In-Sight Publishing

2022-03-28

Dishing Washing Insight and Recycling

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/07/05

I had an experience. And I thought it might be relevant to you. It has to do with when I was doing the dishes just this late afternoon. I was doing the dishes and it occurred to me: if I’m putting the hot water into a sink, and then the soap, and then mixing it with the soap and throwing in the dishes and all the other junk, and then washing it away, where’s all this going?

It occurred to me that this is probably a very pervasive feeling and thought for other people. But this can be applied to other areas. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean the fact that individuals that use things will tend to be using them thoughtlessly, and I am no different than most of others, or others that aren’t even in this kind of movement.

I missed the very obvious fact that anything that I use will tend to be used in other areas by other people and they themselves will not necessarily know where it goes, why it’s used, and what happens to it. How mindful are we in using and consuming resources that the planet provides?

So here are ways we can recycle water at home:

1. Use a Shower Bucket

The shower bucket is probably the simplest way to recycle water at home. When you turn on the tap for your shower, the water that comes out takes some time to heat up to a comfortable temperature. Next time you’re warming up the shower, stick a bucket under the running tap until you’re ready to get in. You’ll be surprised at how much water you collect!

2. Install a Rain Barrel

Skip that whole municipal water system for watering your garden and collect rainwater instead. Rain barrel setups can be super simple or more complicated, depending on how much time you can invest and how handy you are. The best collection method that I’ve found is setting up the barrel underneath your gutter’s downspout, so it collects the most water when it rains.

3. Create a Rain Garden

Rain gardens take advantage of land’s natural water runoff to nourish the plants that live there. Unlike a regular garden that needs watering, a rain garden is constructed so that it reuses water that would otherwise run off into the sewage systems. The bonus is that by diverting that water from the storm drain, you’re giving your city’s overtaxes sewage system a break.

4. Save that Pasta Water

Next time you’re making a pot of pasta, don’t dump all of that precious water down the drain! Instead, set your colander over another large pot to collect all of that precious H2O. Once the water has cooled, you can use it on your garden or to water your house plants.

5. Save Water from Washing Veggies

Just like when you’re boiling pasta, washing veggies uses water that’s totally re-usable. Place your colander over a large pot to collect the water while you’re washing. You can use your collected water on the garden or for flushing the toilet.

6. Install a Gray Water System

Gray water is waste water that doesn’t contain sewage. Think the water that goes down the drain when you wash your hands or do laundry. A gray water system diverts that water, so it doesn’t go to waste. A good example might be diverting water from your shower drain for flushing the toilet. Grey water systems can get pretty complicated, and just like any plumbing setup, they do require maintenance.

7. Collect the Overflow from Watering Plants

When you water your potted plants, have you noticed that extra water usually runs out of those drainage holes at the bottom of the pot? Don’t let that water go to waste! Place your plants in deep trays to collect that water. You can use the runoff from your larger plants to water the smaller ones.

8. Reuse Excess Drinking Water

Got an almost-empty water glass that’s been sitting out too long to drink? Feed it to a thirsty house plant instead! You can also use unsweet tea on your plants. If the drink that’s been sitting is sweetened, you can pour it on plants in the garden, but don’t use it on house plants unless you like ants!

Our consumption patterns relate to one another in very different ways, but the consumption patterns can be unsustainable. So, it was a moment that actually made me pause and stop washing the damn cutting knife (no cuts!), but, even so, this can hopefully be a little bit of a cutting insight.

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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.

2022-03-27

Zimbabwe and Fashion

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/07/04

I want to talk a little bit today about a topic close to the hearts of many people, but with a little bit of background via provision of context. And it is something of interest to me, too, with respect to the African Diaspora. It’s about an individual nation within the African Diaspora. I want to talk about Zimbabwe and its fashion industry. Zimbabwe is a country in Southern Africa that is landlocked. Some notable areas of the country are the Zambezi River and Victoria Falls in addition to the Patoka Gorge.

The capital is Harare, and the current president of Zimbabwe is Robert Mugabe. He runs the country with a population totaling 14.15 million people. In fact, he’s been President since 1980. That’s a long time. The accepted currencies are the US dollar, the Euro, the Botswana Pula, the Pound Sterling, and the South African Rand. The official languages are English, Ndebele, and Shona. Zimbabwe has a rich, and varied history including a Precolonial Era, the Colonial Era, the Unilateral Declaration of Independence and the Civil War, and the Independence Era.

The climate is tropical. Some of the flora and fauna of the region include evergreen and hardwood forests, and extends to over 350 species of mammals that can be found there, and even 500 species of bird and over 130 fish species. In addition to this, there are some international human rights concerns in terms of the organization positions reports such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch examining violations of rights for food, freedom of assembly and movement, shelter, and even protection of the law.

One of the main points of strength in the country relates to the high adult literacy rate of Zimbabwe within the African Diaspora. According to 2013 reports, the literacy rate is the highest in the continent of Africa at about 90.7% for the adult population although, half of Zimbabwe’s children have not progressed beyond primary school. In addition, some of the wealthier members of the population send their children to independent schools as opposed to some of the schools run by the government. So, with that in mind and in terms of providing a context for some of the culture, not necessarily in terms of pluses and minuses, this, rather, gives a context and complement to the presentation of fashion in Zimbabwe.

This is an interesting topic to me. I believe that it might be of interest to others. Sustainability is a challenge for the entire world. Fashion is a core aspect of her culture. To begin with some of the aspects of Zimbabwean fashion and culture, we can look at some of the historic precedents in the long history of the culture for instance, the traditional fashion and culture.

You can also show marital status with a married woman traditionally wearing a blanket over the shoulders with thick beaded hoops of grass, grass that is twisted. This can also include copper rings or brass rings around the neck, legs, or arms. The colors can range from blues, greens, reds, yellows, and browns. It is an important note that the head covering is an external sign of respect for the husbands. Little girls might wear beaded aprons or beaded skirts. Men can also wear animal skin headbands and ankle bands.

Of course, as influence from West and the Western world through colonialization occurred, the current European and Western set of apparels can bleed into the culture and affect the current generations for the future generations with respect to their choice of clothing. This sense of style can then change over time. This, then, changes the future culture. In other words, the more indigenous and more traditional aspects of them in the Zimbabwean culture has been influenced by the European or western culture, especially in regard to some of the context given before about the Colonial Era. Duly noted, there was a separation between the Precolonial Era and the Colonial Era. In addition, you can note the Independence Day is celebrated by the culture.

Now, with respect to the modern fashion culture of Zimbabwe, many of the citizens and individuals in the country wear, apparently, modern and Western-style clothing as the usual outfit. In other words, very few people will wear the traditional clothing on a regular basis within the country. It’s important to keep in mind stereotypes that might be in one’s mind and then contrast that with the reality. Sometimes true, sometimes false, or at times partially or even mostly true; it depends. Of course, there are the major fashion icons within the country that can then therefore produce aspects of the traditional culture within the fashion culture. Of course, this can also come into direct contact with the mixing and matching culture that seems to me like a large part of the international fashion culture. That’s all for now, thanks!

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2022-03-27

Sustainability 101 – Lights and Laundry

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/07/01

Let’s take a look today at sustainability tips. Two sustainability tips seem relevant to me. These relate to the overall sustainable and ethical fashion culture, but in your home. You can use different lights. You can wash your clothes more efficiently. These are aspects of keeping one’s carbon output low and pollution low.

Another aspect of keeping things like those low is the home. The ways in which we keep our homes low in energy cost, but still with comfort. I think that some of the aspects of sustainability regarding fashion relate very deeply to one’s home. Aside from one’s clothing, the home is the next most intimate aspect of our own lives. The home is a reflection of self. A home is a reflection of style. Home is also a reflection of conscientiousness. Conscientiousness regarding the environment. Conscientiousness regarding pollution. And conscientiousness regarding environmental concerns over the next few decades for climate change.

What I want to share in this series are some tips for keeping sustainability are your own contributions to the improvement of the environment. The reduction of harm to the environment. Let’s look at two examples. There are lights. Lights in households. There are laundry machines. The lights tend to be incandescent or CFI bulbs – inefficient bulbs.

Laundry machines can be old, outdated, and so inefficient. Efficiency as in the cost per load of laundry for washing and drying based on electrical usage. We live in a very privileged time. Living in a wonderfully privileged society. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But, to me, responsibility comes with some level of a better life, within reason. Better life can imply taking away the quality of life of people that is here now and other places of the world. Or, another set of people not yet born are just coming into this world. All these things matter. All these people matter. Our actions have consequences. Climate change is one example, and lights and laundry are great examples, I think. And they’re easy fixes!

What about deeper? Sure. You can see this extend into the realm of the home and clothing under the rubric of sustainability. If you look at the incandescent and CFL bulbs, they are typically not very sustainable because they are inefficient, and so environmentally irresponsible. If you refit your house with LED lights as opposed to CFL lights, you can have another, and increase efficiency of about 90%. That’s a great, great increase in efficiency. It is also environmentally responsible. No harmful gases, better and more efficient lights, and lights that apparently can live up to or last long as 20 years. That’s a good thing I think.

The second thing that can be done is changing laundry settings. This is closer to the textile and natural fibre industry, and to sustainability. If you need to heat water, you need to input energy into cold water or room temperature water. That would warm the water and imparts energy. When using laundry, a cold wash might be of use for some types of clothing or some loads of clothing. That can be more efficient. That can be environmentally responsible.

Some other options to do with laundry might be less desirable, but can help. For instance, we can wear clothes longer. We can wash clothes by hand. But, personally, I wouldn’t want my clothes washed by hand. Why? I like the 21st century. Some other aspects can include the use of clothes lines to dry clothes by the sun and wind. That seems a little more reasonable to me, right? It depends on your level of investment. If a heavy effort, you can go full-throttle on throwing clothes on the line and doing a cold wash of laundry. (Depends on the surrounding area’s weather, though.) If light investment, you can do the cold washing of laundry alone and switch some lightbulbs to the LED bulbs. I think that’s enough to get us started.

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2022-03-27

Sustainable Fibres: What is Cotton?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/07/01

Back again to talk a little bit about, and in a little bit of a roundabout way for you, natural fibres! Again, natural fibres are much unlike the synthetic fibres. Natural fibres are divided into three categorizations known as minerals fibres, animal fibres, and plant fibres. Mineral fibres come in in only one form as far as I know, and that form is asbestos. Asbestos is used in many cases throughout homes as insulation for a good thing, but, unfortunately, the bad thing is that it is highly correlated as a carcinogenic material, probably and one might argue conclusively, correlated or causing for human beings.

Cotton is a natural fibre, and sustainable, ethical, and by the lights of Trusted Clothes much more fashionable. Ethical is sexy.

There are many kinds of outputs for this particular fibre, but this will be our look into its production and trade, design and manufacturing, and general uses. Cotton is cultivated as a fibre for textile utilization. The average cotton yield is about 800 kilograms per hectare. But it is almost purely cellulose and with a high level of both breathability and softness, which means that it is a popular natural fibre. Its length can be anywhere from 65 to 10 millimeters.

Its diameter can be anywhere from 11 to 22 microns. It is highly absorbent of moisture and is a comfortable clothing in hot weather. Given that it has a high tensile strength; it is easy to wash with a variety of soaps. It is such a popular production as a natural fibre throughout the world that 80 countries are cultivating it. There are approximately 10 million small farmers that depend on this cultivation of cotton for their basic income. This means their livelihood.

So, the production and trade of cotton produces approximately 25 million tonnes throughout the world per annum, I think. The major producers are Brazil, China, India, Pakistan, the United States of America, and Uzbekistan, which accounts for approximately four-fifths of the world’s total exports of cotton via its production by the aforementioned 10 million farmers. In terms of raw cotton, China has been the major importer, and takes in approximately three to four million tonnes of cotton – circa estimations from 2006, but the main exporter has and continues to be the United States of America.

In terms of the uses of cotton, about 60% of cotton fibre is used for yarn and thread through a wide variety or range of clothing, which means jeans, t-shirts, and even shirts in general, but this can even include underwear and coats. It is used in home furnishings including bedspreads and window blinds, and even washcloths. As noted with multiple other natural fibres in this series on sustainable fibres, the main benefit of things such as cotton is for clothing and other uses in the daily life, in industrial manufacturing, or the fact that they can decompose and have a natural cycle, which I have turned the natural fibre life cycle. That’s all for now!

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2022-03-27

Why Do Ghosts Wear Clothes At All, At All, At All…?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/06/28

If you look at the popularizations of ghosts, ghost-like phenomena (whatever that means, Scott), and many other things, you can see that most ghosts seemed to have an enjoyment in wearing clothing.

John Keats had a poem called La Belle Dame Sans Merci, which translates by my reading as “The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy,” A few lines as follows:

She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!’

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

Thanks for scaring the crap out of people, Keats.

I don’t know about you, but this seems a little bit suspicious to me. Even though these kinds of stories and narratives based on the subjective experiences of individuals (which likely happen) can bring about lovely poetry and tall tales, these seem rather thin in evidence and content other than the elaborations of the reports and the legends and mythos that surrounds them.

I have a natural philosophical bent, so this means that I have a certain bias towards the general scientific and natural epistemological perspective on the world. In other words, my perspective is biased towards modern science, updated natural philosophy, with testability, predictability, and peer review.

If you look at some of the photographs interspersed throughout this article, you can see the clothing that is reported to be worn by these ghosts. It just seems weird. It just seems weird that people would come back in the clothing that they were wearing at the time of their death. Some might speculate that this is some form of immortal soul. How is this an immortal soul taking their clothing with them? Why clothing? Why that clothing from that period of time?

Most of the research I have done on supernatural ghost sightings seem to have them clothed in some type of Victorian-era clothing. Where are the ones in just jeans and t-shirts?

These so called ghosts in clothes have inspired some eerie clothing designs like Dead Castle Project – a Sydney-based label – is well-known for combining a variety of styles in their collections from surf to skate to grunge and its 2012 Spring/Summer collection is no exception. Featuring plenty of black, the models in the graveyards appear disinterested and unperturbed by the fact that they are surrounded by dead bodies inches beneath the surface. This collection by Dead Castle Project is also infused with a slight dose of badass and authority as showcased in the tee-shirt that reads “Cool Kids Can’t Die.”

Paranormal investigators seem to have a hard time telling us why ghosts even wear clothing. So, would people that died then begin to wear just that one outfit? That seems sustainable and within the whole concept of buying less and having better. It would also be the first natural fibre never to bio-degrade – really, really degrade completely and utterly. Textiles in the afterlife, who woulda thunk? That’s all for now.

And as with everything written, I could be wrong, incredibly wrong – think for yourself and come to your own conclusions.

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2022-03-27

The Oft-Neglected Mineral Fibre

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/06/28

The how much and the what now? (Yep, me too.)

Okie dokie, it’s another issue of natural fibres, if you aren’t familiar with fibres or fabrics, then see the article below:

Man-made fibres are regenerated and synthetic fibres. Synthetic fibres are manufactured synthetically and do not decompose. While regenerated fibres are an admixture of natural fibres and man-made fibres. In that, regenerated fibres are the ones that are originally plant or vegetable fibres with cellulose in them, and through the viscose method of extrusion and precipitation are given a chemical that gets rid of cellulose in the vegetable fibre. And then by another chemical process have those parts filled in with another chemical so that they then become regenerated fibres. Therefore, the regenerated fibres are a combination of original vegetable fibres and then by chemical process becoming man-made fibres are regenerated fibres.

Man-made, synthetic or regenerated fibres do not decompose. Natural fibres – that’s fibres and animal fibres and mineral fibres – do decompose. There are many methods to decompose things by a hot or cold compost, or with wiggler worms.

So we’re going to be talking a little bit today about mineral fibres. What are they?

They are, or more accurately it is asbestos, which is the only mineral fibre. It is a silicate of many minerals including magnesium, calcium, iron, aluminum, and other minerals. It is, amazingly, rust, flame, and acid proof. And its particles are actually carcinogenic and therefore it has a very restricted use.

What is a silicate? Silicate contains an anionic silicon compound. What is “anionic”? It is a negatively charged ion or any negatively charged atom or group of atoms. That means silicate is simply an anionic silicon compound and a mixture. A mineral fibre from asbestos can be made into something like a mineral wool. They can also be known as a mineral fibre or even a man-made mineral fibre.

