didn’t care or think much about god, either way). My folks weren’t anti-religious, per se. In fact, we were fairly involved with our local Jewish community when I was growing up – but much more in an ethnic/cultural sense: celebrating holidays, eating certain foods, socializing with people from a similar background, etc. Our involvement with the Jewish community was never about God or prayer or anything supernatural. It was about heritage, history, etc. I grew up in a coastal suburb of Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s and religion just wasn’t a big thing. Most of my friends and neighbours were irreligious. No kids in my neighbourhood went to church. I never saw any family pray around the dinner table. But then, when I was 15, I had my first serious girlfriend. She was the daughter of an Evangelical preacher. She believed in Jesus. I was totally flabbergasted by her and her family’s beliefs. They seemed utterly insane. Yet, she and her family weren’t insane; they were kind and thoughtful people. But they believed in crazy shit. I became obsessed with understanding religious faith: how can rational people believe the utterly absurd? I’m still trying to figure this out. Sure, I’ve gained a lot of good insight throughout the course of my studying of religion, but as for really intelligent, well-educated people who are strong believers — I remain truly baffled. And in that state of confusion, I’ve turned to research on and writings about atheism, agnosticism, humanism, and secularism because they all help me articulate my own worldview which is critical of religious faith and supportive of reason, empiricism, scepticism, human rights, women’s rights, true morality, etc.

Jacobsen: How did this interest in secular studies grow into a life long specialization?

Zuckerman: First, it dawned on me about ten or fifteen years ago that no one was studying secular people or secular cultures, specifically. The social sciences are all about studying humans: what they do, what they believe, how they behave, how they act, etc. And while the social sciences have been studying religion since their inceptions, lived secularity has gone almost completely un-studied. How secular people live, think, celebrate, love, raise kids, deal with death, vote, sleep, eat, etc., etc. has been virtually ignored. And yet secular people constitute a significant chunk of humanity. Irreligion, anti-religion, atheism, agnosticism, humanism, indifference, etc. – these orientations and identifications are growing, and they capture the world-views and life-ways of hundreds of millions of people. We need to study them and understand them. Second, when I was teaching classes on religion, such as The Sociology of Religion, I was often deconstructing religion. Taking a critical/sceptical approach. One day, a student said that she had wanted to learn about religion in the world, and not just about debunking religion. She felt like my religion class was falsely titled. And she was right. So I decided to re-tool that class, and make it truly about religion in society (without too much debunking), and then I created a whole new class called “Scepticism, Secularism, and Irreligion.” In that class, I just looked at religion critically, head-on, and examined various sceptical approaches to religion, from the ancient Greeks and ancient Indians up through Freud and Russell and into the New Atheists. The course was hugely popular. Clearly, students were craving courses that debunked religion. From there, other new courses were created, such as courses on secularism as a political force in various nations around the world, courses on the Secularism and Morality, just to name a few.

Jacobsen: From a historical perspective, what are the origins of secularism? Who was its first adherent or proponent?

Zuckerman: That’s nearly impossible to say for sure. After all, what does one mean by “secularism”? As I see it, “secularism” can and does mean numerous things. For example, we can talk of political secularism, which is basically about the separation of church and state and government abeyance or neutrality concerning matters of religion. The most notable modern articulations of this would be found in the First Amendment of the US Constitution for instance, or article 20 of the 1947 Constitution of Japan.

But there is also what we could call philosophical or sceptical secularism, which is about critiquing religion, debunking religious claims, and attempting to disabuse people of their religious beliefs. Evidence for this form of secularism goes way, way back: there was the Carvaka/Lokoyata, who lived in India during the 7^th century B.C.E, were a group of materialist thinkers who rejected the supernaturalism of ancient Hindu religion and were vociferous in their mockery of religious authorities. They were essentially atheists who saw no evidence for the existence of god or karma or any afterlife whatsoever. There was the Jewish philosopher known as Kohelet of ancient Israel (3^rd century BCE), the presumed author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, who suggested that all life is ultimately meaningless and that there is no life after death. Emergent agnosticism, anti-religiosity, and an all-around debunking orientation are also very well-represented among the ancient Greeks and Romans of the classical age (Lucretius, Epicurus, Democritus, etc). These individuals criticized the claims of religion and articulated a very secular and this-worldly ethos. From within the Islamic world, there was Muhammad Al-Warraq (9^th century C.E.), who doubted the existence of Allah and was skeptical of religious prophets; there is also the freethinking, anti-religious assertions of Muhammad al-Razi (10^th century C.E.), and Omar Khayyam (11^th century C.E.).

Finally, there is what we might call socio-cultural secularism, which entails the weakening or diminishing of religion in society, in day-to-day life. We’re talking things like more stores being open on Sundays, time spent on the internet replacing Bible study, television shows or Broadway musicals making fun of religion with little backlash, etc. At root, socio-cultural secularism is both a socio-historical and demographic phenomenon whereby a growing number people start caring less and less about religion. It involves greater numbers of people in a given society living their lives in a decidedly secular manner, utterly oblivious or indifferent to supernatural things like God, sin, salvation, heaven, hell, etc., baldly disinterested in religious rituals and activities, and less inclined to include or consider religion as a significant or even marginal component of their identity.

Your question is huge – where do these various forms of secularism originate? – and I simply don’t have the time (or expertise!) to delve into it at length. I’d suggest starting with Jennifer Michael Hecht’s Doubt: A History. Or perhaps Calum Brown’s The Death of Christian Britain.

Jacobsen: How do societies get worse and better with more secularism rather than less?

Zuckerman: First off, it depends if that secularism is forced or not. By “forced” I mean, in the 20^th century, we’ve seen quite a few secular dictatorships take over a country and force/impose their dogmatic version of secularism on a captive population. These have often been violent, repressive regimes that tried their hardest to suppress religion by jailing and torturing religious leaders, killing religious people, bulldozing churches and mosques, etc. Communist Albania was one such nightmare – the corrupt and insane atheist dictatorship there even made it illegal to name your baby a Biblical name! So I would say that societies get worse when secularism is being forced by a dictatorship with no respect for personal freedom, freedom of conscience, or basic human rights. But, on the other extreme, when secularism is organic – that is – it emerges freely, in democratic societies, things tend to get better. Of course, this is just a correlation. But we know that the most highly secularized societies tend to be among the best in the world, at least according to standard sociological measures. The best countries in which to be a mother, the most peaceful countries, those countries with the lowest murder rates – their populations generally tend to be quite secular. And this correlation holds true for nearly every measure of societal well-being imaginable, such as levels of corruption in business and government, sexually transmitted disease rates, teen pregnancy rates, quality of hospital care, environmental degradation, access to clean drinking water, etc. We can even look at various studies which measure subjective happiness; year after year, nations like Denmark, Norway, and Sweden – the least religious countries in the western world — report the highest levels of happiness among their populations, while countries like Benin, Togo, and Burundi – among the most religious nations on earth – are the least happy.

One scholar who has researched this matter extensively is Gregory S. Paul. He created the “Successful Societies Scale”, in which he tries to objectively measure a whole array of variables that are indicative of societal goodness and well-being. When he measures such factors as life satisfaction, incarceration rates, alcohol consumption rates, inequality, employment rates, etc., and correlates them with religiosity/secularity, his findings are unambiguously clear: aside from the important but exceedingly outlying exception of suicide — religious societies have significantly lower suicide rates than more secular societies — on just about every other single measure of societal-goodness, the least religious nations fare markedly better than the more religious nations. But again, it is a correlation only. And it very well may go the other way: it may be that as societies improved, they become more secular – not the other way around. Norris and Inglehart’s book Sacred and Secular is a great, data-rich source for this line of thinking.

Jacobsen: Is secularism beneficial or harmful for women‘s rights and human rights?

Zuckerman: No question here: wherever religion weakens, the status, freedom, and power of women improves. Wherever secularism is strong – even when forced, oddly enough – women’s health, occupational opportunities, electoral access, etc. improve. Not only are women’s status, power, wealth, and life choices stronger/better in the most secular societies on earth today, and weaker/poorer in the most religious, but secular men and women are – on average – more likely to support women’s rights and equality than their religious peers. As for human rights, well, as I said above, in situations of forced secularism under Communist dictatorships, human rights suffer terribly. But in situations of organic secularism, where people simply stop being religious of their own free will, human rights tend to thrive. And as for political secularism – the separation of church and state – things most definitely improve for the minority religions, and for the non-religious as well. In the contemporary world, where most societies have a situation of religious pluralism (more than one religion existing), then political secularism is the only viable option because to privilege one particular religion over another, or over non-religion, inevitably leads to inequality and injustice.

Jacobsen: I assume, based on some observations in my personal and professional life, that the irreligious are thought to be less trustworthy and more immoral than the religious. Does the data back this up?

Zuckerman: Yes, religious people in America view the non-religious as immoral and less trust-worthy (lots of data showing this, particularly from the work of Psychology Professor Will Gervais), and no, research shows that they are in fact not less moral or trustworthy. Catherine Caldwell-Harris, professor of psychology at Boston University, found that there exists no differences between atheists and theists in terms of levels of compassion or empathy. And studies from both the United States and the United Kingdom have reported that atheists are under-represented in prisons. Additional studies have shown that atheists and agnostics, on average, exhibit lower levels of racism and prejudice than their more God-believing peers, as well as lower levels of nationalism and militarism, and greater levels of tolerance for those they disagree with. Or consider research that specifically illustrates atheist morality in action: a recent international study looked at children and their likelihood of being generous or selfish in six different countries. Some of the kids had been raised Christian, some had been raised Muslim, and some had been raised without religion. The non-religious kids were the most generous – giving away, on average, a higher number of their stickers to kids they didn’t know– than the Muslim or Christian kids, who tended to be more selfish. Sure, it was just one study involving kids and stickers. But it effectively points to a much larger and important reality: that the vast majority of atheists of the world are decent and humane.

Jacobsen: If you had to have an elevator pitch in support of secularism, or those in support of a theocratic society or a government tending towards the theocratic, what would your elevator pitch be in support of secularism?

Zuckerman: First, I would sing “Imagine” by John Lennon. Then I would sing “Dear God” by XTC. Then I would say: morality should be based on empathy and compassion, not obedience to an invisible magic being – that’s moral outsourcing. Additionally, it is always better to base your beliefs on evidence rather than faith. Furthermore, scientific research has done far more to cure illness and alleviate suffering in the world than prayer. Additionally, the most secularized democracies today are doing much better than the most religious, and finally, if you find personal comfort, affirmation, and security in your religious faith, so be it – I don’t want to take that away from you. But please keep it out of our government and our public schools, and understand that no one has the right to impose their religious faith on others.

Jacobsen: What are perennial threats to secularism? What are the immediate, big issues surrounding secularism and its implementation?

Zuckerman: Well, which secularism are you referring to? The biggest threat to political secularism comes from religious fundamentalists/theocrats who wants to force their religion on the rest of society. The biggest threat to philosophical or sceptical secularism is when people live insecure, unsafe, precarious lives – in such situations, they understandably turn to religious faith for comfort. That is, when life is harsh and hard – when people don’t have access to health care, education, jobs and society is riddled with corruption and crime, then people will turn to religious fantasies to help them cope. They simply will not care about reason, rationality, empiricism, etc. And the biggest threat to socio-cultural secularism? There isn’t one. It is marching on, undeterred. The internet is a huge player in this.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time today, Professor Zuckerman.

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2022-04-18

Q&A on the Philosophical Foundations of Psychology with Dr. Sven van de Wetering – Session 1

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/29

Dr. Sven van de Wetering has just stepped down as head of psychology at the University of the Fraser Valley, and is a now an associate professor in the same department. He is on the Advisory Board of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. Dr. van de Wetering earned his BSc in Biology at The University of British Columbia, and Bachelors of Arts in Psychology at Concordia University, Master of Arts, and PhD in Psychology from Simon Fraser University. His research interest lies in “conservation psychology, lay conceptions of evil, relationships between personality variables and political attitudes.” Here we explore, as an educational series, the philosophical foundations of psychology.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Dr. Sven van de Wetering, thank you for agreeing to do this again. We first did an interview a few years ago, and this time, I would like to dig deeper into our conversation on the philosophical foundations of psychology. So let us start with what is psychology?

Dr. Sven van de Wetering: Psychology is the attempt to apply the same high epistemological criteria that have made the natural sciences such a success to a set of questions that preoccupy almost everyone, namely, why our fellow humans think, feel, and act the way they do. Because psychology asks an enormous range of questions, its various subfields have relatively little in common with each other, aside from the strive for epistemological rigour.

SJ:Psychology seems to create epistemological issues, which, in turn, make for ontological issues.Could you please further discuss the place of epistemology in psychology. And what are some of the more hotly debated issues surrounding it?

SW: Every undergraduate programme in psychology that I know of teaches two lower-level courses that deal almost entirely with epistemology. One of these is a course in statistics, and the second is a course in research methods. Between them, these courses introduce the fundamentals of methodology in psychology.

These courses are difficult to teach. Perhaps because so many psychology students are terrified of math. A frequent response of students being forced to take their first course in psychological statistics is to get very focused on the details of conducting the statistical analyses, and lose sight of the worldview on which those psychological statistics are based. Essentially, the idea is that the human world is a very complex place, and that the common western intuition that single causes give rise to single effects is not helpful in trying to figure out what is going on. Instead, a human being is subject to many influences at any given time, some internal, some external, and some with their roots in the individual’s distant past. Many of these influences are practically invisible, and even if we went to the trouble of attempting to make ourselves aware of every single one of those influences, we still would not know how all those different factors interact. To cope with the uncertainty induced by this overwhelming complexity, we create the simplifying fiction of random variation.

Instead of seeing causes and effects as being tightly coupled in human affairs, we see influences that increase or decrease the probability of certain human behaviours within that allegedly random matrix of behavioural possibility. Thus, we partition this blooming, buzzing confusion of human behaviour into two components: a portion that we think we can attribute to a small group of influences we are currently examining, and another portion that we attribute to the much larger group of influences we are not currently studying, and that we thus dismiss as error variance. Statistics is therefore used to separate the signal from the noise in this framework, and research methods are a set of techniques we use to amplify the signal so that the statistical techniques can be picked out more easily.

One thing that has always bemused me about psychological research is the extent to which we can typically only explain a few percent of the variances for any given phenomenon. This is due to nothing more than the fact that picking up the signal is hard. This is nothing to be ashamed of, but the focus on the signal is so intense that I think we often lose sight of the fact that the noise is also human behaviour. I would love to see psychological discourse focus a little more on the variances we cannot explain, not so much as a lesson in humility, but just as a way of cultivating an awareness of what incredibly complicated creatures human beings are.

SJ: What was the first tacit epistemology in psychological research? In other words, who can be considered the first psychologist? And what was their approach to psychology?

SW: At the risk of sounding very boring and conventional, I am going to say Wilhelm Wundt. He called his approach “physiological” (what we now call experimental). What he meant by this is that he would attempt to present people with highly controlled stimuli in order to evoke a tightly circumscribed set of responses. This actually does not make him that much different from some people that came before him, such as Fechner. His really big innovation however was to create a group of researchers (i.e. graduate students). Wundt recognized that science is a fundamentally social enterprise, and that the proverbial mad scientist in the tower in the thunderstorm is an object of suspicion and derision not because he is mad, but because he is socially isolated.

Communicating one’s findings with other scientists (Wundt also created the first psychology journal) and training other young scientists in one’s techniques is not a peripheral enterprise. The essence of science is that it is self-correcting, but for various psychological reasons, individuals are not very good at correcting themselves. It is only by subjecting their work to the scrutiny of other scientists that any given scientist can obtain the benefits of this self-correcting aspect of the scientific method. It is for this reason that I consider the hype surrounding Wilhelm Wundt completely justified.

SJ: What are some of the major sub-fields, and their fundamental philosophical disagreements, of the discipline?

SW: The number of subfields in psychology is very large, but I would have to say that the major tension within psychology is between people who emphasize the epistemological rigour discussed above and the people who focus on real-world relevance. Few psychologists want to discard either rigour or relevance, but there is sometimes a bit of a trade-off between the two.

Experiments that allow researchers to establish tight linkages between causes and effects often make use of highly controlled laboratory tasks that are quite unlike the sort of situations most people face in their day-to-day lives. Real-world relevance, on the other hand, may come when we try to conduct therapy on someone with real psychological problems. Because the client is often in the midst of a highly complex life situation, strict experimental control is likely to be difficult or impossible to implement, and opportunities for rigour are greatly diminished.

As I said, most of us want both rigour and relevance, but we often have to trade them off against each other. Some people are willing to give up relatively little rigour in the name of relevance, and stay in their laboratories. Others prize relevance above all else, and will sacrifice a great deal of rigour for the sake of having a fighting chance of being useful to people in need.

I think part of the reason this creates so much tension is exactly because psychologists value both rigour and relevance. The ones who, to many outside observers, seem pretty irrelevant, tend to justify themselves by claiming to be more relevant than most other people think they are. Similarly, the relevant practitioners often think they are more epistemologically rigorous than they really are. Thus, much of the tension comes not from differences in opinion about what to give up for the sake of what, but rather anger at the other group for disputing their self-perceptions as both rigorous and relevant.

SJ: Thank you for your time Dr. Sven van de Wetering. It is always a pleasure talking to you.

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2022-04-18

Q&A on Atheism, Women’s Rights, and Human Rights with Marie Alena Castle – Session 2

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/22

Marie Alena Castle is the communications director for Atheists for Human Rights. Raised Roman Catholic she became an atheist later in life. She has since been an important figure within the atheist movement through her involvement with Minnesota Atheists, The Moral Atheist, National Organization of Women, and wrote Culture Wars: The Threat to Your Family and Your Freedom (2013). She has a lifetime of knowledge and activist experience, explored and crystallised in an educational series. The first part of this series can be found here – Session 1

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: With your four decades of experience in activism for atheism, human rights, and women’s rights, you earlier described the victory for women’s right to vote and pursue careers and for reproductive rights. Who has formed the main resistance to the massive pro-life lobby from Catholic and other Christian religious groups?

Alena Castle: Groups such as NARAL and NOW and Planned Parenthood have been the most publicly visible opponents of the Catholic/Protestant fundamentalist assaults on reproductive health care. However, the most effective has been the political organising within the Democratic party. I was extensively involved in getting the Democratic party platform to support abortion rights and in getting pro-choice candidates endorsed and elected. Having a major political party oppose the Republican party’s misogynistic position was key to holding the line against them.

Jacobsen: In the current battleground over abortion, reproductive health and rights, modern attacks on Margaret Sanger’s character have been launched to indirectly take down abortion activists and clinics, and argue against such rights for women. What can best protect abortion access and Sanger’s legacy and work?

Alena Castle: The attacks on Sanger amount to “alternative facts” and seriously distorted history. Women’s rights leaders of the past, including Sanger as well as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are sometimes quoted in opposition to abortion – but their concern was that so many women died from abortions that were either self induced or done by incompetent quacks or because of the inadequate medical knowledge of the time.

Sanger has been accused of favouring eugenics (birth control to prevent the birth of genetically defective babies). These views have been deliberately misconstrued regarding their intent when in fact they were intended to save women’s lives and help ensure a better life for the babies they gave birth to. Today the anti-abortionists are still making up fake horror stories about foetal development and abortion and its effect on women that are outright lies. Nothing will stop this dishonest distortion of history and the absurd lies but more should be done to assert, often and vigorously, the actual medical facts about abortion and the moral rightness and integrity of Sanger’s and other feminists’ views and of the women who have abortions.

Jacobsen: What would you say has been most effective as a preventive mechanism against the encroachment on the rights of women from the hyper-religious Right, or the religious Right?

Alena Castle: Political activism! That is the only thing that will work. We need to focus on putting a majority of elected officials in office at all levels who support women’s rights and the rights of the nonreligious. You can’t make changes by just talking about them – it takes laws and their enforcement. Only politicians make laws – not NARAL or NOW or atheist organisations or people who march in the streets.

Jacobsen: As an atheist and feminist, what have been the most educational experiences in your personal or professional life as to the objectives of the anti-atheist and anti-feminist movements in North America and, indeed, across the world?

Alena Castle: I have personally experiencing the effect of the religious right’s political agenda on my life and on the lives of others. The first funeral I went to was when I was 10 years old. Our lovely 22-year-old neighbour had died of a botched illegal abortion. (At the time, such deaths were listed as “obstruction of the bowels” to save the family’s embarrassment and I only learned several years later what the true cause was). And then there were the funerals of good friends who were gay and died of AIDS while the religious right did everything to hinder medical research for treatment. And almost worse was seeing the total lack of compassion by advocates for that agenda for the harm it causes. Example:

I had a discussion with a very nice, polite woman about a news report of how an 11-year-old girl, somewhat retarded, had been raped by her father, was pregnant, begged for an abortion, and was denied by a court order. Soon after she had the baby, she was back in court on a charge of being an unfit mother. I asked this nice woman if she thought that girl should have been allowed to have an abortion. She said no, that forcing her to continue the pregnancy was the right and moral thing to do. Her religious beliefs had hardened her heart and I told her so.

How do we talk to people with such a warped sense of morality? This woman also believed in personhood from the moment of conception. At that “moment,” her “person” is a microscopic fertilised egg undifferentiated at the cellular level, and no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence. The anti-abortion people put up billboards with a picture of a year-old real baby and a statement that the baby’s heartbeat is detected at a foetal age of a few weeks. They don’t explain that it is then a two-chambered heart at the lizard level of development. (The adorable – always white – baby on the billboard has the fully developed four-chambered heart). Abortion never kills a baby; it just keeps one from forming. The religious right thinks preserving that development outweighs any harm it is causing the women. We have the words of the Pope and the Protestant reformers to thank for this inhumanity. Martin Luther’s associate, Philip Melancthon said, “If a woman weary of bearing children, it matters not. Let her only die from bearing; she is there to do it.” Pope Pius XI said, “However we may pity the mother whose health and even life is imperilled by the performance of her natural duty, there yet remains no sufficient reason for condoning the direct murder of the innocent.”

There is no baby, biologically speaking until the beginning of the third trimester – the rhetoric about innocence skips that convenient fact. After that, it’s a medical emergency affecting the woman, the fetus or both, that requires removal of the fetus. If these anti-abortion hard-hearts have a problem with this, they should go ahead and die from bearing if they find themselves in such a situation, but leave the rest of us alone.

Thank you for your time, Ms. Alena Castle! Your words and experiences are of even greater relevance at this time with women’s lives under attack again.

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 594: The Disco Era and the Distracted Era

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2021/05/26

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Ok, so, do you think that we’re going to see a level of debauchery in the post-Covid world, as we saw in the 1970s?

Rick Rosner: All right. So, before we get to now, we have to talk about America and European countries, too. So, the traditional wisdom is that the Disco Era was a hedonistic reaction to the end of a couple of tough eras in America, the end of the Vietnam War, which had been percolating along from the early 60s until the troops were pulled out in ’73.

But there was a token presence until Saigon fell. South Vietnam fell in 1975. Nixon had been president since ‘69, left office in mid-‘74, I think, and then after a few months, Gerald Ford pardoned him from being charged with.

That was the end of the Nixon Era, the end of the Vietnam Era. Gerald Ford, at least, Saturday Night Live presented him as a buffoon. But he was really a caretaker president. He was the first appointed president.

Nixon named him the vice president to replace Spiro Agnew. He had to leave because of a tax scandal and then Nixon resigned. Ford became president. So, he was the only president who wasn’t elected in some capacity. Every other president who took over had been, I believe, elected vice president, anyway. He supposedly relieved a nation, just wanted to kick back and go to discos and fuck each other indiscriminately for a few years.

Of course, a vanguard, the segment with the fraction of people who signify the era was always just a small fry. Most people were still doing what they normally did, which was go to work and have families and whatever else.

But there were things besides the end of Vietnam and Nixon that probably facilitated a lot of sex or the idea that sex is what you wanted to have. I think Stonewall was 1961. So, it took a few years for a promiscuous gay culture to arise because it was illegal in a lot of places, just completely clamped down until Stonewall.

Jacobsen: What was Stonewall?

Rosner: Stonewall was, I believe, a bar in lower Manhattan where there was a gay bar. The people in there just did finally had enough of being harassed by police and they rioted because it was illegal, I think, for guys to dance with guys in bars.

Cops would come in and just like brutalize the gay guys who just wanted to party with each other. So, there was a big riot, which led and marked the beginning of a lot of history of gay lib and throughout the 70s bathhouse culture.

Jacobsen: I’m asking for those who do not work in North America.

Rosner: Disco is something that probably began in the gay world and moved into this straight world. Now, there’s this digressing too much good to all that took place during the 70s that arose and gay disco fun turned into a straight disco on the pill.

I think it was released to the public, I think, in 1960. That probably took a long time to shift people’s attitudes about what good girls did. Guys were always down to fuck, but girls were very protective of the reputation.

Jacobsen: Do they get somewhere? Do you think it’s somewhat similar to now, too?

Rosner: What’s going on now? I think quite different, which we’ll get to; I think it also took a while to the idea that women could really enjoy the heck out of sex. I think that, outside of marriage, that took a long time to percolate into the culture. The pill made it possible for women to have sex with a very low risk of getting pregnant.

Jacobsen: What about reputational protection? Is that still the same?

Rosner: Nobody right now reasonably thinks that you’re a whore if you have sex outside of marriage. There’s not even a stigma now about getting pregnant before you get married. If you’re living with somebody, and if you get pregnant, and if you get married when you’re five months pregnant, there’s no scandal with that at all.

Jacobsen: Whereas in the 70s, it was a scandal.

Rosner: We have people who lied about it. But anyway, so, why was a big cultural focus on singles bars in the 70s, into the early 80s? People going to clubs to dance with each other, and hit on each other.

Then the end of it was over a herpes epidemic at the end of the 70s. Then in the early 80s, you had the rise of AIDS, and those two things put a big damper on the era. There was also a backlash against disco because it was very gay and glam and the opposite of manly rock, ZZ Top or not even that’s right.

But just like Leonard Skinner, Led Zeppelin, the guys who drove cameras. Disco Era lasted not even a decade. I missed most of it. I didn’t lose my virginity until 1980. I wish I had just gotten in New York a few years earlier, when Studio 54 was still operating, just gotten to a town with a lot of Jews in it where I wouldn’t have stood out as I did in Boulder.

It is like ethnic and also nerdy. I feel like I would have had a shot in New York to get laid a little earlier and there are lots of talks now about how people are going to go sex crazy when life really opens up again when the masks come off and Covid numbers make it safe to go out.

But for everybody who says, “Yes, we’re just going to go crazy.” There are people who say, “No, I’m just going to keep on staying home. I’m comfortable with that. I don’t need them, going out going crazy.”

Jacobsen: Do you think would you put yourself in that category?

Rosner: Well, I was when the Disco Era started. I was a teenager. Now, I’m sixty-one. I’ve been married for 30 years. We’re not swingers. So, there’s nothing. My situation has changed. I think there will be some hooking up.

But the culture is less sex-positive and less sex-obsessed when in the 70s people thought sex was the best thing you could do if you were lucky enough to do it. It wasn’t a wrong attitude because, as I’ve said a million times before, everything else in the 70s sucked.

Most entertainment was mostly bad. There were no video games. Food was bad. Clothing was bad. Everything sucked.

Now, there’s awesome entertainment wherever you turn and personalized distraction, personalized social media feeds. As we’ve talked about a bunch before, people are having less sex than they did in previous generations because there’s more to do; there’s more to distract you from sex.

Sex isn’t as big a deal compared to everything else as it used to be. There are a couple of other things going on. There wasn’t much porn available compared to now in the 70s. The Internet didn’t begin for most people until the mid-90s, but now there’s just porn everywhere on the Internet.

So, when people spent 14 months inside with Covid, there was a lot of jacking off going on from just an endless flood of porn available for anybody who wants to consume it and a cornucopia of porn reduces people’s desperation to hook up.

So there’s that, there’s MeToo, and just the overall reconsideration of the rapey-ness of eras like the 70s, where everybody assumed that you should just go along with that you’re a stick in the mud, a nerd, a loser.

If you didn’t, if you weren’t down for sex, which also meant being down for being hit on, the Disco Era was only five years after the Mad Men Era. So, there was a lot of harassment and a lot of people, women, maybe, mentally rolling their eyes.

They can all right. ‘This is, maybe, not what I want, but I’ll go along with it.’ This seems to be what’s expected. That whole thing has been re-examined where people are reconsidering the easy sexuality without knowing because most people who are out trying to hook up, or not, don’t remember the 70s.

But still, there’s been a reconsideration of behavior as it was in the 70s when you lived through it or not. Also, people’s bodies are different. We didn’t have an obesity problem in the 70s.

Jacobsen: Are you referring to what this has been called the obesity epidemic?

Rosner: Well, 70% of adult Americans are over their ideal weight. Now, you can say, “Well, yes who’s saying what’s ideal?” But, in any case like that, if you go by BMI, one-third of Americans are overweight and another one-third are overweight enough to be obese.

Jacobsen: And that’s also related to sex, though. Sex drive, like being fit, actually induces a healthy sex drive.

Rosner: No, I don’t think so. I think you can still be you can be fat and horny. If there were a lot of unhealthy reasons, there were unhealthy reasons. People were skinnier in the 70s. Food wasn’t this delicious. I think one major reason that people are overweight now is that food is delicious and cheap and plentiful.

It’s just hard to resist. In the 70s, jogging became popular, not all of America was jogging. It was exercise. Exercise became a thing. Cocaine was passed or again, not that much, but maybe 5%, 10%. I don’t know what percent of the population was doing coke, but the 70s were a skinny Asclepius era where the focus was on braless skinny, super skinny blondes, Charlie’s Angels.

So, now, people look different. The barriers for having sex with people have been down since the 70s.

Few people feel shame at having sexual relationships outside of marriage. That’s just long gone. How hot you need to be to have sex has fallen away in the 70s, the sex belongs to the hot people. It’s less so now. There are plenty of ways to arrange sex: Tinder and Grindr and Bumble and a gazillion ways from the most superficial aspects to relationships with the intent to marry somebody.

You don’t have to present as much of a front as you did in the Disco Era where you can arrange to hook up. You still have to put together enough of a front to put together an attractive Tinder account. But you don’t have to get your shit all together to look super good to go to the disco.

So, there’s casual sex, but along with sex, being casual is that people are casual about having sex. But they’re also casual about wanting sex. People are just not as desperate as my friends and I were 40 years ago.

Jacobsen: Do you think it’s a positive thing or a negative?

Rosner: You’re asking if this is a positive or a negative thing?

Jacobsen: Yes, sir.

Rosner: I think it’s probably a net positive. In that, as I’ve said, the sex ceremonies were coercive. People ended up doing a lot of shit they probably didn’t want to do at the same time. Maybe, it wasn’t that bad for most people because people who went ahead and tried stuff might have had fun doing it.

But still, people are more cognizant of the power structures around sex now, which is not a bad thing. Sex is not this way of keeping it less of a way of keeping score or keeping track of yours or affirming your status.

So, yes, overall, sex is more a thing you do when it makes sense to do it rather than the things that you’re culturally prodded to do. So, yes, that overall is a healthier thing. Also, I think there are a lot of shitty things going on in the world, especially politically, but in terms of how the world is to live in, the world is just a lot more entertaining and interesting.

We know a lot more. We have access to more information and all that is an improvement over the 70s. So, yes, people will b hooking up, but it won’t be the insane year after year of disco hooking up in the 70s.

Then you had a related question, which is, “Are we going to see a creative renaissance when everything opens up?” With the idea, people have been working on projects. During Covid, they are suddenly going to be a flood of new ideas into the entertainment marketplace.