Well, isn’t that great? Find out about a new fibre, a good ol’ natural fibre, but it is carcinogenic or cancer contributing or causing. I’m not sure whether if they’re contributing or if they’re causing. And I have to take caution at this point in time about the length of exposure and kind of exposure to the asbestos. However, it might be a little bit like the smoking correlation vs causation argument.

Where the amount of smoke that an individual or population smokes is highly correlated with cancer, which shows that cigarettes are so correlative as to be argued as causative of cancer, maybe the same with these. Although we haven’t found any conclusive evidence or studies to suggest that prolonged exposure of mineral fibres (such as in clothing) can cause cancer, we do absorb toxins through our skin.

That’s an interesting property there’s not much more on these little things. However, I think that it was worth exploring for a little bit. Especially because these are actually used in tremendous amounts of housing insulation, and I think that’s worthwhile as a thing to explore or for yourself. You can simply Google “mineral fibre” and “asbestos” (or Bing or Yahoo, etc, etc) to gain a better idea of this particular natural fibre. That’s all for now thanks for your time!

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2022-03-27

Reverence and the Environment

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/06/27

Do you ever think about reverence? I don’t. So now, I will. If you look at the religious demographic of the world, most people will either have a spiritual, mystical, or religious belief. That means that these people will probably have at some point in his/her life an experience of reverence for themselves, for others, for something outside of human experience.

Perhaps a profound feeling. Something mystical. Something religious. Something unknown that cannot be articulated in words but felt for the people we have in our lives and our surroundings. I think that a lot of the concern for the environment seems to come from two domains. One is a sense of ownership and the other is a sense of reverence. The former is more devoted to the domination and control of the environment, while the latter is based on protection, respect, and interdependency. I think that at some fundamental level, these two ideas are distinct, distinguishable, and mutually exclusive. And that they are unable to be converged or brought together in some relevant practical sense.

Maybe in some sense of higher-order, they can be abstract and brought together. However, I do not think this is necessarily possible at this present time. In a practical sense, I think that the perspective of reverence for nature, or for the environment, is a concomitant of concern for one’s own livelihood. It is remarkable that people will risk their own livelihood to go out onto a boat and try to save a dolphin, or a whale, or some form of cetacean that is assumed to have some kind of cognition like to feel pain. Some might even argue a soul. Although, historically, people have argued that animals do not and are machines, and even more to the modern perspective have extended this to people, and that we are not special in this natural world. That sense of reverence is something that seems to extend into wanting to help the environment and all creatures that live in it.

This is a bit of an evolving discussion. My questions to you: What is your own relationship to reverence and the natural world? And does this reflect an environmentalism? Or does it reflect a concern for the well-being of children in terrible working conditions? Or the fact that slavery exists in this modern world?

Reverence is a nearly fundamental aspect of being a person. However, it may not be the most fundamental thing about being a person. But it does seem to be reflected a lot of times in the ways in which activists – economic, social, political, bring themselves to sacrifice their own well-being up to the point of the potential death for an ideal they consider higher than themselves. (And I would make the term “higher” in some sense very metaphorical and not in any way literal). It’s overused, cliché, and a sort of toss-away term now. So I would argue that reverence is in some way completely natural and evolved as some mechanism for I know not what, but I think that this is now at the present time possibly expressed in concern for others.

And I don’t mean to restrict this to the formal or informal religious or spiritual or mystical communities, in fact, this can be definitely and assertively extended to those that are in the a-religious community such as humanists, skeptics, agnostics, and atheists. These communities themselves have many individuals that promote and advocate some type of practice for self-improvement in many domains. And this is in itself reflective of the sense of reverence for humanity, nature, oneself, or one’s own reason. So, this is not something that is necessarily restricted but I think, makes it one of the things that is universal in all of us.

Because it actually shows up throughout the world and across cultures, political systems and societies. Or in different groups of people throughout the world. (Same species: duh) Do you have your own sense of reverence, Scott? I’ll leave that for another day.

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2022-03-27

An Interview with Carolyn Bailey

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/06/24

Tell us a little bit about your background such as education, and some personal and professional experience.

My passion for quality clothing and apparel construction drove me to create the business I now own. Growing up in a rural town across the street from a fabric studio was where I learned quality clothing construction and also where I grew a love for quality fabrics. After gaining a wealth of knowledge and experience in sales, marketing and management as a business woman, this gave me the professional skills to pair with the love I have for quality fabrics and apparel construction to create my company, Treasure Box Kids.

What was the inspiration for Treasure Box Kids – and its title?

The inspiration behind the name “Treasure Box Kids” came from my idea that the clothing my company produces are precious treasures for children. Treasure Box Kids is “Ethically Made, High Quality, Socially Responsible, Children’s Clothing”. My inspiration for the company as a whole is to create quality family heirloom pieces that can be passed down to future generations.

What makes Treasure Box Kids unique?

Our product offering contains styles custom made by Treasure Box Kids in the USA, Independent Designers that make their clothing in the United States and also a new line made in Kenya named Little Maisha, that helps to support women economically. What makes Treasure Box Kids unique is that you cannot walk into any department store or online store and find this exact product mix.

You sell clothing for girls, girls’ dresses, and birthday dresses. Why these products? Where will the product line expand in the future?

Treasure Box Kids began with girls’ clothing because of my preference visually to girls’ clothing. After learning to perfect that niche, it has sparked my desire to expand our lines. Plans are in development currently to include boys clothing as well as to expand the Kenyan line.

What meaning or personal fulfillment does this work bring for you?

Quality, ethically made apparel is my passion. My fulfillment comes from the affirmation that my customers are getting quality outfits as well as the knowledge that the clothing production is not harming anyone but actually helping the economy, the environment and the people producing the apparel.

With regard to companies like Trusted Clothes and Treasure Box Kids, what’s the importance of them to you?

I see the two companies’ goals aligned similarly in regard to excellence in apparel construction and the fair treatment of apparel workers. It is very important to educate the consumer on how apparel is made and also how the people who make our apparel are being treated. The consumer will be more aware and ultimately make better purchasing decisions. Education is the foundation for change and growth in a culture and I see that our two companies can invoke that change.

Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

The impact my company, Treasure Box Kids (a for profit corporation) has on the wider community, is the need for ethically and sustainably manufactured clothing. I plan to be at the forefront of the growing need to help produce clothing that has a positive impact on society.

Thank you for your time, Carolyn.

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2022-03-27

What is Silk?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/06/14

Natural fibres divide into animal and plant fibres. Animal fibres are those that are composed of amino acids called proteins, plant fibres are those made mainly of cellulose. Examples of animal fibres are alpaca, angora, cashmere, mohair, silk, and wool. Plant fibres can be things like in abaca, cotton, flax, hemp, jute.

Natural fibres themselves also differ from man-made artificial and synthetic fibres. These fibres consist of rayon, nylon, acrylic, and polyester. Each of these are unable to decompose.

One such fabric is silk, sometimes called the “queen of the fabrics.” Its original development was in ancient China. Silk is produced from a silkworm. The worm is fed Mulberry leaves, as it matures the worm spins a cocoon.

Once filaments are made of silk, they can have a great strength and can measure from 500 to 1500 m in length, which is quite substantial given the source. The actual form of the woven silk is a triangular structure. Its absorbency is good and it dyes well, and is produced in over 20 countries. These include the major producers, such as Asia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Egypt, and Madagascar. The particular type of industry, in terms of the manufacture of silk from silkworms, is called sericulture.

There are over 1 million workers in China alone with the provision of production for households, and in India, upwards of 700,000, and growing. The production and trade of silk can range from about 100,000 tons to 150,000 tons per annum. Of the producers of silk in the world, China produces 70% of it, with the other more than 20 countries producing 30%.

The price for raw silk is 20 times as much as the raw price for cotton (circa 2008). It does provide a warmth during the cold months and is typically used in fashion such as lingerie and underwear. It is generally used in textiles and upholstery. Silk is diverse and beautiful, lets just try to involve ethics and sustainability when seeking quality!

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2022-03-27

What is Sisal?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/06/14

Today’s sustainable fibre will be sisal. Sisal is a fibre that is native to Mexico derived from the Agave plant (Yay, tequila!), it is a hardy plant that grows in hot climates. In addition, it is actually able to grow in dry areas that tend to be, for the crops, quite unsuitable. These can be cut or crushed. This is then made into a pulp from the fibres. The average yield is about one tonne per hectare with the yield and the staff of about 2.5 tonnes. I find this to be quite amazing because it is an increase in productivity of about 2.5 times, exactly.

The fibre is illustrious and creamy white according to the Food and Agricultural organization of the United Nations. It can measure up to 1 metre in length, and is very durable as well as having an elasticity component to it. It is not able to absorb moisture easily, but can resist deterioration from salt water. Its main cultivation is in Brazil, China, Cuba, Kenya, Haiti, Madagascar, and Mexico. The global production of sisal is collected in moderately large amounts of around 300,000 tons, with an estimated net value, per annum, of $75 million. 35 to 40% of that 300,000 tons is produced by Brazil at about 120,000 tons. And 5/6 th’s of that produced by Brazil is exported as raw fibre and manufactured goods.

Sisal fibres are made into rope and yarn that is popularly used to make rugs, bags, bath sponges, and even wall coverings. “New products are being developed continuously, such as furniture and wall tiles made of resined sisal. A recent development expanded the range even to car parts for cabin interiors.”

The compatibility and multitude of uses of this natural fibre is simply amazing!

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2022-03-27

“Misquoting” Great Leaders

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/06/08

I would like to explore something about misquotations, as well as two very interesting fellows. I want to start with a picture I came across with a particular quotation about ‘The’ Albert Einstein. It got me thinking quite a bit, it bothered me enough to want to write something about it. But I had to tie this into textiles or sustainability, one thing about Einstein is that he advocated for vegetarianism. How does that tie in with this global warming era and its consequences?

I know that Einstein was a claimant at one point in time, to saying that people should be vegetarians, or that he was, and so might have not explicitly advocated for others, but described himself: “I have always eaten animal flesh with a somewhat guilty conscience.” That picture-meme quote is more descriptive of an ideal rather than prescriptive based on an ideal. And vegetarianism is in the same line as sustainable fibers and a more sustainable lifestyle. Close enough. In that, it is not simply a fashionable thing to do, but rather, it is something that is low in terms of its carbon footprint and possibly even a negative carbon footprint.

And I came across another quotation by a well-known guru, spiritualist, medical doctor, endocrinologist, and popular author.

His name is Deepak Chopra:

If you look at the actual quotations of Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, two of the most prominent physicist/cosmologists of the 20th century – and one into the early 21st century, you can find quotations that refute any notion of them believing in either a “God” in the case of Stephen Hawking or a “personal God” in the case of Albert Einstein. Neither seems to indicate that perspective very much implied by Deepak Chopra. In other words, he misquoted them. Simple. So, let’s compare this with two quotations from Albert Einstein:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this.

And this one:

It was of course a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this, but expressed it clearly. If something is in me that can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

He is more noted for the structure and mathematical precision of the universe with the and you can now look at a quotation from Professor Stephen Hawking:

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

This is a problem. It is a problem in accurate presentation, and it seems to be a common either as a conscious tactic, or unconscious oversight or mistake in automaticity of quotation – or even quoting Chopra in conversation. These things happen, but this seems like a long thought, as a quote. So, that’s something to keep an eye out for not only in the more popular among groups, spiritualists, and like, but also in the world of fashion and claims about the efficacy of certain things. I’ll leave some of the last words to Chopra:

Imagine that you’re looking at an ocean and you see lots of waves today. And tomorrow you see a fewer number of waves. It’s not so turbulent. What you call a person actually is a pattern of behavior of a universal consciousness. There is no such thing as Jeff, because what we call Jeff is a constantly transforming consciousness that appears as a certain personality, a certain mind, a certain ego, a certain body. But, you know, we had a different Jeff when you were a teenager. We had a different Jeff when you were a baby. Which one of you is the real Jeff?

Like. Wow. You know?

As with everything written, I could be wrong, incredibly wrong – think for yourself and come to your own conclusions. I have biases, fallibilities, and quirks – even some funny ones. My words aren’t gold, nor are they a calf. And no bull! Although, I will milk it, if it’s prize goat (or alpaca, or camel, and no can do for cottonmandu). And if gold, I might fleece it, if a winged ram (more the same, more the same).

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2022-03-27

A History of Natural Fibres: Incan Textiles

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/06/03

So, we’re back a little more to talk about the history of natural fibres in one context with an ancient civilization. That civilization is the Incan civilization. These peoples had an extraordinary decorative world, and working textile industry that was representative, as with us now, of status and wealth and other things. They did not have paper money.

Nonetheless, they had used textiles both as a tax and as the currency in their culture. That would seem to have a certain psychological effect on what people valued in that culture. In fact, some of the most prized objects were not gold, silver, diamonds, platinum, and so on. Rather, it was very high quality textiles. Think about that.

These were the crown jewel of value in the civilization. When the Spanish invaded, or euphemistically arrived, in the 16th century, they looted, stole, and plundered textiles in greater proportion than metal and mineral, I think, which is a very interesting note to the previous one.

Textiles were the heart of the empire of the Incan civilization. The dry nature of the Andes, and the burial sites around in the highlands in the mountains of that area have stayed in decent condition for archaeologists and others to look at the textile and cultural traditions via the textiles for examples. They were weavers. Men and women were weavers.

We have talked about some of the other main fibres in the world. These were also used by the Incan culture. For instance, llama, alpaca, and wool in the highlands. The capital of the Incan culture was Cuzco. There were state-sponsored workshops in this particular culture. And the subsidized workers were making the clothing, quite naturally, for the army and the nobility, and, as a speculation, the army most likely protected the nobles alone, the royalty.

There were three classifications of cloth in the Incan culture. There was a very rough one used for blankets and the like. The coarse, or common ones, that were for work in daily life or military applications, and finally the finest cloth was also there for possibly greater than decorative use such as religious rights. Weaving was a highly esteemed craft in their culture. The designs of the cloth had a certain kind of dyed strand embroidery; and the embroidery itself and tapestry was done by either hand or wooden stamps.

They had a certain abstract geometric set of designs in addition to checkerboard motif. The actual patterns by some scholars’ speculation were ideograms and may have had specific meanings.

Those specific meanings could relate to many things. One might think religious rights or cultural values. However, I leave that to the experts and scholars that spend their lives researching this topic. Of course, there are also non-geometrical patterns in the clothes, which might include the aforementioned llamas, or snakes, sea creatures, and even plants, which would be common in that area, maybe. You can see the influence of geographic surroundings on the culture and vice versa. Culture becomes human interaction with the environment, even at times to the extent of changing the environment. It depends.

The designs found on the cloth could likely be reflected in the designs on the potteries for the pottery decorations of the Incas. You can see various animals as with many other cultures such as monsters and half-human figures. These are interesting to say the least. What are the functions of these things? I leave that to you.

Many of the men only wear a loincloth or maybe even a simple tunic. In the winter, when things got quite cold actually, you could see them in a poncho or perhaps a cloak. Women wore more of a body wrap with a waist belt or sash. Both men and women wore cloth hats or headbands in this culture. Clothing, as you might be able to tell from the style and design in the textiles – and for the currency and tax, is a great reflection of the status of someone in a society – such as the reflection it will have on purchases. As with most conquered cultures, they had to pay a tax or a tribute to the central state because they were conquered by the Incas. What happens to civilizations that expand too far, though?

It’s just a short note on the Incan culture and civilization in relation to some of their textiles. It seems interesting to me because the text all that was there were a great influence on both the currency and the status. I like the interrelationship of there.

I like the fact that the currency is related to status, even though this is not even distinct. It is not directly related because as with any culture with currency, maybe. The currency is the means through which one makes their own purchases, and these purchases are reflected in one’s own goods such as clothing. And then, we see the status symbol in the clothing selected from the purchase via the currency. Thank you for your time.

And as with everything written, I could be wrong, incredibly wrong – think for yourself and come to your own conclusions. I’m human. I’m a writer. I have biases, fallibilities, and quirks – even some funny ones. My words aren’t gold, nor are they a calf. And no bull! Although, I will milk it.

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2022-03-27

Sisal and Haiti Agriculture, Culture, and Triumph in Tribulation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/05/26

I want to talk about some natural fibres in one particular part of the world that is unique, that part of the world is Haiti, which is under a great amount of duress at the moment following some tribulations and trials (or ‘trials and tribulations’ in the early part of 2016) in the country.