Jacobsen: For our working relationship, it hasn’t changed any of that. We still do what we do.

Rosner: Yes, we’ve always been working on Skype for the most part. On Twitter, there’s a lot of talk of people saying, “Yes, I got absolutely nothing done during Covid,” just a few people saying they completed projects and other people saying don’t beat yourself up for not getting anything done during Covid.

Getting through Covid itself is an accomplishment, so, I don’t know. I think there will have to be a flood of new stuff because everybody watched everything, binged on everything, while they were locked up.

So, yes, I think we will see a bunch of new stuff, but I don’t think it will be an absolute avalanche. I think, and we still don’t know, what will happen with movies that there hasn’t been a movie, yet.

Where, people absolutely have to go see in a theater. There are movies that have been held back to see if they can be blockbusters in a theater. The James Bond movie has been held back for probably close to a year and a half now.

There are probably some other movies, but, somehow, the model for releasing movies just streaming on people’s TVs hasn’t been a complete disaster. So, I don’t know. I’ve got a project I’ve been slowly working on that should be ready to show to my agent if I still have an agent in a month or two.

But I’ve been saying a month or two for a year. So, who fucking knows? So, the amount of new entertainment, the possible renaissance will, I think, be anywhere from the levels that it has been rolling. The new stuff rolling out will be anywhere from 100% of current levels to 150%.

I don’t think it’s just going to be an absolute, like I said, avalanche. Then there’s one more area where did we lose a year of scientific research in progress, and technological progress. I really don’t know.

I can’t really comment on that except to ask the question because I don’t know how much somebody will figure out how much I should worry about technological progress. I want to live longer thanks to advances in medical science.

So, it really bummed me out if we lost a year’s worth of progress in medicine to people being locked down. I don’t think we lost totally unqualified to talk about it, but, maybe, we lost the equivalent of six or eight months.

People were working at half speed and being shut out of their labs. I don’t know other than that, except to say one more thing. In L.A. County, we’re down to like 200 cases, new confirmed cases a day, out of a population of 10 million

Which if that were the worst for the whole nation, that would be like seven thousand new cases in the US today, where, right now, we’re in the low 20s or a 3 to 31/2 times the L.A. County rate. That’s great for L.A. County and on the way to not being terrible for new cases down by 90% average across the U.S.

But only 5% of the world has been fully vaccinated. Only 9% has received even one dose of vaccine and almost no one in the 125 poorest countries on Earth has received the vaccine. So, the world isn’t done with Covid, and depending on how what happens with Covid variants, the Western world may not be done with it either. All right, the end.

Jacobsen: Okay.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 593: Books, the Future, Futurism, and an Old Blanket

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2021/05/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So old school science, science fiction from the golden age, at least what we think about it, my prime example is a little bit post-golden age. I’m talking about original Star Trek. But anyway, science fiction like that totally misses the foolishness of the future.

Right now, we live in what was the future to the golden age of science fiction. People writing science fiction in the 1930s, 40s, 50s. Believe that, 2021 fairly science fictional world that it would be familiar in some way.

With largely, the same human bodies and human wants. Some of those golden age writers wrote about altered humans of the future. But now, 2021 was, maybe, too soon for that. But 2021 is a scene from 1950. People are still doing human stuff. But we’ve all got all sorts of science fiction shit to deal with.

We might be taking ourselves to Mars and the moon and the other moons and planets of the Solar System. We might have orbiting structures in space. We’d have some of the computational devices.

Ray Bradbury in his short stories imagines and, I think, Fahrenheit 451 imagined an end to reading, and it’s being replaced with just full on entertainment walls. But Bradbury didn’t picture the entertainment of most of the people.

Maybe, I’m just not remembering Fahrenheit 451 in enough detail. But I don’t remember Fahrenheit 451 presenting a lot of foolishness. That, even though, the people of the future are being stupid by entertainment, we don’t get to see any of the entertainment.

It’s a deadly serious book about the end of books. The science fiction golden age has a certain seriousness that leaves out the foolishness that we’re living in now. We’re surrounded by high tech.

We use it to an extent that the golden age science fiction probably hinted at, but missed the extent that we are surrounded by powerful computational technology. But they knew it was coming and they fell short of how powerful it is pervasive.

But what they really missed is just the goofy crap that is spit out by our stuff. It’s not until the science fiction of some of the 60s and 70s that you start seeing foolishness sneak in. But really not with old school like Star Trek. The original series is very spare.

The sets are spare. There’s no advertising anywhere. The original Star Trek looks cheap and uncluttered and everybody’s upstanding. It’s the USS Enterprise, which is exploring. Its mission is to discover new stuff. It’s altruistic. It’s not market driven.

Everybody except for the bad guys, you have to be confronted in most episodes. Everybody’s pulling in the same altruistic direction. Logic itself is personified by the second in command, Spock. I’ve always found Star Trek annoying because it’s so clean.

Then it’s not really until Blade Runner that you get a fairly thoroughly rendered dirty future. It’s rainy, it’s overpopulated, and everything’s scummy. I mean, there’s been scummy stuff in the future before, but it’s still stripped down like brave new world, is under populated by foolishness and sleaze. the brave new world is about people being genetically designed to serve the various roles in society from menial work to executive level and how shitty that is.

It’s a critique of that system. At the same time, it leaves out the nobody until the 60s and then only a little bit, nobody anticipated that we would live in a world of pervasive porn, a billion pages of porn available on everybody’s personal device.

So, we could talk about why old school science fiction missed the superficial, the sleazy, the circusy aspect of the future and why the future is sleazy and circusy. one reason the future is sleazy and circusy is information analytics, analysis explores every aspect.

That’s a good thing about information, the human drive for information. You could even say the capitalism of information, the commoditization of information, the looking the striving to find a new area of information to stake your claim on it.

I’ve been listening to Carole who has satellite radio. There are like five or six comedy channels. So, I’ve been listening to those. a good comedy routine is like an SAT reading comprehension section. You haven’t taken the SAT, have you?

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: No.

Rosner: For most Americans, they know the SAT reading comp section, which is just a short passage, maybe five hundred words. You analyze it. You get half a dozen questions after this short passage about what it’s about, what the thesis is, what its supporting arguments are, ‘the author would most likely agree with which of these statements.’

It’s just taking a piece of writing and seeing your ability to understand and analyze. It’s usually a piece of nonfiction. It’s usually a short passage, either explaining an event or a scientific phenomenon or a sociological phenomenon.

It’s usually making an argument saying this is this is the right way to think about something. This as opposed to its just being able to understand the written argument. A good standup routine does the same thing as a short essay that you might be trying to analyze on the S.A.T.

It has a thesis statement with the most cliched one being, “What’s up? Why is airline food so shitty?” That’s the biggest cliche in standup comedy. So, that’s your thesis statement, airplane food shitty. Then you have examples.

Then I have some other stuff you might see in an essay, like counterexample. It doesn’t have to be this way. On Virgin Airways, they serve… whatever. But it’s a little self-contained bit of a novel analysis. Find an angle on the world, other people haven’t explored adequately.

But that will be immediately familiar and analyze it, lay it out, people will laugh because it being noted as new. But it’s also familiar because people have experienced it. So, stand up is to some extent the business of finding new relatable observations about the world, about making new relatable observations and what we’ve seen now on NBC Prime Time.

On prime time US TV, they will make jokes about butt sex. They’ll make jokes about blowjobs, handjobs. They won’t explicitly say handjob or blowjob, but sitcoms will make jokes about kinds of sex that people didn’t talk about before the 70s.

Now, we have a gazillion channels. I think there are something like 800 scripted TV series on U.S. TV. So, people are making entertainment. They are desperate to find new things to analyze. This includes the whole realm of things that are taboo that used to be taboo.

In fact, those things are more valuable to analyze, as seen by the success of a comedy that analyzes these things because the information is more hidden – because it’s taboo. But the basic principle is that with humans; basically, we make our living off of information.

We find, we look, for regularities in the world that we can exploit. Regularities in the world are information. Chaos doesn’t contain information, regularities contain information. So, information is going to colonize everything. We’re going to analyze everything.

We’re going to bring it to light, even, and especially, the goofy stuff, because there are advantages to be had in doing that. There are livings to be made and just information is going to go everywhere.

It’s the Minority World that’s annoyingly packed with personalized advertisements wherever you go in public. You’ve seen Minority Report, right?

Jacobsen: Way back in the day.

Rosner: All right. So, Tom Cruise is walking through like some public space. He’s just being harassed by personalized holograms directed at him. So, information is just going to proliferate like that expanding foam insulation.

That leaves the question as to why 1950s science fiction missed it. It could be because we were just coming off of being the good guys in a war that we won against truly bad guys using technology.

You could guess that there was a pervasive optimism that technology would lead to good and good values and that good would proliferate. We’ve talked about goodness and order that we perceive as good things that preserve order.

We want to live in a world that allows us not to be killed at random. So, the 50s was an era of believing in the good, believing that the good would prevail. And also believing that the good, it was a very narrow view of good.

They didn’t admit to the perversity that we now accept and embrace. Because the narrow 50s, there was only room for so much exploration within the narrow confines; that left out a more perverse, bigger world that was eventually going to be exploited for entertainment and for information. Did that hang together? Was that a coherent argument?

Jacobsen: I would say you bought a blanket that’s a little old.

Rosner: What?

Jacobsen: I said you bought a blanket that’s a little old. The thread is still there though.

Rosner: OK.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 592: Aware Girls, Graham Priest, and Informational Cosmology

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2021/05/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s a fella named Graham Priest. He deals with a contradiction to contradictions, dialetheia. He, basically, drove that entire field. Anyway, the New York Times, Gulalai and the Ismail family has been featuredtwo or three or four times in the last couple of years.

She’s from Pakistan and is fighting for women’s rights and issues. She is one the leading global thinkers of 2013 for Foreign Policy. She won the Anna Politkovskaya award and a bunch of other things.

She’s like 16 with her sister, Saba. They founded a girls and women’s rights and empowerment organization in Pakistan, Aware Girls. There’s like 150 countries that have been ranked. It’s like third from the bottom or something for the status of women and girls (Pakistan). So, yes, it’s military dictatorships, secular plus Islamic theocracy is the worst of both fundamentalist religious and fundamentalist atheism.

Rick Rosner: It’s an acid in your face country.

Jacobsen: Well, Malala Yousafzai, right? Yes, so, interesting thing, get this, they found Aware Girls. That’s where Malala got her start. That’s where she got these ‘radical’ gender equality ideas, literally.

So, Gulalai Ismail is the inspiration for Malala. Literally, they were in her school. They knew her personally. They’re very proud of her. They’re in the humanist community. They have been part of it for a while.

Anyway, I was thinking about bullet points to maths about. Where if I bring up various principles or scientific constructs in physics, and then we take an informational cosmological version of this translated, does that make a little sense? What would be your immediate objections to that, if any?

Rosner: But I haven’t been caught flat footed or that I’ve got no good answer.

Jacobsen: Do you need to give a couple of concepts to me, come back in a bit and we do it?

Rosner: Sure.

Jacobsen: What areas of physics are you most comfortable in, quantum mechanics?

Rosner: No, I mean anything, but whether I can translate them to informational stuff is questionable.

Jacobsen: Ok, could you give us just, historically, the four fundamental forces, or could simply force and mass and acceleration? What do those represent informationally? That sort of thing.

Rosner: We can start with fundamental forces.

Jacobsen: Ok, so, you want to come back after thinking about it a bit or you jump into it?

Rosner: No, we can jump in.

Jacobsen: Ok, so, where’s the record button? We’re already recording. That’s hilarious.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 591: To Move or Not

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2021/05/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So, Carole and I have been looking at where we might move at some point in our lives, obviously towards our older years because we’re already fucking older. I’m 61 and Carole turns 57 in two months.

That urge to find someplace else to live was to add some urgency under Trump and then under Biden. It seems more relaxed, but that’s not it. But things could still go back if the midterm elections in 2022 go to the Republicans.

But by getting elected, it, basically, bought us four years to get out if we need to get out. Because even if the Republicans win the House, the Senate, in 2022, we won’t have the presidency and they won’t be able to fuck things up too fast.

We’ll have the two years from 2022 to 2024 to deal with Trump as President with that a little bit like Germany in 1932, 33, 34. It’s a situation with Hitler just coming to power, but things aren’t so crazily fucked up, yet.

But people who are skittish or smart started to leave early. I mean Hitler started doing shitty stuff, but the shitty stuff ramped up in ‘35, ‘36. I want to say ‘37. If you were smart and prudent, you might have started to get out of Germany if you were Jewish or some other undesirable thing by ‘35.

With the statistics under Trump, it felt like Germany in the early 30s. Now under Biden, it doesn’t feel like that. But if the clock starts ticking again, if the Republicans win the House or if they don’t, and if the Democrats can pass a voter rights law, federal voting rights law, to replace the voting rights and bad rulings against the Supreme Court.

A few years ago, the Supreme Court said that we could get rid of voting rights mandates in the southern states if they cleaned up their act. John Roberts led a court in determining voting rights. So, voting rights protections went away.

Now, there’s new legislation that the Democrats are sponsoring to try to get it back. If they managed to get that passed, that’s a lot of protection. But historically, the Republicans over the past 80 years have only been more popular than Democrats in terms of people calling themselves Republicans or Democrats.

Only 2 out of the past 80 years. The Republicans have shitty ideas. They don’t govern for the people. When they win, based on built-in things like the Electoral College, they have built in advantages that the smaller states have more power and bigger states.

I don’t want to go into all that. But Republicans have built in electoral advantages. They have a built in disadvantage in that everybody fucking hates the Republicans. if everybody is allowed to vote, if voting is easy, Republicans don’t win.

So, we need the voting legislation. If the Voting Rights Act passes and isn’t thrown out by the Supreme Court, then America is in reasonably good shape. If it isn’t, if it doesn’t pass, and if the Republicans take over part of the government, then I start looking more concertedly at that move.

Carol’s mom is 88, my mom is 87. It’s tough to move because of them and all because you have to sell everything and leave the country you’ve lived in.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 590: A Compare and Contrast Between Trump and Biden

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2021/05/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This is more off the cuff, so it’s not fair. Because it’s requiring long term knowledge, but what are the pluses, minuses, differences between former President Trump when he was in his first four months and current president Biden in his first term?

Rick Rosner: Yes, today is May 22nd, Biden became president on January 20th. So, it’s been a third of a year, so his presidency is one-twelfth over, assuming he’s just president for four years. Well, one thing I want to talk about before we get to that, which is six months after the election, more than six and a half months.

So, it was November. Yes, there are tens of millions of lunatics who refuse to believe that Trump wasn’t elected and that massive fraud got Biden into the White House. The main argument I have against this is just common sense, which is that we spent four years watching Trump be an obviously shitty president and shitty human being, and a majority of Americans saw that and voted against him.

And that’s shown by an election where one hundred and sixty million Americans voted, not only the highest number of people who voted in an American election ever by more than 10 million, but the highest percentage of Americans to ever vote in an election.

Because if you take it, I’m pretty sure it was the highest percentage ever because of vote by mail, which was made fairly easy. I might be wrong about that, but one of the highest percentages ever. If you go back 100 years, only men are voting.

So, there may have been elections in the 80s, 90s where I have a higher percentage of eligible voters voted, but only half the country was eligible to vote just based on gender anyway. A huge number of people voted.

The margin of Biden’s victory was huge, seven million. It would have taken tens of thousands of people engaging in complicated fraud to establish that margin. Then all the Trump people would say, “Well, you didn’t need that. You just needed margins of ten thousand in critical states.”

But still, you’re looking at hundreds of thousands of people in a conspiracy, which is itself impossibly unlikely. But you have the evidence of the votes, so you have the evidence of Trump being a piece of shit very visible for years on end.

You have the country wrecked. Then you have polling, where there was a poll of Trump’s approval nearly every day for four years. He was president and also for a year leading up to his presidency.

So, you’re looking at over 1,200 polls of Trump. Now, you’re looking at polls of Biden. There are hundreds of those in the time leading up to his election. In the one hundred and twenty-some days he’s been president, you’re looking at, roughly, at least, 1,500 polls, almost all of which show that Biden is much more popular than Trump.

Biden’s popularity has been steady approval, steady at 53%, where Trump’s approval was steady at between the upper 30s and low 40s, between 39% and 44%, but most of the time tighter than that. So, you have this incredible stack of statistical evidence that would have to be denied.

You’d have to explain away 1,500 polls. That they’ve all been crooked. And there’s nothing reasonable about the idea that Trump got the votes. All right, so, that’s the end of Biden, who, as I said, Biden’s approval is 10 points higher than Trump’s.

At the same points in their presidency, and if people weren’t so polarized, Biden’s approval would be even higher. Under Biden, half the country has been vaccinated. We went from being one of the shittiest countries in the world at dealing with poverty to being one of the most vaccinated countries in the world in just the four months.

The vice president, the number of new cases, average daily cases of Covid has decreased by 5% since Biden became president. The number of daily deaths on average has declined by 75% to 80%. Now, that might be a little too high, but by, at least, two-thirds.

So, in terms of Covid, we’re doing much better. Trump had the twenty-one largest point drop of the Dow Jones Industrial stock average in his four years as president. Biden hasn’t had one of those yet, which doesn’t mean that he won’t. He probably will.

You always have in the course of a presidency. The stock market will decline hugely from time to time. But Trump, and Trump’s early days, the stock market went up because his business thought he would throw out regularly.

They’d be able to read more and then later he kept interest rates low to try to stem the damage of Coke. So, the stock market had a bunch of good days and a terrible year. 2020 was the deadliest year in U.S. history by 17.6%, according to early numbers out of the CDC.

A huge jump in the mortality rate. The mortality rate of 15.9%. Trump presided over the deadliest year where in 2019 roughly 2.9 million Americans died. That number from 2019 to 2020 jumped from 2.9 Million to 3.94 million, which is the greatest percent jump and the greatest jump in just bodies in a year ever.

The death rate had already been going up under Trump’s previous years. Trump was the deadliest president in U.S. history, and only a third of the jump in deaths was due to an increase in population as the U.S. population increases by less than one percent a year.

So if the population were wildly increasing, we might expect more deaths because there are more people who are alive with the potential to die. But that wasn’t something close to a million more people who died in four years under Trump than four years under any other president and only a few hundred thousand of that is due to increased population.

Not all of it’s due to Trump, but a lot of the Covid deaths are due to his utter mismanagement with other people participating in that. But there are other things that he didn’t address. You can argue that, maybe, it’s not his job, but, as you said, he did the deal. He didn’t stop the opioid crisis.

He didn’t do jack shit. That kills a lot of people. He didn’t do anything about obesity. He didn’t do anything about despair. It was just the deadliest time in modern history. 2021 is going to have a shitload of deaths, too, because the biggest number of deaths from Covid in the US, happened from October through February.

This giant third wave. There were 370,000 people under control. Now, the official number is pushing 600,000. You’re looking at a couple of hundred thousand Covid deaths under Biden and they’re not stopping. We’re still losing an average of six to seven hundred Americans to cover it every day.

If that persists for over a year, you’re stuck. You’re looking at a quarter-million people right there. The 600,000 official deaths isn’t accurate and statisticians say that the true number of US Covid deaths is probably somewhere between 700,000 and 900,000.

By the time it’s over, it’s already arguably the deadliest event in US history. By the time it’s over, it will absolutely be the deadliest event in U.S. history, but deaths are coming down on everybody.

As school gets out, it’s reasonable to hope that more and more people get vaccinated. Even with vaccine resistance, that will start to drop under five hundred US deaths on average. I haven’t seen a count of the number of lives Biden has told versus how many Trump told as president.

But I think Trump’s total was close to 20,000 public lies. Trump and Biden don’t talk to the media as much. Trump would often tweet and Biden doesn’t tweet as much. 4 years is something like 14 public lies a day.

The number of lies he told went up every year of his presidency. By the last year of his presidency, when he was holding all the rallies, he was averaging more than two dozen public lies every day.

And you’re not getting that out of the Biden one. To some extent, there’s more of a national calmness because the nation doesn’t have to be on alert every day for crazy shit happening out of the White House.

Although, we’re not as calm as we could be because Trump’s followers and the Republicans in the Senate, the House, are denying that we had an insurrection on January 6th when Trump gave the speech that prompted his followers to storm the Capital.

Initially, a bunch of Republicans applaud the attack on the Capitol, but lately, they’ve been denying. They’re trying to stop the US from having a commission, the House and Senate, for having a commission looking into the events of January 6th.

Everybody on Twitter, it’s like they had thirty-three hearings into the four deaths of the guys in Libya. And the Republicans aren’t even going to allow us to have one hearing into the attack on the Capitol. That makes a lot of people nervous.

The voter suppression legislation, Americans are afraid. Americans who aren’t Trump accomplices are afraid that if the Republicans gain/regain a majority in the House or Senate in 2022, they will pass a bunch of legislation that will make it so.

That might mean the end of democracy, but it might make it impossible for a Democrat to be certified as president ever again, even if they get many more votes. It’s super crazy and creepy what the Republicans are up to, but Biden has the Republicans trying to portray him as sleepy Joe.

They say he’s not even president; that it’s Kamala Harris who’s running the country. They just say a bunch of crap that’s ridiculous. He’s proven to be coherent, reasonable, energetic. He’s a normal, pretty good president, regardless of how the Trump cultists characterize it. It’s a relief. Jobs are recovering to some extent.

We’ve got the $1.9 billion relief bill passed. One of the big issues that will determine whether his presidency is successful is whether enough Democratic senators can be persuaded to do away with the filibuster, which basically requires 60 votes out of 100 senators to pass most legislation.

The Democrats in the Senate have only a majority of 50 votes is about a tiebreaker. So, to get much done, they’re going to need them to get rid of the filibuster for which they’ll need all of these Democratic senators to vote against the filibuster, which will be tough because there are two very conservative senators, Krysten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin.

Because they often vote as if they’re Republicans. No Republicans vote as if they’re Democrats. So, in the minds of some people, maybe, sometimes in democracy, itself, is all the things that are much more normal.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 589: Pandemic American Sports

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2021/01/18

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why are the sports in a pandemic in America?

Rick Rosner: I want to agree that it’s fucking ridiculous to have sports in a pandemic. America’s behavior has been… we’re not alone in dumb behavior among the nations of the world during the coronavirus pandemic.

But we might be the biggest nation in the world to be behaving so fucking stupidly, though it’s hard to tell because India is much bigger. I assume there’s plenty of stupidity out of India because they’re a big, diverse country with four times the US’s population.

And that gives them lots of room for dumbness to happen. India’s just like just a fucking extravaganza of just different stuff. Including horrible, they have horrible parts of the country, maybe the whole country. They’ve got a bad rape problem.

They’ve got corruption in parts. I assume that there’s plenty of room in India for bad Covid behavior that we may not even know about, if they’re also bad at reportage. Because what we found in America out of the Trumpy states is that you can hide a lot of Covid carnage if the governor is a Trumpy asshole, like the governor of Florida, who not only fired the state’s statistician for publishing accurate Covid statistics, but has had her arrested twice.

She persisted. He fired her and then she persisted now as a private citizen in releasing accurate numbers. So, he had the Florida Bureau of Investigation raid her house and take and pulled guns on her husband and kids.

I don’t know if they issued charges there. I think that dropped because they were ridiculous or they’re on hold. But now, she’s been arrested again because the governor of Florida is a fucking asshole. He’s one of the worst.

He’s killed a lot of his own people with his approach to Covid, which is, yes, just fucking no masks, no fucking anything, Disneyworld is open. Though Disneyworld does a pretty good job, they require masks. They’ve done OK. But the whole state run by this asshole, it’s overall not done greatly.

But anyway, the U.S., parts of the U.S. have just done really shitty and have a really cavalier attitude towards Covid precautions, which means that sports in the southern Trumpy states, the Republican states, there’s the PAC 12 football conference, a college football conference.

And most of the teams in the PAC 12 in normal season have like 12 games for a big college football team. Most of the teams in the PAC 12 played fewer than seven games because they kept getting canceled because of Covid.

But fucking all the teams in the shitty Trumpy states, they just went ahead and fucking played FSU, Florida, Georgia Tech, they all played their full ten or eleven or twelve game seasons. Fuck it if a bunch of people got Covid going to their games, some of their athletes got Covid.

So, some other sports, the NBA did really well. I don’t think they played. They shut down their season when Covid started. Then they came back like two months later in what they called the bubble, which is a plate of all the NBA teams moved to Orlando, Florida, to Disney World.

And they all played the rest of the season and the playoffs as one big group. Nobody traveled anywhere except to Disneyland. They just played every game in the bubble. You just played until you were eliminated in the playoffs, then you went home.

I think like halfway through the playoffs; they let the teams who’d been in quarantine now for two and a half months. They lost family members once they’d been tested visit. But the whole thing was done really well and they didn’t have a major Covid outbreak in the bubble.

The Major League Baseball, they played a super short season, a normal season is 162 games. They played 60 games with empty stadiums and they got pretty lucky. They had very few Covid outbreaks. The NFL has been doing reasonably well, very few games were canceled or postponed.

Now, we’re almost a couple of weeks away from the Super Bowl. So, teams have managed to play sports reasonably safely. That may be because there are billions of dollars in sports revenue involved. All that money at stake, maybe, made the owners really committed to keeping shit safe as opposed to all these other yahoos in America who don’t have a billion dollars at stake keeping Covid at bay.

It’s ridiculous to put people at risk for just sports at the same time. This has been a miserable fucking year and people get a lot of pleasure and a lot of distraction out of sports. Many teams have managed to do it safely.

So, it’s really stupid. It’s extra stupid in those parts of America that are stupid about it. But at the same time, it’s nice to have fucking sports and they’ve done a good job for the most part.

The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 588: Genius Drain and Wishes for 2021

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/12/31

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Ok, what are your plans or wishes for 2021?

Rick Rosner: Well, there is a fade somewhat, that trump and his people are prosecuted. In that, we’ve tried the partnering route before. Letting bygones be bygones in the name of healing, that seems like that would only encourage more malfeasance, especially given the current atmosphere.

Back in 1975-74, Gerald Ford pre-emptively pardoned Nixon from being prosecuted for anything he did while in office. That caused a lot of anger back then. I think it would. Biden says that he will leave the Justice Department to make its own decisions about what to do about Trump and his people.

Trump still has 20 more days left in office. People expect him to try to pardon, maybe his family, maybe himself, but he can only pardon himself from federal crimes. State crimes and crimes that that he did that was illegal according to state laws like the state of New York.

You can’t give yourself a presidential pardon for those crimes. I’m hoping that he’s prosecuted. I’m hoping that Fox News, and the other conservative outlets like OAN, Newsmax, will have less power over the lunacy of 70 million Americans.

But I don’t see that going away, really. I hope the Democratic candidates in the Georgia Senate runoff win giving the Senate a 50/50 split between the Republicans and the Democrats. With the vice president being the tie breaking vote, the oddsmakers give that about a one in three chance of happening.

So, probably, Mitch McConnell, the Republicans will probably retain like a one-person lead in this majority in the Senate, which is bad because Mitch McConnell is a terrible person. So, anyway, those are my hopes.

I hope that they come up with a reasonable, under Biden, and a more effective distribution of vaccines. Only two million vaccines have actually been administered this month. Trump promised 100 million doses would be administered by this point a few months ago.

He promised that. Then last month, he promised us 20 million doses would be administered. Now, we’re, maybe, at two and a half million. It’s just one more fuck up on his way out of office. I hope that Biden can lower rates, get people to comply with masking.

Yesterday was the worst day ever for U.S coronavirus deaths at about 3,900, breaking the previous day, record of 3,780. We still don’t have the wave from Christmas get togethers to hit, yet.

It takes two or three weeks. I hope that in general, that more and more Americans realize what a fucking disaster of the past years and the last four years have been. That we figure out some legislation to prevent a recurrence.

Scott: Are you still writing professionally in comedy?

Rosner: Not for money. I mean, I tweet every day and some of the tweets are jokey. Well, I also hope that the last year of shutdown didn’t cost us a year of technological progress.

Scott: What are your odds of thinking that it didn’t do that? What if it was like nine months, but it was a year of slowdown’s? A functional nine months in one year of slowdown rather than a complete halt?

Rosner: It’d still be bad. I’m hoping to enjoy years of added life due to advances in medicine. I don’t want to have give up years of future life because advances weren’t made because everybody was locked down.

We’re on the cusp of huge advances in medicine by 2040. But if everything gets pushed, I’ll be 80 in 2040. If everything gets pushed, I mean, what? I’m in my 70s. The push of a year is a big deal. I had stage one cancer last year. My kidney’s since have been free, have been clean, clear.

But I’m putting a lot of hope in medicine, in medicine getting better. What do I think? I think that it didn’t cost us a year of advances, but it didn’t cost us nothing either. Also, I hope we can clean up America’s image in the world.

So, we continue to attract smart people from around the world. The US only has less than five percent of the world’s population. We’ve benefited for the past 50 years in being a place that smart people want to come to do research and get educated and build businesses.

The Trump era has been terrible for that. It had made us look like a nation of racist idiots. So, I’m sure we’ve lost smart people to China.

Scott: You’ve lost them to Canada.

Rosner: Or Canada.

Scott: Basically, when that stuff was flaring up, the prime minister of Canada went up and said, ‘You have a place welcome here.;

Rosner: Yes, that’s true. I mean, you guys are smart. We’ve been run by the worst president, the stupidest, the most incompetent, the most corrupt president in history. So, that’s it. Those are my hopes.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 587: Personality Meh, General Intelligence Yeah

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/12/18

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: A lot of things we thought were pretty secure in the findings, probably not unfounded, but less founded than we thought things were on personality and things like this. But other things we have found are consistent through the decades have been things like studies on general intelligence, so things like Spearman’s g. That is a controversial subject.

Rick Rosner: We should say Spearman’s g is the idea that there is a generalized intelligence. For example, if in an army, it’ll serve a purpose. The person who possesses this lower intelligence shouldn’t do well in wherever that person is on tasks that require intelligence.

Jacobsen: Yes, it seems like a pervasive aspect of the deep, fast, and comprehensive level of comprehension. Conscious discrimination in all things that require that they’re going to be pervaded by g to some degree that seems to be the case.

Rosner: Yes, and people probably talk about one end of it, which is, “Does g exist in somebody’s brain?” But the other end, “Is the universe arranged such that it’s amenable to figuring shit out?” And the success of science over the past 400 years shows that for whatever reason, the universe is amenable to logic and an explanation and figuring stuff out.

Jacobsen: And so, it’s almost self-evidently so and evidently so later on, just like the Discourses on the Method deal, where by thinking about it, you can derive a self-consistent argument for some information processing going on.

But then if you develop a methodology like science, then things become evident, so you don’t need your own experience of being in the world, knowing that things in the world and exist in the world.

So, anyway, g came into this conversation. It is one of the things that is pretty consistent in the findings. So, we can talk about that spectrum. Is it something that is just an artifact of statistics, or, on the other hand, is it something that’s actually based in the brain? I would argue, or I say, “Both.”

Rosner: Also, as I said, it’s based in the universe. We’ve talked a lot about how the things that tend to persist in the universe are consistent and as simple as they can be with the Einstein quote. We’ve talked about that where he says, ‘the universe is complicated, but not perversely complicated, no more complicated than it needs to be.’

So, there’s another quote about one of the most amazing things about the universe is how amenable to math it is; when you look at the structures that underlie that game, which we find out more and more about because they’re mostly just neural net feedback systems.

The wiring of the brain is wildly complicated with 10,000 connections from every neuron to 10,000 other neurons.

Jacobsen: It’s really, really astonishing.

Rosner: Yes, times ten to the tenth neurons with these connections constantly forming and then atrophying. But the wiring, even though, the wiring is wildly complicated, the wiring scheme is pretty freaking simple that the neural net stuff is pretty basic.

I say that having never having taken a course and even reading a textbook. But still, these are simple. It is these pretty basic feedback loops repeated a gazillion times. That’s what it takes to have the mental fluidity and capacity to figure out the universe.

It also means that there’s another implication, which is that there are easy pickings. Things that are easy to figure out and then more complicated. Anyway, we’re getting away from the idea of g. Basically, g is some measure of mental resources.

We still don’t know enough about the brain to be able to go from the brains to look at some aspect of the brain’s anatomy and conclusively state that this will result in higher or lower intelligence they tried to look at Einstein’s brain, which was preserved.

I know they decided it wasn’t any bigger than normal, but it had a lot more connections. But any conclusions like that seems primitive and premature, so we should talk about the connection between IQ at least as it’s measured, and intelligence.

Jacobsen: Looking at what is being done and what has been commonly stated in people who spend their professional lives on this stuff is the actual adult intelligence scale or the WAIS is the gold standard. So, if you have a score on that test, that’s likely where your IQ stands.

Rosner: All right. Well, there’s no finding your true IQ because even the best IQ tests have a standard error measurement of at least half a standard deviation. The whole process is inherently just filled with opportunities for sloppiness and accuracy beyond the sloppiness and inaccuracy of the idea of IQ itself.

But when you mean the Wechsler is the gold standard, you mean it has been around for 100 years. This is the Wechsler you’re talking about. So, this is the fourth iteration. You have said that they’re working on the fifth generation, but each iteration has been tested on thousands of people and confirmed on thousands more and then constantly re-normed every few years.

So, it’s got a long history of being used to measure IQ and being as well evaluated for its ability to do that as any test, right?

Jacobsen: Yes. Which leads to another aspect of this paper and pencil tests are the way that they’re typically done are on electronic screens, but they’re generally the same format of just giving questions. Are there multiple-choice, true-false, or just arrange things in order?

You name it. Regardless, it’s still the fact that people were writing 10,000 years ago, so they could have made these things up. They may have been China on their civil service examinations four thousand years ago. So, it’s not like an original form of thinking. It’s pretty primitive.

Rosner: The idea is that IQ tests are still used. It strikes me as weird, at least in most aspects of the adult world. I can see kids being given IQ tests just to see if they need what academic help or enrichment they might need.

But even there, I just don’t see. For instance, my wife works at a high school and various kids do really well and other kids fucked up. I don’t see anybody here and nobody at that school. It’s a very liberal school, but I feel like they’re representative of schools in general.

At least by the time you get to high school, nobody is running to look at your IQ to see why you might be having problems with general school work. People just don’t think of that as a diagnostic or a source of information about somebody’s academic performance.

There’s still a lot of anxiety about tests like the SAT and the ACT, which can stand in for IQ tests. But nobody uses it like that. They’re just a credential to get to the college of your choice, you hope. Nobody looks at you when you get to thirty-four out of thirty-six on the ACT and says that’s the most important thing about that kid.

They’ll say a couple of things. One is, “That’ll help him or her get into college.” Then you think, “Yes, that kid’s pretty smart.” But the first thought is not, “We need to figure out how smart people are and that this test tells us that.”

So, Carole and I just started watching the show called Industry, which is about a bunch of interns at a trading house, financial enterprise, like a Lehman Brothers or a Goldman Sachs. One character is having her entry interview.

An interviewer says I’ve never seen anybody list their IQ on their resume before. And that’s just a quick little moment. But that line is in there to show that that kid is a heck of rube, like in over her head in terms of sophistication that anybody with any degree of sophistication would be able to know that her IQ doesn’t matter.

Nobody or no employer would give a shit about their IQ and no one would put it on a resume in a billion years. It’s not just past that point. Using IQ in the adult world is suspicious, it discredits. It’s like bragging about your cock size in mixed company.

But I could make the argument that that is a moral and a more helpful brag because somebody might believe you. That you would want that person to actually see your cock, where it’s a very rare person who could hear somebody brag about their IQ and want to see that IQ and have evidence of it.

Jacobsen: Is that in your experience?

Rosner: What?

Jacobsen: Has that been your experience? Generally, people don’t care about your IQ?

Rosner: I had one girlfriend who liked me, perhaps specifically, because I was smart. She was a lunatic. Now, Carole likes that I’m smart, but not in an IQ-type way, she finds me goofy. Well, it’s a mixed thing. But she’s not blown away by my IQ.

She’s benefited from my confidence. My being able to stay and keep a job, a well-paying job in late night for 11 and a half years. She benefits from my understanding finance, but I find her unnecessarily skeptical of how smart I am.

I think she should be more impressed and should be less skeptical of what I say on a daily basis. It’s frustrating to me how much corroboration she needs for what I say, what I know is correct. I never hear the end of it when I say something that turns out not to be correct.

For instance, I said that to sell my mother-in-law’s house to pay for her care when she moves into senior living. What I didn’t know is that you get a stepped-up basis when a spouse dies, the surviving spouse receives the house tax-free at the value of what its value is when their spouse dies.

So, I thought you paid taxes on your original purchase price of the house 35, 40 years ago, 40 grand, but you only pay taxes on – my father-in-law died like 2010 and houses were already really expensive by then.

So, you have the stepped-up tax basis, which made it possible to sell the house and make enough money to take care of my mother-in-law. I got a lot of shit about – well not shit, but like Carole was basically saying, “See, it’s good that I don’t just take your word for it because shit like this would happen.”

Een though, by the time it was time to make the decision, we’d already learned about the stepped-up tax basis. We didn’t come close to making a bad decision. We had a lot of talks in the years before based on my bad understanding.

But it never became even close to a huge mistake anyway. Yes, IQ, it’s gotten some articles written about me, but they’re not adoring articles for the most part. They’re mostly the mix of “Yes, he’s really smart. He’s a weirdo.”

There’s a lot of schadenfreude in articles about high IQ people. They like an attractive angle for the writers. The natural angle is to show how fucked up people with the high IQs are.

Jacobsen: Salacious schadenfreude? Bit more of a salacious version of schadenfreude.

Rosner: It’s not exactly schadenfreude. It’s just happy with what you have because if you have this other thing, you think you might want this being a really smart thing. Look at this guy, he’s really smart and it hasn’t gotten him anything that you, the reader, would value.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 587: “Assholes: A Theory,” Decency, and the Cosmos’ Information

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/12/09

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I’ve seen your American deceased artist, Bob Ross. He seems like a generous, warm, and kind person. Other people in your country are shitheads. So, what’s the benefit of a life lived as a generous, kind, and warm person compared to being a shithead?

Rick Rosner: First, I want to recommend a book on what makes somebody a shithead. There’s a book called Assholes: A Theory, I don’t know. It was written about 10 years ago. I think the guy – I don’t remember his name – wrote a sequel. I think also had assholes in the title.

But anyway, if you find Assholes: A Theory, you can also find the sequel, which deals specifically with Trump. According to this guy’s theory of assholes, which I agree with, an asshole is somebody who claims privileges that other people are decent enough not to claim.

Before everybody started learning how to use cell phones with good manners, back when everybody talked on cell phones instead of texting, assholes are people who would talk loudly on their phones in public after the time when most people would learn not to do that.

They’re taking the public space and occupying it with their loud voice. Exercising not a privilege, but they’re doing something that other people hesitate to do out of decency, cutting in line, getting into the ten items or less line with twenty five items, stealing a taxi from somebody when somebody else hails a taxi, then you run up and get in before they came.

All these are asshole moves. These are moves that most people don’t do because everybody likes living in a little Golden Rule world. We like the Golden Rule because it just seems to be the basis of so much ethical behavior.

There’s the big Golden Rule, which says, “Don’t kill people, don’t rape people, don’t steal all their shit.”

But I’d say that the little Golden Rule, because you wouldn’t like that. The little Golden Rule says, “Don’t even do a bunch of minor annoying things because you also wouldn’t like that.” So, everybody likes living in a world in which people aren’t total fucking assholes all the time.

It’s nice for everybody, but it leaves everybody vulnerable to assholes. Nobody knew how to fight Trump. We still don’t know how to fight Trump because he’s this rare person who stops at nothing.

We were soft targets of this behavior because you don’t find this level of indecency very often. Then fucking Trump, he exercised his huge indecency at the same time the Republicans as a whole party decided, “Well, it looks like we can get away with acting without decency.”

Even tens of millions of Evangelicals whose religion is based on decency decided that we can be bad in defense of a few moral stances that we think are paramount, like fighting abortion, getting judges in there that will fight abortion, that will overturn Roe v Wade, so, now, America is steeped in anxiety and misery.

The reason is that decent people engage in the big and little Golden Rule. That it’s nicer for everybody when everybody isn’t a fucking prick. So, anyway, your original question was, “What’s the benefit of being a decent person?”

One benefit is when everybody is a pretty decent person within reason. Everybody is fallible. Everybody fucks up. But when everybody strives to be decent and tries to minimize the amount of shittiness they’re engaged in, it’s nicer for everyone.

It’s probably not a zero sum game, where a world in which everybody is pretty decent probably feels better. The aggregate amount of happiness is probably higher than if some people were motherfuckers and got happiness from that at the expense of happiness in other people.

I’d say a utilitarian framework probably has people being pretty decent, up to the point where it gets ridiculous, where you don’t want to be like the Jains who walk around with like masks over their mouths, so they don’t accidentally kill insects by breathing them in.

Jacobsen: Yes. Cheesecloth.

Rosner: What?

Jacobsen: Cheesecloth.

Rosner: So, anyway, up to a point, probably, short of that point, so, that’s a huge benefit. Being able to go about your life, we’ve had decent presidents for the most part. Obama was too decent. He got played by the Republicans. But you didn’t have to follow politics every day to see what fucking new scary thing happened.

Unless, you’re a racist motherfucker, Obama’s presidency was a calming time. There were causes for anxiety under Bush, too. The collapse of the housing, the real estate bubble collapse, and the collapse of the economy caused a lot of misery.

That, he plus Cheney, he had them lying us into the Iraq war, which caused a lot of misery. But the man himself is a guy. It’ famously said he’s a guy you’d enjoy having a beer with, a friendly happy guy you’d like to be pals with.

So his presidency, even though it caused a lot of misery, it didn’t cause the fucking rancorous misery of Trump. Before Bush, Clinton, a very affable guy and not dangerous. Unless, you’re an intern. Then he might jizz on you.

Fucking before that George Bush Sr. was a very decent guy. Reagan started this whole wave of Republicans turning into the most horrible major U.S. political party in history. But the man himself was very charming and very comforting to have as well not comforting the liberals because we saw what he was up to.

But he was a very much a warm presence in the Oval Office. Even as he planted the seeds for the dismantling of democracy, we, usually, have a decent person in the White House. We, usually, have decent, at least until recently, near majority of conscientious political leaders.

There were always the racist fuckers down south, the George Wallace’s, but there were people, fucking Hubert Humphrey, the happy warrior; Lyndon Johnson, was a prick. He was really good at playing power games.

But after the assassination of Kennedy and becoming president, he decided to play power games to usher in all of the Civil Rights Era. This motherfucker from the southern state decided to fucking lay it all on the line and passed Civil Rights legislation, which cost the Democrats the entire South.

Democrats used to be a casual and, maybe, not so casually racist political party that owned the South. I just saw the election map from 1960 when Kennedy narrowly beat Nixon and the entire fucking south, except for Florida, went to the Democrats.

That hasn’t happened since probably 1964 when the South said, “Fuck you, you just empowered… you just gave civil rights to all these black people.” They lost. The Democrats rarely win southern states ever since.

While Obama did pretty well in the whole country, he probably picked up some Southern states. I don’t know. But anyway, like basic human, widespread basic human, decency makes everybody feel good, it provides stability, safety.

Otherwise, you get the Purge. Purge is a series of thrillers/horror movies where a hellish America of the near future has said that like one day a year, for 12 hours, anything goes, nothing is illegal.

They figured this would get rid of a bunch of bad guys because you could just kill over something. I’ve never seen one of the movies, but I think that was the rationale behind the plot. But it’s nicer when shit isn’t the Purge. So, that’s where you get your decency back.

You get the decency you invest and more back when everybody is decent. It’s like the fucking universe. The more matter there is, the more information matter can exchange and the more precisely defined matter is.

It’s no coincidence that in a universe with ten to the 80th or 85th particles, gravitation is like 1/10 to the 40th, as strong as the other forces. Like the precision with which matter is defined is on a scale of one part in 10 to the 40th, which is the square root of the number of particles in the universe.

The more particles you have, the more precisely the interactions among all these particles can define all the matter in the universe. And you need precisely defined matter for shit like us, for order to emerge out of chaos. Similarly, the more people you have or decent, the more decency there is to go around and the more you can build from this order and stability. The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 586: Celebrity Husbands and Comedy Writing Sports Comparisons

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/12/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck both started in Good Will Hunting.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Time out. So, I want to talk about his celebrity wife. He had a quote about her. It’s one paragraph. So he goes, “We ended up at a bar where my wife was the bartender. I literally saw her across a crowded room and eight years and four kids later, that’s my life. I don’t know how else our paths would have crossed if that didn’t happen. The moral is that when you’re tired, suck it up and go to the bar because you might meet your wife.”

Rosner: I think because his wife is lovely. I wasn’t meaning to insult Matt Damon’s wife, daring to compare my wife to his wife. He just happened to be having to go pee at the same time that my wife did. I just didn’t want him to get hit by the shrapnel of me comparing like my wife to his celebrity wife. I mean, I don’t see how he would have been reasonably insulted, but I didn’t like the situation.

Jacobsen: Yes, it’s not like he’s famous…

Rosner: One time, I got caught saying shit about Robert Redford by Robert Redford. What happened was back in the 80s, I worked in a hotel. I was a bouncer in a bar disco that was in a hotel in Boulder, Colorado.

Redford’s kid, his daughter went to the University of Colorado. It was well known at the university that his daughter lived at Spanish Towers, which was one of the fancier apartments for students in Boulder.

Some shit happened where her roommate or her boyfriend was murdered. This other bouncer and I, it was late at night. The bar, it was hit. The bar had gotten slow and whenever it got slow. We would sometimes go to the kitchen, the hotel kitchen and see what food was available to be pilfered.

Like the bread things, those bread-ready things that go along with beef wellington. We would get those. So anyway, we’re walking through the hotel. We’re discussing that we’ve heard that Redford is staying at the hotel and we’re talking.

We’re like, “Why would he stay at this shitty hotel? This hotel is a shithole where he could stay at his daughter’s place, which is very nice. It’s Spanish Towers.” Just as we were walking down, we walked through the lobby.

Now, we’re walking down a hall to the kitchen and behind us somebody yells at us, “How does it feel? Caught you red handed!” We look back. We walk by a guy, just a regular guy wearing glasses. Now, the guy has opened up the doorway, stuck his head in, and is now making fun of us.

We realize; we just walked past Robert Redford while talking about Robert Redford, which made him very amused. He is like busting our balls about it. Oh, it’s hysterical. So, I have several dumb stories about saying dumb shit around celebrities.

Okay, so, we were talking about Good Will Hunting.

So, I like Good Will Hunting because Matt Damon, his character Will Hunting, is a world class smart guy, a native genius who’s a janitor at Harvard because he’s from South Boston, which is just this fucked up part of Boston.

Somehow, he uses his genius. He’s just so fucking smart that he uses it to get Minnie Driver, whom I love. She’s really cute. She’s got those super wide set of jaw bones. If Batman were a girl, she’d make a great Batman.

It’s one of the things that can make that during her era, could make you a star. This giant jaw line reads really well on camera. I think she’s super cute. Matt Damon got to get with her in the movie just from being smart.

There’s another movie, Real Genius, where geniuses at MIT and Caltech, some of them get to get with really cute girls or ladies just for being smart. I like that. Even though, it doesn’t really line up much with my experience.

I’ve got you with, maybe, one cute lady from being smart. Maybe, but she was also a lunatic, she was a runner. She would go running for about five miles. She’d come back all sweaty where I’d be waiting for her. She liked having sex all sweaty. I was okay with this because it was sex, but it was weird.

She got in a fight with my ex-stepsister, this girl, the sweaty girl. She wasn’t always sweaty. She was like 5’11”. My sisters is like 5’2”, but my sister’s like really good at fighting. So, eventually, there was a fight that ensued. They were roommates, I think. Anyway, the cops came.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with anything except that I don’t think Minnie Driver would get in a fight with my sister and the cops would have to be called. Nor would Minnie Driver want to have sex while covered with cold, cold sweat.

Anyway, my experience being really smart and getting with girls is that it’s just not as if I never got to get with Minnie Driver. So, I don’t find the movies that realistic. But I like them because I’d like to get all sorts of shit because I’m really smart.

But really smart, just doesn’t get you that much; unless, you do a lot of work to go with the really smart. Really smart, the applicability of my really smartness is limited in what I’ve done with it. For 12 years, I wrote jokes for Jimmy Kimmel, where everybody else was also really smart and funny.

My being the very smartest person at Jimmy Kimmel in terms of IQ did not translate into me being the very funniest person among the writers, say there are 12 writers. I’m about in the 35th percentile on a comedy writing standard, which still makes me world class in terms of being funny.

Because you have to be really fucking good to get one of those staff positions. But I know one of the things that probably pissed off my boss is that I described my skill level on a writing staff is equivalent to, maybe, Manu Ginóbili, who was a pretty, I think, durable sixth man in the NBA.

The sixth man is the guy who doesn’t start the game, but comes off the bench and gets you, maybe, 12 points, who isn’t the best, but is a reliable performer. But I don’t know basketball. So, I may have been overrating myself because the man had a long career.

Maybe, he was better than I thought he was. So, if my boss read that he would have been like, “Fuck you.” You’re more like a Kiki Vandeweghe. But who knows? But anyway, I was reliable, but not the very best. Not good for fucking Kobe or Michael Jordan or LeBron. When it comes to jokes.

So, I don’t know. I mean, it’s like in some ways being really smart is like being really pretty, and then going to Hollywood to try to build a career out of being really pretty. You find out that when everybody who’s really pretty comes to one town to make a career out of it.

That you’re fucking really pretty. You better have some other shit going on besides just that. I had just enough comedy shit going on in addition to the really smart and also just working really hard.

I’m not letting myself go home for the night until I turned in ten pages of material, which is an insane amount of fucking writing. You’re a fucking machine cranking out material. So, anyway, the end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 585: Celebrity Wives

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/12/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, we’ve talked about portrayals of genius, Matt Damon actually graduated from Harvard and he portrayed someone in Good Will Hunting.

Rick Rosner: Genius, who’s a janitor at Harvard. All right. First, let’s start with a Matt Damon story. I’ve never told before. Okay, so, my wife and I are at a very fancy wedding that’s just chock full of celebrities.

My wife, I’m walking with her to the bathroom. She’s in one of those boots like Biden has right now because she had surgery on some tendons in her ankle because she hikes a lot. So, she’s clumping along.

We’re in our wedding finery on the way to the bathroom. I say to my wife, “I’d give her a compliment.” I go. You see all these famous people here. I see their spouses. You compare quite favorably to these celebrity spouses. They’re not so hot. I’m just giving her a compliment.

My wife is pretty good looking. Then I turn around. I just happen to look behind me. I’m like, “Six feet behind us is Matt Damon, also walking to the bathroom”. I’m like, “Oh, fuck.” I’m like, “Jesus Christ. I hope I haven’t insulted Matt Damon because he’s a celebrity. He has a wife. here I am saying my wife compares favorably to the celebrity wives.”

I was freaking out or trying to figure out if my voice would have carried enough for Matt Damon to have heard, like me comparing a regular wife to celebrity wives. I felt bad about it. Yes, that’s the message. It’s not very good.

Jacobsen: It’s a terrible story. It’s hilarious.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 584: IQs in the Million and Billion Rarities, and High-Range Intelligence Test Reveals

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/12/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: No, I’m starting now. So, what do you think of a high range testing in so far as it measures intelligence?

Rick Rosner: Well, you just told me that a guy with a gripe against high range testing revealed the answers to like two dozen tests, or his answers at least. Two dozen or so high range tests as a protest to what he considers IQ inflation.

It’s just that in itself seems like an asshole move that developing a high range test and then sending it out into the world, and scoring it, and norming it, taking the scores of dozens of people and comparing that to their scores on other tests.

So, you get a good idea of what your test is. All that can take hundreds of hours and this guy just scuttles all that work. So, just because he doesn’t agree with this, he thinks – this guy you told me about – that the scores people get on high range tests or he thinks they’re too easy for the scores they give.

But if you take one of these tests, do well, and you score 170, this guy says, “Well, that’s not really a 170, maybe, you’re at 160 or 150. Therefore, I’m going to fuck up all these dozens of tests. Thousands of hours and people’s work.” That guy just seems like a fucking dick.

People might be more eccentric, but I don’t know if that would be the case. But you could also argue that in Aspergery people, they don’t follow norms or have many social graces. Maybe, this is an expression of social gracelessness.

But I don’t know. I don’t know if I buy that either. I don’t think that high IQ people are necessarily, on average, more dickish than not super high IQ people. But this guy is certainly a fucking dick about this issue.

These high range tests of which I’ve taken. I have three dozen give you inflated scores. I’d say that in general not. With regard to the practice effect, maybe, if you go in cold taking one of these high range tests, I don’t think it’s going to give you an inflated score because you really don’t know what you’re stepping into if you’ve never taken one of these tests before.

They’re hard. Now if you’ve taken a bunch of them, as I have, what it takes in terms of effort, a lot of people will take a look at the high range test that might have 30 problems. Say that I’ve done pretty well on a regular range IQ test, you’re pretty decent, maybe score a 140 on it, on a test you were given as a kid.

You might be good at puzzles. So, you see one of these thirty item high range IQ tests, let’s say, measures, or claims to measure, from 140 to 170.

So, you go through it once. Right off the bat, you think the answers to three of the early problems, because most of these tests are arranged from easier problems to the hardest problems. So, you get three off the bat. It takes like ten minutes and then you’re like, “Okay, maybe, I should try this test.”

You sit down for half an hour, 40 minutes, maybe get five others. You’re pretty confident about the answers to five other problems. Then, maybe, that encourages you to spend another two hours and, maybe, get the answers to four other problems.

Now, you’re up to, maybe, 12 items correct, or you think you have the answers to 12 items, I assume. You spend another three or four hours across a couple of days, a couple evenings. Maybe, you work out what you think are plausible, what you think are plausible answers, to, maybe, two or three more problems and then just the rest of it.

It’s just you. You’re like, “Well, I’ve spent almost 10 hours on this test so far.” You spend another couple hours taking wild guesses, so you get half an idea what the problem is about. And if it’s multiple choice, you’re just going to go ahead and take a wild guess at the other 16 problems that you haven’t figured out the answer to, for sure.

If it’s not multiple choice, you’re still going to get sick of it. After a dozen hours, you are going to take wild guesses. You’re going to be confident in your answers to maybe a dozen problems. You’re going to take educated guesses on another few problems, maybe wild guesses on the field.

After spending 14, 15 hours at the most on it, you turn it in and you get your score back. You get like eleven problems correct. That gets you a high score at 151, 152. It’s not unreasonable. What you don’t know as a one time pretty smart test taker is what it would take to get instead of eleven out of thirty to get twenty-four out of thirty, which would be another fucking sixty hours, at least, of sitting there trying different angles on these problems, maybe, it’s a reference heavy book.

A heavy IQ test looking up obscure definitions of some of the words and trying to match up the most obscure definitions. It would take a lot of work.

Let’s say, you’ve got a decent job, where you’ve got a good job. You make $3,000 a week. You take home in the low six figures. Maybe, you’re a lawyer. Maybe, you’re an engineer. You make like $140,000 a year.

It would seem weird to you to spend 60 hours or 70 hours, almost two full weeks of work on this test. If you spend two full weeks of work, at work, you earn $5,500, and here you are doing all this work for free, so, a lot of competent people are going to not know it takes that effort.

It is really minimizing the effort it takes on some of these tests. The test I’m working on currently I’ve been a little lazy with it, but I’d say that I’ve got pushing a hundred hours on it. Really, to do the very best job, which should be, at least, another twenty hours more, I don’t know if I’ll do that because it has got a deadline.

But given the situation with these tests, for most people, it’s going to give a pretty reasonable IQ score to the extent that you believe in IQ at all for people like me who know what it takes. On some of these tests, I’ve probably spent close to two hundred hours, which is crazy.

But knowing that that’s what you have to do, to do really well, and having the confidence that if you think of these problems long enough, you might get the answers to some of these things that; you could argue that by virtue of spending so much time on these tests that I’m outperforming my natural, what you might think would be my natural, I.Q.

It is just by sheer waste, just force of spending time and coming up with 100 different angles on a problem, until you find one that works, you can make the argument. Yes, there’s a practice effect like that.

I’ve learned that it takes a huge amount of effort. I’ve learned the tropes, the areas that plague some of these tests go into. It’s not uncommon to find items on these tests that do something with Pi because Pi is an endless succession of digits.

To some extent you can argue that they’re random, so, you can do something with a set of random digits. That’s also a famous number. So, Pi shows up not rarely on these tests. I know that from having taken a bunch of these tests.

Also, by figuring how the people who write the tests are thinking, you think, “Well, all right, Pi is a famous irrational number. What are some other famous irrational numbers? Square root of 2. 1/Pi. Pi divided by four. What else?”

If you look around, you can probably find sequences on a lot of these tests that fit the bill that way. I know that. So, I have some background in this where I have some things I can try if there’s a sequence problem on a test.

And to that extent, I’ve got knowledge that, maybe, lets me play above my ability level to some extent. Does that mean because there are eight guys in the world who might get a 190 on a test, will they only deserve a 179? That this fucker should wreck everybody’s work?

It’s a harmless thing. I mean, what’s the harm? The societal harm in me saying that I’ve got an IQ in the 190s based on scores I’ve been given on these tests, but that, maybe, I only have a score in the 180s. Why does this fucking V for Vendetta vigilante guy get to wreck everybody’s work?

He’s addressing a societal ill that just doesn’t exist. Even if there were a bunch of people going around and there, might be a few hundred people going around saying their IQ is such and such on based on some high range test they took, there’s no societal ill, except for, maybe, the people who took the tests and are bragging about their scores because they’re not going to get laid out of this, which is what some of them want.

They’re just going to creep a bunch of people out. But they have this credential that they’re compelled to share with people in the hopes that somebody will be impressed and nobody’s going to be impressed. They’ll just think they’re a fucking creepy weirdo.

So, the harm is in the creepy. It’s the creepy weirdos who are being harmed, not society. So, with that, I think we can wrap this up. I mean, not everybody is a creepy weirdo. A lot of people might be sad weirdos, lonely weirdos.

Some people might be like super gifted, like non-weirdos who are just grew up in the Appalachians and weren’t exposed enough to normal society. Maybe, they grew up in a Hillbilly Elegy situation.

They happened to be super smart. They don’t realize that it’s creepy to be interested in IQ. They just like taking the test because they like solving puzzles. So, it’s possible to just be a naive bragger about one’s own IQ without being a weirdo about it just because you haven’t learned any better. Fucking Good Will Hunting, growing up in South Boston, getting in fights, picking up Harvard girls, doesn’t know any better, he’s a janitor at Harvard.

He solves the problem, slept on the blackboards at night in between cleaning toilets. Not a real character by the way. It’s fucking a bad thing. But he won an Oscar along with a fucking Affleck for writing a screenplay. So, good job for everybody.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 583: “History doesn’t care about us”

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/12/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: It’s the worst day ever again.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, is it at 9/11 levels, yet?

Rosner: Yes, we have a 9/11 every day.

Jacobsen: What’s the conservative reaction to it?

Rosner: They think we’re babies for wearing masks and being concerned and opening up the schools. They think it’s tyranny to make people not do stuff and to shut stuff down.

Jacobsen: For almost 3,000 people that have died every day…

Rosner: Who’ve died from it?

Jacobsen: What’s the number of people who have had some physical or mental decline from it?

Rosner: So what, 15 million Americans are known to have or confirmed to have had it and in estimates what the multiplier for the number of people who’ve actually had it is. Like Trump was bragging that, maybe, 15% of the population has had it, he’s thinking that that’s some achievement.

But anyway, conservatively, say 20 million Americans have had it, which is certainly an underestimate. 20 percent of people are who’ve had it. 20% is the number they think might suffer lasting mental debilitation. So, that’s 4 million Americans who might have their brains fucked up from it, which is 1.2% of the whole population.

Jacobsen: How rich is the denial over there?

Rosner: Well, it’s huge. So, nobody puts it in the right perspective, which is roughly one American in a thousand has died from it. Right now, it’s the leading cause of death. But 3,000 people, close to 3,000 people a day might be dying from it.

But 5,000 people die from other stuff every day. The other stuff is the end of life stuff, the cancers and the heart disease and all of that. So, both sides could probably use some perspective, but certainly the denier side is much more stupid and inaccurate in its denial of what’s going on.

The deal is, it’s a deadly thing. It will certainly overtake a World War Two to become the third leading, third deadliest event, in U.S. history. But the other deadliest events, the Spanish Flu and the Civil War, happened when the US population was a lot smaller.

So, the percent killed by the other events was much higher. I’m thinking, the population under Spanish Flu was probably a third of what America is today and probably in the Civil War, it was the fourth or fifth.

So, you’re looking at more than one percent of the population being killed in each case or at least in the Civil War. then almost a percent dying in Spanish Flu. Two thirds compared to, by the time we’re done with this will be, as many as one fifth of one percent, which is a lot, and probably one in 100 seniors killed by it, which is just some horrible shit.

But certainly not as devastating as 1918. But neither should be as devastating as 1918. It’s one hundred years later, lifespans are double what they were in 1918. We shouldn’t have one percent of the population die and losing half a million people to this.

It isn’t acceptable. It’s a staggering number of U.S. dead compared to 553 Covid dead in South Korea. They have 1/80th the per capita death rate. It’s almost entirely because they have competent leadership. We have Trump, who’s just one of the most stupid and evil guys in history.

Jacobsen: What is the state of affairs in terms of white Evangelical America? What is this disease? It’s a virus. What is the reaction to it?

Rosner: The white Evangelicals have been tenderized for forty years, have been mobilized and fed bullshit both from their media and from their leaders, from their pastors and from their communities that has left them belligerent, uninformed, and stupid.

They’ve been preyed on and they’ve allowed themselves to be preyed on. They’ve allowed themselves to embrace denial of reality in the service of some political agenda. The anti-abortion stuff that they’ve allowed themselves to be told of outweighs everything else.

So, they’re both the perpetrators, victims of their horribleness. They should be the most charitable to fellow human beings in America because of the obligations of their religion. Instead, they’re some of the biggest assholes in America.

That won’t be fixable until, at the very least, we fix our media and until enough time goes by that this generation of horrible Evangelicals is supplanted by, one would hope, their kids, who are to a large extent, one would hope, are just as disgusted with the hypocrisy of their parents as the rest of America is.

I’m sure it’s not maybe 40% of their kids are disgusted and won’t embrace their religion or their flavor of denial.

Jacobsen: Do you think fundamentally their whole theology is just untenable? The way they live their lives, the way they preach, the way that they have this male worship of their pastor, things like this.

Rosner: Well, I mean, in the longer term, all of us lie on the ash heap of history. We all die. We all become immaterial. History doesn’t care about us. Our ideals may or may not be carried forward. Certainly, their ideals won’t be carried forward because, yes, what they believe and how they act is too contradictory. But that becomes true for us all a little, just becomes true or faster for those assholes.