But first, I want to discuss or point out some of the basic information around natural fibres in the world, and then that part of the world. Natural fibres are composed of mineral, plant, and animal fibres. They can decompose. Mineral fibres only have one kind as far as I have discovered/learned, which is asbestos. Plant fibres are made of cellulose primarily and come from plants, of course. Animal fibres are composed of amino acids linked together in chains or proteins. Animal fibres come from a variety of fauna including camels, alpacas, and others.

Synthetic fibres and man-made fibres differ from natural fibres in that they do not decompose and are prominently seen in such things as polyester. Polyester being made primarily in mainland China based on consumer demand from Europe and North America, I assume.

With respect to Haiti, they have a proverb that says, ‘Bèf pa di savann mèsi.” The ox does not thank the field. That’s probably true. Or “Bèl cheve pa lajan.” Good hair is not money. For a poor country, which often lacks for the basics of life, then this makes perfect sense. You wear clothes for livelihood or to just have clothing, not as a frivolous garment. What is Haiti?

Haiti is a Caribbean country in or sharing the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is to East. In 2010, it had a terrible earthquake. That earthquake devastated much of the country, and the country has upwards of 10 million people in it. In Canada, we have approximately 36 to 37 million people. It’s teeny little place with a tremendous number of human beings. The capital is Port-au-Prince. And its official language is Haitian Creole French or French. Recently, a deadly attack was conducted on a Haitian police headquarter as tensions arose in February. The tensions arose and individuals in military fatigues attacked at night in the coastal city of Les Cayes.

Gunmen stormed police headquarters on Monday and killed 6 people in an apparent shootout at a police station. Could the country be close to a civil war? One of the problems with the possibility for the civil war at the present moment is in light of the fact that the country was unable to sign in a new president because it missed a deadline to do so.

The individuals that committed the crime seized automatic weapons. Some of these murderous activities stem from February in terms of a political disagreement for the Caribbean nation. It failed to hold a runoff election. In other words, both deadlines were missed.

How does this relate to the natural fibres? Look at the people, look at the frustration, look at the clothes, it’s all intertwined. One giant interconnected web. Sisal, itself, has actually been used in terms of content materials for furniture and construction in addition to cars and plastics and paper products. The plant is quite hardy and can grow year round in hot climates and even in arid or dry regions that are typically unsuitable for other crops.

It does have a difficult time in growing in very moist or saline, salty, soil. It does show that it is resilient to disease, and it is typically harvested after about 2 years from its original planting and its productive cycle or life cycle can be up to 12 years, in which it can produce up to a total of 180 to 240 leaves for its growth depending on the level of rainfall, the altitude, and the location.

So, this can be of great use to areas such as Haiti in terms of its productive capacity and its capability provide for its own needs with such things as natural fibres. Or by making animal feed. It is interesting to note that the leaves themselves are about 90% moisture and yet still have a rigidity. It seems counterintuitive to me. In terms of its average yield, the dry fibres come to about one ton per hectare. Although, it is reported that East African crop for this fibre can grow up to four tonnes per hectare. That is an astonishing four-fold increase in the amount of fibre that is growing per hectare. What else is Haiti?

It’s a religious nation among many other things with about ¾ as Roman Catholic and 3/20ths Protestant with a sprinkling of Pentecostal, Advent, and the universalist religion of “other.” So, by any reasonable definition, a Christian influenced nation. They have another proverb: “Bondye bon.” Or God is good, sounds familiar? For whatever reason, I don’t know why, but this is bringing to mind Bach’s Cantata 54, BWV 54, for me, which went as follows:

Widerstehe doch der Sünde,
Sonst ergreifet dich ihr Gift.
Laß dich nicht den Satan blenden;
Denn die Gottes Ehre schänden,
Trifft ein Fluch, der tödlich ist.

In Standard English as a translation of the old German, this says:

Stand firm against sin,
otherwise its poison seizes hold of you.
Do not let Satan blind you
for to desecrate the honour of God
meets with a curse, which leads to death.

So, what, Scott? God is good, but Satan is tempting and sin is bad. Well, if it’s this kind of a religious nation, and we have good reason to expect this form of religiosity provide the numbers of the religious or Christian population in its citizenry, then the metanarrative for Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity incorporate these narratives. Besides, those are damn good proverbs by my reading, and fabulous music by Bach too. It’s like double-bubble.

Sisal is also a major part of agriculture in the north coast region of Haiti. And it is used for rope, wallpaper, rugs, and other daily items of use to citizens of Haiti in various combinations and to different communities. Near the conclusion of sisal’s lifespan, it can grow upwards of 15 feet in height and can have numerous plants and baby plants linked with it.

In other words, it is an abundant source of fibre for the Haitian people. The waste that is not used for ropes, rugs, and so on, is actually used to make, by a particular process, fertilizer or food for animals.

The process mentioned before is called decortication. Decortication is the crushing and beating of leaves by a rotation wheel with blunt knives. Once only the fibre remains, then the fibre is dried to get a high quality fibre by the removal of the moisture in the fibre prior to that the moisturizing process.

After that point, the fibre product is brushed and after that point it is then ready to be used for a variety of products including rope, rugs, wallpaper, and many other things of daily use in homes and various communities in Haiti.

In terms of sustainability and the ethical use of this particular fibre, it is one of the best around, especially for areas of the world where it is poor. It is one of the grand ironies, and not an original point to me or any one individual, that with climate change and global warming. That is, the advanced industrial nations are the major participants in the industries that pollute the environment, and the undeveloped nations or the poor of the world are not and are actually working to improve it. In addition, the indigenous communities of the world are the ones that are partaking in, not the industry, but the social and environmental activism to help with these global problems relevant to their local level.

There were consequences of the Industrial Revolution. We see them today. We see reactions to their consequences, of dead generations’ sins, today. On that same line of reasoning, that ‘grand irony’ of the modern era relates to one of the poorer areas of the world that are even under tremendous political turmoil and at the verge of a possible civil war, and are able to keep an industry that is both ethical and sustainable within the world.

Back to Haiti, and its fibre, sisal produces less carbon dioxide than it takes in and, therefore, it is a net negative carbon producer. It produces mainly organic wastes. To get to the close of this particular article, it is cultivated in many other areas of the world including Angola, Brazil, China, Cuba, Indonesia, Kenya, Mosinee, South Africa, and so on. And the estimated value of the 300,000 tonnes of output is upwards of 75 million dollars. I do not know the currency. It could be Canadian or American et cetera.

And following that earthquake and its own internal problems, which are, quite granted, numerous, there’s always some good, if you look close enough.

And by the light of Bach, and via the hope of Haiti: Degaje pa peche. To get by is not a sin.

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2022-03-27

Natural Fibres’ Lifecycle

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/05/26

Cycles are loopy, ideally. Not crazy. It’s a system that feeds back into itself. Pick a circular metaphor, that’s it. It’s not necessarily the most efficient in the short-term. But the bet is on the long term. Sustainable for generations to come, and ethical, super ethical because, this loop provides decent conditions for future generations. I introduce the natural fiber lifecycle, not a new idea – far from it. So, it’s not mine, and I have no idea where the concept (not the title, though,) started out.

Synthetic or man-made fibers might have more productive methodologies in the short-term. But there’s basically a one-way line from production to consumption to waste. I mean, look at the landfills and oceans, global catastrophe case in point. The landfills are stocked with synthetic garbage. The oceans have 4.54 trillion pieces of super-small plastics alone. Our recycling isn’t keeping with the level of intake-outtake. And the waste that falls through the massive gap is non-biodegradable, which means it will be around forever. So we are left with a mess. A big one. Like that proverbial chocolate on the white dress shirt or wedding gown. It ain’t comin’ out, except by drastic measure.

Demand in the fashion industry has caused the production for synthetics to increase. Alas, alternatives exist! Natural fibers, on the other hand, are natural thus involving a cycle! Which includes the input, the processing, and the output. Input, involves growing the plant fibers by proper fertilization and watering. For the animal fibers, there’s getting the right food like grain or grass, and water sources, and even the occasional need for open fields for that grazing.

Then comes the processing which involves harvest for the plant fibers and a shearing or de-hairing for the animals’ fibers. It’s a very different set of processes, the outcome, sustainable product which allows cycles to continue! Then comes the fun part! The fashion guru’s get to make some hip, even beautiful, products that are sustainable and have the environment in mind. I’m no pro, but there are many options. And they are pretty fantastic work. I would be fumbling to make these things with my clubs for hands, but take a short look at some of the other bloggers’ stuff from very recent.

And then comes the last part of this cycle, which includes many, many parts. There’s the cutting and composting route with red wiggle worms (Real name!) and a hot composting to help out. This makes fashion bio-degradable. And then there’s the waiting…stage…that…comes…next.

Fertilizer: that’s the final product that’s used in the soil for plant fibers to grow (with some water) and to feed the grazing grounds that grows the grass that the animals eat – camels, alpacas, stuff like that. And that’s the natural fiber life cycle(s)! Which makes fashion for the conscious minded individual more enjoyable!

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2022-03-27

A Man’s Underwear and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/05/24

You know what they say about a man’s underwear: he wears them. He doesn’t wear them to wear them alone, though. In that, he might have other purposes. What do you think? I think he wears them for health, if he’s conscious and conscientious about these things.

Comfort matters, undergarments matter, but so does health such as reproductive health. In my experience, there are some things men rarely talk about. Nonetheless, the men do at times in Canada – or, at least, maybe, in your county or township. And there’s more than the basic idea of “underwear.” Men have lots of kinds of undergarments; boxer shorts, boxer briefs, trunks, briefs, jockstraps, bikinis, thongs, and G-strings.

That’s a basic visual crash-course in the underwear meant for males. If you scroll or look back up the kinds of underwear for them among the 8 that I know of online – others might exist but I do not know for sure, what’s the problem there? There’s something off about most of them and we’ll get to that in a tiny bit. But what are the testicles, really, and what do they do – in brief?

Testicles are part of the male sex anatomy and sometimes called the testes or gonads. They are two glands that are a main part of the male genitalia. They are housed in a skin pouch and produce one set of gamete cells and one hormone; the male sex cells for reproduction, sperm, and the testosterone, the ‘male’ hormone. Sperm development is best with temperature slightly below that of the rest of the body.

What is the process for semen? According to the experts, the process takes about a total of 7 weeks. That’s something amazing to me. It takes 7 weeks in total. If you look at the seminiferous tubules or the sertoli cells on the diagram above, the germ cells create the sperm. Once gone from there, they move and are stored in the epididymis for maturation for a few weeks, after which time they proceed into and up the vas deferens for admixing with the prostate and the seminal vesicles; That then becomes semen.

What about testosterone? That leaves the leydig cells that are throughout the testicle and the core creator of testosterone for the body. Typical male characteristics that come from the heavy production of testosterone are facial hair, low voice, wide shoulders, and without this the man can suffer from depression, fatigue, hot flashes (men get them too!), and even osteoporosis. You can find out more here.

So what are the health issues? One issue has to do with the innate aspect of the male sex from biology. As with many other mammal and primate species, the innate male sex organ is complicated and prone to problems like most organs and, of course, this includes the testicles. The testicles are outside of the body in human males, and this is the reason why they need to be about a degree cooler, less hot, in comparison to the temperature of the body. Tight underwear can make them too close to the body and even keep too much heat in for that 7-week developmental cycle of sperm and, that means, health sperm or male gamete cell development. Oh, man!

Another issue deals with an intuitive sense of the constriction to the blood flow to the testicles. Tight underwear can cause problems for the testicles themselves by this constriction. Apparently, the loss or reduction of regular circulation in the testicles of men, such as myself, can lead to some major reproductive issues. What does this do? According to the experts that spend their time writing the medical textbooks and websites, it reduces the sperm count of the man that happens to wear these tight garments. Like this:

That’s tight. That’s constricting and it can reduce sperm count, which for many, many men that, likely, want children can be a health issue and reproductive concern. I think it’s a probability issue. If you wish to increase chances of fertilization as a man, then this is something that you need to take into account for the future, especially with the modern reproductive health services – the numerous ones around – that can assist with family planning. Women have their own concerns and issues with respect to reproductive health. Men have their own too; myself included, because I would want to increase the chances of fertility with appropriate family planning for my partner and I (not dating at the moment, single as a lost sock). Most of the time, people want families, and so this seems like a reasonable concern to bear in mind, I feel.

Even further, there’s another issue with a higher surface area for bacterial growth on synthetic materials, which can cause…issues…odor problems. Bacterial growth can cause that, and it is more likely with synthetic materials. And if you have an intimate partner, or consider general genital health, then this can be an even more serious issue. Because I would want to keep my partner included on health things. Why? Well, if married or together with someone, my health, especially sexual health, could have impacts on my partner. And so, continuing with elementary moral truisms such as ‘the Golden Rule’, I would expect the same of them, and so I expect the same of me.

Finally, and one particular point brought to my attention by Shannon, cotton is one of the least moisture absorbing fabrics, and this can cause irritation to the skin, which is also an issue for the health of male genitalia, and ties into the rest of the points. Thanks for your attention…

By the way, please feel free to disagree with any of this. I’m not a deity or anything like that, I did some research, and presented some information and opinions. Does this make me an underwear connoisseur now? Doubt it.

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2022-03-27

An Interview with Andrea Sanabria

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/05/13

Tell us a little about your familial and personal background, as well as some educational background.

I spent most of my life in Peru, but I finished my high school in the US. I lived in Minnesota for a year and went back several times after that. I did all of my university in Lima because after high school, I went back to Peru. Though I am not originally from Lima, I’ve lived there for, maybe, 10 years. Finally, I stayed working there in advertising and marketing. After a few years of work, I felt the need to change industries because fashion was actually moving in Peru. Before, the industry wasn’t much in terms of creative fashion – it relied more on manufacture and production. I wouldn’t have really called it a fashion industry, more like industry-suppliers. But at that time, the creative industry was already moving, though in a slow pace.

So I decided to travel to see what the fashion industry was actually like around the world because I knew we were in a very early phase. I decided to move to France to do my Masters in fashion management with thoughts of moving back to Peru right afterwards to help develop the industry there, and build a bridge between the Peruvian industry with the rest of the industry abroad. While I was here in France, I discovered sustainable fashion – which in Peru we didn’t know about.

Now, there is a little bit of it. In Latin America in general, there is a little bit of sustainable knowledge, but people talk about it and don’t really know about it. Here, even though French people consider it not that important or developed, to me, it was like, “Wow!” It’s been eye-opening. So, I decided to stay here to learn more about it.

You are a freelance writer and activist for better practices in the fashion business. How does this play out in personal and professional life at the present?

To be honest, until maybe, two years ago, I was really the regular professional person. When I was in Peru, I would work for several companies in marketing. On the side, I would always do freelance design just for the fun of it. When I moved to France, after school I started working for fashion companies. I was on the regular path I guess. But ever since I decided to fully commit to sustainable fashion and the promotion of sustainable fashion in Latin America, starting my own company of course, I quit any possibilities of a full-time job, and have been doing freelance ever since. I have been freelancing for fashion showrooms, for sales, and everything that has to do with writing. Everything that aligns with fashion and sustainable fashion. I do that nowadays. I am an entrepreneur and freelancer. It’s a mess sometimes. (Laughs)

You have experience in the international market and a specialty for Latin America. And you are a featured author for Trusted Clothes. How does the expertise influence the chosen article topics?

I’ve been checking a lot of blogs and writers that are contributing. They write about their own personal experience, which I think is important to start. I also started to write what it is like to start your own business, and I think it is the first step because you are connecting people that are thinking, “Maybe, I should more interested in this than that.” But in the articles that I’ve been doing afterwards, I’ve been trying to look at it more from a commercial point of view. At how sustainable fashion and practices is something that you can make profit off. Little businesses, and major brands, are looking into it and developing. I cannot not see that with my background.

I’ve studied marketing strategies, greenwashing cases, and successful online startups. So when I see it happening, I immediately do a little research and write about it. The last article, which I wrote for Trusted Clothes, and hasn’t been published yet, is about the shared economy and how it applies to fashion because it’s a big thing right now.

It has taken longer for fashion. So, I wrote a little bit about my thoughts on it, and at the end I always end up mentioning, based on personal observations on the international scene – why it’s happening or not happening in Latin America – how it applies there. Because being from Latin America, and going there once a year, I get to see how the market changes, and then I get to compare it with the rest of the world because I want to say the US and Europe are somewhat aligned. However, I feel Latin America is behind. And I try to state why it is we’re behind or in different states.