Jacobsen: The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 582 – Adult Ridiculous Behaviour from Ridiculous Thoughts

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/12/04

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the most ridiculous thing you have done, a single thing, not necessarily repeatedly?

Rick Rosner: Going back to high school at age 26 and spending a full year as a high school senior to have a place to think, that that would be a good place to think about the universe. That’s pretty stupid. In retrospect, suing Who Wants to be a Millionaire? was pretty pointless. Though, at the time, I really wanted to prevail.

But having the thinking that I had a chance to prevail, well, I did have a chance to prevail. But the chance was much smaller than I thought. At every step of the process, I thought I had, maybe, a one third chance of things going my way.

But given the decisions that went against me, I’d say that the aggregate probability or the individual probability of any of those decisions going my way must have been lower. If there were five separate points in which I had a one third chance of prevailing, then my chances of not prevailing at some point would have been 32 over 343, which meant that I would have only a one in seven and a half chance of not eventually getting quiz show justice, which I did not.

So my odds of prevailing must have been much lower. Maybe like one seventh or one eighth of each point. If I’d played it differently, maybe, I could have prevailed. For instance, the millionaire only received one letter complaining from a viewer complaining that my question was flawed.

If I’d realized, and if I thought about, I could have contacted a bunch of people to write in so that they would have received, maybe, 15 letters from all across the country saying the question was factually flawed, which, maybe, they would have felt was more persuasive.

That was, maybe, the main thing that I didn’t do right. If I threatened them with a legal action from the word “go,” maybe, because I started off being very nice with them, thanking them for having me on their show, who cares?

I still do this, but I don’t care to talk about it further to waste your time at this point. Anyway, that turned out to be pretty pointless.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 581 – 50,000 Acts of Shittyness

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/12/02

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When you imagine a good president, one of the greats, a good president, what is decorum for them? What should be their behaviour?

Rick Rosner: All right. You’ve asked… there’s an assumption in there that there’s ever been a good president. If you really look at the presidents one by one, even the best presidents, they had huge fucking flaws.

Washington owned a shitload of slaves. Didn’t none of the early presidents do anything to fix the slavery situation? Lincoln, while one of our emotionally deepest presidents, presided over the greatest slaughter of Americans in history.

I don’t think anybody wouldn’t argue that he had no choice. But still, he was president while 650,000 Americans were killed in the war. FDR, he got us out of the Depression kinda because what really got us out of the depression was World War Two.

He ignored that the Jews were being slaughtered in Germany. I mean even the best presidents are shitty in a lot of ways. Obama has been our most decorous president, perhaps in my lifetime, but that’s wasn’t necessarily the best thing for him to be.

He should have been more feisty and combative because he got played for years by the Republicans. He kept wanting to make deals with them and work with them, and they just wanted to fuck him up whenever they could.

So, he didn’t get as much done as a more angry, confrontational president would have. He let us just slide straight into Trump. He didn’t announce that Trump was being investigated for the Russians who were all over the election of helping Trump.

He didn’t announce this. If Obama did turn it into a partisan issue, and Obama didn’t because everybody thought that Hillary would get elected… anyway, what was the question? What makes a good president?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: Obama is known for his empathy. I think that’s probably the biggest element of decorum. Once you get to a basic level of just non-animal behavior like Trump, occasionally, less so as President, in his past, he had Elvis moments where somebody would come to him with a charitable request.

Trump would occasionally say, “Okay, somebody whose plight would strike my fancy.” But that doesn’t really add to any greatness to him as president, because he’s an asshole 24/7, regardless of the occasional acts of mercy.

He pardoned some deserving people at the behest of Kanye and Kim Kardashian. But that small gesture does nothing to clean him up as president. So, you need to start with a basic decency. And then beyond that, you achieve greatness in emotional areas by actually and clearly feeling empathy for people.

There are all sorts of instances of Obama convincingly demonstrating sympathy and empathy. You get that same feeling from Lincoln that he was really suffering along with the country. You get the idea, JFK from certain photos, and I don’t know what else, but you get the idea that JFK really, really took the presidency to heart, that he really agonized over the responsibilities of president.

Now, at the same time, he had a fuck room in the basement of the White House for banging people he wasn’t married to. Also, he was all jacked up on drugs because he was super sick. So, he was on this. For a while, he was on speed.

He was getting injected with by this doctor nicknamed Dr. Feelgood, who is, basically, just shooting people full of speed. B vitamins, but the B vitamins didn’t make you feel good. That’s what he told you made you feel good, but it was really the fucking meth.

But really the ability to demonstrate empathy, sympathy, kindness is what it takes, Jimmy Carter was a very unpopular president and is still loved by a lot of hyper conservatives, but is also beloved and is pretty much regarded as the president who’s had the greatest ever post-presidency.

Because he’s just behaved with decency and charity. He was a fairly young man when he left the presidency. So, he’s like 93 or 94 now. So, that means he was born in 1926 and he left the presidency in 1980. So, he was around 54 years old.

For 40 years, for one thing, most presidents don’t live 40 years after they leave office, but he’s lived for 40 years and he spent that those 40 years being just an example of a charitable decent, Sunday school teacher, the builder of homes for humanity.

Even he’s there, all these pictures of him, like beat to shit by the bike, by being a carpenter, at fucking 94 years old, being a construction worker isn’t for somebody in his 90s. He’ll give himself a bullet. He’ll get hit with something he’s working with and will give him a massive black eye. He doesn’t give a fuck. He just keeps working. That makes him saintly. So, there you go.

Bush too, you have to think back, remember what an asshole he was, a disaster he was as president because he’s just kept very quiet in the 12 years since he’s been president. He’s painted cute pup paint. He paints doggies.

So, not being an asshole goes a long way. Most presidents are rehabilitated in the public’s mind as they forget what pissed them off about them as president. That’s happened probably with every single president.

I’m hoping it won’t happen with Trump because he’ll just keep reminding everybody what a fucking asshole he is. I mean, eventually, he’ll die and then people may forget. I mean, he did so much terrible stuff, but nobody can keep it all in their minds at once.

Some day, some historians will enumerate every single act of dickedness and every lie and every scam. He’s already at 25,000 public lies while being president. When everything is tallied, everything he did, it could amount to close to 50,000 acts of shittyness.

Jacobsen: So there you go. Wow.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 580 – Rational and Irrational, and Evaluation and Garbage

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/11/26

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Rational and irrational, but all rooted in economic and psychological considerations that all, whether there square or not, they can explain why we do what we do.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: And so, what’s the separation?

Rosner: Drained by biology and sentimentality and economics. But all that is gonna change in terms of consciousness. When consciousness becomes possible to replicate, preserve consciousness outside of a biological body or create consciousness, it is something that didn’t start biological.

Really, that’s all I have to say in this segment is that everything changes when consciousness itself becomes an independently existing thing. It opens up a bunch of questions. Some of these questions are being addressed and have been addressed, mostly stupidly and superficially by science fiction. But it is possible to have a reasonable discussion about what is going to happen.

It will become possible to assign value both to society, in terms of dollars to consciousness of various types, various magnitudes of consciousness. It also becomes highly likely that consciousness will be cheapened. That once it becomes commodified, then it’ll be easier to think of it in certain contexts as garbage. That’s it. That’s our segment for right now.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 579 – Reasonable, Confident President

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/11/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I’m looking at this as Canadian overall. Trump, basically, is just losing day after day after day.

Rick Rosner: Here’s what everybody has concluded: Nobody believes he has any chance of winning. But he’s a prick, can’t stand losing, and also he’s made a sixth of a billion dollars in contributions since the election from his followers whom he’s telling that he needs their money to fight to remain president for another four years.

This is just a cynical means of exploiting the followers, when you donate to him, for him, to fight to overturn the election results. The fine print says he can spend the money how ever he wants including personal expenses. So, it is just a scam to suck money out of people.

And as more and more people realize that he’s got no chance of winning, the only people still making noise about it is just what’s that same principle that the worse he gets, the worse the cause gets, the lower the bar is for people deserting the cause.

This is leaving only people under the lower and lower bar that the greasy scum at the bottom of the barrel. So, now ,you only have the craziest and slimiest people fighting for Trump. You got this Sydney. What’s her name.

Jacobsen: Powell?

Rosner: That’s an actor. Powell, yes. She’s a crazy piece of crap. Whatever her name is, Ellis and Rudy Giuliani. They’re all just super confident and just keeping the grift going for as long as possible. But it is bad because they keep drifting; the longer they keep tens of millions of yahoos agitated and in a state of thinking that Trump is going to prevail.

Trump’s people threaten violence against people who dare to question him. One of Trump’s lawyers, the guy who headed the US cyber security agency, whom Trump fired after the guy said the election was clean.

One of Trump’s lawyers said that guy should be drawn and quartered, and then hanged. Just execute and shit like that, it just leads to just rancour. His people continuing to be dangerous assholes. But we only have less than 50 days.

There’s been news that somebody out of the White House is trying, was trying, to sell presidential pardons for money. It looks like he’s going to be as shitty as he could possibly be. He’s not going to behave with any grace or decency.

In the last 50 days, the best hope for him is that he’s just so sick of being president that he doesn’t work very hard at doing the shitty things that he could do. He doesn’t do any of the presidential things he could do.

He hasn’t really addressed COVID except for trying to take credit for the vaccine. He hasn’t held a COVID briefing in nearly six months. Even though, today was the worst day ever for U.S. COVID deaths.

The second worst day ever for new cases. So, it is continuing to explode, but he couldn’t give a shit. That’s about it.

Biden doesn’t have to. Biden’s behaving strategically in looking like appointing or announcing, who his new cabinet’s going to be and just behaving like a president should behave. But Trump is making it easy for Biden to do that by behaving like the biggest asshole ever. All Biden has to do is just do shit that any reasonable confident person in his position would do.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 578 – Baths and Boy Scouts

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/11/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So, I’m in the tub today. Under lockdown, baths in the tub are still something you can take. My wife takes a lot of baths, and then I use the water before it cools down. I was thinking about how in America we tend to warehouse our old, which has been part of the Covid problem.

Because when Covid gets loose in a senior living center then it devastates roughly 80 percent of the US Covid deaths have been among people 65 and older. I was thinking about how other cultures treat their old differently. Treatment of old people varies widely.

But in the US, if we have the money or if the grandparents have the money, enough money to get stuck in senior living, then that’s probably where they’ll go. I was thinking about, is this a selfishness problem among people who aren’t old?

Because old people they take a lot of attending. They’re not as young; they can’t deal with the tech and they don’t. Anyway, my theory is – I ran it by Carol, who said, “It’s so obvious as to not be a theory.” But she says that about a lot of my shit.

I’ll tell her like most of my jokes are just, “Meh.” Sometimes, I’ll come up with a pretty good one and I’ll run it by her. Often, I’ll get from Carol, “Yes, but anybody could have come up with that joke.” That doesn’t necessarily make it a bad joke.

Not everybody or anybody did, I came up with it. Just because it is made up of familiar components doesn’t mean that it’s not a good joke, so, anyway, my idea is that now compared to 50 years ago. We all suffer from a time crunch because ‘me time’ has become so much more precious than ‘we time.’

Deal is, now, everything’s awesome. Entertainment is awesome. Personalized information feed via social media is awesome. It takes up a lot of time and it’s great, relatively. We want to spend as much time as possible doing that instead of anything else.

So, anything like dealing with an oldie that takes away from that. This is resented, makes us feel time pressure. You look back at the 70s when pretty much everything sucked, except for sex. Back then, sex was only for cool people.

So, people had all these hours of sex. So, it was when your life is filled with just sitting around vaguely bored and resentful. It might be possible for you to be more altruistic because the time you’re sacrificing isn’t worth as much.

And that’s the theory. I threw it up on Twitter and there actually only one guy who called me out saying, “No.” Because if your theory were true, it would be true across all nations, since all nations have the same tech and the US is more selfish than a lot of other nations. I go, “Okay, yes, I acknowledged that there are other reasons.”

He threw some of those reasons. We’ve talked about these reasons. The American mythos of rugged individualism. I was thinking about the Evangelicals, the politicization of Evangelicals, which has been going on for 40 years. The deal is, in order to make Evangelicals a useful political tool, you have to divorce Christians from Christian values.

And the way it has been done is to tie political action to Christian things that are made to seem as if they overwhelm anything else, that if the whole nation is going to hell, then the ends justify the means. You can elect the most godless president we’ve ever had if he’s doing things in the service of saving the country from going to hell and also saving America from aborted babies.

The United States is sinking into depravity and abortion means that any normal everyday morality or everyday moral considerations have to take a backseat to fighting those things politically. That’s the jujitsu that’s been done on Evangelicals.

That you have to forget any moral qualms you have. It has been freeing that you can go ahead and be a fucking immoral dick if you’re working for a greater or a more desperate morality.

There’s that, there’s the fear, the selling of the idea that any collective action is socialism or communism or is opening the door to such that anything other than unfettered capitalism, that unfettered capitalism allows all Americans to discover their greatness through capitalistic struggle and entrepreneurial struggle.

Anything that eases Americans away is fucking socialism and is stealing my tax dollars for people who don’t deserve it because they don’t have gumption. It’s an old tune, but it’s been played very successfully, recently.

To underpin the thesis of this thing, which is that Americans are fucking selfish now, I would say that more Americans than ever before, more people voted for Trump. Seventy-four million people that have ever voted for any other candidate who has lost a presidential election by probably 10 million votes.

A lot of people voted for a guy who’s obviously a corrupt, do nothing, incompetent, lying asshole. That speaks to an America that’s willing to be lied to, manipulated. Because it somehow aligns with they’ve been taught to believe is their self-interest.

That’s pretty much it beyond the things like the ongoing eroding of the institutions that were more collective, that had more focus than even industry. Corporations back in the 1950s when CEOs made only 20 times what the average worker as opposed to a thousand times.

But the head of Disney making 12 million bucks per year. Corporations used to exist for the betterment of or used to care about their workers. Used to, I thought they were bringing good products for the improvement of life, American life in general.

I’m sure there was always some craven capitalistic considerations. But they weren’t as the shift has been away from workers and towards management owners and stockholders. We’ve talked about that. I mean, everybody knows that.

The loss of religion is something that you could look to for daily guidance, moral guidance. The loss of things like the Boy Scouts to cynicism and there being better things to do and more entertaining things to do as a 12-year-old or a 14-year-old than going on camp-outs. Also, the molestation there. We’ve talked about that. Anyway, all that we’ve talked about before.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Yes, they’re in like a lawsuit that may lead to bankruptcy, too.

Rosner: Yes. I was a Boy Scout for half a second. I was a Webelos, which is in between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts for like two years. I regret that I didn’t stick it out and become a fucking Eagle Scout. There’s still merit in being guided through a multi-year program of developing some knowledge and expertise in a number of different fields, which is really what the Boy Scouts are about.

They picked a bunch of meritorious areas to learn. Every time you learn enough or do enough in that area, then you get a patch to put on your sash. When you get enough patches for your sash, you can become an Eagle Scout. Some excellent people have been Eagle Scouts. I know more. I mean, maybe, it’s still going in some areas, but, I think, it would be a rare and a weird thing to be an Eagle Scout. Age 17 now, that’s all I got on this.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 577- The Death of Theology

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/11/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you think the end point, the eventual end point, is, at some point, going to be the death of theology? Because it seems like we’re seeing that in real time.

Rick Rosner: The end point of theology, do you think that science will always just kill theology dead? Is that what you’re asking?

Jacobsen: Asymptotically kill it.

Rosner: Yes. I would, in the manner of presidential candidates at a debate. We are not going to exactly answer that question when I answer a different question, which is: I don’t think that science will kill humanity dead, kill human values. In fact, you’ve been working on this yourself.

We’ve been working on it together. But under IC consciousness is an unavoidable, not uncommon thing. It is going to arise; unless, it is specially constrained. Statistically, it is going to arise. At this point, we only know linear consciousness.

That is, consciousness that exists in a being. We can imagine it existing in an engineered being, though we’ve only seen it so far in evolved beings. But regardless whether evolved or engineered in a being who exists, who lives across linear time for us, one-dimensional time, it is possible to speculate that you could at least engineer universes, designer universes. that have other than three spatial dimensions.

You need causality, which tends to really lock into a linear time. But it is possible to imagine you could develop other kinds of causality. For instance, there’s a pretty good science fiction comedy called Galaxy Quest, have you seen it?

Jacobsen: What is it called?

Rosner: Galaxy Quest.

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: All right. So, if you haven’t seen it, it is, for people who might be listening or reading this, who haven’t seen it. It is about the cast of a show exactly like Star Trek.

Jacobsen: This is with Tim Allen.

Rosner: Yes.

Jacobsen: I love that show.

Rosner: And it is like 10 or 15 years old, you’ve seen it, right?

Jacobsen: Yes. It is a decent and funny show.

Rosner: It is a great to good movie. I, personally, don’t like Star Trek very much, but I love this movie. It is the cast of Star Trek. It is like 15 years after Star Trek has been canceled and the cast pretty much subsists on going to Comic-Con to fan-cons, signing autographs for 5 bucks an autograph and shit like that. They end up being basically kidnapped by an alien race that’s in a war with a more powerful alien race. The alien race that grabs the Star Trek crew has intercepted broadcasts of Star Trek and misunderstood those broadcasts to be the truth instead of fiction, and has grabbed this crew to pilot their ship against this great enemy. Shit ensues from there. The whole point of it is, because I’ve now forgotten the point I was trying to make… but yes, they’ve got a device, the aliens have this device that has like an eight-second reset.

But if you deploy this little time bomb, it’ll take you back to eight seconds in the past. So, anything that’s disastrous; if it took less than eight seconds, you have a shot at rectifying it. I could imagine that you could engineer a world that has an eight-second reset. So, time wouldn’t be perfectly linear because you’d always be able to like simulate, if you can reset eight seconds back into the past whenever you want. Basically, you’re pushing forward a simulation and checking out different little eight second futures. It doesn’t become set in stone. Until, you let it become. So, I’m reading another book by Lisa Barrett, who wrote How Emotions Are Made, called Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. Her area is brain science.

Maybe, it is that the brain is just mostly predicted. The brain helps your body get ready for what happens next, both near next and slightly more later next. But if what’s going to happen, you can budget your bottle your physical resources better down to knowing how traffic life works, not to step in front of a car. You’ve managed your body better than somebody who steps in front of a car. But it is possible to imagine a type of a resettable simulation always running a simulated future. Until, you let that future become an actual thing that happens based on having your brain or your information processor having better and better predictive ability, a better ability to model and simulate the future. So, it is possible to imagine that taken to an extreme, that such an extreme that the time doesn’t work the way we experience it now.

I don’t know how hard it would be to work out how living in a flexible future would really work. But if you thought about it, and if you could have a novelist could figure it out, obviously, we don’t have that power over our world. You could certainly engineer a world like that within a video game, where you’ve got that constant eight-second reset. So, time would function somewhat differently. But anyway, that was a long digression to get back to. It is hard to imagine a time like on other planets where conscious beings have evolved working in universes that aren’t engineered and planets where shit it engineered. It seems unlikely that you’d get creatures, conscious beings that don’t have the same existential issues that we do.

They live linearly. They have all the issues of being evolved beings or as technology gets there, being engineered beings with all the issues that we have with mortality, scarcity, morality. So, it is possible to imagine entire galaxies and universes where most of the beings within that universe are dealing with the same root existential philosophical moral issues. Because everybody’s pretty much made of the same shit, existing under the same physical constraints created by the same evolutionary and then engineered forces. So, as people who want to look up the shit we’ve talked about, we’ve talked about how morality is inescapable in an existent world. By tautology, an existent world is a world that can exist. So, you’re going to have morality, which you can also call humanity, though the simple practice of morality in the future will be less and less human.

But the issues behind existence will still be there. We’ll need address a lot of instances via a moral system, which, as we’ve discussed, are entwined with the preservation of order. The freedom to go about your life in a world that has enough stability that you’re not constantly struggling to survive or struggling not to die, constantly cowering in fear of death. To get back to the original question, will theology survive? Well, it survives less well than – well, it depends on what you call theology. But we could call it the creation of explanations for why the world is. The imagining of divine beings and divine forces with these imaginings being imagined before humanity or whatever other species is doing it, has the science to explain the world. It makes sense that theology generally predates science.

And then once science comes along, it really strips theology bare. You’re left with having to link the remains of theology to arguments about morality that arise consistent with the principles of existence. That morality is tied to order, tied to the collective good, the right that the conscious beings have to go about their business unmolested by overwhelming chaos, the right to order, basically. That’s an end place. Though you can take it a little farther and you can always look for theology at the very edges of what you’ve talked about with the God of the gaps, where God is left, where the possibility of God still exists – where science has not got to yet.

Jacobsen: Yes. I would take it as a closing window or door that never entirely can close. But as you get the evidence to kind of substantiate hypotheses and theories, to get mathematical principles, you close that door by bigger and bigger motions while never entirely closing it. Yet as that door closes, the holding of that position becomes less and less reasonable at a faster and faster pace.

Rosner: Except that there’s no such thing as absolute proof in the world. I mean, some people might argue that we will eventually find absolute proof. But most people don’t believe that. Especially most people who are kind of scientifically and mathematically educated, everybody without necessarily understanding mathematical or logical proofs or understand that they prove that you can’t prove shit, basically. Well, that’s the lesson of math and science. In the near future, we’ll come up with pretty decent arguments. I think you and I already have some of them on why existence has to exist. But those aren’t bullet proof arguments that can exist in a self contained way, and then in an absolutely irrefutable way. That still leaves room well, less and less room, but still always some room for the kindness of existence. There are many aspects of existence that are unkind.

The necessarily finite length of existence is like a bummer. But you can argue that the nature of things down to the very fucking… however deep you can go into the nature of things that this nature of things allows for any existence, which in turn allows for the existence of universes of any possible size, is a kindness that’s built into existence and even some tricky metaphysics beyond existence. If that metaphysics can even exist or that may be a spurious thing, that you need existence for… you can’t have the metaphysics without the existence. That’s a long standing, I would think, argument. Things like numbers with their platonic, perfect existence to those things. Are those things more existing than the everyday world and its sloppiness? And I’d argue that, “No, those perfect numbers are an artifact of existence rather than the other way around.” But at this point, I realize I’m talking shit and I reached the point where I’ve confused myself. Unless, you’ve got questions or things to add.

Jacobsen: Yes. When I think about it, I mean the idea of numbers and even colors and presentation as some other place with qualities and being platonic. If you think about it a bit more the argument is basically for some other metaphysical realm, that represents them either as kind of a mini map or is out there, and then you make your axis.

Rosner: Just waiting to be explored by like fleshy beings.

Jacobsen: Now, the people who tend to argue this way… So, taking a step back before taking a position, people who argue this way they are typically arguing either for Heidegger’s being or the transcendent in some way in kind of a traditional religious sense or the neo Platonists. that they’re making the same kind of arguments with mathematical objects or objects out there. Yet, they would be the individuals who would probably try to make human beings special in some way. We have this ability to access the space. Aren’t we special? And it seems the basis that we had with this whole issue that animals don’t have souls. So the justifying animal cruelty. I think about it a bit more, the implication would be that computers that do or are able to produce color and representation computation, to have no sense even.

They would be arguing what they are doing; that is, in and of itself, having a qualia in modern computers and, basically, somehow, being metaphysical not necessarily objects, but metaphysical and their operations as well. Yet, they probably wouldn’t want to make that kind of claim. But that’s the implication. Because basically, you just have a natural material object through time producing representations of both the world that it happens to be in or even imaginary things. They’re based out of those base elements that are already present from that experience. So, nothing’s ever truly evidence less. So, I would probably make the argument that it is the negation of this whole idea of some other transcendent realm, because the things that are being processed about the world are merely contained in the world. It is not jumping outside of it. If we’re assuming that about computers, we can assume about ourselves because we are built in it. Similarly, your remarks about the finitude of things, the finitude of math, of numbers that are given.

Rosner: Numbers to have infinities. Like the counting numbers that that like three point zero with an infinity of zeros. When we think we can imagine things that have infinite precision and we can do operations with numbers that have infinite precision doesn’t mean that there are actual infinities. It just means that we can come up with logical mathematical systems that assume infinity.

Jacobsen: So I would argue this is a relativity thing. In that, the infinity’s that we see; they’re more likely going to be apparent infinity. So, there’s a property of appearance to being a subjective object in the universe, an object with subjectivity. So, I would make the argument that, generally speaking, being a subject in a universe, processing through time; there’s no metaphysical extra property either being accessed or being derived about the universe. But you’re, basically, dealing with various forms of principles and relationships in and amongst the kind of objects that you have evolved and constructed over time. High levels of those get called mathematical principles or laws of nature, something like this.

Rosner: Yes. There are systems that there are self consistent systems that tend to crop up all over the place. Like number able objects and the mathematics behind just arithmetic pops up commonly in existing systems because their self consistency means they’re very existence.

Jacobsen: So I think you can make the argument there. So, what people have been claiming is a metaphysical can be inverted.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 576 – Compulsive Lying

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/11/07

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You mentioned the personality of Trump with two more fundamental questions of personality. Why the inconstancy from day to day, moment to moment?

Rick Rosner: I don’t know. Like, he’s a compulsive liar and a compulsive bull shitter. He’s gotten whatever he wants throughout life. Nobody ever really was able to control. There’s a story about how he punched his second grade music teacher in her face because he thought she was a bad teacher and eventually he was sent away to military school because nobody could control it. He’s had the resources and the shamelessness to just get away with whatever he wants. He’s been involved with more than 4,000 lawsuits, either filing them or having them filed against him. So, with lawyers, he’s just been able to hold people off from everything, bullshitting. He has stiffed creditors out of more than a billion dollars. The government out of half a billion dollars in estate taxes through fraud and banks won’t lend the money he’s stiffed out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Like, I think you stiffed people on a building of his in Chicago that was underperforming. He just renegotiated the deals with these banks, costing them hundreds of millions. They renegotiate because they hope to get, if they loaned him four hundred million, maybe one hundred and fifty million back instead of losing everything. He’s stiffed people. He just he hires people to do stuff. Then he says, ‘I’m just not going to pay you for what I said I was going to pay you and I’ll pay you this.’ Maybe, it is a third of what he said he was going to pay. You can either take him to court or it might just be cheaper to take. He’s driven small contractors out of business by not paying. He just gets away with whatever he wants. He’s that rare; I don’t know whether it is sociopath or psychopath that people aren’t ready for.

And so, they don’t have their defenses up and they fall for his bullshit. He just keeps rolling onward from failure to failure that he’s cushioned from because he isn’t made to pay for any failure. He doesn’t have to. He’s told – I don’t know, I think, twenty-five thousand lies, public lies, as president now. He faces no consequences, no immediate consequences. He’s lost the election, but nobody’s forced him to draw a line from his horribleness to his loss as president, so he’s never been forced to have any consistency, and that includes consistency of thought. He’s got no moral system. He doesn’t bother to keep track of what he believes from moment to moment.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 575 – And the Winner is…

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/11/02

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Who’s going to win?

Rick Rosner: I think Biden will pull it out. I’m very confident that he’ll do better than Hillary, even in the Electoral College. He’ll do better than Hillary. That still leaves the zone where he does better than Hillary and still loses the Electoral College. The Republican challenges to the vote will largely be ineffective at disqualifying a large number of voters. So, there’s still the possibility in the cheaty states like Georgia and Florida that there will be Election Day fucking over of Democratic voters in poorer neighborhoods. That generally happens; that they have fewer voting machines. They get broken voting machines. Where whitey can just show up and stand in the zero line or a line that takes 10 minutes, while black people can stand in line up to eight hours, that’ll probably go on. But people are pissed enough. They’ll put up with it to get their votes and so on.

And so, Biden will, very sure, do better. Then I’m as sure as the poll aggregators are. I mean, it would be, I guess, even more shocking for him to lose than it was for Hillary. They will definitely retain the House of Representatives. The polls give the aggregate Democrats a 75% or 74% chance of taking the Senate. I’m pretty sure that those predictions are reasonable. I might even be a little more confident than that in Democrats taking the Senate, giving help, given how pissed everybody is and how many people have voted early on and just how shitty the Republican senators are. Martha McSally in Arizona, Susan Collins in Maine and Joni Ernst, maybe; I mean, she’s shitty, but she’s got her races. She probably will win, even though she’s shitty. Kelly Lynn Loeffler in Georgia, this appointed Senator married to the head of the New York Stock Exchange worth five hundred million dollars.

Took what she learned about Covid in February and sold all her stocks and bought stocks in shit that was going to go up, if Covid got really bad, she did insider trading, though. She may not be at a limit. I think she’ll lose, but she may not lose by enough to avoid a runoff.

If Democrats get to 50/50 in the Senate, then the vice president becomes the tie breaking vote. So, Democrats currently have 46 or 47 senators. So, we need to get the presidency and four seats out of twelve Republican Senate seats, maybe more that are up for grabs. Anyway, I’d say, “I don’t know.” 78 to 80% confidence. We get the Senate, the end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 574 – Probabilities and Counting

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/11/02

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are the chances that Trump and Biden or Biden winning now, and what are the chances of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump winning in the 2016 election, how it is comparable or not?

Rick Rosner: So, I think at the last moment, last time in 2016, everybody turned to The New York Times probability needle and away from 538.com. But I think at the last moment for 538.com, it gave her a 69% chance of winning.

Jacobsen: How much?

Rosner: 69. Bill and Ted’s number, a nice number, gave Trump a 31% chance of winning. that was the highest for Trump during the entire lead up to the election. It was because of what Comey did with 11 days to go, which caused Hillary Clinton about 2 percent, which was early enough. It doesn’t get said enough. But if Comey had done what he did and Hillary eked out a narrow win, the last four years would have still been pretty fucked up because the Senate would still be the same, still being run by Mitch McConnell. But at least, we would have had a Democratic president and a confrontational one. Obama was non-confrontational and he gave the Republicans endless opportunities to compromise with him, and they never did. Had Hillary become president, whether in 2005 or 2012 I’m sorry, 2005. I’m sorry.

Whether in 2009 or 2017 she would have been already pissed off and she would have had no illusions about working with the Republicans. That could have been a good thing. Because even now the Democrats play the long game, they kind of sit back and aren’t scorched earth confrontation and they wait for the Republicans to go too far. We’re hoping that tomorrow is the day we finally see the results of Republicans having gone way, way too far. Anyway, Trump was given three times as big a chance by 538.com, as they’re giving him now back in 2016, giving him a 10% chance of winning. Another aggregator, The Economist, is giving him a 4% chance. If you look at the voting, 98.8 million early votes have been registered. By the time they’re done registering early and vote by mail votes, that number will probably swell to 103 million or more.

Because ballots in a third of the states, maybe more are allowed, if you postmark them before, on or before Election Day, they’re allowed to be counted. Even the 98.8 is more than twice as many early and vote by mail votes as were whatever voted in 2016, the vote by mail votes heavily favored by all those early votes, which included the vote by mail votes. Biden has among the roughly one third of those votes that were the state where they were voted; the state to release the party affiliation of the voter. That party affiliation gives Democrats a seven million vote lead, which doesn’t include Independents. It doesn’t give any indication of Republicans who may have crossed over. According to pretty good polls, Trump may have lost 12% of the people who voted for him in 2016 and only gained 4% crossover from people who voted for Hillary in 2016.

So few Democrats, maybe around 1%, will have voted for Trump, but it may be 5% of Republicans have voted for Biden. We won’t know until everything’s done. Then there are 20 million Independents who voted and Biden may have a 10% advantage among them. So, overall, the early vote may give Biden a 15 million vote advantage, which ought to be enough to hold off the day of voters. We’ve talked about this. They will vote heavily Trump or maybe not. As enough people may be just so pissed off at what has been going; in that, Trump’s day of advantage may not be that strong or Trump’s continuing to be just an awful dick. Infected people, particularly old people, may discourage some, especially older Trump voters, but people feel more confident. It is a weird week. People felt confident in the polls 2016, but they felt stupidly confident.