I mix my professional background with my cultural background every day. (Laughs)

It sounds to me, like something personal in that way. As another aside, you would know better than I would; have you looked at the amount of carbon footprint from synthetic fibres compared with natural fibres?

Right, I think at the end I do take it personally because of what I have seen. What pushed me is that Latin America produces a lot of raw material that is high quality. I think the first article I wrote for Trusted Clothes was about farming in Latin America because we are changing our ways to become better.

What I think is silly is that we produce high quality coffee, food, and textiles, and it all goes abroad. All of the footprint you’re reducing by changing your ways of production, it needs to be transported to the other side of the world. All your savings went out, again! Actually, we aren’t producing it for us. We’re producing it for them (developed countries). You hardly find those in the local market. Then we get really low quality products imported from Asia, and so on, we follow trends. We follow the American look.

Low quality products from these far away countries coming all the way to Peru… In my logic, this doesn’t make any sense. You’re making high quality fibres and not even using them. You’re sending them far, far away. So, though my idea, initially, was to produce high quality clothing to sell in Europe where people actually care about manufacture… seeing the situation in my country. I figured this was impossible, something had to be done.

In my eyes, we have full potential. We’re just not seeing it. At the end, it’s a matter of misinformation. It’s not a matter of money. The price is not even that high.

You founded La Petite Mort, organic streetwear company, where “la petite mort” is translated as “little death” or as a popular reference to a sexual orgasm. How do these two relate to one another?

The inspiration for the company is, first, to develop an alternative to streetwear, common streetwear, that we wear every day… but in organic cotton. Farther than organic, I’ve chosen to work with Pima cotton. You have several types of cotton. The pima one is the cotton that has a longer fiber. So, when you do the textiles, it’s going to be softer. You notice that immediately when touching a t-shirt. I really want people to relate the brand to the substance. I decided to work with the best that I could find to make these pieces. If you look at the brand, it’s not really about statement pieces. It’s a regular t-shirt, so it better be a good one! I also try to make it very approachable.

The second is also that it’s environmentally friendly. I wanted to develop the brand with a lower impact, of course.

Then, the inspiration for the name brand… la petite mort is, of course, the orgasm. It is actually the moment of the orgasm that lasts maybe half a second. As if you were dead for an instant. It goes farther than orgasm itself. It is the feeling of emptiness – total, ultimate freedom. It is what people look for when they do yoga or meditation, or reach nirvana. It’s just another way to put it.

I chose it because when I learned the meaning of it. I thought, “Wow! This is so true, we all look for this” Even before I had the brand, I had this concept in my mind, back of my mind. So, I decided that when the time came to grab it. I am having trouble with it because the new generations of French do not really understand or make the connection with la petite mort. It’s kind of sad as a name.

Once they get it, they connect to it, some of them. (Laughs) And once you do, it’s hard to forget, right? I don’t do the whole la petite mort when working in Latin America, because French is hard! In Spanish I use the short La P.M. standing for la puta madre, which means something super cool. It’s slang, urban slang.

To me, La Petite Mort, is the ultimate nirvana. There’s no other name to call it. I don’t want to use a yogi name! (Laughs)

Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion of sustainable fashion?

I’m going to say it is a lot of work. Sometimes, I feel like the brand, if I didn’t mention “sustainable,” it would run even better because when you take this approach people immediately back away. I think there is a lot of clichés around it. That’s why when I try to communicate I try to be very soft, very positive, and not to make people feel guilty. To this point, I think fashion has been sold in the wrong way.

I wish there was more of this movement in Latin America. I know there are organizations working on it over there, but the road is still long. So, I take it personally to help raise consciousness. It’s crazy. We are the ones that get affected the most in the developing countries. That’s all that.

Thank you for your time, Andrea.

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2022-03-27

But What Can I Do?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/05/10

I felt like writing a less thinking piece. And more of a reflective or opinion piece, based on a feeling, not so uncommon, and not so profound, but worth its weight in meaning.

Something ‘struck’ me. And it’s the idea of reach. Personal reach, emotional reach, the reach of physical work, the reach into the lives and minds of others, and hopefully (if super lucky) hearts of others, and so on and so forth. How far can I possibly go?

Like, if in this endeavour with such a limited capacity in my own life, what could I do? I’m just a person, like most people. There’s small contributions: getting informed, knowing a bit, reflection on these things talking, writing, et cetera, etc. There’s doing composting – hot or cold – to reduce my personal impact on the environment and eventually on the climate. And I know I’m already bad at that. I know that. So I feel as though, at times, it’s like, “but what could I do?” Well, a good first step is to learn about these things. Good.

What then? Well, I’ve done some of the taking in of neat stuff, and then there’s writing. Writing? Yup, it’s the productive phase past learning about things. I can do some kind of mini-outreach to others through this. I can reference. I can footnote or end note. I can think more, and re-reference (and footnote or end note), and on and on. That’s a great tool to learn, kind of.

But does that matter to folks? I don’t know, quite frankly. I have an intuition that there’s some reach there, but is that good enough? For me: no. What then?

There’s reading other peoples’ work. Other articles. Other interviews, even chapters or whole books. But that takes a lot of time. And time is short with lots of things going on. Many folks have kids, have work – have lives. Or, in other words, have resources being spent, resources which are likely quite short, like time, money, emotions and energy, or other, more personally immediate, things. Even after those things, there’s reflection on all of this together, talking straight about the issues, staying positive, and, maybe, keeping persistent.

Persistent writing, persistence reading, persistent thinking, persistent work in general. That’s a good start, and it skips a lot of the issues around particularities and funky little details.

Is this all too much waving of hands, and wishing the wishes? I don’t know, but can see why it might seem like it. Even with that, it would seem wrong to me in that, even though there’s the “but what can I do?”, there’s also the little voice of “but what can’t we do?” ‘cause it’s an organizational message, a collective and communal effort, a group plan, and a unified network of principles. So I don’t know for sure, and could be wrong, but I think the voice of doubt alone can be replaced by a voice of assurance together.

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2022-03-27

A Brief Note on Natural Fibres and Climate Change

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/05/03

Natural fibres split into animal fibres and plant fibres with the animal fibres composed of proteins and the plant fibres of cellulose.[i]^,[ii]^,[iii]^,[iv]^,[v]

These, together, constitute a large set of industries with millions of workers including the textile industry, and they have competition from the synthetic or man-made fibre industry.[vi]^,[vii] One of these is compostable or bio-degradable, and the other is not.

Plant and animal fibres are bio-degradable such as in a cold or hot compost, and synthetic or man-made fibres are not.[viii]^,[ix]^,[x]^,[xi]^,[xii] The one’s that do not biodegrade will tend to end in landfills and the ocean, and will become broke down cubes such as microplastics.[xiii]^,[xiv]^,[xv]^,[xvi]^,[xvii]

The lifecycle of synthetic or man-made fibres are different than the natural fibres because the natural fibre lifecycle is shaped like a loop. And the synthetic or man-made fibre lifecycle is basically a straight line with some looping via recycling.

And with this taken in its full implications comes around to one of the major issues of our time, global warming or climate change.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations via Jan van Dam, the connection between environmental sustainability, climate change, and natural fibres is not necessarily a complicated one. How so?

The promotion of the use of natural fibres as CO2 neutral resource is believed to contribute to a greener planet… The transition towards a bio-based economy and sustainable developments as a consequence of the Kyoto protocols on greenhouse gas reduction and CO2 neutral production offers high perspectives for natural fibre markets… On ecological grounds products should then be preferred that are based on photosynthetic CO2 fixation… Growing of crops results in the fixation in biomass of atmospheric CO2 through photosynthesis and has therefore in principle a positive effect on the CO2 balance.[xviii]

There we go again. A green planet, accordance with the Kyoto Protocol (and likely numerous other agreements), carbon capture, an actual lifecycle for feeding back into its own future generations of growth and product via natural fibres, and even a reduction in the net CO2 in the medium- to long-term. What’s not to like – and there’s plenty more where that came from.

It can be a complex representation of the information. However, the fundamental principles need little thought. Synthetic fibres do not decompose. Natural fibres decompose. What follows? The former become various direct and indirect pollutants and is, therefore, unsustainable and increases the ongoing climactic warming; the latter amounts to a self-sustaining cycle and is, therefore, sustainable and reduces the ongoing climactic warming.

[i] New World Encyclopedia. (2014, December 23). Natural Fiber.

[ii] natural fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica.

[iii] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2009).Natural Fibres.

[iv] Government of Canada: Canadian Conservation Institute. (2015, November 23).Natural Fibres – Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) Notes 13/11.

[v] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2009). Why Natural Fibres?.

[vi] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2009). Natural Fibres.

[vii] man-made fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica.

[viii] Wild Fibres. (2016, February 15). Animal Fibres.

[ix] Wild Fibres. (2016, February 15). Plant Fibres.

[x] Almanac. (2016). How to Compost: Hot and Cold Methods.

[xi] Vegetable Gardener. (2009, February 10). Composting Hot or Cold.

[xii] Kitchen Gardeners International. (n.d.). Which is better: hot or cold composting?.

[xiii] New World Encyclopedia. (2016). Natural Fiber.

[xiv] United Nations Environment Programme. (2013). Microplastics.

[xv] Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. (2016).Microplastics and microbeads.

[xvi] WorldWatch Institute. (2015, January 28). Global Plastic Production Rises, Recycling Lags.

[xvii] [National Geographic]. (2015, October27). Are Microplastics in Our Water Becoming a Macroproblem?.

[xviii] Van Dam, J.E.G.. (n.d.). Environmental benefits of natural fibre production and use.

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2022-03-27

An Interview with Abena Sara

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/05/03

Abena Sara is a regular contributor and featured author here at Trusted Clothes. Read more about her below through this one-on-one interview with Scott.

Your name is Sara Corry, but you have the name Abena Sara, too. How did this come about for you?

In Ghana, everyone has a ‘day name’ that corresponds to the day they were born. I was born on a Tuesday, so my day name is Abena. When saying it, the stress is on the first A so it’s like AH-beh-nuh – not aBEEnah like most people outside of Ghana pronounce it.

You have a passion for travel, and you’re living in eastern Ghana near its capital of Accra at the moment. How’d you get there? Tell us your story.

That’s a long story, but I’ll try to keep it brief. I was involved with African drumming in Albuquerque, New Mexico where I’m from, for many years. One of my teachers is from Ghana, which piqued my interest in Ghana in the first place. Then, a friend from a drum circle introduced me to a Ghanaian friend who was visiting NM – this was back in 2010. His friend, Godfried, and I hit it off and kept in contact after he went back to Ghana. In 2011 he invited me to come to Ghana and see some of the country, and I went for 16 days. The trip was amazing. I’d never been to a “third world” country and I saw so many things that touched my heart and soul. I fell in love with Ghana, and with Godfried. Then lots of “life” happened for both of us and I didn’t return until 2014, for a month this time. When planning the trip, I started brainstorming ways I could spend more time in Ghana, and the idea to form a business that would allow me to be here more often came to mind. One thing led to another and I realized that my passion is with humanitarian causes and a desire to give a hand up to people who are in desperate situations. In February, 2015 I returned and ultimately spent nine months in Ghana, working on business development – and I’m still here! I’m working on getting residency so that Godfried and I can be together and continue work we’ve started on a project to improve medical care in villages, and of course to develop Batiks for Life.

Your posts always have great photographs of Ghana. What personal fulfillment comes from it?

Yes, I love photography, although I’m really an amateur. I love nature photography most, but I’ve managed to get some nice shots of people here in Ghana. Ghana in general is a very colourful and photogenic country! For me, photography can be a spiritual thing. It’s soul-nourishing to slow down and see my surroundings through the camera lens.

And you’ve lived in the desert for over 30 years. How did this come about for you?

I moved to Albuquerque, NM (high desert in North Central NM) in 1988 (after spending a couple of years there previously). New Mexico’s state slogan is “the Land of Enchantment” and it’s a joke that we say it’s the “Land of Entrapment”! Or like Hotel California, you can check in any time you like, but you can never leave! The land does seem to hold onto people! I do love New Mexico and my family is there, so I’ll be back to visit at some point. Ghana feels like home now though.

What’s a normal day in Ghana like for you?

It’s a rather “chop wood, carry water” kind of life – in some ways a little like camping. I don’t have a huge income so I can’t afford the high rise apartments or fancy gated communities in downtown Accra. Actually I wouldn’t want to live like that anyhow, surrounded by mostly ex-pats and apart from everyday people. So I live in a small town in a small house, draw water from a well every morning, wash my clothes by hand, shower from a bucket of cold water, shop for food at the markets and food stalls, and cook over a little gas canister, just like most people here. One challenge is that I’m continually singled out because of my skin colour, which gets kind of embarrassing at times. But whereas a Black person in a predominately white area of the US might be negatively singled out, here “obrunis” are looked upon as an asset to the community. Sometimes this becomes another kind of challenge, when children come to me asking for money for instance, or when the market ladies overcharge me. Even Godfried has said he gets charged more at the market when I’m with him. To be looked upon as a source of easy money is uncomfortable, and creates a kind of entitlement which is exactly the opposite of what I’m trying to do through my work.

Batiks for life has come a long way, what does “Batiks” mean and where did the name of the company originate from?

Batik is a process of creating a print on cotton fabric, by applying wax to form a design, then dyeing the cloth, then removing the wax. It’s a traditional way of making beautiful fabrics in many parts of the world and in Ghana, there’s a particular way of making batik that’s been handed down from generation to generation that’s specific to this country. One way of making batik in Ghana involves using stamps with symbols known as “Adinkra” – it’s a centuries-old system of symbology with meanings attached to each symbol, kind of like a proverb in a way. So, for instance, you could tell a story through the Adinkra symbols stamped on your batik! I love these symbols, which tell the story of life in all its nuances. The name “Batiks for Life” is partly about the Adinkra symbols used in batik, but also about the intention that sales of our products will support life – from the people in Ghana who make the products, to the customer. Our batik medical scrubs are one of a kind, and bring colour and liveliness into often depressing environments. We have several repeat customers who remark on how their patients enjoy the batik scrubs they’re wearing! Additionally, our mission is to use a portion of our income to support life-giving medical projects here in Ghana. This has been a goal of mine since the beginning of the business, but I never expected to be able to realize this dream so soon. I’ll say more about this below.

What kinds of things does Batiks for Life offer, and what is the overall purpose, to you, of the organization?

We started out with medical scrubs, but pretty soon people who don’t wear scrubs were asking for other batik products. They wanted to support our mission, but the product wasn’t appealing to them. So we’re in the process of adding new products that our supporters asked for, like different sizes of bags, yardage of batik fabric, and wrap skirts. Right now our batik artistes are working on some batik wall hangings that I’m excited to put up on the website! I think one of the things that makes our products desirable (in addition to being beautiful of course!) is that customers know that people in this developing country are being supported through their production, and that a portion of income goes right back to the community in the form of healthcare initiatives.

What is the difference between fair trade products and other products?

First off, I want to be clear that Batiks for Life products have not yet been certified as Fair Trade – this is a lengthy process which we will undertake once we are more established. But we do incorporate fair trade business practices – meaning the people who create our products are paid a living wage and work in safe conditions. Actually, they set their own prices and work out of their own small businesses. So there is no concern that they’re being exploited or forced to work in unsafe factories like often happens when sewn products are mass produced in China or other countries.

You contribute to a website on wildlife conservation in the continent of Africa. What is its importance as a website or resource, and the salience of larger efforts to preserve wildlife in Africa?

The website is www.safaritalk.net and is a community of people who support wildlife conservation efforts in Africa. Some people own safari lodges, others are visitors to Africa, and some live on the continent. There’s always interesting discussion about wildlife topics, amazing photography, and reports on places all over Africa. One of the issues that continually comes up is that most of the problems facing wildlife here are economy-driven. When people don’t have another source of income, they will be more likely to poach wildlife. We all know about the plight of rhinos and elephants, but it continues down to the smallest of animals. Poaching here in Ghana is a huge problem because people love bushmeat. Bushmeat can be anything from grasscutter (a large rodent that lives in sugar cane fields), to antelope, to monkey, etc. Anything that moves can be consumed, pretty much. Combined with habitat loss, this has decimated the local wildlife. But, if people have a reason to keep the animals alive, by and large they’ll protect them. Again, it’s economy-driven. So some communities have started wildlife sanctuaries which are tourist destinations and bring money into the community. Ghana isn’t known for wildlife as are East and South Africa, so through my writing for Safaritalk, I hope that more people will see that we too have wildlife (you just have to know where to look!), which will bring in more tourism, and keep these local wildlife sanctuaries, preserves, and national parks alive.

What is the importance of the companies and organizations such as Trusted Clothes and Batiks for Life to you?

I think that people are in a conundrum when it comes to their clothing. We all know that most of what we get at the department store is produced by people who work in a form of slavery – these clothing companies make a huge profit on the backs of impoverished people in the “third world”. Yet while someone may feel bad about supporting these businesses through their buying choices, they don’t know their options. We’re here to show them the options, and to convince people that it’s worth a little extra money to buy something unique and lasting. I value my connection with Trusted Clothes because it reminds me that on top of all the other reasons I’m here in Ghana pursuing this crazy idea of mine, I’m also contributing to a healthier world through promoting sustainable clothing options. Kind of like the cherry on top!

Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

I wanted to back up and say a bit more about the healthcare initiative I mentioned above. Godfried is from a little village in the southeastern corner of Ghana. I interviewed the two nurses who run the clinic – I also write for a nursing website, HireNurses.com – and I’m doing a series on healthcare in Ghana. In doing this interview it became clear that they’re doing the best they can, but are really hampered in their ability to provide healthcare for the village for a lot of reasons. I saw the opportunity to do something to help. It was an initial goal of mine that Batiks for Life would give back to the community through giving a portion of income to health related projects, but I never expected it to happen so soon in the life of the business. For Godfried, it’s also a dream come true because his great-great-grandfather founded the village and so he’s in the lineage of chiefs and very concerned about the welfare of the village. He’s also had an idea in his mind for a long time about leading medical mission trips throughout the country. Well, almost immediately we started getting offers of help that were most unexpected! We’re pursuing these offers and trying to wrap our heads around the possibilities! It’s really exciting and we hope to make our ambitions to help underserved communities with their healthcare a reality.

Click here to read more of Sara’s posts from Africa and Batiks for Life.

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2022-03-27

A History on Natural Fibres

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/05/02

Natural fibres have been around for a long time and will continue to be around for much longer. As described by the Encylopedia Britannica, Natural Fibres are “any hairlike raw material directly obtainable from an animal, vegetable, or mineral source and convertible into nonwoven fabrics”[i]

It’s out of the textile industry, or the industry devoted to fibres, filaments, and yarns capable of being crafted into cloth or fabric for the production of material.[ii] That’s a huge industry, international in fact, which is connected to the local economies of many, many developing nations.

And these same developing nations have consumers throughout the world – and our concern is for the sustainable and ethical working conditions. With the strong emphasis on natural fibres production because of their variety and their ability to decompose and not simply accumulate in landfills.

Natural fibres, as utilized in small-scale and rather ancient textile industries, dates back to before the era of recording history.[iii] Flax and wool appear to be the most prominent sources in those times of ‘pre-history,’ which have been found at various Swiss excavation sites dating to the 7^th and 6^th centuries BC; and this coincides with multiple vegetable fibres utilized in a similar manner by ancient peoples.[iv]

Some would claim that the oldest are “flax (10000BC) cotton (5000 BC) and silk (2700 BC), but even jute and coir have been cultivated since antiquity.”[v] The more detailed histories appear to exist with hemp natural fibre, at least as a cultivated fibre plant emerging out of Southeast Asia, which “spread to China” around 4500 BC.[vi]

After this, along came the introduction, or the development/invention of spinning and weaving linen around 3400 – at least, and likely before that time in Egypt based on the archaeological record, and so flax was developed before that time too.[vii] There were even developments around that time in India with cotton (3,000 BC).[viii]

Lastly, we come to China and silk from this ancient era. The manufacture, and one can reasonably suppose distribution, of silk and its associated products came from them. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, it was “highly developed” at around 2640 BC with the “invention and development of sericulture – a sort of silkworm cultivation to get raw silk, wow![ix]

Phew, that’s a lot of information. Part II, we’ll cover some of the more recent history of natural fibres, and how they came to be – stay tuned!

[i] natural fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[ii] textile. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[iii] natural fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Bcomp Technologies. (n.d.). Natural Fibre Specialists. Retrieved from COMP.

[vi] natural fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Ibid.

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2022-03-27

Sustainable Fibres: What is Camel Hair?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/04/29

It’s that time again! That’s right a quick recap from part one for those that missed out on natural fibres, a crash course. What did Sustainable Fibres: What is Abaca (I) say?

Natural fibres, as opposed to synthetic or man-made fibres, have a long history, and come in many types.[i]^,[ii]Typically, these include animal fibres or plant fibres.[iii],[iv]

Animal fibres can be things like alpaca wool, angora wool, camel hair, cashmere, mohair, silk, and wool. Animal fibres come from hair, secretions, or wool.[v] Plant fibres can be things like abaca, coir, cotton, flax, hemp, jute, ramie, and sisal. Plant fibres are come from seed hairs, stem or bast fibres, leaf fibres, and husk fibres.[vi]

Which is helpful and a quick description on what is going on with natural fibres, what is its general division within itself – plant and animal fibres, and what even comprises, via examples, those plant and animal fibres. Great! Now, the other fun stuff. Last time we took a peak at Abaca, a plant fibre with lots of neat little uses and history.

Let’s take a look at an animal fibre this time, and this one can be Camel hair; first things first, what is it in general? According to Encyclopedia Britannica, it is as follows:

Camel hair, animal fibre obtained from the camel and belonging to the group called specialty hair fibres. The most satisfactory textile fibre is gathered from camels of the Bactrian type. Such camels have protective outer coats of coarse fibre that may grow as long as 15 inches (40 cm). The fine, shorter fibre of the insulating undercoat, 1.5–5 inches (4–13 cm) long, is the product generally called camel hair, or camel hair wool.[vii]

Bactrian type are, one can assume, a camel from Bactria.[viii] Now, with this kind of encyclopedic description, it can, or might, see a bit overwhelming in terms of the information, but there’s some basic things to pull out of it. One, the specialty animal fibres for the natural fibres, and two, its textile use. Three, the description of the size and characteristics of the hair from camels.

Who supplies it?

According to the Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers Institute (CCHMI), there’s many, many sources that supply the hair including “China, Mongolia, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, New Zealand, Tibet and Australia.”[ix]Those aren’t necessarily a tremendous amount of places, but an enormous land area coverage if taken as a whole especially with a whole continent (Australia) and the largest country in the world (Russia). And who doesn’t like cashmere?

How much is gathered and produced for each yield?

It can vary. But there’s a common range. For these kinds of specialty animal hair fibres, natural fibres, the gathering or the collecting of the hairs occurs in the molting season or the season when animals tend to shed their hair.[x] That means around late spring to early summer. These can fall off in clumps for collection by standard collection methods from way-back-when – by hand (neat).[xi]

Following this, the “coarse hairs and down hairs of the…camel are separated by a mechanical process known as dehairing,” explains itself, which in turn brings about a yield per camel from as low (not really low, actually) as 8 kilograms to as much as 10 kilograms.

What is its utility, and look and feel?

It is lightweight and naturally warm, is a tan colour, and can be made various color through colouring it – and, in fact, takes in the dye about as well as wool does.[xii]

What about the small stuff like the end product and recyclability?

If you go to that website with the table, there’s a wonderful layout of some of the finer points such as garment care, end uses, virgin fiber, and recycled fiber.[xiii] Garment care is basically the means by which garments can be properly cared for, so “dry clean wovens; knit goods may be handwashed.”[xiv]

End uses are the finalized textile uses such as “Men’s and women’s coats, jackets and blazers, skirts, hosiery, sweaters, gloves, scarves, mufflers, caps and robes.”[xv] Not bad, a decent selection with a certain appeal in its ability to be recoloured; hosiery is the one that surprised me, personally. And it is a virgin fibre or non-processed fibre, and it’s capable of being recycled – and as with many of the lovely variety of natural fibres, the forms and uses provide plenty of reason for consideration of the general consideration about, what I might call, the lifecycle of fibres.[xvi] That’s about it for camel hair, in a brief summary.

Closing thoughts?

Synthetic or man-made fibres can end up in landfills or the ocean and are not biodegradable, but the natural fibres have all of these measures, granted with a little effort (but they can be fun!), to send them back from whence they came after they’ve spent or expired their fashionable quotient – sometimes in a season, and other times after a decade of cycled fashion trends (you never know).[xvii]^,[xviii] Come back for part three for the next fibre profile!

[i] natural fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved fromhttp://www.britannica.com/topic/natural-fiber

[ii] man-made fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/technology/man-made-fiber.

[iii] Wild Fibres. (2016, February 15). Animal Fibres.

[iv] Wild Fibres. (2016, February 15). Plant Fibres.

[v] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2009). Natural Fibres. Retrieved from Natural Fibres.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii]camel hair. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[viii] Bactria. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[ix] Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers Institute. (2013). Cashmere and Camel Hair Fact Sheet.

[x] Ibid.

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Ibid.

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] man-made fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[xviii]natural fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

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2022-03-27

Microplastic in Wastewater

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/04/28

We talk about the natural fibres and the man-made fibres, but do not take into account as much the water aspects of these fibres. As natural fibres come from plant and animal fibres, by definition, their contents come out of the earth and extract and use water in the midst of their production, whether cellulose or proteins composed of amino acids (of course).[i]

But what about the possibility of problems with water in connection with the synthetic fibres? Take, for instance, the issue of microplastics in wastewater. Microplastics are part of the larger categorization of marine litter – gross – and can be defined “as particles of less than 5mm in size.”[ii]^,[iii]^,[iv]^,[v]

These small bits of plastics can tend to come in the form of pellets.[vi] However, the source of them are separate processes. According to GreenFacts, those are:

deterioration of larger plastic fragments, cordage and films over time, with or without assistance from UVradiation, mechanical forces in the seas (e.g. wave action, grinding on high energy shorelines), or through biological activity (e.g. boring, shredding and grinding by marine organisms);
direct release of micro particles (e.g. scrubs and abrasives in household and personal care products, shot-blasting ship hulls and industrial cleaning products respectively, grinding or milling waste) into waterways and via urban wastewater treatment;
accidental loss of industrial raw materials (e.g. prefabricated plastics in the form of pellets or powders used to make plastic articles), during transport or trans- shipment, at sea or into surface waterways;
discharge of macerated wastes, e.g. sewage sludge[vii]

The per annum increase in the consumption of plastics will not by necessity change overnight, but these can continue unabated in the, at least, near future because of the continued increase in the global consumption of plastics.[viii] That is, circa 2013, 299 million tons of plastic was produced, about 4 percent more than 2012, and collection and recycling of these materials does not suffice to keep up with the pace of these developments, even only a couple years ago, and these plastics complete their journey in landfills and oceans.[ix]

There are about “10–20 million tons of plastic that end up in the oceans each year. A recent study conservatively estimated that 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing a total of 268,940 tons are currently floating in the world’s oceans.”[x]

This comes back to the industries of natural fibres, biodegradable, and synthetic or man-made fibres, non-biodegradable in the textile and other economic juggernauts.[xi] According to O’Connor’s report (2014), “In fact, 85% of the human-made material found on the shoreline were microfibers, and matched the types of material, such as nylon and acrylic, used in clothing,” she continued, “It is not news that microplastic – which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines as plastic fragments 5mm or smaller – is ubiquitous in all five major ocean gyres. And numerous studies have shown that small organisms readily ingest microplastics, introducing toxic pollutants to the food chain.”[xii]

Many organisms eat these materials and thereby poison the food supply with pollutants. And it’s ubiquitous, that is, it’s everywhere and that means the global food supply chain is being completely filled with trillions of bits of plastic particulate matter less than 5mm small and finding its way into the food chain, which moves up into us.

National Geographic in Are Microplastics in Our Water Becoming a Macroproblem? (2015) provides a good overview of the subject matter at hand with the connection between the manufacture, distribution, and lack of recycling measures, and then the consumption by lower-end animals in the food chain and how this moves into our own food supply chain – bigger things eat on the smaller things.[xiii] It’s an issue for the environment and a major concern for us.

So are these micro plastics accumulating in our bodies?

We don’t know, but there is reason to believe that it is very much likely. And even if it doesnt accumulate in our bodies, do you want this in you? I think, and feel, as with many of you that I firmly do not.

[i] New World Encyclopedia. (2016). Natural Fiber. Retrieved from New World Encyclopedia.

[ii]GreenFacts. (2016). Marine Litter

[iii] Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation. (n.d.). Global Microplastics Initiative. Retrieved from Adventure science.

[iv] United Nations Environment Programme. (2013). Microplastics. Retrieved from UNEP.

[v] Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. (2016). Microplastics and microbeads.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] WorldWatch Institute. (2015, January 28). Global Plastic Production Rises, Recycling Lags. Retrieved from World Watch.

[ix] Ibid.

[x]Ibid.

[xi] O’Connor, M.C. (2014, October 27). Inside the lonely fight against the biggest environmental problem you’ve never heard of. Retrieved from The Guardian.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] [National Geographic]. (2015, October27). Are Microplastics in Our Water Becoming a Macroproblem?. Retrieved from Nat Geo.

[xiv] [gedwoods]. (2010, May 11). Polar fleece. Retrieved from Fabrics Int’l.

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2022-03-27

Sustainable Fibres: What is Abaca?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/04/27

Natural fibres, as opposed to synthetic or man-made fibres, have a long history, and come in many types.[i]^,[ii]Typically, these include animal fibres or plant fibres.[iii]^,[iv]

Animal fibres can be things like alpaca wool, angora wool, camel hair, cashmere, mohair, silk, and wool. Animal fibres come from hair, secretions, or wool.[v] Plant fibres can be things like abaca, coir, cotton, flax, hemp, jute, ramie, and sisal. Plant fibres are come from seed hairs, stem or bast fibres, leaf fibres, and husk fibres.[vi]

Let’s zoom in a little on one of them, say a plant natural fibre like Abaca.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, it is this:

Abaca (Musa textilis), plant of the family Musaceae, and its fibre, which is second in importance among the leaf fibre group. Abaca fibre, unlike most other leaf fibres, is obtained from the plant leaf stalks (petioles). Although sometimes known as Manila hemp, Cebu hemp, or Davao hemp, the abaca plant is not related to true hemp.[vii]

So it’s a leaf fibre, a kind of hemp without being real hemp. I like that definition by association. Where did it come from?

It’s native to the Philippines since at least the 19^th century, and around 1925 there was cultivation by the Dutch in Sumatra.[viii]^,[ix]Following this, the United States of America’s Department of Agriculture began to establish plantations in Central America along with the smaller operations, commercial ones, in British-run North Borneo, which is now Sabah or a part of modern Malaysia.[x]

What does it look like?

It’s a bit like a banana. Its rootstock produces about 25 fleshy, fibreless stalks in a circular cluster.[xi] Even cooler, every “stalk is about 5 cm (2 inches) in diameter and produces about 12 to 25 leaves with overlapping leaf stalks, or petioles, sheathing the plant stalk to form an herbaceous (nonwoody) false trunk about 30 to 40 cm in diameter.”[xii]

Where do they grow?

They grow in puffy, open, and “loamy soils” with decent ability to drain. Mature rootstock planted in the earliest moments of the rainy season constitute its common means of growth. It takes a 1.5 to 2 years for its plant stalk from each mat to be harvested, and the cut on the plant for the separation for that further growing is at the or to the ground of it – “at the time of blossoming.”[xiii] They’re replaced within 10 years as well.

Finally, what are its uses, and benefits?

For one, it’s environmentally friendly. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Abaca can be utilized for “[e]rosion control and biodiversity rehabilitation” for things such as “by intercropping abaca in former monoculture plantations and rainforest areas” in addition to “minimize erosion and sedimentation problems in coastal areas.”[xiv]

Erosion control is important because without it crop yields can be reduced because of the soil loss due to the water erosion.[xv] Monocultures can have benefits, but necessarily at every given instant of agricultural production and harvesting, and even in most cases there could be downsides.[xvi] So, in general, the facilitation of biodiversity is a net good, and abaca helps with it. Good stuff!