And now people feel confident that the polls, feel confident in better polling this time around. So, people feel like they were foolishly confident in 2016. They feel like they’re cautiously optimistic this time around, but with the emphasis on the cautious because we got burned badly in 2016. But the methodology seems to be better. The raw numbers, the early voting numbers seem to be cause for optimism. We’ve never had this kind of turnout before. 137 or 138 million people voted in 2016, I think that was an all time high. But now people are predicting like 160 million votes, which will be the biggest jump both in raw numbers of votes and, I think, in terms of percentage turnout in history. That kind of turnout makes it a little bit unpredictable. But it still is cause for optimism because Trump becoming more and more of a lawless asshole really hasn’t expanded his appeal beyond the base.

And that’s what he’s still just appealing to the base in an abusive way for the past like 4 nights. His campaign hasn’t paid for buses to take people back. So, hundreds and possibly thousands of people, many of them old, are stranded in the cold, two or three miles away from where they parked. They have to walk to their vehicles. It is just like a “fuck you.” Trump never pays the bills for the venues he uses for these events. So, there are dozens of rallies that haven’t been paid. They just don’t pay for it. I don’t know why cities haven’t figured this out and have refused to host his bullshit. Also, Stanford did a study of 18 of his rallies held between June and September and found that those rallies based on increased incidence of Covid in the weeks after the rallies in the communities where they were held.

They did the math and they found that these 18 rallies caused a total of or led to a total of 30,000 more cases of Covid and more or less 700 dead, which is appalling. If you believe that most people don’t believe this shit, they’ve been manipulated by their curated media. Media that picks and chooses the stories it tells and then mixes that in with just a healthy binder where you find crab cakes; you take the crab and then you mix it with breadcrumbs to hold the whole thing together. Also, so, you don’t have to spend too much on crab. So, fucking, what people who watch the conservative media, they get little bits of stories, crab cake mixed in with just pure shit, which is the bread crumbs that hold them together.

Anyhow, Trump didn’t hold just 18 super secret rallies, those were just the 18 studied by Stanford. Trump now held 17 Covid era super spreader rallies. If you extrapolate the numbers from the 18 that were studied, you get Trump has Trump rallies that have led to or will lead to in the next several weeks, 100,000 new cases of Covid and more than 2,500 dead. So, just by holding his fucking rallies, Trump may be responsible for 1% of the Covid cases and 1% of the deaths in America, which is just fucking crazy. He is just dumb, lazy Hitler. So, we have less than 22 hours now until polls close in California, which pretty much marks the end of the voting season. Because Alaska and Hawaii, Alaska goes Republican, Hawaii goes Democratic. They both have small populations. So, nobody cares about their one or two electoral votes.

Each state has its own law about when they can start counting votes. Every state and start counting votes that were cast on Election Day once the polls close or maybe even before. then states can release those voting results after the polls closed. But every state has its own custom rules about when they can start counting votes cast early or by mail. So, we don’t really know what the state of counting will be in the states that count like Texas, Florida, all these swing states, battleground states. So, we don’t know if there will be clear returns out of the states that matter after the polls close. We also don’t know what the Republicans will do. Republicans have been filing lawsuits in a number of states to try to get votes thrown out.

And it is expected that the Republicans will file dozens of lawsuits in various states tomorrow to try to invalidate some of the vote. So, nobody knows what’s going to happen, whether how long it will take for all this to get straightened out. There is cause for limited optimism and again; I think I already said this like a couple of days ago. I was talking to you that the Supreme Court looks like it will engage in outright stealing the election for Trump, but it has to be close. As it was in the year 2000, and I think Bush and Gore only differ by like one half of 1% of the popular vote and the conservatives on the Supreme Court threw it to Bush. If Trump loses by millions and millions of votes or is trailing by, the Supreme Court isn’t going to throw out the votes of entire states. So, that’s where we stand. Everybody’s nervous. Everybody on Twitter, at least the people I follow on Twitter and probably mostly everybody. I get there maybe like MAGA Twitter where they’re just like, “I don’t know,” they’re probably nervous too. Everybody I follow on Twitter is shitting themselves.

The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 573 – 80-Hour Countdown

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/10/31

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what’s going off the election?

Rosner: All right. So, the whole country, we’ve got 80 hours to go until the polls close in California. Then we probably have a couple of days to go until we get it clear. It is not clear at this point that we’ll have a clear picture of who won within a few hours, because right now we’re more than 90 million early ballots cast. We could get to one hundred million. By law, most states can’t count early ballots until the polls close. So, it is more complicated. You’d think that everybody getting their votes in early would mean for early counting, that the stupid laws of most states would lead to the opposite. That they can’t count anybody’s vote until the polls are closed. And all the early ballots are harder to count than the ballots cast into voting machines. So, we won’t know immediately, probably.

So, we’ve got 80 hours plus another day or two probably of anxiety and, maybe, four years of anxiety if Trump wins. But it doesn’t look like I’ve been watching the numbers, the poll aggregators, the sites, the websites, look at all the polls and rank them and adjust them for reliability and bias and come up with because looking at any one poll is not good. It is much better to look at five dozen aggregated polls. So one poll aggregator, 538.com, gives Trump a 10% chance of winning. Another aggregator, The Economist, gives Trump a 4% chance of winning. One polling company captured what people were thinking last time shows much more solid numbers for Biden this time compared to Clinton the last time.

So, we’re anxious, and there’s more reason in terms of the political climate, which is much more Nazi-ish this time around. Nobody really knew exactly how shitty Trump would turn out to be. Nobody thought the guy would be jacked up on steroids and having these super spreaders, none of this was easily predicted in 2016, when he got elected. But it has now been calculated that his rallies have caused 30 thousand or have led to 30 thousand Covid cases and 700 deaths. He’s not stopping. He’s continuing to have rallies. He’ll probably keep having rallies even after Election Day. In Texas, Kamala Harris’s the tour bus was pretty much run off the road by a 50 truck Trumper attack force, just one that forced her off the road, forced her to cancel all the rest of her Texas appearances.

And the cops refused to do anything. So, all that feels more dire than any shit that happened in 2016, the potential for more violence. We’ll have some violence over the next week or so. It won’t be nationwide. It won’t be a civil war, but there will probably be a dozen incidents of fisticuffs and, maybe, guns being brandished at polling places. So, things feel ugly. Nevertheless, the numbers give cause for optimism, 90 million early votes cast. I think I already said, which will double the number of early votes cast in 2016, which were only 47 million. Biden, has a healthy lead; I’m guessing maybe as much as 15% among the early votes, which will be roughly 60% of the votes cast this time around. Day of votes, Trump will have a healthy lead maybe out of 60 million votes cast.

Trump will have a margin of 6 to 9 million votes. But overall, you’re looking at Biden having a 7 to 11 million vote margin of victory. Unless, there’s severe fucking with the vote. But this whole next week is going to be just ugly and nervous making. You mentioned that the Trump will claim victory regardless of what the results are and most outlets this time, most legitimate news outlets this time, will exercise restraint about prematurely announcing states that have been won because the nature of vote counting this time around won’t give you immediate results. There’s just this huge potential to be wrong.

So it is like right wing sites like OAN and Breitbart, and just all these fringe right wing sites will announce that Trump won and Trump himself will announce that he’s won and that anything diverging from that is a lie. He’ll run to the courts to prevent this fraud that he says is happening. And so, all this stuff is going to play out immediately after the election. But when the dust clears, we’re all hoping, fairly optimistic, that Trump is done. He still has 77 days left as president, even if he loses. People expect him to do a bunch of horrible shit. So, anyway, that’s what we’re at now.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 572 – Game Shows Aren’t to be Played Around With

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/10/17

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your gripe with game shows? There’s a lot of context here.

Rick Rosner: So I’ve worked on more than half a dozen game shows. I was co-creator of a game show. I’ve been a contestant on quiz shows. Five of which include running through a contestant. pseudo quiz show. I’m booked to be in the contestant pool for a quiz show next week. If they’re doing it very Covid compliant, I’m going to go get tested for Covid. Then I’ve got a day in the studio where everybody is just in masks and distancing, the prize for this thing is three contestants and the winner get a thousand dollars and gets the chance to compete in the grand prize round to potentially turn the one thousand dollars into ten thousand dollars. To me, this is just bullshit. There’s a show on all the time on the cooking channel. They give people baskets of weirdly assorted ingredients and force them to make dishes out of them.

Anyway, so, I spent about four hours on just getting ready to be on a quiz show today until they kicked me out because I knew too many of the people working on the show, which is something they can’t allow because it is left over from the quiz show scandals of the 50s that they want to avoid any kind of appearance of impropriety. So, I got a free Subway sandwich out of it. But my general gripe is the exploitativeness owners of competition shows have, where most people leave with nothing. On the run of the mill shows like Chopped, for instance, it is a cooking competition show that’s on all the time on the Food Network and they have four chefs on, and three of them leave with nothing and one leaves with ten grand. The overall budget for an episode of that show is $100,000. Then you have these shows like Wipeout or whatever, which was replaced. I guess this is kind of a violent golfing show called Holey Moley. These shows people go on like – we’ve got to go back in time, 15 years – Fear Factor. I think probably started out with every episode you start out with 15, 18 contestants. Put them through hellacious tortures.

And I don’t know. I think the only person left standing at the end got any money and I’m sure relative to the show budget it was a pittance. It is bullshit that the prize budget should be less than 5% of the show’s overall budget. It just seems like bullshit that they’re getting away with exploiting people. These people are exploitable in the name of being on TV. It is a little like what collegiate athletics is like. The players in the big sports, football, basketball make millions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars every season for their schools, what they get are shitty and incomplete educations and injuries and their bells rung. So, maybe 20 years down the line, they have CTE, brain damage. It is just bullshit.

These shows where people bake a cake or who can bake the best Halloween cake and they’re in there working on this shit for twelve hours building this fucking cake that’s twelve feet tall competing for twelve grand. I know it is cool to be on TV. Maybe, it helps some of their businesses, just the being on TV. But I don’t know. It just seems contrary to the promises being made; people don’t do the math, including myself, so few people know I was on Jeopardy! And I didn’t do the math on how few people actually win on Jeopardy! during the months and months that Ken Jennings was on Jeopardy!. Only one person, one person on Jeopardy!, fucking Ken Jennings wiping out like 174 other contestants. At least now, Jeopardy! gives third place a thousand bucks and second place two thousand dollars. Just go kind of chintzy, but it is better than nothing. That’s it. That’s just my gripe. A lot of TV is both being on TV and working on TV and entertainment industry in general is there are a lot of jobs that are exploitative at the bottom or middle or even towards the middle upper of the pyramid. You hang in there because you want to, maybe, eventually, be one of the people who rakes in all the bucks at the top of the home.

We call the Disney company a bad name, because Disney it is known for working people really hard for, maybe, not the best rewards, except as you climb the ladder until you’re in the position of Bob Iger, who makes fifty million dollars a year. I’m sure his lieutenants, the VP’s of Disney make four hundred and fifty thousand dollars or something. There are plenty of jobs low level at Disney with really shit pay. Anyway where you’re working for the love of the company and a double minimum wage.

Jacobsen: Okay.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 571 – Cored Out: Corruption of a State and a Party

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/10/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So, we lost the signal yesterday when I was saying that in Trump’s four years in office, three quarters of a million more Americans will have died under four years, under any other president. Only a third of that population is slightly bigger now than under any other president. So, half a million more Americans will have died under Trump, not because of population reasons, but because of Covid, because of opioids, because of suicide, because of the consequences of obesity. It is a miserable time in America. Trump promised to fix a lot of these things. He’s done virtually nothing. His lies about fixing everything aside. But to put it in proper perspective, about three million Americans, a little less than three million Americans die every year just from everything. Cancer, heart disease, accidents, because a little less than 1% of the nation passes away every year.

So that extra seven hundred and fifty thousand dead under Trump represents about a 6% higher death rate than under previous presidents, which is bad. I mean 6, a several % reduction in life expectancy. It is all bad, though. Life expectancy has been heading downwards for probably about the past four years. This year, it was picked up by a tenth of a year. But it was unheard of until started ticking downwards at all. I don’t think it had done it in America at all in the past 30 years. Though, I haven’t looked at the statistics. But, generally, you expect lifespans to be increasing and it is an indicator of the misery in America now.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is part of this, due to an increase in suicides among white middle aged men?

Rosner: Yes, and not just middle aged, but younger than middle aged. You’ve got a lot of military and ex-military suicides. You’ve got deaths that may or may not be suicide among people who have opioid issues.

Jacobsen: There should be one caveat there. Individuals who enter the army or are coerced into the army are disproportionately of minority ethnic groups or poor whites?

Rosner: Yes.

Jacobsen: Those in poverty across the board have less access to mental healthcare and just general care for mental health.

Rosner: It should be available.

Jacobsen: Well, it is not.

Rosner: Carole and I have gone to couples counseling for 27 years and are ensuring once a month because we’re not really fighting all the time. It’s like doing relationship push ups. You do the work.

Jacobsen: It is maintenance.

Rosner: But our insurance paid for fucking 27 years of therapy, which is insane. I mean, it is not insane for a sophisticated country with a good medical system, an insane perk. But most Americans don’t have it. Most Americans should have it. Other countries have it. But we’re among the lucky few, I’m as a TV writer. I’m represented by a great and powerful union. So, I have stuff that other Americans don’t have. It just shows that the dark shitty access to medicine is reflected in our lower life expectancies. Other things that reflect that we’re more obese than almost every other developed country. But our medical access, countries like Japan, I think the expected lifespan is like five years longer than ours. I, personally, know of two people who are facing life threatening diseases and in one case died of a life threatening disease because they had to wait until Medicare kicked in at age 65. They had serious problems that they didn’t want to take to the doctor until they had medical coverage. In the case of one guy, it killed him. So, maybe, having Biden in there, and possibly winning back the Senate, it won’t fix everything or even maybe much of anything.

We got to get Trump out of there with the Republicans. In 2009, the Democrats more or less had the Senate, the House, and the presidency. The only thing that got done in terms of big changes was Obamacare. Republicans have spent the last decade voting to kill it every month or two. They’ve voted to kill it 70 times or the lawsuits to kill it will hit the Supreme Court in early November. If Amy Coney Barrett gets confirmed, it is likely that the Supreme Court will kill Obamacare after ten years of Republicans trying to kill it for no good reason, except that Republicans are wildly corrupt and in the pockets of rich donors and rich donors get to hold on to more money, apparently.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 570 – Footnotes to Mass Death

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/10/13

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why is America so beholden to herd immunity right now, so much of America, just idea?

Rick Rosner: It’s Trump’s latest idea. He’s losing badly in the polls. His brain is full of steroids. He’s just crazy. Aapparently, he’s got an idiot in charge of this. The guy is not an epidemiologist. He’s a radiologist. I think he’s been disavowed by the school he works at. Anyway, somehow, they’ve decided that America should just go for herd immunity, which is having enough people who’ve gotten the virus, they can’t get it anymore. So if maybe 75% of the population has had it, then it’ll be harder to pass it on to the remaining 25%. Because it has to go from person to person, and if three quarters of the people you encounter. You can’t, infect, because they’ve already been infected and then recovered, then might be enough to have it to extinguish it in the general population.

Jacobsen: How many people will die in such a scenario by the time that happens?

Rosner: Now we do the math.

Jacobsen: OK, do the math Mr. Math.

Rosner: All right. So in America, we have 8 million confirmed cases out of about 330 million people round that up to 10 million or more to include cases that just didn’t get caught because we’re bad at test. So we’re at about 3% of the population having it now or having recovered from it. That means we have to multiply that by about 25 to get to 75%. And then if you multiply the number of dead so far by 25, you get more than 5 million dead, which would be an unprecedented catastrophe in American history, where the most deadly incidents in history, are the Civil War, the Spanish Flu, AIDS if you want to throw that in there, which killed about two thirds of a million people. So you’re talking killing more than seven times as many Americans as the deadliest other thing, killing more people than the top 10 deadliest events in American history combined.

Even if you optimistically say that the mortality, we can get it down to 1% among people who catch it because we have more drugs to treat it with now. That still means 1% of 320 million Americans still means over three million dead Americans, which is, again, five times the worst thing in American history. It’s not genocide, but it’s death on a genocidal scale. Hitler famously killed 6 million Jews and another 5 million other people he sent to their deaths in the camps. And we’re killing, if we want for herd immunity, we’d be killing at least half as many of that as Hitler’s 6 million, which would make Trump a criminal on Hitler’s scale. He’s already done his shitty job on Covid, which has already killed at least 220,000 Americans and probably closer to 300,000. So, he’s already 5% of his way to Hitler and the Jews. He’s already one of the worst killers in US history. And going for herd immunity, it would multiply his incompetence and his crime at least tenfold.

Jacobsen: Are there any other comparable people than Hitler for this, for instance, Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, those individuals who are typically associated to mass murder?

Rosner: Okay, so, if you add up all the deaths that you can attribute to Hitler, which was pretty much the European theater in World War Two. I’ve heard estimates of 30 million, including all the soldiers killed on both sides and all the civilians killed. So, 30 million for Hitler. 40 million for Stalin. 50 million for Mao in China. I don’t know how many Pol Pot killed, probably on the scale of a million or two I don’t know. But yes, Trump is in the six figures for the shit he’s done with just Covid. By the time his four years are up, three quarters of a million more Americans will have died under Trump than under any other president in four years. Only one third of the three quarters of a million more people who’ve died under Trump have died just due to America being bigger now than it has been in the past. So half a million people are dying from.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 569 – Risk and Its Contents

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/08/06

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You had some thoughts about risk. Can you set the context here?

Rick Rosner: Part of the risk in talking about coronavirus in the U.S., depending on your politics, the idea of what you consider acceptable risk is different. The basic structure of the debate is that Trump catastrophically fucked up the response and in the U.S. in early August, as we speak, has nearly 163,000 Covid dead.

Which is 8^th in per capita deaths in the world, it is terrible for a country as developed as we are; it is the shittiest developed countries in the world or the countries unlucky enough to get hit early that have the highest per capita death rates.

Number 2 in deaths is, I think, Brazil, which has a dumbshit semi-dictator. Number 3 is India, which has bad government. Trump fucked up the response, so Republicans are trying to prop up Trump by arguing that what has happened with the U.S. with Covid is no big deal. That we would have had a lot of deaths from flu, giving a bunch of excuses.

South Korea with about 2/11ths of our population has 301 deaths so far. They got hit the same time we did. We have more than 5 times as many deaths and more than 85 times per capita deaths as South Korea. So, Republicans are in the business of saying, “It is no big deal. People have to die.” They are ignoring the tragedy of it and denying the risk of it.

They want America opened up. They present people who want masks all the time as babies. Liberals, Democrats, are saying, “This is an ongoing horror. We need to keep taking reasonable precautions. We don’t need to sacrifice more than another 100,000 more people to this.”

I mean, that frames what is happening with risk right now in America, but there are some longer term trends in America and the rest of the world.

Jacobsen: What does this say about human cognition and flaws just built in?

Rosner: It says humans are bad at evaluating certain types of risk. Humans are good at spotting immediate risk. Risk that’s tangible. Humans are good at crossing the street for the most part, at understanding traffic signals. We have two dogs. I don’t think either dog is smart enough to not run out into the street. I don’t think either is smart enough to know what would happen if they got hit by a car. Some dogs are smart enough, but these dogs are not.

Humans are smart enough and are smart about some types of risk. But when it comes to risks that take statistical analysis, we are bad at it. We are motivated by feelings of fear rather than the understanding risk probabilities. For instance, I will drive like an asshole, but I’m terrified of flying. Even though, I’m putting more risk on myself by my driving than I’m assuming by getting on a plane.

Even there, it is hardtop properly analyze because one way of analyzing risk that you hear a lot is “risk per mile” on a plane versus in a car. But the deal is, if you are going on a plane, you are going, at least, 300 miles. If you are going in a car, then you might be going half of a mile. So, it is not a fair comparison.

In general, people who watch certain types of TV, have different ideas about crime. Crime has been steadily declining in the U.S. for the past 30 years. But because the news industry has exploded and more news is available than it was 30 years ago, most people don’t know crime has gone down because crime is a staple of news and so people are always hearing about crime.

Somebody did a study. The more Hannity you watch, the more you will underestimate the risk of Covid and the less that you are going to wear a mask. There are plenty of reasons why we are bad at evaluating risk. One reason is that we are bad at math in general. That and also back to what we needed to know in our pre-history. We like salty, sweet, and fatty.

Because those things were great to find before we had civilization and food was scarce. We were motivated to kill stuff and eat it all up. It has been bad for us since McDonald’s is readily available. The same deal is, we didn’t need to know that much risk math in our prehistory.

People had an average lifespan on the savannah in the early 30s. Under a high likelihood that you’ll be dead young, life is cheaper. That is one of the overall frames of risk. How we approach risk now versus a hundred years ago, 100 years ago, the average lifespan in America was early 40s.

If you took out child mortality, it was higher. It was probably early 60s. But if you made it to 15 years old, the odds are you would live to an average of 62, 63. But now, if you make it, there’s less infant mortality; if you make it to 8 years old, you’re likely to make it into your 80s.

Right now, we don’t know how far you’ll make it, because that means you’re not going to be 80 by the end of the century. By then, biomedical technology will be dropping extra decades on people like it is nothing. The upshot is life is less cheap.

People shorter lives, shittier lives, and there were more sources of death short of old age 100 years ago than there are now. So, we, now, are less willing to throw our lives away unnecessarily. Unless, we listen to too much Fox News and have been brainwashed into thinking that certain kinds of risk are patriotic.

But that’s not an overall attitude. You can find different strains of risk tolerance. Probably among conservatives, the risk tolerance that would lead you to enlist in the military might be higher. On the other hand, there’s a strain of draft avoidance among Republican leaders, among all political leaders.

The last president to serve in the military, I think, was G.W. Bush. And he served in the National Guard, so he didn’t have to go and he ditched out on his service. He pulled strings to avoid any significant or super dangerous service. So, the last president to put his life on the line; Kennedy was in battle.

George H.W. Bush was a war hero. He was the last one. His term ended almost 28 years ago. So, anyway, we’re less risk tolerant. I think you could probably make a car. If you get in a wreck and your air bags go off, it is $200 to replace or reset all your airbags, which means, to me, a car without air bags.

It used to be every car. When I was growing up, zero cars had air bags. I think it wasn’t until the late ‘80s. You shouldn’t be able to get a car with air bags for $2,000 less than a car with air bags. There are no people up in arms that that choice has been taken away from consumers. Nobody is bitching that seat belts are mandatory.

Maybe, there are, because there are campaigns to make sure people buckle their seatbelts. But nobody is mad or there aren’t big campaigns to resist seatbelts. We are mostly okay with the shit that has happened that is a part of our lives that lowers our mortality and lowers our risk. That’s the entire point.

We embrace reductions in risk, especially if we, more or less, understand them. This will continue – our tolerance of risk – to shrink as we get more and more years of life. Life becomes more precious. Throughout Covid, there have been plenty of Republican politicians saying that there are plenty of old people ready to sacrifice themselves to save the American economy.

Everybody is like, “Fuck you! We’re not ready to sacrifice those people.” And old people are like, “Fuck you! We didn’t sign up for that.” People want to keep on living. There used to be this idea from Freud of the death wish that, at some point, people longed for death. Along with everything else for Freud, people don’t discuss that much anymore.

Sure, if you are in pain from disease, you might wish for relief. But somebody who is 85 years old doesn’t have a death wish that I’m aware of, the average 85 year old. Even though, their quality of life is much less than the quality of life of a 55 year old. That idea was, at least, part of common awareness in the first half of the 20^th century and most of the second half.

But when you compare the life of a 65 year old in 1910 to the life of a 65 year old now, certainly, the 65 year old now has much higher quality of life, probably a greater average health, maybe greater average fitness, though people in 1910 were skinny. 65 year olds now, probably ¾ of them are fat, but there are more things to do now. Entertainment is better.

Even if everything sucks as your age now, at 65, you can, at least, watch really good T.V. and movies compared to the person in 1910, who could only read. All these trends.

Anyway, the end, fucking – the end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 568 – Wholesome High School Shows Gone Bad

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/07/27

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was the Kissing Booth? This was when Carole was calling you “Loudy.”

Rick Rosner: You’re going to be reading a transcript of this. When I am very interested in a subject [Laughing], I get louder and was shouty discussing high school.

Jacobsen: I can confirm this. This is true. It is not angry yelling. It is John Mulaney punch-liney telling a joke.

Rosner: If only I could be as funny and talented as John Mulaney, Kissing Booth, anyway, conformed to my stereotype of a high school movie, which is a de-emphasis on social media. Only using it so the characters can know where one another are or can suspect one another of cheating based on messages on a cell phone and stuff like that.

That all of the important moments take place face-to-face, as in old school life. Everything centres on the activities of the high school. Namely, the main story and a couple of the sub-plots, maybe not the main story, were resolved in the Kissing Booth.

It was at the high school. But there is one thing I also noticed, which is that compared to the high school movies of yore. The characters are leading much more adult lives. In that, the main character in this one drinks under-age without hesitation.

Even though, her age is unspecified. It is pretty clear that she is a high school senior, but has sex with her boyfriend who is a college freshman. Nobody worries about the legal implications or anything. It is something people do when they are dating. They have sex.

This is something. Carole and I don’t want CW much, but Riverdale is based on Archie comics with Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead, which, for 60 or 70 years, was a painfully wholesome comic about a high school guy divided in his affections between the blonde Betty and the brunette Veronica.

It was also known for every sentence in the comics that didn’t end in a question mark ended in an exclamation mark. It was wholesome to the point of being unreadable. It was in a way Richie Rich was to anybody older than 8.

But the characters in Archie comics have been reimagined as noir characters in the benighted drugs ridden and gang ridden town of Riverdale. Apparently, the deadliest city in the state where they live.

All of the characters, even though, they are in high school; they are leading adult lives. Veronica is running a bar, a full-on bar. It serves alcohol, but it is in the style of a speak-easy. One character who lives with her lesbian girlfriend at the girlfriends’ house/mansion who has had the sinister mom thrown in prison; and now, the daughter is in charge of the mansion.

They both live in it. I think they’re both cheerleaders. The entire school is hip to the relationship. Archie carries a gun from time to time. Archie had to go on a journey where he fought a bear. His shirt comes off once per episode, at least, because he has nice abs.

He is boning the heck out Veronica. Jughead has come out as asexual in the comic books who has only affection for hamburgers. But in the TV show, he is boning Betty. In the first episode, Betty and Veronica dress up at dominatrices to execute part of a plot, because Betty is also a private eye.

Betty also has serial killer genes, which makes her worry that she will sometime become uncontrollably homicidal. Anyway, it is no longer a comic book meant for 12-year-olds. Veronica’s dad is a crime lord. It’s all that kind of stuff.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 567 – Auschwitz Memorial on Twitter

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/07/23

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the Auschwitz Memorial?

Rick Rosner: I’ve started following the Auschwitz Memorial on Twitter. Most of what the Auschwitz Memorial does is show a picture and say, “Here is so and so,” when they were born, sent to Auschwitz, and when they usually died at Auschwitz, because not many people made it out.

But the pictures are edifying because I can be a Jew and be aware of everybody’s tendency to need to be educated out of some form of racism, but the deal is: The pictures of the people sent to Auschwitz.

It is amazing. Even though, I should be beyond thinking like this. It is amazing how perfectly good looking so many of these people were. The Jews were presented by the Nazis to Germany as being these ugly, inferior people.

Frickin’, all of these Jews that got sent looked perfectly normal and most of the time better than average. They don’t look “inferior.” They are good looking people who fell victim to, basically, a criminal government that wanted to take all of their shit and kill the fuck out of them.

Jacobsen: These are perfectly good. They’re dusty, but yes.

Rosner: Some people looked dusty and bad. Because they have been processed and wearing the striped prisoner outfits and all of their hair has been shaved. The whole German argument was psychotic.

Jacobsen: I brought this up to a German and a Belgian friend. The German friend is ashamed of that national history.

Rosner: But there are so few people still alive who had any agency during World War Two. I read a headline of what is being called the last trial of a Nazi concentration camp guard ever to be held.

Jacobsen: When?

Rosner: Now! I have been reading the Drudge Report because it used to be the standard conservative “fuck you” to liberals, a collection of news stories. Now, it is closer to a centrist news page and its discontent with Trump becomes more and more apparent.

I found this on Drudge. I didn’t read the story. But it is probably about a guy who is like 98 -years-old, born in 1922, becomes a guard when 21 in 1943. There’s almost nobody left who did evil or, on the other hand, did good from World War Two.

The youngest person who joined World War Two and the military by lying about their age was born in 1928, so they are 92-years-old. That’s the youngest World War Two veteran. There are still people.

I don’t know if there was someone who joined at 16 and is still alive, but there are veterans who are 94 and 97, and still get trotted out for stuff. That person who joined at 16 was a hypothetical person. There are plenty of people who did it, whether any of those liars are still around; I don’t know how many of them there were in the first place.

German guilt: The point is, I am trying to say there is almost no one left alive in the world; I’m sure there are, maybe – I don’ know – 1,000 old Nazi still tucked away in old age homes. Not concentration camp guards, but members of the Nazi Party who had viable beliefs and even, maybe, acted on their beliefs to some extent.

But they are in their late 90s. It would be bad if all Germans felt this national guilty. We are 75 years past the end of World War Two with 3 or 4 generations of Germans since who came after the Nazis.

Jacobsen: What do you think of this history of IQ and race mixed up in history?

Rosner: IQ is a terrible, racist idea. Statistics itself grew up or was brought to fruition by a bunch of racist motherfuckers. Probably not everybody who worked in the field of IQ or everybody who developed the mathematical discipline of statistics was a racist, but the guy who came up with the correlation coefficient, Pearson.

Apparently, that guy was a racist. But racists have been everywhere. The guy, William Shockley, got two Nobel Prizes. He was a huge ass racist. He was the only Nobel Prize winner to donate his jizz to the genius sperm bank established in the ‘70s.

It was a sperm bank in California founded in the ‘70s as a place to store genius or purported genius jizz. And if you wanted a genius kid, that’s where you went to get your jizz.

The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 566 – 15 Weeks

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/07/21

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It is 15 weeks until the election. What is the deal now?

Rick Rosner: Trump has gone from 45.8% approval to 40.3%. That’s the difference between making it a close election and it being not close. So, I look at those approval numbers several times a day. Carole and I are seriously considering…

If Trump won, depending on the circumstances of him winning, and if he stays behind and wins due to outside interference, then it might be a good time or prudent to look at moving out of the country because things are seriously broken.

But Trump’s approval rating has been the smallest range of approval ratings of any president since they started polling approval 80 years ago. But even so, he has had, for him, some big swings in fairly short amount of time.

With 15 weeks to ago, it starts being very statistically unlikely that he can climb back up to 45% approval in only 15 weeks. Although, he could still do it. There’s a thing called an October surprise where opposition tries to drop crazy bad shit in the week before the election.

For Hillary Clinton, it happened in November 8 days before voting began when Comey said she was under investigation by the F.B.I. again for her emails. Beyond that, outside of some October surprise, it will be tough for him to move his approval more than a couple percent in the time that is left. As it gets tighter and tighter, and as more people vote early by mail, his electoral destiny becomes more cemented.