Biodiversity is the opposite of monoculture; it’s lots of cultures, that is, a plethora of biological plant life, for instance; or it “encompasses all living species on Earth and their relationships to each other. This includes the differences in genes, species and ecosystems.”[xvii]

Biodiversity rehabilitation relates to monocultures and the assistive properties of planned agricultural activities through abaca, which means it, according to the Convention on Biological Diversity, can be used towards the purpose of “rehabilitate and restore degraded ecosystems and promote the recovery of threatened species through the development and implementation of plans or other management strategies.”

So it can even help with saving the lives of endangered species, or those animals on the brink of extinction, gasp!

Secondly, it’s used for a vast number of things within or associated with the textile industry including Cordage products – e.g. ropes, twines, marine cordage, binders, cord, Pulp and paper manufactures – e.g. tea bags, filter paper, mimeograph stencil, Handmade paper – e.g. paper sheets, stationeries, all-purpose cards, lamp shades, balls, dividers, placemats, bags, photo frames and albums, flowers, table clock, even fibercrafts, handwoven fabrics, and furniture.[xviii] And even with all of these uses, the darn things are being beat out by synthetic fabrics in cordage products, for example.[xix]

And now? The Philippines continues to dominate the cultivation of Abaca to this day.[xx] And its’ widely used as a fertilizer. That’s all for now, folks!

[i] natural fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica

[ii] man-made fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[iii] Wild Fibres. (2016, February 15).Animal Fibres.

[iv] Wild Fibres. (2016, February 15). Plant Fibres.

[v] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2009). Natural Fibres. Retrieved from Natural Fibres.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] abaca. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[viii] Philippines. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[ix] Sumatra. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[x] abaca. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2016). Future Fibres: Abaca.

[xv] Government of Alberta: Agriculture and Forestry. (2016). An Introduction to Water Erosion Control.

[xvi] agricultural technology. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

[xvii]Biodiv Canada. (2014, July 3). What is Biodiversity?.

[xviii] Textile Learner. (2014). Abaca Fiber (Manila Hemp) | Uses/Application of Abaca Fiber.

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] abaca. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.

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2022-03-27

What’s the Deal with Natural Fibres?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/04/26

What’s the deal with natural fibres? Why are they important?

Organic Cotton, Jute, Hemp, Alpaca, Cashmere, Flax, Silk & Wool. Oh My!

So, what’s the deal with natural fibres? Natural fibres are “elongated substances produced by plants and animals that can be spun into filaments, thread or rope. Woven, knitted, matted or bonded, they form fabrics that are essential to society.”[i],[ii]

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, they are “any hairlike raw material directly obtainable from an animal, vegetable, or mineral source and convertible into non-woven fabrics such as felt or paper or, after spinning into yarns, into woven cloth. A natural fibre may be further defined as an agglomeration of cells in which the diameter is negligible in comparison with the length.”[iii]

These can include the fifteen main natural fibres – Abaca, Alpaca, Angora, Camel, Cashmere, Coir, Cotton, Flax, Hemp, Jute, Mohair, Ramie, Silk, Sisal, and Wool, and many others.[iv] That is, natural fibres provide a great variety of possible materials from plants and animals from which to make fibres.

Read more about sustainable natural fabrics here.

Natural Organic Plant Fibres:

The plant fibres include abaca, coir, cotton, flax, hemp, jute, ramie, and sisal. Plant fibres are come from seed hairs, stem or bast fibres, leaf fibres, and husk fibres.

The animal fibres include alpaca wool, angora wool, camel hair, cashmere, mohair, silk, and wool. Animal fibres come from hair, secretions, or wool.

The Government of Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) provides information on four specific examples: cotton and flax for plant fibres, and silk and wool for animal fibres. [v] Cotton and flax are made of cellulose and vegetable fibres. Silk and wool are protein fibres made of a variety of amino acids from animals.

There are some geographic considerations and plant/animal specific information such as the fact that cotton and wool represent the most pervasively utilized vegetable fibres in North America, and silk and wool as they are animal in origin are subject to affects from ageing of the animal.[vi] However, these are highly detailed bits of information best left for the end notes.

Why are Natural Fibres Important?

It’s actually pretty straightforward. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations argues from five “choices”: healthy choice, responsible choice, sustainable choice, high-tech choice, and fashionable choice.[vii]

“Each year, farmers harvest around 35 million tonnes of natural fibres from a wide range of plants and animals…[and] [t]hose fibres form fabrics, ropes and twines that have been fundamental to society since the dawn of civilization,” The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations stated in 2009.[viii]

Throughout the last 50 years, synthetic, or man-made fibres, began to dominate the landscape previously carved out by natural fibres in “clothing, household furnishings, industries and agriculture.”[ix]

Natural fibres, as a means for production and, thus, “livelihoods of millions of people” is adversely effected by the global economic downturn and the increased and ubiquitous competition from synthetic materials; In fact, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations declared 2009 the International Year of Natural Fibres to attests to natural fibres’ importance to those millions of producers and their consumers, too.[x]

Let’s look into their arguments from 2009, which remain as salient as now as they were then.

Natural fibres as the healthy choice. There is natural ventilation from natural fibres. Wool can be an insulator in cool and warm weather. Coconut fibre has a natural resistance against fungi and mites. Hemp fibre appears to show various antibacterial properties as well. What’s not to love?

Natural Fibres: The Responsible, Sustainable Choice.

They remain the source of economic vibrancy for millions of people including small-scale processors and farmers. That means “10 million people in the cotton sector in West and Central Africa, 4 million small-scale jute farmers in Bangladesh and India, one million silk industry workers in China, and 120 000 alpaca herding families in the Andes.”[xi]

Natural fibres are the sustainable choice for the future, and a high technology choice too. That is, the emergent technologies in the coming decades will increasingly be the ‘alternative’ energies such as wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and others. That is, the oncoming and ongoing green economy. So that means “energy efficiency, renewable feed stocks,” and “industrial processes that reduce carbon emissions and recyclable materials…Natural fibres are a renewable resource,” and natural fibres are, as noted in A How-To On Composting Your Clothes, are capable of decomposition compared to synthetic materials.[xii]

They’re based on high technology with good mechanical strength, low weight and low cost” and are, therefore, “attractive to the automotive industry.”[xiii] Take, for instance, the European example with their car manufacturers utilizing an approximate 8,000 tonnes of natural fibres per year for the reinforcement of thermoplastic panels, which, as with all of the aforementioned information from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, comes from 2009.[xiv]

Finally, and a more minor, but personally importance choice for many people much of the time, natural fibres exist as a fashionable choice, too. There’s a whole area of eco-fashion, or things like sustainable clothing based on clothing for all ages and styles for wearing and disposing, and then, one can assume, for decomposition. The cycle of natural fibre.

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2022-03-27

A How-To on Composting Your (Wool) Clothes

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/04/25

So now that we know that we can compost our clothes and with the separation between natural fibres and synthetic fibres, and the multiple kinds of natural fibres on offer are numerous, and these natural fibres come with the benefit of being able to be composted, which does include wool.[i] So this one will be about wool, and with some important information as ‘food for thought,’ consider:

Every year, Americans, alone, throw away 11,000,000 million tonnes of fabric and clothing.[ii] And 99% of textiles remain recyclable.[iii] Traditionally, wool has been used for fertilizer in the district of west Yorkshire.[iv] The issue with wool is that it takes a heck-of-a-long time compost. That’s a concern, and a valid one if time is an issue for your projects.

And that waste is not only of the fibre themselves, but of water, and in an increase of pollution as well.[v] But, and to start, there are some general things that can be done to speed up the process for wool, and in fact other natural fibres.

You can chop up your clothes, especially for big harder-to-compost natural fibres like wool.[vi] Apparently, it’s important according to the Texas Office of Agriculture. If you visualize it, that means the tough material can have more surface area on net, with each and every piece taken into account, for the environment to working on degrading the wool.

If you’re super keen and diligent about biodegradation of the wool, you can, and should, remove the non-biodegradable materials such as the synthetic fibres to permit the complete composting of the compost pile. Synthetic or man-made materials cannot be composted – so any that you do not remove will not go away. You’ll have your compost as compost+ or, maybe, compost- with the additional bits of non-wool in it.

Some more involved things include the creation of a hot compost, the addition of earth worms, and recycling the things that cannot compost.

Hot composts – real quick – these can help with the time management concerns of composting that darn wool! Hot composts contrast with cold composts or regular composts. The kind where you simply throw a pile of bio-degradable materials together and wait – that’s cold composting.

Hot composting “produces compost in a much shorter time. It has the benefits of killing weed seeds and pathogens (diseases), and breaking down the material into very fine compost.”[vii] (Wow!) You can also check out other resources as well.[viii],[ix],[x]

Earth worms can, to no surprise, can help with the compost process.[xi] Worms have been hard at work throughout evolutionary history breaking down materials and returning to the earth once the material came.

Feng and Hewitt said, “Worms eat food scraps, which become compost as they pass through the worm’s body. Compost exits the worm through its’ tail end. This compost can then be used to grow plants. To understand why vermicompost is good for plants, remember that the worms are eating nutrient-rich fruit and vegetable scraps, and turning them into nutrient-rich compost.”[xii] Reason enough? Good, because even if it isn’t, with the other reasons it should be, I think.

So consider a combination of chopped wool bits from the clothing, hot composted, and with earth worms to boot. You’ll have that wool composted in no time! And it’ll be ready for fertilizing, too, very likely nutrient-rich. And if any questions, check out the endnotes!

[i] alderandash. (2012, July 11). Composting Woo.

[ii] Mind Your Waste. (2012, March).

[iii] Fisk, U. (2011, November 7). Is Fabric Compostable?.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Hearts. (n.d.). Surprisingly Compostable Textiles.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Deep Green Permaculture. (n.d.). Hot Composting – Composting in 18 Days.

[viii] Bement, L. (n.d.). Hot Composting vs. Cold Composting. Retrieved from Fine gardening

[ix] Government of New Brunswick. (2016). Building A Hot Compost.

[x] Savonen, C. (2003, February 19). How to encourage a hot compost pile. Retrieved from Oregon State

[xi] Fong, J. & Hewitt, P. (1996). Worm Composting Basics.

[xii] Ibid.

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2022-03-27

International Women’s Rights, Farming, and Natural Fibres

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/04/25

International Women’s Rights are, not-so surprisingly, knitted together, intimately, with natural fibres in terms of harvesting and general farming. How is this so?

Well, this, as well, needs a little background with respect to the international community because women’s rights are not limited by national boundaries. It’s international after all. And natural fibres were important enough to devote an entire year to, through a United Nations Organ, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.[i]

How does the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations self-define?

Our three main goals are: the eradication of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition; the elimination of poverty and the driving forward of economic and social progress for all; and, the sustainable management and utilization of natural resources, including land, water, air, climate and genetic resources for the benefit of present and future generations.[ii]

Right there, you have an alignment with Trusted Clothes: ethical and sustainable. A part of this connects to the component relevant to us, and our mission – clothing, especially natural fibre-based clothing.

Take into account, we do not exist in a vacuum. Our lovely, and wonderful, writers, more formal, (bloggers, more informal,) come from all over the world, and that reflects the international character of the explicit calls for provisions for women and for the desire for natural fibre materials for clothing and other productions.

For instance, every year “farmers harvest around 35 million tonnes of natural fibres from a wide range of plants and animals – from sheep, rabbits, goats, camels and alpacas, from cotton bolls, abaca and sisal leaves and coconut husks, and from the stalks of jute, hemp, flax and ramie plants.”[iii] That’s a lot of natural fibre, and many, many sources for its harvest.

How does this tie into the United Nations? It’s Charter. Chapter I, Article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations states:

To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion [iv]

And some of the economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian items of interest relate to things like manufacture and production of materials for clothes and other things. That includes synthetic fibres, and natural fibres. How much?

There are “10 million people in the cotton sector in West and Central Africa, 4 million small-scale jute farmers in Bangladesh and India, one million silk industry workers in China, and 120 000 alpaca herding families in the Andes.”[v] Okay, so we have the major organization, our organization, the UN, and statistics on the number of workers, so what?

Many of these workers are women and, in fact, are as efficient as the men, but do not achieve the same yield rate for the output. That sounds like a paradox, or something contradictory. As it turns out, the reason is not innate or anything like that; rather, it is the amount of resources given to the women in these contexts that limits their yield.[vi] And this connects to international women’s rights how?

International women’s rights become relevant here because no major discernible difference in farming ability from biology, but from provision for production based on sex. In short, environment not biology. That’s the fundamental character of “in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character.”[vii] So, we have to work together, directly or indirectly, for the solution to this inequity.

Even further, Men and women in Agriculture: Closing the gap states:

The most thorough studies also attempt to assess whether these differences are caused by difference in input use, such as improved seeds, fertilizers and tools, or other factors such as access to extension services and education. And the vast majority of this literature confirms that women are just as efficient as men. They simply do not have access to the same inputs, productive resources and services.[viii]

Furthermore, and according to the same authoritative source, women can comprise as much as 70% of agriculture, in Southeast Asia, to as little as 20%, in Latin America, with an average of 43% of the total agricultural workforce in developing countries.[ix]

So we have the United Nations Charter, the Food and Agriculture Organization for the United Nations, Trusted Clothes, millions of workers and so millions of consumers, natural fibres, and women as productive as men but with less yield and lower employment rates. Take at once, this means something quite simple. Women aren’t being included as equally as they could be included in this economic and productivity area, and we’re bound internationally to help out. And there’s a huge industry, and therefore demand, for natural fibres; and that means the concomitant labor as well.

[i] Food and Agriculture Organization for the United Nations. (2009). Natural Fibre. Retrieved from natural fibres.

[ii] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2016). About FAO. Retrieved from fao.org.

[iii] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2009). Retrieved from natural fibres.

[iv] United Nations. (n.d.). Chapter I. Retrieved from UN.org

[v] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2009). Why Natural Fibres?. Retrieved fromnatural fibres.

[vi] The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2009). Why Natural Fibers?: A Responsible Choice. Retrieved from natural fibres.

[vii] United Nations. (n.d.). Chapter I. Retrieved from UN.org

[viii] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (n.d.). Men and women in agriculture: closing the gap. Retrieved from fao.org

[ix] Ibid.

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2022-03-27

Ask A Genius 10 – The Future of Money

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016

What is the future of money, of finance?

Money as an abstract entity made world trade possible by replacing barter. So, you have some means of containing value. Even if you want to buy something, but don’t have the specific item that the guy wants who is buying something from you, you can have a trade. All transactions become possible.

Since money is abstract, it is flexible and has held up, even with more rapid transactions and more world-spanning finance ongoing. The pace of financial change will keep accelerating like everything else. It will force drastic changes in how value is stored and companies are financed.

One problem that I see that will become more and more of a problem, and will require shifts in how things are done, is that companies that trade in abstract products like media companies may go through their business cycle of ‘boom-and-bust’ faster than the thing can be turned into securities on the stock market.

There’ll still be traditional stores of value like land. There will be oil, applications for oil, even as the world moves away from an oil economy into other means of generating energy. The financial markets may start moving too fast for traditional means of valuing products and companies.

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2022-03-27

Ask A Genius 9 – The Future of Popular Culture

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016

What about popular cultures in the future? What will happen to celebrities in this future world?

What you’ve seen scripted and on reality TV shows is an opening of all aspects of life to portrayal in the media starting under JFK in the early 60s, it was known to the news media that he was banging a bunch of different people or he had banged some people from time-to-time.

They kept it all quiet. Then Gary Hart, a presidential candidate in the 90s. He was the first guy to get nailed with an affair. Now, when you turn on TV, on ABC match game, there was an implied gay sex joke involving a 10-inch penis. When I was watching TV with my wife, I am amazed at what is part of public discourse.

According to some of the science fiction I read, more and more convincing, Oscar-winning, performances may involve actual sex. Chloe Sevigny in a movie called The Brown Bunny actually blew her director and co-star on camera. She’s still a respected actress. This was part of the performance.

She had an actual penis in her mouth. There was a director named Michael Winterbottom, who is a respected and legitimate director who directed a movie called Nine Songs, where the characters had actual sex on camera and it was part of the story. It wasn’t a good movie or involving story.

However, the trend will be to include everything. Respected actors will have close-to-sex on camera if the story requires it, or if somebody thinks that movie can make another few tens of millions of bucks by throwing that stuff into it. You’ll have Boyhood and Dazed and Confused with people actually growing up over many years.

Eventually, somebody will win an Oscar by playing out their disease on camera. Imagine a Meryl Streep in 12 years comes down with some disease, that’ll take two years to kill her. Somebody would come up with a pitch for her if that was public knowledge.

Media will become more and more inclusive of all aspects of life. It will become more and more intrusive. More and more people will be hooked up to cameras all the time, the way millions of people have blogs now. A million or ten million people will have their lives available to be observed all of the time.

The thing is, TV and the internet are going to emerge into one entertainment hub. People will have their lives examined hosts and purported experts.

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2022-03-27

Ask A Genius 8 – Science Fiction as Science Fact 2

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016

What’s the middle-of-the-road view about the future?

There’s a couple of things. World War II ended in 1945, which was 71 years ago. People might have the idea that we’ve reached the end of large wars. However, if you look back into history, somebody did a study and the average period between large international conflicts that suck in entire continents is 150 years.

So, we’re not beating any international records in not having a large international conflicts. To the Americans, the early part of the 21st century has looked back. We had 9/11. The Afghanistan War is the longest in US history. We had the Iraq War and its aftermath. None of those things are ending clean or particularly optimistically.

However, if you look at the casualties, Iraq and Afghanistan killed fewer than 5,000 Americans compared to Vietnam that killed 50,000. World Wars killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Even though, things look dire. The actual net effect on Americans as a statistical whole hasn’t been that miserable, except if you’re looking at things like unemployment.

It is tough to blame our wars entirely for the employment problems that we’ve had. Things look terrible because awful stuff that happens in the Middle East that doesn’t affect that many Americans. Because things haven’t been terrible in truth doesn’t mean they can’t be terrible.

The 20th century was much more terrible in terms of mass death compared to the 21st century. World War I, tens of millions of deaths; Flu Epidemic in 1919, tens of millions of deaths; World War Ii, tens of millions of deaths; Chairman Mao, millions of deaths; Stalin, millions of deaths; we haven’t had that in the 21st century, but could have it.

What if somebody decides to bioengineer something terrible? You could have an epidemic that results in tens of millions of deaths. We haven’t had terrible stuff happen so far. However, looking at history, we won’t get out of the 21st century without some terrible stuff.

It might be a lot of regional wars because of climate change migration, population pressures, and migration, and so on. We’re at 7.3 billion people now. At the end of the century, we’re probably going to be pushing 11 million, and mostly in developing countries. That will put pressure on food production and land ownership.

The bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it’s easier to attach nuclear materials onto traditional explosive, and then send that into a city and make much of the city radioactive. That would freak out the world. It’s technologically easy. You need the material.

You have to be able to get into a city. Terrorists have shown the ability to get into Western cities. They could set one off and kill many people. The 21st century looks like it might have some scary stuff happening.

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2022-03-27

Ask A Genius 7 – Science Fiction as Science Fact

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016

There’s science fiction turning into science fact. What things that are science fiction might become science fact?

Gender fluidity, I assume gender roles will continue to be less important. There will continue to be more gender fluidity based on individual decisions and these will be helped along by future medicine that makes such fluidity somewhat easier. Perhaps, somewhat more reversible; back in the 80s, I had the chance to make out with a trans person.

They were very attractive, but I freaked out. I couldn’t help the lump of flesh in that person’s pants. However, if I were 25 again, and I had a similar opportunity, I’d probably make out with that attractive trans person. I think that the overall zeitgeist is pushing in that direction and that medical technology will be increasingly helpful in that direction.

However, it will take a while. It’s not that you will take a pill and your penis will turn into a vagina. That’s one thing. Another thing will be a more pervasive loss of privacy. Equipment that will track movement, whether cameras or social media stuff. It will shift stuff that keep track of who is around and who has gone where.

That stuff will be more and more pervasive. People will have no expectation of moment-to-moment privacy in their lives. If people want privacy, they will have to explicitly set up safeguards for whatever periods of time they need higher levels of privacy. Neither of those things are invention-based science fiction things.

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2022-03-27

Ask A Genius 6 – The Middle Road of the Future

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016

What’s the middle-of-the-road view about the future?

There’s a couple of things. World War II ended in 1945, which was 71 years ago. People might have the idea that we’ve reached the end of large wars. However, if you look back into history, somebody did a study, and the average period between large international conflicts that suck in entire continents is 150 years.

So, we’re not beating any international records in not having large international conflicts. To the Americans, the early part of the 21st century has looked bad. We had 9/11. The Afghanistan War is the longest in US history. We had the Iraq War and its aftermath. None of those things are ending clean or particularly optimistically.

It is tough to blame our wars entirely for the employment problems that we’ve had. Things look terrible because awful stuff that happens in the Middle East doesn’t affect that many Americans. Because things haven’t been terrible in truth doesn’t mean they can’t be terrible.

The 20th century was much more terrible in terms of mass death compared to the 21st century. World War I had tens of millions of deaths. The Flu Epidemic in 1919 had tens of millions of deaths. World War II had tens of millions of deaths. Chairman Mao killed millions of people. Stalin killed millions of people. We haven’t had that in the 21st century, but could have it.

It might be a lot of regional wars because of climate change migration, population pressures, migration, and so on. We’re at 7.3 billion people now. At the end of the century, we’re probably going to be pushing 11 billion, and mostly in developing countries. That will put pressure on food production and land ownership.

It might push regions into war. Regional conflicts could coalesce into larger conflicts. Some groups say the odds of a terrorist group setting off a dirty bomb aren’t that low. It’s hard to set off a nuke that acts like a nuke. That does nuclear fission. The bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But it’s easier to attach nuclear materials onto traditional explosives, and then send that into a city and make much of the city radioactive. That would freak out the world. It’s technologically easy. You need the material.

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2022-03-26

A How-To on Composting Your Clothes

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/04/21

Can you compost your old clothes? It turns out that you can do it, but it takes a little work and the right kind of materials. And it depends on your degree of fussiness as well. It needs some background, though.

For example, the EPA showed that, in 2012, 14.3 million tons of textiles were produced by the United States. 2.3 million of that 14.3 million were recovered (a difference of 12 million tons!) and not all of the recovered textiles were reused. So what’s the major division? There’s two major divisions in material: synthetic and natural fibre. Synthetic will not decompose. Natural fibres will decompose.

The synthetic fibres include acrylic yarn, microfiber fleeces, and polyester/nylon fabrics. These will bog down the compost heap without decomposition. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of natural fibre options.

For example, cotton, hemp, linen, pure wool, ramie, or silk will compost over a sufficient amount of time. The reason being that they aren’t some easily broken down toilet paper. They have a durability, which makes them good clothes. It will take time, but they do decompose. In fact, any combination of them will decompose, too.

Some exceptions are cotton t-shirts or jeans. They claim 100% natural fibre material, but this might not be true. It could be, for instance, polyester cotton, which does not break down as easily. You could have the compost heap, plus some not-so decomposed strings.

You can speed up the process by giving more points of contact, that is, ripping them to shreds and then waiting for them to decompose. What about admixtures? That’s a good question. It’s about ratios and kinds of materials.

If more synthetic than natural fibre, then it’s not going to decompose as much. If more natural fibre than synthetic, then it’s going to decompose more than if the ratio was reversed. It’ll depend on how finicky you are, basically.

There’s other consideration to do with not composting stained clothes, depending on what was used to stain it. Don’t compost clothes stained with paint or engine oil, do you want those in your compost heap? Nope.

Next consideration, what about the eventual compost material used for vegetables, growing them. Dry cleaned natural fibres might be an issue and heavy prints, there could be some contamination there.

This extends to slogans, designs, aspects of weaves, fabrics that have been soaked. PVC ink could be printed on them too. PVC plastics will not break down. A further note dependent on the individual level of fussiness about these parts of the decomposing planning stage, and eventual process.

Something that can also help with the breakdown of the natural fibres, because you wouldn’t use synthetics, are adding vegetable or fruit peelings, cuts from the garden, and other wet and more easily compostable items. And keep the natural fibre content to ¼ of the pile, and no more!

And while we’re on the subject of composting and sustainability, try reusing your old clothes, or give them to others to borrow (or even have!). Charities are always in need, and the recipients of the clothes would be absolutely grateful. You can do crafts with it. But, of course, you can always, as in line with some of the information given above, compost the clothes!

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2022-03-26

Brewmaster and the VR Experience in Gaming

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): TrendBT

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

Some games are so good that you cannot ignore them. They become immersive and entertaining they feel good. They look sleek.

They draw attention into the game itself through sheer excellence. Apparently, to some reportage, one such game is called Brewmaster. It provides the full VR experience for, well, brewing. The players make gestures, nudges, and movements for the VR experience. Those act as commands for inside of the game.

As reported, “Dungeon Brewmaster is an early access virtual reality game available on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. It’s a clever riff on the job simulator genre that tasks players with concocting potions and poisons to satisfy the clientele of a working dungeon.”

The brewmasters – so to speak – or brewnovices will take their virtual reality headsets and have their avatar take their movements in line with their own. They will work to become a bartender for the customers in the story.

“Gameplay unfolds through the use of gestures and movement. Players will, for example, hold a wriggly worm creature in one hand and slice its head off using a virtual knife or pour the contents of a liquid vial into a simmering pan,” the article stated, “It’s all very intuitive and there wasn’t any learning curve in figuring out how to interact with the tools and ingredients at hand.”

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2022-03-26

New VR Experience with Christina Ricci and John Cusack

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): TrendBT

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

Deadline reported, “Two companies — Minds Eye Entertainment and Sky VR — have produced a scripted, live-action 360 cinematic VR experience tied to the release of the Christina Ricci and John Cusack film Distorted.”

The film will be available in VR. That is amazing. It is really cool that this is a possibility, even now. The questions may emerge about the ways in which this plays out into the future for the movie industry. But for this movie, it is quite interesting.

A VR producer, Travis Cloyd, of the film stated, “Sometimes it’s a challenge. You do have to hide the crew because the audience can see everything and everywhere… You have to make sure everyone is hidden so we have people hiding behind walls and whatever our natural sets allow.”

There was a live-action portion filmed and directed by Rob King. Then actors re-shot the VR camera with further dialogue. It seems like an integration process of the technologies together.

Well, first off, the VR portion was shot immediately after director Rob King filmed the live-action portion. The actors, which also included Brendan Fletcher, then re-shot for the VR camera and with more dialogue. Now, it is not very long. “Distorted Reality is a 10-minute film that is going to be distributed through OneTouch VR on Google Daydream, Oculus Go and Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, and iOs. It will also be available in stereo 3D on various platforms like the Littlstar app on Sony’s’ Playstation VR,” the report said.

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2022-03-26

Reduction of Children’s Fears with VR

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): TrendBT

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

Pediatrician, or those doctors who work with children, have been looking for ways in which to have children get immunizations. Outside of the concerns of people against vaccinations, the children can cry and scream to not have them.

It makes immunizations and other things difficult for the doctors having to work with the parents and the children when the child is having a tantrum. The fear of needles and so immunizations and vaccinations via needles are a common thing for kids.

Eureka Alert reported, “A pediatrician has come up with an innovative solution to distract children from their fear, anxiety and pain using a virtual reality headset. He is the first to conduct a pilot study, published in the journal Pain Management, using this technique in a pediatric setting.”

There was research into humans having the capacity for limited attention and if distracted then pain will not register as much pain in them. They will feel less pain because of the distraction.

“To date, no studies have looked at virtual reality distraction during pediatric immunizations, so Rudnick decided to put his theory to the test working with two pre med students and co-authors of the study, Emaan Sulaiman and Jillian Orden, in FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science,” the article stated.

The study looked at the efficiency, feasibility, and usefulness. As it turns out, the VR headsets helped with the reduction of fear and pain for the pediatric patients getting the regular immunization shots. The participants in the research ranged in age from 6 to 17.

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2022-03-26

Global Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market VR

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): TrendBT

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

It was reported that there will be “vast benefits of Global Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market processes and operations.”

These potential large-scale benefits have been impacting companies in the healthcare sector as the conventional and manual devices continue to give way to the efficient, software solutions. The established players and the new competitors are part and parcel of this market.

This makes for a change in the types of the classifications in the market. If you follow the link, then you will find information about the improvements in the applications, classifications, segmentations, and specifications for the virtual reality market around the world.

Healthcare may turn virtual more into the future. Companies are looking into it. They are also developing other companies that build reports to help in this marketplace as it grows into the future.

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2022-03-26

AR and VR for the Workforce

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): TrendBT

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

Forbes reported on the future of AR and VR for the training of the workforce. It will help with the future of the workforce through the development of training systems for the managers to use in line with the employees. It has been characterized as same simulations.

It does not involve some of the risks involved in some training. “The demand for AR and VR in corporate training has caused a dramatic increase in the global market. Statistics show market growth is now projected to reach $2.8 billion by 2023,” the article stated.

The top five benefits for professional development via training with AR and VR are listed by the article author as follows:

1. They make training more innovative and enjoyable.

2. They create experiences that are impossible in any other form of training. 3. They teach through practical simulation rather than theoretical concepts.

4. They offer a practice playground that encourages users to learn from their mistakes.

5. They encourage employees to explore at their own pace and in their own style.

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2022-03-26

Anne Frank Gone Virtual

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): TrendBT

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/13

Recent reportage talked about the time for the utilization of the modern virtual reality technology in order to view the Holocaust victim Anne Frank’s home.

Apparently, the view is available on Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR for the Anne Frank House VR. The virtual reality exhibition takes those who view the place on a trip into the Secret Annex. It is a “photorealistic detail” of the place.

The house where Frank with parents and sister stayed in hiding between 1942 and 1944.

The article stated, “The 25-minute experience explores all of the hideout’s rooms, which are furnished in the style of the times. The actual Secret Annex is empty now, but the VR furnishings help to give a sense of what it was like for the occupants to live there.”

It will launch with the foundation of the Anne Frank House Museum housed in Amsterdam, Netherlands (Holland). The experience will come inside of two other locations including New York, United States and Berlin, Germany.

All of this will unroll later in the year.

“Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most widely read books in the world, and the Anne Frank House Museum draws in over 1 million visitors per year. Frank died in a concentration camp after Nazis raided the Secret Annex and arrested its occupants in 1944,” the article states.

Furthermore, the Develop of Strategy for Oculus, Tina Tran, opined, “One of the most promising and important uses of VR is how it can help us see history and current events from a whole new perspective that is more immersive and powerful than any other medium.”

Duly note, the Anne Frank House VR will be free from the Oculus Store. It will provide an important experience for those who wish to see a piece of crucial history in the Holocaust.

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2022-03-26

Parisian Graduate Students Using VR to Reduce Pain

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): TrendBT

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/12

A bunch of graduate students in France started the “Healthy Mind” initiative to create a VR product to help people who suffer from the pain.

The basic idea comes from the intent to reduce the pain felt by people through distraction in a VR environment. The head of the emergency department at the Saint-Joseph Hospital, Olivier Ganansia, talked about the possibility for the patients to use the technology to distract from pain and anxiety while being treated in the emergency room.

With 20 or more years behind the doctors and the researchers who tests the VR equipment and software, this helps change some of the means by which some facets of healthcare get delivered to patients.

The important point about this particular case comes from the help in the emergency care area. Some are looking to this VR technology as an alternative to the prescription medications some people receive, especially with the opioid crisis ongoing.

The report stated, “One of the leaders of the project, Reda Khouadra, told Reuters that patients put on a pair of VR goggles and are taken to a faraway land while undergoing procedures ranging from stitches, to burn treatment and joint dislocations. Researchers have already found that patients have a higher pain tolerance when using the VR.”

The offer in the VR for pain and anxiety is a guided tour with some interactive options and music. Some have the opportunity to virtually pain and solve puzzles. The Healthy Mind initiative won about $20,000 from the one university in Australia.

The people behind the initiative will be meeting representatives of Microsoft in Seattle soon based on the success of their early products. This type of utility in VR is not something wholly new.

It has been used to take out teeth by dentists, to do tooth extraction. Some have seen noticeable reductions in pain. The researchers, who are from the United Kingdom, wrote some descriptions of their positive research findings.

They stated, “Our research supports the previous positive findings of VR distraction in acute pain management, and suggests that VR nature can be used in combination with traditional [medication].” Howard Rose and Hunter Hoffman work in the bringing in of VR software and equipment into healthcare. Some see help with the phobias and psychological disorders. Hoffman has stated, “Acute pain is a perfect match for VR. You only need it for 20 minutes and it has drastic effects. If you say, ‘go home and meditate,’ not many patients will follow through… But if you give them a VR system and say ‘go into this ancient world and meditate with monks,’ they’re more likely to actually do it.”