So, it is the beginning of the end of the time that he can do anything to help himself, which is why he is holding Covid press conferences. Including today, except excusing a child rapist and wishing her well, he was actually pretty well behaved at his press conference.

He stuck to his pre-written speech and notes and talked about the great things he is doing to save the country from coronavirus, which, if you know anything about what he has done, is stupid. It is stupid people who vote for him and it may have sounded kind of okay to stupid people.

His approval numbers hit the highest when he was having daily Covid briefings. But that was 140,000 Covid deaths ago. He may not be able to help himself with the daily briefings as he was able to help himself 3 months ago. At this point, we’re counting the days and hoping his assholery stays clear to a pretty big majority of the nation.

The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 565 – Anna Karenina

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/07/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We’ve had some pretty ongoing severe cases in the United States. It is not doing well alongside Brazil, India Russia.

Rick Rosner: There’s that Anna Karenina, where it starts with every happy family is happy in the same way and every miserable family is sad in a different way. Every fucked upcountry has a diferrent set of reasons why they are fucked up. Although, the U.S. and Britain, in terms of Covid, are run by morons. At least, they’re getting their shit together.

Russia is used to hiding information, who knows what is going on there. If you go on Twitter, you will occasionally see people say, “Coronavirus is an IQ test for people and nations.” There is a big amount of stupidity in our national leaders wanting all schools, in general, to open up in August.

Today was the worst day ever for new Covid cases in the U.S. It broke almost 62,000, breaking 60,000 for the first time. Fauci, a non-diot, thinks we might be moving to 100,000 new cases in a day, but he has been pushed to the side because he is more likely to tell the truth than anybody in the administration.

You’ve got three people behind the push to open the schools. You’ve got Pence/the Vice President, his wife. They’re both super Christy and she teaches at a Christian school where you can’t be gay and work there.

‘She knows schools and we should open up the schools.’ To the extent that there is logic and there isn’t, it is that not many young people die from Covid. 80% of the people who die are over 60. The schools are 10% or more people who aren’t kids.

They are at risk. Also, every kid goes home to someone who is older than the kid and the kids can catch it, not die from it, and the disease is new enough that we don’t know the permanent effects enough if you don’t die. Betsy DeVos wants to open up the schools.

She is our Secretary of Education; she is a terrible person. She is an Amway billionaire, has ten yachts and two helicopters in the family, hates public schools, wants all schools privatized or charter schools because it makes the schools easier to be Christy. She is dumb as hell, has her own agenda.

Then you’ve got Trump who just wants to get re-elected. He thinks that if he gets lucky that things will look normal enough, long enough, for him to get re-elected. He is dumb, lies to everybody including himself, so he has this Hail Mary that opening the schools will somehow be something that he can use for propaganda and, maybe, the dying from the schools opening up.

Opening up the schools means you have 400 people for every grade, it means for kindergarten through high school: 50,000,000 kids going back to school. Also, he got ICE to pass a deal. If you’re a foreign student here studying, you have to go home studying.

Unless, you are in a school live and in class, in person. You can’t go to a college that offers classes by Zoom or Skype, which seems to be punitive bullshit forcing people to show up to college too.

This is what happens when you have the worst president in history and none of the people in charge have a science background or really believe in science (do not believe in science). They resent science more than believe in it.

Science is telling them to do stuff, so they do it reluctantly. They believe in wishful thinking. My wife’s best friend is a teacher. I believe that if they force them to open; there may be some nationwide teacher strike or in certain states, maybe.

All of the biggest states, Florida, California, Texas, are having their worst cases for new cases and new deaths. We’ve got about 118 days left until the election. It is a countdown to when we have a chance to kick the super corrupt idiots out of office.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 564 – Reform

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/07/02

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In terms of reform in the United States, what governance needs restructuring?

Rick Rosner: Right now, in America, the focus is on fixing the police Although, the latest thing is on Trump. But what I think needs to be reformed is the news, the engine for 40% of the country to continue to support Trump.

It said that it was a mystery. Except, it is not a mystery. Conservative media, particularly Fox News, not because it lies more than other conservative media, like OANN or Alex Jones, but because it has the most viewership.

The stuff that presents itself as news shouldn’t be allowed to misrepresent itself, shouldn’t be allowed to bullshit at Americans for 4 prime time hours, for example, every night on Fox. I don’t know exactly what can be done about it. Take away the “news” designation?

They are an entertainment network, but are allowed to have “news” in their name. That doesn’t seem right. If they are allowed to have “news” in their name, they should have a third scrolling chyron that fact-checks what is said.

It can apply to the other news networks, too – CNN, MSNBC, and whatever else. You shouldn’t be allowed to pump propaganda into people’s heads and call it news. After WWII in Germany, there was de-Nazi-ification.

I don’t know how it worked. They had to unbrainwash the population. I’m not sure anything like that can be done with Trump supporters. They are isolated in an information bubble. It’s a cliché. They don’t know about a lot of stuff that is happening.

They believe a lot of stuff that’s not true. To a lesser extent, that applies to MSNBC and CNN because they don’t cover enough stories. They will stick to the most popular stories. The Malaysian airline went missing. It was about that all day and it squeezed out all other news.

There should be a rule and the government can do this. New stations can’t spend more than 10 hours on any one story.

Jacobsen: I mention in the context of governance and not individual people.

Rosner: Fix the news via legislation. Two, get money out of politics, which is almost impossible, get some legislation to overturn Citizens United. But the supreme court ruling there argued that money is speech.

That restricting money in politics is restricting free speech. That’s just horrible bullshit. So, that needs to be legislated against if possible. Then fixing gerrymandering, we have just had a census. Every time you have a census every ten years in American, yo redraw districts.

They have tried to legislate fair district boundaries. It is really tough to do. It is easy to set it up to give the dominant party in a state more political representation than they should get proportionately.

The way you do it is concentrate. Say you’re a Republican, you concentrate. You have four districts, as an example. You get four congresspeople. You concentrate all the Democrats into one district. In that district, a Democrat will always win because it is 90% Democratic.

Then you spread out the Republicans across every other district, so they have an unbeatable but lesser majority because they’re spread out. So, Democrats into one district with 90% and then 3 or 5 district where the Republicans are spread out to win all the other districts with a 5% or a 60% majority.

So if you put the Democrats in a ghetto, and spread out the Republicans, so they have a decent majority, you can get Republicans having 45% of the vote and 65% of the elected representatives. That needs to be fixed. Will it be fixed? I don’t know.

Those are three areas.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 563 – The Current Political Context

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/07/02

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How bad is Trump?

Rick Rosner: The people on Twitter have been asking each other a lot, “Would Trump be this bad?” Some were saying, “Yes, he would get us into nuclear war.” Others said, “Yes, we didn’t know the form.” I am and others are saying, “No, this is worse than we imagined, though we imagined Trump was bad.”

One of the surprising things about Trump is how he manages to consistently outdo himself in new and worse ways on how to be terrible with the complicity of the Republicans in Congress. He is, by far, the worst president in history.

The latest horrible thing that has come out and has been verified by a number of sources, including the U.S. intelligence agencies. He has denied it, but the White House hasn’t denied it. It has been known since 2016 that Putin has been paying a bounty of up to $100,000 per dead American for Taliban fighters to kill Americans.

Even while the Taliban is supposed to be fighting a peace treaty with the U.S., Putin is paying the Taliban for a bounty on U.S. fighters. He has issued a number of excuses, even though he’s gotten a debriefing as early as more than a year ago. He seeks excuses.

Like, he got the debriefing and said that he got it on paper, but he doesn’t read paper. So, his Press Secretary had to say that he does read. It is bad. The Republicans in Congress had dozens of hearings on Bengazi, where four Americans were killed in Libya.

They were trying to hang it on Hillary Clinton. Even with all the hearings, they could find no direct culpability. With Trump doing nothing about Russia paying for the death of our soldiers, they aren’t doing anything about that.

It looks bad for Trump. It looks bad for the Republicans. America hit 50,000 new Covid cases for the first time ever today. The number of cases are going up every day rather than declining in 45 out of 50 states.

Trump said he expects it to go away. He said he might wear a mask. He’s okay with wearing a mask; it makes him ‘look like the Lone Ranger.’ He is doing nothing to stop the virus. The most people unemployed in U.S. history.

There’s no area of the U.S. presidency where you could say Trump has done even an adequate job at. His poll numbers are slowly dropping. He peaked at 45.8% approval, which was the highest approval he’d ever had since the ever first week of his presidency in April when he was having daily press briefings about Covid.

Since then, he has lost 12% of his approval. He’s down to 40.3%/40.5%, which puts him squarely in the range of the fairly rare group of presidents who were not re-elected out of 20 presidents since the beginning of the century, only five ran for a second term and were not re-elected.

He’s clearly shitty. People still don’t know whether he is demented or just some kind of psychopath who has had his bluff called too many times. We have 124 days until election day. He is falling into a hole versus Biden, which is very statistically unlikely that he can get out of to win the election.

Unless, there is cheating in the election. Which there may still be, because the Republicans have not instituted measures to prevent cheating or allow nationwide vote-by-mail, it is up to individual states.

I think people who hate Trump, which is a majority, hope that the worse he gets, then the more incompetent he shows himself to be. That’s pretty much where we stand. People like to call him a cult. But that doesn’t tell you anything.

Other people take stabs at their support as the sunk cost fallacy. That they’ve invested so much in him. That they just can’t let go, even as it becomes apparent that he is awful. Some people stick by him thinking that he was appointed as a warrior for God. That he was chosen by God.

Some people stick by him because he in combination with Mitch McConnell are very effective at getting very rightwing and often unqualified judges confirmed, which will fuck up the courts for decades to come.

It’s as inexplicable as what happened in Germany, where so many people went along with an increasingly atrocious regime. Although, he is losing support. You hope, normally, his support resorts to its usual levels of approval, which are in the 40s.

He’s not recovering as much. You’d think the different between 40% approval and 42% approval isn’t that big a deal, but it is because of the Electoral College and because each state is winner take all.

Those couple percent can determine the outcome of the election. That’s about it.

Jacobsen: Do you think America is finished?

Rosner: No, I think Trump will get beaten and it is possible the Republicans lose the Senate. The last time the Democrats had control of all three legislative and executive bodies was after the election of 2008 when Obama came in.

They have the Senate, the House, and the presidency. It was kind of a terrible time because the world was recovering from the crash of 2007/08. It took a while to recover, years, but the Democrats presided over that.

For a little while, once Al Franken joined the Senate, it took an extra six months, maybe 8 months, because – his election – it was so close. They kept challenging the results of the election. When he was finally seated, the Democrats had 60 senators, which gave them a supermajority to be able to do a bunch of stuff.

People say Obama squandered the majority, except in passing ObamaCare. People liked to rethink or second guess stuff say that he, maybe, could have achieved a greater number of things if he hadn’t put all his eggs in the ObamaCare basket.

But if the Democrats take back the Senate, keep the House, and take the presidency, they could do a lot towards fixing some of the stuff that has gotten all fucked up. Although, the Democrats tend to be conciliatory and tend to make a point like they are governing for all Americans. They are not as ruthless as the Republicans.

If they do that, then it is bad for America now. It has always been bad to have one political party more ruthless than the other in America. But it would be particularly bad. For instance, it is possible to imagine the Democrats being conciliatory and not prosecuting any of his people.

Even though, they have been guilty of serious crimes. In the past, after WaterGate, Nixon’s Republican replacement pardoned Nixon. Nixon could have been prosecuted, but his successor pardoned him. It was Ford. It pissed off much of the country and was a major reason for Ford not being re-elected in the country.

You’d hope to see some people prosecuted and investigations of Trump and his people to continue after he is out of office. That’s all. Unless, you have more questions.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 562 – Being Seen

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/06/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You live in a place with a lot of famous people. What is it like living in a place like that?

Rick Rosner: For a long time, I worked for a famous guy who kind of got famous as I worked for him. He was a teeny bit famous when I worked for him and got a lot famous as I worked for him. Working on his show, more famous guests came in.

I didn’t seek out guests to meet them, because it turned out awkwardly – ugh. But on the show I worked on, the writers I worked with were part of the production team when working with guests. So, I worked with quite a few famous people.

You try not to act weird around them. It is fine. Everybody does their job. I was not allowed to meet… I wrote a bit that ended up in a Cruise bit. My bosses decided I was too weird and shouldn’t be allowed to interact with Tom Cruise.

I semi-met him on the red carpet. We sent one of the interviewers down to the red carpet, a movie premiere, generally. Our interviewer would yell at people on the carpet trying to get them to come over and answer questions.

One time one of the people was Tom Cruise. The gimmick our show used was a not good interviewer. This interviewer went on and on at Tom Cruise and not allowing Tom Cruise to say anything. He made eye contact with me like “this is the bit?” My eye contact said back, “Yes, this is the bit,” back to him.

He did hold a silicone model of my foot, I found, later. I have a grotesque foot. Somebody made a copy of it and made it an ashtray. Apparently, when Tom Cruise was over at my boss’s house, he held it up.

Jacobsen: What did he say?

Rosner: I don’t know. They sent Tom Hanks. He was personally nice. They sent someone with me to Tom Hanks because they thought I’d be weird alone. I didn’t say much. I was just there. Hollywood is a place for people some of the best social skills in the world.

If you’ve got really good social skills, then you might be tempted to gravitate to entertainment and to live in L.A. The people with the best social skills do really well. My social skills aren’t terrible. They’re probably even better than average at this point.

But they are, certainly, not on a scale with some famous people I have met who radiate charisma. Even if they are famous, you’d be like, “Wow, this person is weirdly charismatic.” Then you meet real famous person like that, and you’re like, “Wow, that person is really nice.”

The bar for famous people is lower. One of the bosses pointed out that if a famous person is regularly nice; people talk about them as if they are the nicest person in the world because you don’t expect someone famous to be regularly nice.

Jacobsen: What is the social expectation there as people become more famous from the point of non-famous people, normal people?

Rosner: There is a deal with attractive women in New York City. You have to have a closed face. You can’t look like you would be approachable. Because then people will approach you. So, women in New York City learn to move fast and to have a look on their face like, “You don’t want to try looking at me.” A similar one may be resting bitch face.

My wife has a fairly open face. People would fuck with her, not that often, but, sometimes, in New York. One guy jacked off in front of her. He had his hand in his pants. He wanted her to see he was working his junk right in front of her.

She had other stuff that would happen to her on the subway. It, maybe, happened elsewhere. It was a small sample set. She only lived there 2.5 years. Anyway, celebrities, when they go out, have to develop some distancing skills or they will be approached in the same way a sexy lady might be approached if you don’t have distancing skills, or if you just don’t go out that much.

Really famous people a) don’t go out that much, b) have security, and c) don’t come in the front door, most people who become celebrities, on average – there are idiots who become famous, are at least somewhat smart, because it is helpful not to be an idiot.

It helps to be an actor if you aren’t dumb because good acting is correlated with smartness. You can be an idiot and be an intuitive actor, a good actor, but you are more likely to be a competent actor if you are smart.

So, I don’t know. Everybody who is not famous and probably a lot of people who aren’t famous in L.A. act like they are not excited to see or thrilled to see famous people. They don’t bug them, don’t make a fuss, but inside they’re excited.

It is a known thing. To see a famous person and pretend like you are seeing a selfie, and swing around as if the celebrity is coming into the back, there is a guy called Cole Sprouse who is on Riverdale. He loves to take pictures of people, catching them sneaking pictures of him.

Jacobsen: [Laughing] That’d be a fun game.

Rosner: I’ve always wanted to be famous enough to be able to interact with famous people as a semi-famous person myself, but I haven’t reached that point, yet. We’ve gone. My wife and I have gone to places. We went to the Emmys a couple of years.

We went to post-Emmys parties and stuff. We rode in an elevator with Ellen DeGeneres and her wife. We knew enough not to make conversation with them. Celebrities feel a little exalted. One time, Colin Farrell, the Irish actor.

I was on Hollywood Boulevard. He was looking at me. I get recognized very occasionally because there is a bunch of video of me up. He was looking at me as if he’d seen videos of me, then there I am, the guy he has seen videos of me.

I know somebody has shown Conan O’Brien the Errol Morris documentary. He said it made him scared and nervous. That’s a talk show host reaction. Obviously, he is not really scared and nervous. His reaction would be that is a bizarre guy who makes me nervous.

This Colin guy recognized me. This is the one time a famous person recognized me…

He was driving a big, white fancy pickup truck and looking at me, but not in a gay way. He was so straight he had a sex tape scandal, maybe more than one, where beautiful women were banging him.

Back in the day, he used to be a party guy. Anyway, my writing partner’s brother’s wife, I think, worked on Conan and Conan ended up being shown the Errol Morris documentary because it is such an entertaining documentary because I am such a weirdo.

He said ‘he is a scary guy,’ because I am such a weirdo. If you’re a late night guy, you’re going to give a glib reaction.

Jacobsen: Who else has recognized you?

Rosner: Among famous people, that’s it. I get recognized three times a year by non-famous people. They come up to me and say, “You’re Rick Rosner. Are you?” I say, “Yes,” usually at the gym, then we will talk for a little bit.

Jacobsen: What do you talk about?

Rosner: It is occasionally about being ‘that guy’ or occasionally talking about smart stuff. They go and do stuff on machines and then I go and do stuff on other machines.

Jacobsen: Are you dying for that attention?

Rosner: As a young person, I think, but less now. But we’ve been in lockdown for three fucking months [Laughing]. I just want my neighbours to stop partying so much.

Jacobsen: [Laughing] Are you turning into an old man?

Rosner: I have no reason to go out. I have only gone out to the gym for three times. People aren’t wearing masks or aren’t wearing them right. I had kidney surgery. I work out all the time. I’m 60 years old. I don’t want to get the Covid. I’m not in the demographic that, apparently, gets it without much in the way of symptoms.

I could get really sick. I don’t even want to get a little sick. If I had a job that I had to go to every day, I might take the risk of going to the job and being okay with the possibility of getting sick, because I could be over it and do whatever I wanted.

Unless, the studies they’ve done prove to be true and you only stay immune for a few months, which would suck. Given that there is no reason for me to leave the house, why should I run the risk. I will leave the house, but I’m going to take maximum precautions.

I wrap a scarf around my lower face. Then I put a mask on on top of it. Since I have a beard, the mask doesn’t fit on entirely anyway. I have double protection with the mask not fitting tightly, but the scarf fits all the way around the beard and the mask fits on top of it.

I get what is effectively a tighter fit, which may or may not matter because the mask is primarily to stop me from infecting other people. But it does have to fit to keep me from infecting other people, since I got this double, triple layer deal.

I think I do still want to be famous. Even though, the main thing that I wanted to be famous is being famous young to get laid a lot. That’s now very off the table for a number of reasons, including I am married and don’t want to fuck that up. And I am old, and several other reasons.

The fucking beautiful women is off the table, besides my wife.

The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 561 – Mosaics for the Wife; From Russia with Love

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/06/29

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You are really into mosaics. When we met years ago, you had a bunch.

Rick Rosner: Micromosaics, Carole decided she likes micromosaics. These are very, very, sometimes incredibly, small mosaic is showing flowers, which are for poor tourists who can spend $10 or the 1920 equivalent of $10 showing costume jewellery.

Then there are those showing Roman ruins for richer tourists. They are nor more than 2 inches across, some of them. Some have thousands of shards of glass in tiny mosaics. I have been busted ones, cheap, repairing them, and giving them to Carole.

Every once in a while, I’ll go to Etsy or larger, regular-ish ones. But they almost all suck. They’re just not good because, in America, making good mosaics is not a thing. What happened is paint by numbers kits, you’re probably too old.

Paint by numbers, in the ‘50s, and into the ‘60s, there was this drive for people to create art; it’s probably less now, because there are other things to do and you can create better stuff on your computer. You can use computer graphics to make decent looking stuff.

People were limited before and people made paint by numbers. You get a board. You get a set of a dozen colors and a little paint brush. The little tubs of paint half of an inch across would be labelled with a number.

There would be a number and with an outline. It told you what colour, what number, to paint on that board. When you were done, you had a not great looking little painting that you painted by yourself by numbers, similarly, there were mosaic kits.

It allowed people to make mosaics with tiles. They weren’t great looking because you were taking the little square tiles, gluing them down, grouting them, and then you’d end up with a primitive thing that you use as a trivet or can hang on your wall.

They were popular in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and maybe into the ‘70s. They weren’t artistically sophisticated. Then American got the idea that these are what mosaics are, not great. A fancy person, unless they were into retro-kitch, a low of these mosaics now, from the ‘50s, might sell for $50 to $100 if you can find them on eBay.

They are kitchy, but not super great art. When I look around for decent mosaics, there aren’t that many. Sometimes, one will showup out of the Vatican mosaic factory because the Vatican was the originator of the post-ancient Roman decent mosaic because in the 15^th or 16^th century; the Pope decided to replace a bunch of frescoes across the Vatican City with mosaics because the frescoes were getting wrecked by the moisture of tens of thousands of tourists breathes. He hired a bunch of craftsmen to get trained to make mosaics that are so good looking and so precise.

You can’t tell that they’re not paintings. Unless, you’re standing a couple of feet away from them. It led to the mosaic workshop, the Vatican mosaic workshop, which is still in business. They made, maybe, 9,000 mosaics that can be sold to people who can afford them in the 300 years since they became a commercial enterprise.

Every once in a while, those will go for auction and sell for a couple of thousand bucks. At least those very decent mosaics are out there, but there aren’t that many of them, looking around a few days ago on Etsy, I came across people making decent mosaics out of St. Petersburg, Russia, where, in Russia, I still think people make decent mosaics.

I don’t think the reputation of mosaics was wrecked by a bunch of crappy mosaics as they were in America. Obviously, there are still people in Russia making decent mosaics without a lot of grout showing and close to photorealistic and look like somebody made and effort and look like what they portray.

My wife likes flowers. There are mosaics of flowers that look like somebody worked from a detailed photo of flowers and turned it into micromosaics and looks pretty close to what must have been the original photo.

They are cool. I am using Google Translate to talk to these people in Russia. So, the F.B.I. probably already have a dossier on me because I am a weirdo who tweets a lot. This should be in such a file because I am communicating in Russia with a couple people in Russia via Google Translate.

Eventually, I might end up owning, and might get one of these for several hundred bucks, which is a good deal for a competent mosaic compared to $3,000 for one that came out of the Vatican factory. Here is a tip if you are using Google Translate, which gets better and better, it has been around since 2007.

It has a bunch of languages now. The languages are pretty decent. You’d think there’s no way to tell because you don’t speak the language you’re translating into it. There is one way. Copy and paste or cut and paste the set, set it aside, but then they have these reverse arrows that take the translation and translate it back into English, then you can read the message as Google Translate translated the Russian back into English, so, you can proof it to see if it makes sense, if it isn’t saying anything inadvertently offensive.

You still don’t know what it says in Russian, but you do have Google’s translation of Russian back into English. It will not be exactly what you wrote in English. But how close it is to what you originally wrote in English is an indication of how decent the translation is, it is a nice way to check your work to make sure you’re not saying something incomprehensible or offensive to the Russian.

There is a game that you can play back and forth. You can do it back and forth multiple times. It can begin to sound really weird. Anyway, the end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 560 – Knowledge of Sexual Behaviours and Sex

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/06/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Are things better in terms of people’s knowledge of sex and sexual behaviour compared to when you were growing up in the ‘70s?

Rick Rosner: Yes, I think with MeToo and with knowledge in general. Things are generally better, but the whole culture is more perverse. Carole and I were just watching a documentary on the sexual abuse scandal in American gymnastics.

Where hundreds of girls were molested, one guy in particular. He was probably the most celebrated doctor, but there were others who were molesting these girls. Girls who were abused in a whole bunch of other ways too.

The model for gymnastics since Bella Caroli came over from Romania in the ‘80s has been to be really mean and punitive. That is the way it is thought to win gold medals. On the document, it was hundreds getting abused.

Just looking at the rest of the Netflix and HBO lineup, the stories we watch now are all fucked up.

Jacobsen: Is it SNAFU central?

Rosner: Just the perverse and the dark, and embracing all the nasty details of life, where compare what we watch now to Magnum P.I. or Starsky and Hutch, or the Partridge Family, the nasty realities of life were kept hidden from T.V. and in life.

People had no idea as to the level of rapey and abusive behaviour that went on and people were more tolerant of sexually abusive and harassing behaviour. We made a deal where it is the Garden of Eden.

We made a deal to know more, which brings a measure of improvement in people’s lives because it is harder for abusers to get away with stuff. Because people are more aware of the potential for abuse and are less willing to hide it.

But the other half of the deal is that we’re less innocent. We accept that everything and everybody are fucked up. That’s all I have to say. It makes for better stories, more entertaining stories. It’s still possible for a shitty production team to make a shitty show.

There are plenty of shitty shows that are gritty and employ all the nasty details of humanity. I stopped watching this one show called Marcella out of England. It is hacky because it makes everybody the worst person possible.

You know the worst thing that can happen, will happen. There was a kid in the show who has a bunch of pet mice. I figured at some point in the story that the kid would crush one of the mice because it is that type of show. He did. I decided that show had nothing original to say and decided to stop watching.

Anyway, we live in a fallen world, which is, to some extent, the price of knowledge.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 559 – Micromosaics and Surveillance

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/06/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What’s your deal around micromosaics and surveillance?

Rick Rosner: We’ve talked about it. My wife likes micromosaics, which are these very small mosaic pieces, mostly jewellery where the sliver of glass can be less than a millimetre in length and width.

We’ve collected quite a few of these little things. I’ll buy broken ones and fix them. It ties in with my natural ability, or my ability to see super up close. I am nearsighted enough that I don’t need magnifying lenses to do super close work. I was thinking.

My wife likes micromosaics. I should see if there are any other mosaics that aren’t shitty, and larger. I usually don’t find shitty ones. Most full-size mosaics, anything over a few inches on a side; most are amateurish and crappy.

I was poking around on Etsy. I found some from St. Petersburg, Russia, that were professional and gorgeous and achieving the effects of water in a clear container with refraction, just really nice.

I ended up got Google Translate to send a couple emails to Russia to inquire into buying these. It turns out. The guy never completed his Etsy store. I was trying to track him down. I don’t know if the U.S. government is paying attention to Russian web addresses/email addresses in Russia.

They may have a dossier on me. Although, they may have one on me, after all the angry tweets about how terrible Trump is. For what it is worth, the difference between an average to shitty mosaic and a really good one is the tightness of he joints.

There should be barely any space between the pieces. People think that since it is a mosaic there should be a space or some grout, but the best pieces have almost no grout and have almost no space. It makes for a much more legible image and abetter looking image.

That’s all I got about it. We’ll see what it is like to do business with Russia if that is even possible. I feel like it might be possible to get a decent deal on this stuff depending on what I would expect is that it is not the exchange rate; it is the cost of stuff in Russia.

I am expecting Russia is economically depressed enough that the necessities of life are cheaper there than here, which means the luxury of life may also be cheaper. Where I wouldn’t be able to get these pieces if they were made by Americans, this may be the case in Russia.

That’s about it.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 558 – If Trump Loses

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/06/23

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: If Trump loses the conservative media propping him up, there are always one or two people at Fox News who are ot afraid to praise him, but the primetime news lineup supports him. Although, Laura Ingraham has criticized him for being a wimp about stuff, not Trumpy enough.

Ingraham, Hannity, Carlson, and Jeanine, are the most convincing Fox News voices. If he starts losing any of those people, I think that would be about the only way to erode his support below 39%.

Also, you have to look at Republican senators who may speak out against him more, figuring that they will lose if they remain strongly attached to Trump in purple states or states that have a strong Democratic demographic.

That might happen. But I am not sure that will erode his support much.

The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 557 – Trump Now

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/06/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is Trump’s situation now?

Rick Rosner: It is 19 weeks until the election. There have been 123,000 confirmed U.S. coronavirus deaths are a rally last week; Trump said that he has been trying to slow down coronavirus testing in the U.S. because he doesn’t want so many people coming back positive with it.

His people said he’s joking. He went back and said that he is not. He is a terrible guy. He promised to build the wall. The border between the U.S. and Mexico is 1,950 miles. He has only put up 210 miles of wall, so only slightly more than 10% of the border.

Of those 210 miles, only 3 miles are walls in places where there was no previous border. So, his great wall is a piece of shit. He’s got the most corrupt administration in history. He owns the 19 largest point drops on the DOW-Jones industrial average in history.

He’s increased the deficit by trillions. 675,000 people or so have died – more people – under Trump in 41-months than in 41 months under any other president. Only 1/3^rd is due to increased population.

It’s hard to really defend him in any way. He’s down to Biden in the polls by roughly 10 points. Although, Hillary up on Trump by similar margins, even later in the election cycle. But the world odds, you can’t bet on politics in the U.S. but can in England.

Odds in England have gone from more than 50% to less than 50% of Trump winning. It does a little good if Trump loses and the Republicans hold the Senate because Mitch McConnell is as bas for the country as Trump.

But every who doesn’t like Trump, which is the majority of the country, is cheering for him to fall apart. His rally to open up his campaign after no rallies was puked by Gen Z people. People in TikTok and who like K-Pop.

They ordered a millions tickets to te Arizona rally. People expected overflow crowds. They only filled a 1/3^rd of this 19,000 person area. So, it looked really bad for him. But it is still too early. He is at 40% aggregate approval if you combine the polls compared to a 45.8% two months ago when he was doing daily press briefings about coronavirus.

So, he has lost little more than 10% of the people who approve of him in 2 months. He’s given up on coronavirus. There is not a push to increase testing. There’s not a push for much contact tracing.

If you combine both of things, you could get a handle on the virus in the U.S. The way other countries have done and push it down to negligible numbers. South Korea has had only 280 deaths from coronavirus.

They still have an average of 1 or 2 a week, where we average 5,000 a week and have more than 400 times as many deaths as South Korea has had. Our curve of new cases never came close to zero. It dropped from highs of 30,000 per day to roughly 20,000 a day for a month or a month and a half.

Since the country is being opened, 4 out of the past 5 days, we have been back above 30,000 new confirmed cases a day. I am guessing within the next 2 weeks; we will break our all-time record for most new cases in a day.

For states in denial about it, Texas, Arizona, and Florida, the hospitals are starting to overflow in Arizona and Texas. They may get harder than they are getting hit now. Tis may be the thing that erodes Trump’s support even further, but who knows.

His support has been the steadiest of any president since they started polling under FDR more than 80 years ago. His range of approval and disapproval, if you don’t count the first polls because people want to give the new president the benefit of the doubt, since the first week has ranged between 45.8% and 37%.

It is a tight margin compared to every other president. It may not be possible to get his support to drop much below 39%. Because those weeks of him in the 37s were 2.5 years ago, 3 years ago, before people got used to that he was going to be an asshole for his entire presidency.

They got used to it after the initial shock. It may not be possible. There may be some gradual erosion to 40 or into the 39s, then there will be the Republican and Democratic national conventions. The candidates, usually, get a bump for a couple percent from their conventions.

So, I don’t know. I expect the week of the election; he will be around 40% approval. The week of the election will have about 200,000 coronavirus dead or more. The country will probably have had to shut down more again.

But there are millions of people who will not admit to pollsters that they will vote for Trump because they find it embarrassing. There is a chance that he will still win. That’s where we are at now. He looks or the country looks worse than ever.

There is an all-time low for the number of Americans who say they are happy, which is 14%. I think the previous low was 29%. So, most of the country thinks he is a monster. 40% still stands by him.

The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 556 – The Best Model of Consciousness, in Brief

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/06/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The best model of consciousness now, if we simplify that to a definition in one sentence, what is it in plain English?

Rick Rosner: It is high-information flow, sharing information among a bunch of different analytic nodes, and a bunch of different sensory analytic nodes. You get high-density information, detailed information about the world coming in through several senses, merging with analytic information produced by your brain about what is coming in, and the analytic information is associative.

What is in the conscious arena brings up associations from memory, and creates new associations, so, it’s a function of varied, shared information. All about the world under consideration by the thing that is conscious.

In other words, everything is looking at roughly the same stuff, the world that the consciousness is trying to model and analyze. It is not like somebody sitting, like a stock broker sitting at 17 different screens looking at information flows about 17 different things. It is not parallel processing those – no.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 555 – Dogs Barking and Frankenstein, “Damn it”

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/06/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Some more stuff on IBM – yada-yada. You wanted to talk about it some more. Go ahead.

Rick Rosner: I don’t remember where we exactly left off because I took a nap. We should look at old hand-wavey models of consciousness. There is a trend calling whatever something humans can do and animals can’t “consciousness” with an in-built assumption that animals aren’t conscious and humans are, which I don’t believe.

To this train of thinking, you should find things human can do like have language, recognize oneself in the mirror, having a sense of self which comes with seeing oneself in a mirror, and whatever this one thing was that people thought human beings can do; they argue this is what consciousness is.

Having language means you’re conscious, seeing yourself and recognizing yourself in a mirror means you’re conscious, it is not a good reason. At the same time, some of this stuff does help flesh out what we feel as conscious humans.

Language, certainly, facilitates some aspects of consciousness if you can assign a term or a shorthand for everything that may come up in your awareness; that’s helpful. Anyway.

Jacobsen: What about metaphors of consciousness like levers, gears, pumps, vacuum tubes?

Rosner: Up through the 50s and the 60s, there was the Dr. Frankenstein model of biology, where once medicine started making some headway and able to do stuff and understand the body. This got tied in with the mechanical-physical models that people had at the time.

With the novel Frankenstein being the first major work to discuss humans as machinery that could be repaired and resurrected, so, I feel like all those models of pumps that you mentioned get tangled in 19^th century Frankenstein and then crappy horror movies of the 1950s, where scientists are always resurrecting people to bad effect.

But I’m sure that machinery model, probably, got tangled up in other models of consciousness and, in fact, there are still ideas of flow when discussing consciousness. Some of those models or ideas are not illegitimate. That bandwidth, the amount of information flowing through a system per unit time is not inapplicable to consciousness.

You could model consciousness as a game played on a board. If you set it up based on whatever the rules of consciousness are, you could animate modes of consciousness by moving pieces around on some board. But in practice, you need a flow rate of real-time of having a lot of cognitive and sensory information flowing through the system.

To get back to Watson and Google Translate, though, you could argue that they have an awareness of something at some really low level because the amount of information flowing through them and the number of things, the graininess, and the paucity of inputs means that whatever awareness they have is nothing like our awareness, and, furthermore, they’re not like awareness because they don’t have so many of the things that may not be necessary for consciousness; we associate them with consciousness.

Even though, Google Translate is about language. Google Translate does not have language like we have language because words in it do not have as much in them as us, or each meta-word. People argue that Google Translate has developed an internal efficiency with a meta-language, where each word in every actual human language is associated with the concept of that word in a synthetic language within Google Translate.

It has a landscape of the relationship among words. This landscape generally doesn’t use the specific words in the landscape, but some representation of the words in the landscape meaning “bread” in the different languages. But I haven’t read that much about it, though. So, I don’t know.

[Dog barking]

Jacobsen: We have guest speakers.

Rosner: Yes, the word or meta-word for “bread” doesn’t represent bread the way we represent it because Google Translate doesn’t have the sensory library to have the imagery associated with the bread.

[Dog barking]

Rosner: Damn it.

[Pause, swearing]

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 554 – Conscious of Butts and Curves

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/06/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay, so, you wanted to talk about IBM’s Watson and Google Translate and their level of consciousness.

Rick Rosner: My question is if they are conscious and to what degree. For this era, they are sophisticated and closest to conscious.

Jacobsen: What is the separation of conscious and not conscious here?

Rosner: Everyone knows what consciousness is within living in consciousness. We all know what consciousness feels like. That is a good enough start, I believe. The question could be, “How close to feeling human-type consciousness could these association engines come?” I started reading an article, ‘What does it feel like to be Watson?’ in a journal.

It veered quickly into “What does it mean to be human?” It went into behaviourism, as the basis of the journal.

Jacobsen: That is a joke in and of itself.

Rosner: Yes, behaviourism comes from a time when it was very hard to look inside the brain. We are only going to look at human and animal behaviours. It was people throwing up their arms and giving up. I was surprised people are still doing behaviourism when we have all these tools to look into human brains.

It is like the journal of rotary phones or buggy whips, sorry behaviourists, but jeez.

Jacobsen: When I was working in psychology, there was advancements. We were between cognitive science and neuroscience marrying together with the looking at the general processing of information in humanistic terms, providing narratives around things, e.g., false memories, where neuroscience is more clinical and looking at the chemistry and architectural of the brain at macro scales and micro scales.

That’s one marriage. That cognitive revolution was a revolution on the cognitive revolution by marrying cognitive science and neuroscience, but cognitive was an advancement on behaviourism because, as you were saying, the brain was see as a black box.

We might see a marriage between cognitive neuroscience and behaviourism now.

Rosner: You see this in all the hard sciences, chemistry and biology and physics. The things that some scientists strive for is to try to turn everything into physics because science is the basic, ground floor for all physical processes. Everything in biology and chemistry must ultimately be traced back to the particles involved with the chemical and biological systems.

To a huge extent, that has been done. Angela Merkel, the head of Germany or very competent leader of Germany, started off in Quantum Chemistry. You can compare that to our President who struggles with double digit mathematics of addition.

You don’t have to take everything in chemistry or biology down to its basic physics foundation. Every day, you could do it, and it would all hold up. Similarly, everything in cognitive science and neuroscience at some point in the future should be built up from the basic physics of the matter in your brain and nervous system.

Anyway, the behaviourism article was annoying. You do want to take a look at what makes human consciousness. What are the elements of it? A couple big ones are that it is judge-y. Everything that impinges on your consciousness is judged according to a bunch of criteria that are themselves part of consciousness, whether they are good for you, good for your safety, for your health, whether it makes you horny or scared.

Everything is evaluated multi-dimensionally, which is to say among a bunch of different scales. That’s one thing. Another thing is pleasure in pain. Everything in consciousness is in consciousness because it is in an associative net. Everything that enters your conscious arena because it triggers associations with other stuff. Your brain is just a rolling cascade of associations.

It makes it weird to talk about pleasure and pain because pleasure and pain seem more association free than other stuff. Food has flavours that you associate with a specific food. Pleasure and pain, though they come in different flavours too, with the stomach ache versus slicing a finger with a knife.

The pleasure seem to exist as pleasure and pain more than flavours exist independent on other stuff. I would guess stuff can’t be in consciousness. Unless, it triggers associations. Pain exists to alert you to a problem and get you to do stuff with regard to issues with that problem. Something is fucking up your body.

Pain tells you to isolate that part of your body or to go away from that thing, aversive behaviours. Pain pushes you away from stuff. Pleasure tells you everything is okay. When you have an orgasm, including me, orgasm makes you sleepy, “Yes, you’re not going to worry about anything right now. You’re going to drift off into a nice little nap.”

So, in rough terms, though they don’t immediately seem to be, they are associative. They want you to do stuff or feel good to not have to do stuff. With regard to judginess regarding pleasure and pain, can you o withou them? I say, “Yes.” But a consciousness without that stuff would not feel like human consciousness to us. Then we can circle back to Watson and Google Translate.

With Watson, questions are entered into it. The words and grammatical relationships in the words are looked at and given a bunch of associations without a deep understanding of the question; it just knows that these words set out in this sequence generate this set of possible answers.

Each with a probability of being correct. If a rule breaks some or hits some threshold of being correct, say 85% or 90%, then Watson rings in and answers the question. I think Watson has been sold to clients looking for machine learning association engines.

I don’t know what specific Watson tasks there are, assume you can sell Watson to a hospital. Someone presents this kind of symptoms. Watson generates a set of possible diseases. Each with a probability of fitting those criteria. You can probably use this kind of thing for social media brainwashing. You enter characteristics of somebody’s voting behaviour that you want to influence.

You enter what is available about this person and then Watson generates a set of messages that are ranked by probability in influencing this voter in the way you want, which is the way, I assume, Cambridge Analytica worked. It was used by Republicans in 2016 to make people crazy in the way they wanted to make them crazy.

So, there is association going on. You could argue there is a certain degree of awareness. It is not broadband at all. In that, our consciousness, we get information from a number of or along a number of different cognitive and sensory pathways. We have nodes of specialist systems that add their two cents on what they are seeing like the horniness node.

This thing I am seeing. How does it make me feel sexually? Every knows that node is overactive and will find some things to see as sexual even in contexts where nothing sexual is happening. You can see certain curves. They remind you of a butt.

Everyone is familiar with the feeling of seeing butts and getting horny or for no reason after seeing something curvaceous. That horny node is always going and evaluating. We have hundreds of those nodes large and small. Watson and Google Translate don’t have as many nodes. They really don’t have many pathways for input.

Obviously, you can type stuff into Google Translate and into Watson. That’s primarily how you are filling them with information. I would guess with Google being a sinister high-tech company is experimenting with ways of entering information into a system that isn’t just words, like Google Images. I assume working with Google Video and trying to build associative structures.

So, it is reasonable to think that Watson and Google Translate don’t really understand the words that are entered into it. They only understand what those words are associated with. That if you enter “bread” into Google Translate; that you’ll get a bunch of words that mean “bread” in other languages.

Words in this associative net will reflect that bread in something you cook, that you eat, that you buy, that you might find in a kitchen or a restaurant, without Google Translate knowing what any of these terms mean. We can also assume Google is trying to build, if not Google Translate, how bread would work, including these ingredients and knowing what “mix” means and could call up videos of bread mixing.

But none of this gives you consciousness, but all of this gets you closer to consciousness. The question becomes, “How close does this get you to consciousness, whether human consciousness or even grasshopper consciousness?” They have a consciousness, grasshoppers, and they have an experience of the world moment-to-moment.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 553 – Machine Learning as Early A.I.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/06/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, you wanted to talk about IBM’s Watson and Google Translate. What about them?

Rick Rosner: Both of them are machine learning – which is another term for A.I. – associational engines. Watson get a Jeopardy question entered into him/typed into him. Based on the words and the relationships of the words in the questions generates in a fraction of a second, a set of possible answers wih each one ranked in terms of probability of being correct.

If one of them hits above some threshold, maybe 80/90% of being correct, Watson will ring in with that answer. All this happened not too long ago. Since then, Watson has been sold to IBM’s clients as some kind of search engine or association engine.

My question, “How conscious, if at all, are machine learning, association engines like these?” I started reading an article that was from a journal titled something like ‘What is it like to be Watson?’ I started reading it.

The article turned out to be crap. The discussion focused on, “What is it to be human?” I am interested in what it is to be conscious. I looked up the name of the journal. It is the ‘American Journal of Behaviourism’ or something. It shocked me.

Behaviourism is some movement in psychology from the 1930s that it was too hard to figure out what is actually going on in the brain, so that movement decided to just look at thought and animals and humans in terms of behaviours. “We’ll leave the brain as a black box.”

It was the scientific equivalent of throwing up your hands and saying, “Fuck it!” It is surprising as we have increasingly advanced tools to look inside the brain on a fraction of a second basis. So, that was a garbage article.

But you can ask in a more legitimate way, ‘What makes consciousness conscious?’

Jacobsen: Also, what makes the non-conscious crucial to the conscious?

Rosner: Yes. Consciousness is built out of non-conscious building blocks. It’s got a physical basis. That is the processes that go on in the brain and some people like to argue that consciousness resides within certain structures within neurons. I find that to be a garbage theory.

Anyway. You look at human consciousness. Human consciousness is judge-y. That is, the events that happen o human consciousness and sensory input is judged according to a bunch of criteria, but, maybe, most importantly whether what is going on is good or bad for the human and whether the human being likes it.

So, there’s judging, pleasure, and pain. I find those hard to incorporate into consciousness. But I think the key for everything in consciousness is to see how it works associatively because you’re not conscious of anything.

Unless, it enters into an associative arena, where it can trigger a sensory event.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 552 – Non-Sense Engines

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/06/19

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what is going on in America with Fox News? You had some thoughts.

Rick Rosner: I am just dib-sing the term “non-sense engine.” Right now, roughly a third of American adults support Trump to some extent, which means you support nonsense and bullshit to some extent. There’s the media constantly pumping bullshit into people’s brain and calling it truth.

You can’t fix people who believe ridiculous shit. Unless, you remove the source of ridiculous shit. So, in this country, we are trying to fix the cops. After we fix the cops, we got to fix the news. I have some ideas for doing it, for example, like requiring channels that claim to be running the news to have a sidebar that runs simultaneously that fact checks bullshit.

Although, for good fixes to happen, non-Republicans would have to get a very large majority. Even then, they would fuck it up. All I want to do here is dibs the term non-sense engine. It is an engine because it powers the ongoing political dysfunction that is facilitated by people believing stupid untrue shit.

Jacobsen: What about a “sense navigator” – how you find your way through the muck with an engine? What is your sensible astrolabe?

Rosner: Consensus facts instead of crazy bullshit conspiracy theories. The best science, unless somebody is sufficiently educated in science that they can handle the subtleties. For instance, there are a bunch of people in America who won’t wear masks because it will make you sick, because you breathe in carbon monoxide. It’s just stupid.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Rosner: Its disproven every day by medical professionals who wear them for 12, 13 hours a day all day several days a week. But if you are going to argue some masks are more effective than others, then you should be able to believe that shit if you have read the science on that.

I was listening to an expert on the pandemic and diseases, infectious diseases, saying that the latest evidence is that it is hard to catch Covid on surfaces. So, he stopped worrying about surfaces as it relates to Covid.

So, if somebody is scientifically informed and literate enough to have some alternative views, fine, but you can’t just believe straight up bullshit, I was thinking about how I am writing this book based on the future.

I was thinking one way to enforce the rule of truth, which is a little coercive, but, maybe, the entertainment and news industries form consortiums/consortia. Where you don’t get to have your face and your voice amplified by working in entertainment or news, unless, you agree to believe facts in pretty the way I’ve been talking about.

Where, it is fine to be a little bit informed, but the informed you are should be based on legitimate consensus knowledge. That coronavirus is a thing. There are millions in America who believe it is a Bill Gates conspiracy.

Maybe, if you have that belief, you don’t get acting jobs or writing jobs. If that is what it takes to get us back on track to combat nonsense/bullshit engines, then, maybe, that’s one. I only just thought about it, so there are probably some shitty aspects to it.

Also, I don’t know if anybody will have the balls to do it. People have argued for billionaires to buy Fox News. You could buy it for several tens of billions of dollars. So if you took 200 billionaires, and if they each pitched in a quarter billion, that’s $50 billion for a hostile take over of Fox to make it not Fox.

Maybe, the investors may make some money off it, because it is still a news organizations with profit in it.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 551 – Luck, Nature, Coronavirus

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/05/12

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why is there such innumeracy? What are the social and political implications of this?

Rick Rosner: 15 years ago, people talked about the perfect storm based on the movie The Perfect Storm, which is about the confluence of factors coming together to make something particularly horrible. This is where we are roughly May, 2020.

We are having more than 2,000 fatalities a day the past few weeks due to coronavirus. But this is the week that people have become impatient and people are partially opening up 42 states after things were shut down for a while

There is a way to do it based on extensive testing and contact tracing. You test everybody and find those who have been positive and ask who they have been in contact with and ask them to quarantine. That isn’t being done.

Testing remains horrible largely due to Trump’s incompetence, large due to he and his people thinking that if they don’t produce horrible numbers produced by wider testing, then it wouldn’t look so bad for his re-election.

I will confine discussion to much of this happening to people having no grasp of math whatsoever. People who have a decent grasp of mathematics and statistics and understand the relative risks and outworks the spread of the disease and how it works, and that testing is inadequate.

Right now, we are testing just over 1/20^th of 1% of the U.S. population per day. We have tested a total of roughly 2% of the entire population. If we could get it up to roughly a third of 1% of the population per day, say a million tests a day, in a month, we could get 10% of the population tested.

That might be enough to open up a lot of offices, open up some communities, once you find out who needs to not be open, who needs to be quarantined, in a community. But the current level of testing does not allow this.

But it does allow the virus to be passed on enough to, at least, maintain a, more or less, steady rate of 2,000 more dead people per day. If that rate holds until the end of the year, we’re looking at more than half of a million Americans dead, which puts it in the top 5 deadliest events in U.S. history up there with the Civil War, the Spanish Flu, and World War Two.

Even if we get lucky, get more testing, and can drop the number of dad per day to just a thousand per day, still by Election Day in early November, we’re at a quarter million U.S. dead, which makes it the fifth deadliest event in U.S. history.

But enough of the country doesn’t even bother to understand the math to the point where they might understand that opening up the country now will add another 100,000 to 150,000 fatalities and will make the rate of the number of cases and the number of deaths rise to the point where we might have to close everything down again.

Or if enough assholes have their way, there is a thing being said, ‘Some people have to die.’ We might rise to 3,000 to 4,000 deaths per day and still have lots of states where people refuse to close things down again.

Jacobsen: Is this related to the amount of illiteracy in the United States as well?

Rosner: The engine for people not bothering to understand are shitty arguments cynically targeted at dumb people by conservative news organizations and conservative news pundits. That we have to open up the country and sure we’re going to take reasonable precautions, but people are going to die.

When that argument is made, there is little discussion as to what reasonable precautions are. When you understand math, you understand the reasonable precautions are having enough testing and contact tracing to understand who still needs to be quarantined and what communities still need to be quarantined.

A month ago, when they talked about what the criteria should be for opening up the country, there were four including 14 days of declining numbers of cases in the area where people are discussing opening. No part of the country has that.

Many of the places opening up have hit their highest numbers in the past couple of days. So, people try to sound reasonable and say, “We’re going to take reasonable precautions,” but the people making those arguments either don’t understand or don’t care about reasonable precautions.

Because if you understand math, then you understand what reasonable criteria are. Unless, we are lucky enough that higher Summer temperatures or different Summer behaviours – more people outside in groups rather than inside in groups, unless that knocks it down; we will continue to have 1,500 to 2,500 U.S. deaths a day.

So within a week, this will be the deadliest year for respiratory diseases since 1969. With two weeks, it will be the worst year for it since the Spanish Flu, where the worst month in U.S. history for communicable disease deaths was October, 1919, when 195,000 people died of the Spanish Flu.

Last month, about 60,000 people died of coronavirus, this month, it looks like it will be about the same. Unless, we are lucky. We could hit 100,000 deaths in a month.

Alright, the end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 550 – Death and Aftermath

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/05/12

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I’m just thinking about this a little more with ongoing crisis pandemic, because we have a lot of people dying in a short amount of time. So there’s also almost 8 billion people alive in the world. So that just makes me think about, “Okay, so, what are we going to do when people have either expired prematurely or have died by natural causes, other natural causes?”

So, the question is: “What is going to be the future of dealing with bodies when they’ve had their use, basically, when the person’s life is over?” Is the demographic of this going to change from mostly burial to more cremation and things like that?

Rosner: I do not know. The bio mass of the dead is negligible compared to all other forms of waste. You die once and you leave 150 pounds of person behind, but, the thing, most people in America probably generate, five or 10 pounds of trash a day.

So, it is not like dead bodies add much to wherever they’re put. The only problem is that as land becomes more scarce, people have to do stuff about cemeteries, either turn them in mausoleums, but it is not a big deal. If you want to talk about the number of people dying from coronavirus, it doesn’t even put a dent on average, worldwide human mortality at this point.

It is the leading cause of death in the United States or it had been for about a month. It was the leading cause of death with more than 2,000 people dying a day which is slightly more than people who die from cancer and who die from heart disease a day.

But the last few days it is been under 2000. So, it is not the leading cause of death. On an average day, about 7,000 people die in America. So even during the worst today of the virus, it was only kicking daily mortality up by 30 something, maybe 40%. In a worldwide, it is probably not even kicking worldwide mortality more than a percent or two.

Jacobsen: What happens to bodies when we can do more to rejuvenate old people?

Rosner: That just means we’ll keep old people longer, but the era of keeping the body you were born with going for 200 years, well, either that keeps going or, enough different technologies will develop around living for a long time, that some people want to hold onto the body they’re born with.

We’re talking like 200 years from now. Some people will put it in storage. Some people will rent new bodies. We’ve talked about all this before, but not in terms of what to do with the bodies, but it won’t be that much of an issue because we’ll have mastered the technology of keeping for as long as it is practical for growing new bodies, if you want, or we’ll have other vessels or people will live virtually.

Then there will continue to be people who want to dispose of the bodies of the dead or the disposed bodies, if they’re not necessarily dead, in various ways. So people still get buried or cremated. Just a whole lot of different stuff will happen.

A whole lot of different stuff will happen with humanity in general, where people will embrace lives of different degrees of traditional-ness. There will be, I do not know; “clans” is not quite the right word.

There will be populations who live in different ways and some of these ways will be tied to religion. Some of them will be tied to geography but there will be increasing uncertainty and debate for much of the population in lifestyle and how modified humans should be. But we’ve talked about all this before.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 549 – Libertarianism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/05/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen. What do you think? Just for sake of asking. What do you think of libertarians in the United States?

Rick Rosner: Right now, it is as corrupt as Republicans, as being a Republican. It is just another like slight variation on being a Republican. It is part of a wave of thinking that began in Republican think tanks in the 70s and 80s, which was the idea of limited government.

And to strip away what they thought was too much governance, too much regulation. What it has turned into is trying to strip away governance and regulation for the rich people who were the major donors to Republicans. Yes, Trump has gotten rid of a lot of regulations.

But he got rid of them because he hates Obama and a lot of them. He associates them with Obama and because his rich friends want their industries to be less regulated, so they can make more money. There’s no honest philosophical motivation for a limited government that these people say they want.

Jacobsen: What do you mean by that?

Rosner: The whole deal since the 80s has been to say that Republicans say that government is the problem, the government is broken. Then they get elected and they do their best to make government not work. So people are pissed at government, which drives down voting rates, which again helps the Republicans.

And Republicans do not want regulation. They do not want money. Rich people do not want money for the most part. At least rich people who are exercising political clout, they want to keep the money. They do not want money to go to anybody but themselves. The way they’ve been doing that is via fucking up government.

Jacobsen: What are substantive ways in which they’re “fucking up government”?

Rosner: Well, they’re trying to get rid of what they call the welfare state, which began.

Jacobsen: What is that euphemism for “welfare state,” by the way?

Rosner: It is the social safety nets that were created under FDR during the Depression, Social Security. They wanted to really cut down on things like welfare, food stamps, Social Security, Medicare and stuff that takes money that they’ve taken from people, taxpayers.

And distributes that money to pay for stuff for the public. Republicans do not like that they want to keep the money. For instance, in L.A., in the state of California in 1978, there’s this thing called Prop 13 that was passed, which limits how much property taxes can be increased per year.

Which keeps a one percent maximum increase, which keeps property taxes really low because property values increase every year. So the property taxes we are paying on our house are less than one half of one percent of the value of the house.

Warren Buffett says he pays less in taxes on his L.A. mansion than he does on his little bungalow in Omaha. We’ve got super low property taxes. That impacts the schools because schools are funded from property taxes. But rich people do not give a fuck because they do not send their kids to public schools.

So rich people are fine with fucking over the schools and paying less in taxes. Because they’ll be OK using their own resources. They’re willing to let everybody else fuck off.

And the philosophy of libertarianism and Republicanism is that if you just get the government out of people’s business, private efforts will make everything OK for everybody, that the churches will take care of their people and that somebody will figure out how to make money running schools.

So that schools should all be privatized or turned into charter schools. Republicans for decades have been trying to scuttle the post office and replace it with more privatized companies. Because they figure they can make money doing it.

And anyway, it is a bogus philosophy. It is not designed to help people. It is designed for rich people to keep more of their money. Right now, we have more income inequality than at any time since the beginning of the 20th century.

You had the Gilded Age in the 1880s. What we’re talking about is the percent of all private assets owned by the upper echelons, the wealthiest people. The fraction of all wealth owned by the wealthiest people is at its highest ever.

It matches the rates of just before the Great Depression and at various times from the 1880s until the end of the 1920s. It is bad for the country. Even though, the productivity has increased. It is kind of steadily upwards. Yet lower class wages haven’t have remained proportional in real terms.

Middle class people on average haven’t gotten a raise in forty years. Eighty percent of the increases in compensation have gone to the top couple percent.

Jacobsen: To return to the original line of thought. What is the libertarian line of reasoning for justification of it?

Rosner: If you let markets be free, and if you let people be free, everybody will get what they want. Because people will find solutions for stuff that do not require government intervention. it is a stupid idea. It is a fallacious stance.

It is just rich people wanting to hold on to more money. At the expense of reasonable functioning of government. We have a country with three hundred and twenty-eight/twenty-seven million people. A big complicated society with publicly funded stuff that’s always been publicly funded or at least has been publicly funded for the last hundred and forty years.

Schools, public schools, libraries, roads, police, firefighters have all largely been publicly funded. But then you have assholes on the right and among libertarians who say taxation is theft. But giving any money to the government is stealing their hard earned money. It is bullshit.

Obama one time got in trouble when he was giving a speech and told some people, ‘You didn’t build this.’ He told a bunch of entrepreneurs and he kind of misspoke. What he was trying to say is you didn’t build this alone, the success of your business requires having employees.

Those employees having a reasonable standard of living. People having access to your products and services via the mail and via public roads. Advertising your stuff on public airwaves that you cannot have a functioning economy that’s constantly fucking over all but the richest people.

But Republicans and libertarians have been successfully arguing this for forty years. they’ve gotten a lot of political leverage and they’ve gotten people to vote against their best. I said this yesterday against their best interests. we have a government right now that is not doing what most people want it to do.

It is doing what the richest people want it to do. So I do not need to keep going on because I’ve already said all this stuff.

Jacobsen: What about the derivative effects of this on social life in America?

Rosner: Well, right now, we’re super polarized. We have media. Conservative media is cynically designed to spread bullshit among low information voters, which is a euphemism for stupid people – to get them to believe a bunch of stuff that’s not true and to vote against their best interests.

And to make them think that everybody but the conservative media are lying to them. So we’re super polarized. Even before Covid the standard for the first time in history, I believe, except maybe during wartime, life expectancy during the past three years went down.

Because income inequality and the opioid crisis and obesity, suicide, farm failures are making people die earlier, contributing to decreasing quality of life.

Jacobsen: If someone is Type I or Type II obese, an American, blue collar, and white, what is their life expectancy?

Rosner: I do not know, but it is obviously less than somebody who’s not obese. I do not know what the different degrees of obesity you are talking about are. But you’re subject to a whole slew of diseases, heart disease, type two diabetes.

I’d think probably somebody who’s obese has a life expectancy that it is at least three years less than somebody who is not. I’m just being conservative. But again, I do not need to explain that everybody fucking knows that if you’re fat and you’re borderline diabetic, you’re going to die soon.

Jacobsen: How are the liberal wing and the Democratic wing of United States functioning in this environment? Are they fractured in confidence?

Rosner: The Democrats have for decades and generations have been accused of being incompetent. Because they’re wimpy and they tend to try to play fair. For instance, right now, there’s this thing going on. Where a very not credible woman named Tara Reid says that in a deserted hallway in Congress, Joe Biden jammed his fingers into her vagina in 1993.

And she has changed her story a bunch of times. There’s a bunch of angst among Democrats in that we’re supposed to believe all women and people are saying Biden has to drop out or we need to investigate this fully, though, as people are getting more and more annoyed with this.

Because there’s a thing on Twitter, where it is like an own goal. You fuck yourself up. Democrats are accused of trying to be too fair and not being as ruthless as the Republicans and in trying to give this woman a fair hearing.

Even though there are lots of indications that she is full of shit, that we’re fucking over our candidate compared to Trump, who has fairly credible accusations of sexual harassment and sexual abuse from at least twenty-five women.

And depending on how you count the accusations as many as sixty women, the Republicans do not give a shit about that he raped his first wife. She gave a sworn deposition that I find entirely believable because of the details. He says that he raped her when they were married in the 80s.

Because he was pissed at her because she recommended a hair transplant surgeon when he got a procedure done and it made his head hurt and he came home all pissed off and he ripped her hair out and he raped her. She said this in sworn testimony during their divorce.

And I find it believable, having had a bunch of procedures done on my fucking scalp. But the Republicans do not give a shit about all the women that Trump allegedly attacked. But they want us to scuttle Biden because this woman claims that Biden stuck his fingers in her.

Though there are lots of things that she is, she has changed her story a bunch of times. I do not need to go into the details of her. But I can choose not to believe her and fuck it if it makes me a hypocrite. Franken, Al Franken was pressured to leave the Senate because of a joke picture he took where he is pretending to grab a woman’s boobs on a military transport plane.

It is obviously a joke picture. It is fairly obvious that he is not even touching her boobs. This was the center, this was the smoking gun in allegations that he is a sexual harasser and he quit the Senate. That’s just bullshit. So anyway, again, I do not need to go much into this because all this is shit people already know.

Jacobsen: The end.

Rosner: Yes.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 548 – Wealth Inequality in a State (and in the Nature of States)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/05/07

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How much wealth inequality is required for wealth inequality in a state to become bad?

Rick Rosner: All right, so right now, what we have, I’ve called Trump the little end of the world before the big end of the world. But when I started calling him that, I didn’t realize that he would bring on the end of the world for like a quarter million Americans.

We’re at seventy-seven thousand dead and another two thousand dead every day. So by Election Day, six months away, we’re going to be at least a quarter million dead, unless some miracle happens. Probably closer to three hundred fifty thousand US dead from coronavirus.

Which will put it in the top five deadliest events in U.S. history. Right behind World War 2. So what we’re seeing is life inequality with the virus that I’m not sure, I haven’t verified the statistic. But it may be that more black people have died in the US from this fucking virus than any other race. Black people are only approximately, maybe, 12 percent of America

Jacobsen: They’ve died far more disproportionately than any other population.

Rosner: They certainly have died at a higher rate than any other. So poor people and minorities are dying more from this shit more than the rich people. That’s a little preview of what increasingly income inequality may do as medical technology gets better.

It is already somewhat the case in America. But it hasn’t really been explicitly noticed by most people. Because there’s so much other shit going on, even with regard to wealth inequality, that people really haven’t started getting pissed about differential health and mortality outcomes between rich and poor.

But that’s going to get a lot more attention as this stuff plays out, as medicine gets better over the next 10, 20 years. That’s the biggest and most obvious place where wealth inequality and income inequality show up; the unethical situation that you have to die 20 years sooner.

You and everybody have to die 20 years sooner than rich people. Just because you do not have money. You live a less healthy life and then you’re dead in your 60s, then rich people are living healthy lives into their 80s and making it well into their 90s.

So that’s super unethical. There is a demographic remedy for income inequality, which is there are more poor people than rich people. So poor people use the political power of their bigger numbers to vote in policies that favor them over rich people.

But what is happening, what has been going on in the US is that, that dynamic has been subverted more horribly than at any time in the past hundred and thirty years where rich people have captured the levers of government. There’s the Citizens United Supreme Court decision which says that corporations are people.

And that political contributions, that money is speech. That putting limits on what people and corporations can donate is limiting free speech. It is a horrible decision and it is going to need legislation to fix it.

But since that decision was handed down, Democrats who represent the non-rich to some extent haven’t had enough political power to do anything about it. So on the one hand, you’ve got political power in the hands of rich people, the politicians they’ve bought.

And on the other hand, you have propaganda, Fox News and OANN tricking poor people into voting again against their best interests. So it has been a terrible time for the past 10 years in the U.S. because poor people have been on average stymied.

And rich, shitty people have just grabbed all the wealth. So those are two areas that are obviously ethically shitty, deplorable; that much longer lifespans and no access to political power.

Jacobsen: What do you think of these arguments that people are opposing and have been for a long time around inequality being some kind of law of nature and that’s innate with people who do not have a talent, not having a talent, not having work ethic, etc.?

Rosner: Yes, that’s just bullshit. Where some level of income inequality is fine. There have been times. There’s a harsh view of the US that says there have never been good times. The US has never been a good nation. That there’s been riot consistently right below the surface.

But contrary to that, there have been times when America has been good for a large proportion of its population. They have been shitty; there have always been shitty things going on. But America made it possible for a lot of people to live good lives by the standards of the time.

It is not right now. We’re all either hunkering down, trying not to get sick and unemployed, or defiantly and stupidly trying to reopen the country. Because we’ve been brainwashed by conservative bullshit.

But at other times in the US, capitalism plus democracy to the extent that we had each made it possible for people to move up economic ladders and make own enough stuff to have good lives and pay for their educations, their kids’ educations.

But there are limits on it. We’ve reached those limits in the disastrous loss of the years under Trump and the years leading up to Trump.

Well, that’s it for that.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 547 – Addendum to “Wealth, Good or Bad?…: In Other News, a Book!”

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/05/07

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Here, so, two points.

Rick Rosner: Let me say one point, then you say two points. My one point is the future is inherently sinister. Because we are, the project of the future is to dismantle and analyze and reconstitute humanity. Now, you go.

Jacobsen: Apart from those concerns focusing on ethics and wealth from the time-based perspective, in two ways. One, Individuals who were poor and made it rich by luck or work or talent or something else.

Two, those who were born into wealth without work ethic, talent, intelligence or anything else. It was simply luck and nepotism. What are the ethics that are behind those? What does it do to someone psychologically? Probably, it is pretty clear.

Rosner: We’ve seen this with famous people and with powerful people. It is really like the 60s, which I lived through, were a time of celebrity downfall to drugs, usually. There are a lot of people who died from drugs in the 60s. People have continued to do so.

But that was really kind of a trademark celebrity death of the 60s. Choke on your own vomit, just whatever. I’d say more recently, celebrity downfalls are really putting yourself in such a position that you’re impervious, you’re completely resistant to input, to reasonable, sensible input from other people.

But nobody can tell you “no.” You surround yourself with “yes” people. You are in a kingdom of your own. Michael Jackson, Trump, to some extent, Prince, Elvis, although he died in ’75. But the inability to take good counsel is maybe the major deficit of the untalented, rich and powerful.

Because I do not know somebody who’s untalented and rich and powerful, but not so full of hubris that they listen to competent people, that person can do OK and that person can do good. I do not know, Reagan. As a liberal, I do not think he was a good president.

But he was a pretty effective president and he surrounded himself while not being that dumb, but he was not a genius. In the last few years of his presidency, he was probably becoming less smart. But he surrounded himself with somewhat competent or somewhat effective conservatives.

And he got stuff done. He had what conservatives consider a successful presidency. Even though, his major skills were a folksiness and a handsomeness and a distrust of government. Bush, good guy on a personal level, not a genius, overly subject to manipulation, surrounded himself with some rotten guys.

Some of them left over from Reagan. They dragged him into the worst trouble that US has gotten into until now. Then Trump, not a smart guy, surrounds himself with pure shit. The competent people who accidentally end up around him. He doesn’t listen to him and they leave.

And now he is a shithead surrounded by other shitheads. Yes, and so on. So he is the downfall of untalented wealth and power. He is about the purest example and most tragic example, not just for himself, but for the country in the world that you could possibly think of.

Jacobsen: Did Errol Morris do a clip of various celebrities telling their favorite movies years and years ago?

Rosner: And it ran before the Oscars? Yes, I think.

Jacobsen: Do you remember the one Trump stated as the favorite movie for him, the iconic one?

Rosner: I didn’t know he was part of that reel.

Jacobsen: It was in ‘a stately dome decree.’

Rosner: Oh, it is fucking Citizen Kane.

Jacobsen: And so that summarizes everything because that represents him.

Rosner: Yes, that makes sense. I’ve argued that the Trump of 30 years ago would be somewhat appalled at the asshole he has become. He wasn’t always as terrible as he is now. He is a monster now. 30 years ago, he was an affable blowhard who liked to have sex with pretty women.

And brag about his accomplishments. He was – unless you were a creditor of his trying to get paid or an investor in one of his businesses – fairly harmless. But now, of course, his bullshit is killing thousands of Americans every day. But that he likes Citizen Kane.

Jacobsen: It is his favorite movie.

Rosner: It shows some near insight. Because, it is not a happy movie, it is about a rich asshole, a rich, unhappy asshole.

Jacobsen: He becomes completely isolated in the end.

Rosner: Yes, and maybe he was enough of an asshole back then to misunderstand the movie. He only saw the trappings of wealth and power. He was like, “Yes, that’s me.” Who fucking knows? That’s interesting, though.

Jacobsen: The end.

Rosner: The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 546 – Wealth, Good or Bad?…: In Other News, a Book!

ON MAY 7, 2020 BY RICKR

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/05/07

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen. So, is wealth in and of itself a bad thing?

Rick Rosner: Well, OK, here’s the deal. I’m working on a book. A novel starts about now and goes about 15 years into the future.

Jacobsen: When do you start working on this book?

Rosner: A year ago, maybe or a little less. I’ve been lazy about it the last couple of months, three, four. But I’ve almost got enough maybe to send out to see if I still have a literary agent. But I want this last chapter that I write before I send it to him to see if he thinks it is a thing to be about rich people in the future coincidentally.

Well, when we first started talking about six years ago, basically. Nobody very much was worried about AI or thought very much about how the world was going to change. Because of tech, people eagerly embraced new devices, especially smartphones but nobody really considered the implications of smartphones and what happens is they get smarter and better and more intimately connected to us.

But in that six years, shit has changed and people think about it quite a bit. Now with coronavirus, everybody has been forced to realize that the world is changing and will change. Probably throughout this one that subsides, people will be more receptive to picturing change, a changed world.

Various people will have various levels of receptivity to the changes themselves. But most people won’t have to be persuaded that the world will change and has changed. I’ve been watching this show. You know Hank Azaria?

Jacobsen: Sure.

Rosner: He got a show called Brockmire, which is about this degenerate alcoholic, drug abusing baseball announcer. Apparently Azaria has had this announcer radio voice that he developed, that he has done for fun for 20, 30 years, has developed a whole character around it.

And this last season of the show I just started watching, the season finale takes place in 2033 and 2034, roughly at the same time as where my book ends up. Brockmire, the last season, he ends up being the commissioner of baseball.

And in this world, so, he is fairly powerful and he is dealing with powerful interests. One of the interests, one of the players in this new world is a super sophisticated Alexa device. A personal digital assistant called Limon. Everybody wears a little Limon.

You have a Limon, a yellow plastic Limon, in your house, and you talk to it. You also wear a little brooch in the shape of a lemon on your lapel and it gives you advice, does stuff for you. I haven’t seen the whole episode yet.

But apparently, according to the episode guide, Limon, I guess, makes attempts to take over the world during this series finale. So this is a show about a degenerate baseball announcer and even it is moving into the future and looking at the implications of A.I.

So it is there. Once we’re done with coronavirus, people will have a lot of time and a lot of willingness to re-examine the world. Handshakes may go away. Everybody’s going to know how to do Zoom meetings.

Everybody’s going to know how to work from home to teleconference to telecommute. In the last chapter that I’m working on or getting ready to work on market forces personified by consumers and by the people making a fuck load of money off of the new devices.

And the downtrodden barely getting by, but still almost entirely are plugged in to the world as people who aren’t poor people. We are all going to be confronting this new world. So like the rich people, the dog that I’m writing about works as the public face of a company that is working on cutting edge brain information processing interfaces.

And the book so far, I’m calling it “Mach.” Because if you’re committed enough to go to the technology, you have your skull opened up or at least a hole is drilled into your skull. They’re not going to open it all the way up.

They’ll drill a hole, or they’ll stick, or they’ll jam a scroll, a metal mesh scroll and unroll it across the top of your brain. It is like two square inches. A one-by-two-inch grid of iron or maybe three, four or five wires per millimeter.

So a grid of, maybe, two hundred wires by one hundred wires forming twenty thousand nodes, which can provide a more easily addressable interface between your brain and these cubes that are the external information processors. So this is one thing the companies working on.

They’re working on a bunch of other stuff, genetic stuff, too. They start off being affiliated with UCLA and then they kind of get too big and they want their own destiny. But they poach, poach from universities. This becomes a very rich and powerful company doing all sorts of questionable shit, a lot of which they’re able to get away with.

Because they’re having a dog. A talking dog is the face of your company, makes the company seem less sinister than they might otherwise. One of the main sources of income is in certain areas, for certain departments of the company, are very rich people, who feel free to say which of this stuff sounds right and which of it doesn’t sound right or whatever.

So the people, the rich people that this company is dealing with come in various flavors. There are the people who have a bunch of money. It is not correlated with any particular cleverness, royal families inherited wealth on second generation, third generation, billionaires.

Just kind of people with regular abilities who just have a butt load of money. Then you have the same self-made rich people. Those come in a couple flavors. You have the tech people and then you have the people, the non-tech self-made rich people, who could be criminals, who could be corrupt politicians, who could be non-tech industrialists.

I do not know even people, somebody who came up with a really nice microwaveable cookie, celebrities. Each flavor of rich, and also you’ve got the stubborn, dumb rich who do not listen to their advisers. Then you’ve got the smart, the non-tech rich who are smart enough to listen to their advisers.

And there’s a whole range of things that the various flavors of rich people want. But mainly what this company is selling is if everything goes well, extra decades of life. Because one of the big end games is to replicate consciousness enough that you can go on living once your brain and your body are kaput.

So they’re working on a range of technologies. Some of which are would be considered acceptable. The things they’re working on have a range of sinisterness and acceptability. People with Parkinson’s can already get a pacemaker implanted in their brains in the real world right now.

And then they’ve been able to do this for, I do not know, probably 10 years, that sends out signals that keeps your brain ticking over where one of the problems with Parkinson’s is an inability to initiate action. You lose Will. Once you’re walking, you can keep walking.

But getting yourself to start walking is a problem with Parkinson’s. I guess this pacemaker somehow keeps goosing your brain. So you’re able to do more stuff than most people with Parkinson’s. People have cochlear implants, little computer information processors implanted in their ears, that process sound.

And in a way that a deaf person can learn to understand the signals as sound. there are various shitty attempts at providing some simulacrum of sight for blind people. So people already have shit implanted in their brains and nobody has a problem with them.

So a mesh implant in your brain for a failing brain that helps an aging Alzheimer brain continue to think competently. Few people would have a problem with that. There would be issues if it is only available for rich people. But that really, I do not know that we can talk about that.

But that’s not necessarily a huge problem with tech. I’m just thinking this out. Now tech makes its money not from charging a few super rich people a shitload of money. But from making their products cheap enough to sell them to everybody.

So there will be those kind of standard business model products this company is trying to come out with. At the same time, there will be cutting edge, experimental and morally questionable products and treatments that they’ll want to keep secret.

They want to keep sequestered from the rest of the company. They’ll want to charge people like a billion dollars for. Like an unethical approach might be that a rich guy as a kid and he meshes himself up and he messes up his baby so that they’re both smashed to a cube. I forget what I call the cube. Cube is not a good name.

Think it is the big box or something like, I do not know. It is the big block. So anyway, the dad and the baby, the infant are both linked to the big block information processor. They’re sharing thoughts through this.

So basically the old rich dad is trying to train the infant’s brain over a period of years to share thoughts with him. So they’re basically extensions of the same thinking entity. So when the old guy dies, he keeps on in the body of the kid who may be a teenager or young adult by then.

And whose thoughts have been shaped for decades by being linked. So if it works right, you’ve got a three-year-old whose sharing thoughts with a 58-year-old, billionaire. So it is a three-year-old who is only 18 months into not shitting himself at this but who at the same time has a deep understanding of the adult world.

Because he has been part of an entity that is thinking the rich guys’ thoughts and he has been part of an information feed his whole life. That seems pretty hinky, like you’ve created some kind of monster there. Rich people are going to want what rich people want.

And not every rich person is inherently evil in wanting what their money can buy. A lot of this arsenal of sinister shit will lead to widely applied products and treatment that will in the long run be beneficial for what we become.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 545 – Addendum to “Ashkenazim: Smarts Escaping the Nazis, and Genetic Diversity even in Homogeneity”

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/04/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: And they had become business people. My grandpa on my dad’s side worked in retail his whole life as a salesman and he may have owned a store at some point. My step dad and his family are in retail, their friends, also Jewish, were in retail.

I do not know where all that comes from, except that America has been called a nation of merchants and plenty of people go into retail. Though not late lately, it has been, with the rise of the Internet retailers, it is not something you want to go into. That’s about it.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 544 – Ashkenazim: Smarts, Escaping the Nazis, and Genetic Diversity even in Homogeneity

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/04/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: My various people, my stepdad’s family came from Germany, they got out long before the Nazis came into power.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: And at one part, if I may, and I do not mean to be rude, but just for those reading this later on you, all the family is Ashkenazi. So this is coming out of Germany and that kind of contact is very serious.

Rosner: Yes, so they got out, though, some branches of the family didn’t get out. Of my step family, my step dad side. Of my genetic parents, grandparents came out of Eastern and Northern Europe. Latvia, may be Lithuania, Romania. The kind of hinterlands of Europe, not the central countries that everybody knows, but some of the smaller or poorer countries.

My kid did 23-and-me came out like 99.7 percent Ashkenazi Jew, which surprised me because, the point three percent was North Africa and somebody out of Libya, or who knows, like three centuries ago or something.

So, I was surprised at the high percentage of Ashkenazi because I figure if you were Jewish in countries that abutted Russia 200-300 years ago. I thought it’d be likely, your people would likely get raped by Cossacks occasionally, but apparently that didn’t happen.

So we were pretty, I guess, lucky not to be raped. Also among genetic and whatever you call it, subsets, enclaves, or whatever, we’re lucky in the Ashkenazi, even though they maintained a pretty strict genetic lineage of having enough genetic diversity; we’re not completely inbred.

There are some genetic diseases that pop up among the Ashkenazi. Tay-Sachs disease where you’ve got to get screened for that if you’re Jewish. And if you’re Jewish and married to non-Jew, you have to get screened.

With two Jews, you have to get screened because any fetus with Tay-Sachs, you do not want to be born because that child will only live for two years. It is a devastating and catastrophic disease. The Ashkenazi are renowned for being smart.

Intelligence is, I guess you might know, different, one of the least pinned down genetic traits. Probably, if there’s statistical evidence that intelligence has a genetic basis, at least to some extent. But I do not think anybody’s ever hung it on a specific group of genes.

And there’s a lot of evidence that intelligence is cultural, that the Jews have prided themselves on academic achievement and hard work and hard academic work. Jobs that take a lot of training. Part of this may come from the racist policies in Europe where Jews worked in some countries in Europe.

Jews weren’t allowed to go into most businesses. I should be better informed on this, but this pushed us into mathy fields like accounting. So I know that’s about all I know about my people, genetically.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 543 – Going the Way of One’s Gods: Invincibility’s Dawn to Flaw’s Visibility

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/04/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Yes, this is like a phase change in American society and one-way; the first note of vulnerability or that the sense of invincibility being destroyed or corroded in American society was 9/11. That was a big one. Another one is the coronavirus.

Americans do not feel invulnerable anymore. So this is an important marker in early 21st century history for Americans because this corrodes the idea of not being harmed in any substantial way by outside forces who are people in 9/11 or by microscopic, seemingly invisible forces.

Rick Rosner: Yes, though, like you have to connect it to larger trends or tendencies in society. One of the larger trends, maybe not just for America, but certainly for America, is increasing selfishness. The sense of World War Two and then post-World War Two America, at least the public face of Americans, was that we were in stuff together and that we would thrive together.

Now, of course, there was plenty of racism and sexism that was built in, and that was part of our assumptions. So that all togetherness included some sort of exclusionary behaviors and institutions.

But we felt rich enough, powerful enough and righteous enough there, and also that there were these righteous institutions, e.g., scouting, religion, patriotism, standing together against the Nazis, the Soviet Union, and so on.

All these people were and it just made us less, unscrupulously greedy. The ratio of CEO salaries to the average worker salary is more like 30:1 instead of 300:1. So in a more selfish society, it doesn’t matter if we all thrive, if you’re looking at trying to excuse your selfish behavior because there’s not enough to go around.

So, this is stuff like this is part of a more Dog-Eat-Dog selfish orientation. The various amateur, gun toting morons, hitting state houses to protest the lockdown. Where the lockdown, it is a sacrifice, but it is nowhere near like near some of the sacrifices of the past, people getting killed in war.

So, it is the mark of an increasingly rinky dink country, a country that no longer feels like it is the paragon of world.

Jacobsen: Ok, let’s pause there.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 542 – Addendum to the AAG 541, The Air-ow of Mimes: In-Action in Action

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/04/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: The Spanish Flu pandemic, where Republicans are also going crazy, saying that it is wrecking, saying that the shutdown, the lockdown, or stay at home is wrecking the economy, we have to open up.

When you look back in 1918, 1919, when they opened up again after a summer that gave up something of a respite a little bit, it meant a second wave that was about as bad as the first.

Maybe the second wave wasn’t as bad as the first with the Spanish Flu, but it was worse. That’s with one of the pandemics. One of the other two big pandemics of either 1957 or the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69; we opened back up and just got hammered.

So we’re set up to have that happen again, particularly in the Trumpy southeastern states, the old Confederacy, where there is Georgia and Florida opening up probably faster than they should. All right. That’s it.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 541 – Fresh Prince of Air-Heads: or, Out of Air, 60,000 Unspeakable Acts, and More Unspoken Words

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/04/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, the American response. Jared Kushner was proclaiming about the virus that it was more or less mission accomplished. The best statement that I heard about that was, 60,000 people were not available for comment.

Rick Rosner: Yes, we’re at sixty-three thousand.

Jacobsen: Good old Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air died today.

Rosner: Really?

Jacobsen: Yes. He died today.

Rosner: It is all pretty sad.

Jacobsen: I do not know if he died from the virus.

Rosner: Any discussion of the response in the US with a discussion of Republicans who dominate our national government and many of our state governments. So the deal is that, as Reagan was the first modern Republican president in the 70s and 80s, conservative think tanks realized that there are tens of millions of dumb people in the US that they can more easily politically exploit.

And they started making themselves into the party that leverages angry, dumb people. They get people angry about issues like abortion or gun control, and then they bring them under this big, angry umbrella.

Then 30 years ago, Fox News began, which is a constant outrage engine for its viewers. You are constantly getting them worked up about the issues they’ve been taught to care about.

And two more things about the Republicans. One is they are under demographic pressure. The Republicans are a white people’s party and an old people’s party and as their members gets old and age out of being voters, as the country gets browner; they’re under pressure because they’re losing numbers.

So are the Democrats, the independents are growing at a higher rate. The Democrats are holding up a little better. That can vary month to month.

Jacobsen: What are the percentage of the independents now?

Rosner: The last time I looked, it was, 26 or no, 27 percent Republican, 31 percent Democrat and the rest independent. But the month before they were straight up tied. Republicans and Democrats with this coronavirus thing has cost them a few percentage points.

The last thing is that since they’re under demographic pressure, they have to do all sorts of anti-democratic stuff to maintain their political advantage. With the main two of the main tools being, voter suppression and gerrymandering. We do not have to go into the specifics of that.

We do have one thing is that given that we may still be under quarantine for the general election, the Republicans are trying to stand firm against vote by mail because vote by mail is more Democratic. if everybody was able to vote by mail, the Republicans would be wiped out politically. Because if everybody votes, Republicans are destroyed.

So there is a very terrible part in there. They hold the presidency and they hold the Senate and they have a lot of sway in the courts. The Republican President Trump blew off responding to the virus in any effective way for roughly 10 weeks after he learned of it.

People started getting inklings of it in November. But that was really kind of way too soon to expect national governments to do anything about it. It was just fairly on the rise. A really, really good, national government might start paying attention in December and then any competent national government would have started paying sharp attention in early January.

Trump didn’t do anything effective until March. He did one ineffective thing around January 29th or 30th, which is a travel ban for people from China, which was really sterilely porous. Anybody who’s a U.S. citizen coming back from China maybe got their temperature taken, that was prohibited from entering the country.

So since the China traveling to the talks about how that saved America, which it obviously hasn’t. Since we have two and a half times as many deaths as any other country and one third of all the confirmed cases in the world and more than one quarter of all the deaths. Obviously, our response wasn’t adequate.

Banning Chinese travelers didn’t do much because by the time he did that, the virus was already across Europe and it was European travelers; and it was already here. It was European travelers who were bringing it as opposed to just Chinese travelers.

So the ban, even though, that was the one thing that might have been a little effective that he did. So he talks about how that is a hugely important thing that he did. But really, it didn’t do much. What would have done much better was testing, but he didn’t do any testing until March.

Then the CDC testing was just pathetic. We’re one week into March, at the time, and the CDC processed a total of 77 tests, 11 on average, of 11 tests a day. Testing is still wildly inadequate for three weeks. Testing averaged 150,000 a day until this last week. 150,000 is roughly 0.042% of the US population.

Now that’s increased to roughly 210,000 a day or roughly – Oh, I do not know – 0.62 percent of the population. We’re still not at 2 percent of the population being tested. So testing has been awful. We have a million, 1.08 million, confirmed cases.

We probably have at least a million unconfirmed cases because testing sucks, maybe as many as 2 or 3 million unconfirmed cases. Or if you look at the antibody testing, it could be wildly higher, many millions.

But the antibody tests, which measure if you were exposed to it at some point, those tests are all super shitty and they give a number of false positives. So the number of false positives might outweigh the number of actual positives for the antibody tests.

OK, so constantly, there’s a whole timeline of Trump and his people saying that the virus is no big deal and it is going away. Yesterday, the US had 2400 confirmed coronavirus deaths. As we’ve talked about, a lot of deaths get missed either intentionally or unintentionally.

And if you compare the number of the average mortality per month in the US or per week in the US, it is apparent that many more people are dying than are being counted as official coronavirus deaths. It might be as many as 54 percent more.

So we’re still losing thousands of people a day to coronavirus and even just 2,000 people a day. If that continues for a year, you’re looking at 736,000 deaths, which would make that the deadliest pandemic in US history, even more so than the Spanish Flu, which killed, estimates vary wildly. But, the last number I saw was 675,000 people in a year and a half in 1918-19.

This also means that Republicans who are doing anything they can to deflect blame of use per capita arguments, that it is really not so bad on a per capita basis. The deal is, it is still fucking bad. We’re number one in deaths and cases on a non-per-capita basis.

On a per capita basis, we might be 9th or 10th. That’s still shitty because we’re a developed country. We prided ourselves on doing shit and we shouldn’t be in the top 10 most fucked up countries, developed countries, first world countries, because of this. So that’s pretty much it.

And it looks like it is going to continue. There have been hopes that summer would make it drop back some. It is still kind of early to tell. But we’re still racking up, as I said, thousands of deaths a day. Also, Republicans keep grasping at a cure at that.

There is the big thing about hydroxychloroquine, which looks like it is just not very good. It is a little bit killy, the heart arrhythmias.

There is the new thing that’s being touted. It seems as if it is anti-biotic, I guess, antiviral. It is an anti-something that even a set of tests reduce the recovery time from on average 15 days to 11 days. This is typical of antiviral treatments that they do not just keep.

They do not cure things magically. They only reduce the severity. Because viruses are far simpler, infectious machines than bacteria. Bacteria are alive. If you kill them, they become noninfectious.

Viruses aren’t alive. They’re just little fricking spring-loaded machines that inject RNA into cells. They do not live. They just exist. They do not breathe, because they’re simpler and because there are no biological processes, like breathing or eating or whatever to interrupt.

They’re harder to wipe out. So antivirals are much less effective than antibacterials. So this new thing reduces the recovery time by 30 percent, according to one test, and it may reduce mortality by 11 percent versus 8 percent for other treatments, but which is a non-statistically significant result.

So you’ll probably hear if you’re listening to American media, there’s assholes like, Fox News; Laura Ingraham and company are still touting hydroxychloroquine and saying there’s a conspiracy.

They like to say stuff like there’s a conspiracy to make Trump look bad because it is his cure by not using it and letting more people die. This is his horse. This is just complete horseshit. So they’ll keep pushing chloroquine and they may talk about this new ‘cure,’ if that’s what you call it, in super glowing terms, when it is really just one of a whole bunch of antivirals that offer very mediocre results. That’s pretty much it.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 540 – Tara Reid-ification of Biden-Trump

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/04/29

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why is Tara Reid important to consider in this moment with Joe Biden as a contender against Trump in the next election?

Rick Rosner: All right, so, there’s Joe Biden. Well, they’re trying to hit the Republicans who are morally bankrupt at this point, the worst incarnation of a major US political party, probably ever, but at least since the Civil War.

They are just, as we’ve talked about the factors that have turned it into this monstrous thing before. But they’re just bad. They’re all ends justify the means and holding on to power at any price and not caring about fairness.

So it tried to hit Biden with various things. One is that he is old, senile. But if you listen to his interviews, I do not listen to him every day. But I’ve heard him interviewed a few times and he seems perfectly clear. He is got a lifelong stutter.

So I guess not all of his sentences are perfectly smooth, but he seems fine to me. Even though he is 100 years old, he is like fucking 78, which is ridiculous that the two major political parties, the two candidates for president, one’s 74 and the other 78. Which is just ridiculous.

So hit him with old and senile, which I think is bullshit. If he was Hunter Biden, that his kid was making these sweet deals. This kid did have some sweet deals on the board of an oil company in Ukraine, but Biden didn’t have anything to do with it.

They’re trying to twist the facts to make it like Biden was doing favors, political favors; some of which didn’t really happen. Oh, the son is kind of a fucker. So anyway, those things, I’m sure they’ll come back in force as it gets closer to the general election.

We’re still six months away, but this other thing is surface. Tara Reid is a woman who has accused Biden of cornering her and jamming his hand up her dress and stuffing his fingers into her vagina.

Then she slapped him away. She says that he said, “I heard you liked me.” It is a problematic thing because we’re in the middle of MeToo, and “believe all women.” You have to at least hear her out.

It is also problematic because this is one, and the only, allegation of sexual assault against Biden. Though various women have said that he is a little touchy, like a good hand on shoulders and stuff. Nobody’s accused him of doing anything in a sexual manner except this woman.

Some women have said that he has been in the past, putting hands on people and like that. On the other hand, the other guy, Trump, has been accused of sexual assault by at least 22 women. It is, depending on how you score things, it is closer to 60 women.

Some women have taken him to court. It is like he is super rapey and he is being caught talking about it. So anyway, I choose not to believe Tara Reid. Maybe it makes me a hypocrite who doesn’t believe all women.

But I would urge people who are curious or concerned to Google her and to read, two, three, five articles about the whole thing, that list why you should believe or why you shouldn’t believe her. You won’t necessarily get everything in just one article.

The alleged incident happened 27 years ago in 1993. She didn’t come forward with it until a month ago, even though she is praised Biden for the intervening 25 years. She did say that some of the shoulder touching made her uneasy. But the finger jamming didn’t come up until a month ago.

And he has had, as I said, no other accusations of sexual abuse or assault or harassment, assuming no other allegations from other women come forward. One of the measures I use is the number of women who come forward, like with Trump and with Bill Cosby. Why? When it becomes dozens of women, then I tend to totally believe it.

Jacobsen: The End.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 539 – Addendum on “Points on Covid”

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/04/29

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: More than ever this fucking virus has underlined that the US states are each kind of a different place. That we live in a loosened place, that our national agglomeration of states is looser than maybe I imagined before. Its increasing polarization between conservatives and liberals has also loosened ties among the states.

There’s a lot of antagonism between red states and blue states, but also just the approach to the pandemic, varies by state wildly. You’ve got the dump states, like Florida and Georgia with their corrupt and stupid governors who just decided to just open them up and then probably lie about not just probably they’ve been caught like suppressing some other coronavirus numbers.

Then you have California where we shut down early. The mayor of L.A. the governor of the state, or on TV every day, told people just to stand pat. That we’ll get through it, that it is not time to open up again though, some beaches have been opened up a little bit. But every state is a different motherfucking place here.

I hope when all this is over, I hope that the silver lining of this is that this getting Trump out of there and maybe healing some national wounds, becoming more of a nation rather than a bunch of states that are pissed at each other.

[End of recorded material]

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Copyright

2022-04-18

Ask A Genius 538 – Points on Covid

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/04/20

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what are some of the points you want to make around Covid-19?

Rick Rosner: Just two quick points, to the end of April, the number of official US coronavirus deaths just surpassed the number of American soldiers who died in the Vietnam War. 61,000 corona deaths officially and 58,000 US soldiers died in 10 years of Vietnam. So two months of Corona versus 10 years of Vietnam.

It is a lot; two thousand people are dying a day here officially. But people demographers, people who deal with population numbers, had been looking at the average number of deaths at this point in the year, historically for the past five, 10, 15 years in America. They say based on the amount of deaths we’ve had so far this year; we’ve underestimated the official coronavirus death count by more than 50 percent.

So we’re looking at somewhere in the 90,000s. Though, all these numbers, they never really entirely settled down, but they’re certainly not. But people, maybe, get a better idea of them, once things start to subside and there’s time to actually analyze them. So the numbers are never going to be known for sure, but eventually, we’ll probably get a better idea how many people have been killed by it.

Also, people are saying that more people are dying from other causes because, somebody has chest pains, they decided not to go to the hospital because they do not want to get infected. Then, maybe, they die at home from just a heart attack or even at the hospital too, or whatever. But people are dying. Coronavirus has been the US’s number one cause of death for three weeks now, maybe more. That’s what is going on with that.

Also, my conservative buddy likes to say, ‘It is just like a bad year of flu. It is like no big deal.’ To my mind, of course, two years ago, 60,000 people did die of the flu in America. It was the worst year since probably the 70s for flu. But it makes me ask, why should we put up with tens of thousands of deaths per year from flu?

When what we’ve learned now, because right now is a pretty good year for flu, because people are staying home, but in the future, I’m thinking we could reduce flu deaths if handshakes go away; and handshakes are ridiculous. If handshakes were killing thousands of people a year, we can make do without handshakes. If people wash their hands more, and if they stay home when they’re sick, because I’ve noticed over the past 10 years, people used to get credit for showing up at work sick.

Say before 2010, show up when you got a runny nose, people are like, “Oh, good for you. You’re sick, but you still made it in to do your job. Only the office lunatic would be able to get out of here with a runny nose.” But that’s changed. Now, everybody, most people are in an office or get the fuck home. No, we do not want to get sick from you. So if that’s a permanent shift, a serious shift where people just stay the fuck home or wash their hands, do not handshake, and maybe we can knock down the annual number of flu deaths by 50 percent.

Anyway, this year 24,000 people died of the flu. If you have the 24,000 from the flu to the 61,000 from coronavirus, that gives you 85,000 deaths this year from respiratory disease, which is the worst year since 1969. In 1968-69 Hong Kong flu and we’re about ten days away from surpassing that death toll. So people who say it is just another, it is just like flu and get over are an assholes would be foolish in.

[End of recorded material]

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