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2022-03-25

Ulster University Rekindling Old Buildings with Virtual Reality

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): TrendBT

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

Ulster University’s own Dr. Joan Condell explained the ways in which museums are going virtual. The university, among others, is involved in an international effort to create a virtual reality or VR environment for the Irish tourist sector.

The report stated, “Managed by Museum Nord, the €2m CINE project has nine full academic partners across Norway, Iceland, the UK and Ireland, funded by the Interreg Northern Periphery Programme.”

Condell talked about the use of VR and augmented reality of AR to sustain and protect the cultural and national heritage. The idea is to help, in part, protect the culture as well as increase the numbers of people who visit the museums.

Condell opined, “Museums are struggling with lowering visitor rates; they constantly have to redo their sales pitch.” One potential solution is to digitize the museum experience. Condell et al will work with the Donegal County Council.

The academic teams working on these AR and VR museum projects will develop interactive exhibitions in the museums.

“In addition, VR could be used to repatriate artefacts from bigger museums,” Condell said, “There may be an artefact in the British Museum, for instance, that originated in Donegal. Visitors to Donegal could see an immersive AR piece; you see and experience it like the object is in front of you, when it really isn’t.”

The initiatives equate to ways in which to bring people together. However, these need to remain realistic.

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2022-03-25

Preface

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): TrendBT

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018

In reflection on the nature of the scientific discoveries and then the engineering manifestations and technological implementations of the discoveries from science, the orientation throughout much of the scientific historical record remains the purposes and delights of human beings, even the miseries and pains.

With the modern technological waves with the replication of aspects of human intelligence placed in digital substrates and the work towards automation of human drudgery and, at times, creativity, the growth and breadth of human possibilities becomes even greater than at any other time in the history of the world.

We can develop a newfound sense of directions for human possibilities. One of those manifestations is in the increase potency in the not only the quality of potentialities before us but also in the ways to realize what we have in our minds onto the virtual world. A digital representation of our imaginations becoming ever-more real by the year.

With the improvements in the cost-access and efficiency of processing of computers now, we can see the development of a series of new media to help manifest our imaginary landscape. That technology comes in two forms, and others. The interest of TrendBT is an emphasis on the nature of the future technologies and the upcoming, and ongoing, developments in technologies of virtual and augmented reality.

The two technologies relevant for the young adult Millennial population are virtual reality, VR, and augmented reality, AR. The contents of this text amount to the news and educational items from TrendBT meant for furthering not only knowledge of but also the educational content relevant to AR and VR.

Both AR and VR represent novel developments for the technological progress of humankind with applications barely even tapped and only part of the science fiction future of decades prior. Now, even though things can be grubbier because they are manifested in the real world, we live in the science fiction future prior generations dreamed about, of which we can see the new span of possibilities from a higher plateau.

The “what” of “what will come of AR and VR and associated technologies?” like most things with technology will depend on individual human choices for how to best use them for human purposes. As with any technology at present and throughout human history, the purposes of the technology were built around the options and conveniences that these provided for human wants and desires.

The same holds true now. The main question that follows from this need for furtherance of the discussion on AR and VR is what we want to do with this newfound technology and how we want to build them around human wants and desires. Something like a Utilitarian ethic found in John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill would help quite a lot in guiding the purposes of the technologies for the needs and whims of human beings.

Those that expand human horizons and do not limit them. The means by which all human beings can increase their emotional and cognitive reach beyond the mundane, so that the future generations only children now could realize that greater vision of possibilities that

are only in our dreams now, in our imaginative landscape. One which is very different from the prior generations’ imaginative landscape.

The idea of the creation of an entirely new visual and tactile landscape to even elicit real human passions and emotions, sensations, to mimic, in real-time, the movements of the human body and the nuances of the human face such as a grimace, disdain, a smile, joy, and perplexity was completely beyond the imaginations of those who have gone before us.

It gives us a tremendous power and capacity to change our vision of the future in a conscious way. Some are already realizing this and working to develop a human-friendly future with the positive and well-being increasing use of artificial intelligence. It is the same orientation of moral outlook.

How is this going to optimize wellbeing for as many people as possible? How will an expanded vision of human possibility build into this ethical framework? What will most efficaciously bring this about for our shared future, as the geographical landscape of the world continues to close and become tighter in terms of the length of time that both physical bodies and communications between two points is reduced?

Multiply that increase in spatial and informational efficiency over the total and increasing number of people in the world. You can then develop an idea of the power of technology now compared to the past, and the present to any of a number of possible futures.

TrendBT is doing its part in informing some of the current young population in order to produce some serious thinking about the possible positive futures for AR and VR technologies, e.g. entertainment, training of medical professionals, virtual dancing lessons, and so on.

As what prior generations did the to set the groundwork for our present, we too are setting the precedent for the future world now, where this will take us depends on what we do now. Education is always a part of that process, for a shared positive future.

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2022-03-25

Ask A Genius 5 – Repressive Takeover

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016

Let’s take the opposite view, let’s say Western countries tend to be more free and democratic, etc, people can do more here. With greater science and technology, we have power. That can be a positive thing for general human flourishing and expansion of possibilities. What if it doesn’t happen here and happens in repressive areas?

More of this is inevitable, more than people think. Along with the inevitability of tech, there are a lot of large-scale projects that are tech projects. Every big movie involves like a thousand people working on them. In the future, it will be mostly small-scale groups because the technology will allow small groups to do great stuff.

We already have individuals or small groups working together or on their own. Twitter helped take down dictatorial governments in the Middle East. Egypt fell a couple times. I don’t know its state now. It was individuals working on their own with technology thwarting the actions of larger groups.

Tech is small. Tech is as small as a thumb drive or a smart phone. So, you won’t be able to keep it out of repressive countries or repressive places. Developed countries will keep on being free. Although, privacy will increasingly erode. In England, there’s a camera on every street corner and various agencies, or algorithms, are looking for weird behaviour.

Things as trivial as people walking weird. That might betray some suspicious activity. People are going to have to get used to giving up a lot of privacy. Maybe, we’ll have islands of explicit privacy with the expectation of privacy most of the time. The general expectation will be that you only have privacy when you walk into your cone of silence.

When you explicitly set up your own privacy, public life will have almost no privacy. One reason we want America to survive is the values that it was revered and known for in the 20th and 21st century. They have been attacked by demagogues and A-holes in government that are willing to talk tough and act like jerks in the name of American safety.

I hope that demagoguery will be defeated. people can see it is preferable to go with the traditional American values of freedom, everyone having a shot, economic mobility, as opposed to sacrificing that stuff for some illusory safety based on terrorist incidents.

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2022-03-25

Ask A Genius 4 – The Future

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016

What will happen in the next 20-25 years?

One thing is the US will keep getting increasingly terrible for most of the 21st century. I think it’ll get better. In that, we’re talking in mid-August right now in 2016. The odds of Trump getting elected are low, like 1 in 8. If Hillary gets elected, and if she elects some Liberal Supreme Court Justices, then the government starts getting cleaned up.

That means polarization starts being reduced, slowly, and, maybe, the government starts functioning better, which makes it easier for the US to continue to be a place where tech flourishes. Government won’t save us, but government might eff things up.

Among the things under tech that start unfolding, or unfolding faster, are things like medicine. A lot of highly targeted therapies for cancer roll out. Overall, it’ll become less taboo to talk about anti-aging therapies in general. Medicine will become a lot more effective. Mortality will drop.

Food science may make it so that people can eat food that’s delicious, but isn’t as terrible for us. In developed countries, we might be able to see life expectancy continue to move up as obesity doesn’t drop that much. So, the developed nations will be over 90 for men and women.

A couple decades after that. It will be 100. For people that are conscientious, and have the resources to do so, it could go much, much higher into the middle of the 20th century. Other stuff, entertainment and information will be more directly piped into ourselves and out of ourselves.

Some wearables, Google Glass didn’t work because it creeped people out. We will come up with wearable computers. People will be even more connected to social networks than they are now, in more and more intimate ways.

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2022-03-25

Ask A Genius 3 – Superheroes: Our Last Hurrah

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016

There have been a lot of superhero movies as of late. What does this reflect in the larger culture? Does this somehow tie to the future?

One thing to have in good superhero movies is good special effects. It wasn’t possible to have great science fiction movies until Star Wars came out. It was able to deliver convincing and impressive science fiction special effects.

With CG and by spending $200,000,000, and having crews of 2,000 people produce a movie, it has become possible to make a convincing and entertaining movie of superheroes. There’s another thing that comes along with that.

You needed entertainment consumers that have seen enough action that they can actually follow the action in a superhero movie. If you took a viewer from the 70s, he would be completely baffled by the action in the current action movies because it’s so fast, so complicated, and a lot of these movies have 4-on-4 action.

You’ve got individuals in spaceships fighting individuals not in spaceships. There’s a lot of stuff going on. But beyond technical ability, and the educated and interested public, superhero movies represent some kind of ultimate end of what humans imagine for themselves.

The superness of super heroes is still highly human. They have all of these abilities. Yet, they are still completely concerned with human stuff like relationships. You can’t have Peter Parker without his angsty relationships with his Aunt May and he’s feeling bad about getting his uncle killed.

His relationships with Mary Jane Parker and Stacy, and whoever else he’s always got a thing going with – a girl. He’s got work problems. Superman spends most of the day as a human and with a bunch of hassles because he feels the need to be a part of human society.

Fantastic Four and X-Men, most of the time they are dealing with human issues such as relationships and trying to get power rather than fighting bad guys or trying to save the world. Superheroes, it’s similar to Greek and Roman gods. They have ultimate power.

All of the power was expressed in human contexts – having sex, feuding, having offspring, and what’s going to happen in the non-superhero world in the next 20-200, or 500, years is that we’re going to re-engineer ourselves.

We will add to our abilities to think, to our lifespans, and our ability to process information and network with each other. We’ll be able to change what our basic drives are when that suits us. The most ridiculous human drive in terms of messing up and making us do ridiculous things is the sex drive.

Where, what evolution wants for us is to reproduce, find the healthiest partners, partners that are best able to help make offspring and help offspring survive. Often, the drives to reproduce have helped make offspring. They make us go against what we want for ourselves as individuals.

We will have power over ourselves as individuals and over our drives. Huge numbers or percentages of the population will decide to not reproduce because if you can live indefinitely then you want to save resources for yourself. So, the entire human enterprise up until now in history.

You’re able to take the most twisted human in history and hypothesize motivations for that humans actions no matter how weird or horrible based on basic human drives – being resentful that you don’t fit in, wanting power, wanting sex, but the human enterprise is about to become all smeared in terms of drives and actions as we acquire the ability to mess with those drives.

Superhero movies represent our last hurrah for unadulterated basic human drives taken to their imaginary limits.

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2022-03-25

Ask A Genius 2 – The Next Two Years

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016

What will happen in the future – with AI, etc?

One thing that seems to be happening is that people are having somewhat less sex. There’s so much other stuff to do, so much stuff to occupy our attention, which makes sex run down from number one in the 70s to not the awesomest thing to do – to only in the top 10 awesomest things to do for a half hour.

The whole next century is going to be about our relationship with information. We love information. The human evolutionary strategy, our niche versus other animals is that we’re better at exploiting information. Dogs can go after smell information to find run-over squirrels.

Whereas, we use information to come up with theories of everything. A lot of these theories lead to new inventions, products. Over the next 20 years, we will come up with more effective ways to pipe information in and out of our heads. When you look at things that happened with TV, which went from 3 crappy channels to public TV to HBO and the rise of cable channels in the 80s and 90s.

Anything that you want whenever you want it, and close to thousands of entertainment purveyors now.

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2022-03-25

Ask A Genius 1 – Genius in Pop Culture

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016

You’ve noted a lot of geniuses in popular media, movies, and television. Recently, what’s the deal?

There have always been the kids that wore tennis shoes. Garry Coleman had the 200 IQ. There was Encyclopedia Brown. Now, there’s a flood of geniuses. I would guess that’s because the world is a fast-moving and fast-changing place. Geniuses somehow offer the possibility of making sense of the world, which makes sense in terms of who is selling us the genius.

On TV, it’s CBS, which, over the last 2 or 3 TV seasons, has had about 15 shows dealing with genius. You’ve got Limitless, where a guy takes a pill and becomes a genius. You’ve got Elementary. You’ve got Scorpion, which is a crew of geniuses. CBS used to be, and to a large extent still is, the murder network.

There are many shows about people getting killed. Every murder show has one genius detective or forensic expert. The Mentalist was a genius in his own genius way. CBS is also known for being the network that skews the oldest among viewers. If my theory’s right that people are nervous about how confusing the world is, old people would be even more confused.

They might welcome geniuses more. You have a TV genius explaining what’s going on. And it can be clearly explained by them, which can make older people feel smarter about the world. Also, geniuses have a hipster aspect to them.

Geniuses were nerds. Geniuses had no cachet. They were bullied. For the past 30 years, you’ve had growing numbers of software billionaire geniuses like Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, and others. Now, geniuses are cool. Maybe, CBS is thinking that they can hold the old people and grab the new people with the hipster geniuses.

Some other places include Ron Howard. He is making an Einstein biopic. If you look at the last two Oscar seasons, something like 6 out of 20 best actor or actress nominees portray geniuses. Cumberbatch being in Turing. Redmayne being Hawking. Keira Knightley being a girl genius who wanted to get with Hawking.

They’re all over the place.

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2022-03-25

Between Two Houses

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Voice Magazine (Athabasca University)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/03/18

The oil downturn and the future knowledge economy means our country has two houses so to speak. One housing the resource-based sector of the economy. Another housing the human capital sector of the economy. I consider both houses’ contents important.

But, I argue, we need a balanced economic plan for the next 5, 10, and 25 years; a plan that leans toward intellectual capital over resources in the long-term. AU can be the road between those houses through education. However, infrastructure for that road, for education, takes time and planning.

Take, for instance, the international trend toward the knowledge economy, which seems to show that national success in the future will require preparation and adaptation to the oncoming knowledge economy via education now (Tsaparis, 2014).

Education is an investment in the nation’s intellectual capital, which is the currency of the knowledge economy. But education takes time. So the next economy’s readiness, founded in education, will also take time.

And by time, I mean a decades-long progression of the relative weighting of the economy in favor of human capital over resources, beginning in the present. And AU, as Canada’s largest online postsecondary institution, seems like one major place to help the country’s transition into this economy of intellectual capital.

The pressure of this is even more intense with the recent economic downturn in Alberta due to oil prices. Furthermore, Alberta’s economic downturn is not isolated. For example, the resource or oil-based dip affected Manitoba as well as Newfoundland and Labrador too (Statistics Canada, 2016; Younglai, 2016).

Bear in mind that while It’s bad, It’s not the worst time for Alberta in its recent economic history. For instance, the current drop in Alberta’s economy is less than the 2008/09 economic dip, and even a bit higher than the 1990 one (Babad, 2016).

Furthermore, Alberta is not alone, because Ottawa has promised at least $250 million in monetary assistance (Varcoe, 2016). Why does this matter? It means we don’t need to panic, but we still need to prepare for the future economy.

Nationally, the economy is deeply interconnected. Big dips in the economic situation have provincial/territorial effects elsewhere in the economic system. So if all of the eggs are in one basket such as resources, then dips or rises in the economy cascade across sectors embedded in it. In other words, Alberta is in an economic dip based on oil, which reduces the economic success of other parts of Canada.

And to buffer the country from these dips in the future, education is the key to a balanced economy. We need to be transitioning into education because education is the access point to quality knowledge and training for this new economy.

AU, in part, can help Alberta, and Canada, rise into the future economy, the knowledge economy, in the long-term with greater reliance on resources in the short-term. To conclude, our strength is resources rather than human capital now.

Taken together, both houses mentioned at the outset, economies need to transition into cognitive work in the future because the next economy lies in knowledge and, therefore, education. AU resides at this juncture.

That is, AU is the road between resources and cognitive capital. A transit system from here, resource heavy, to there, human capital heavy. What we need now is for governments, at all levels, to recognize this, and to realize that funding AU is not a cost, not a drain on their resources, but rather an investment. A way to provide education to those of us for who traditional education does not work.

But they won’t realize until we make them. The road won’t be built without us telling our MLAs that it needs to be done. And if we hope to make the trip between houses, from resources to resourcefulness, they need to know, and soon.

References

Babad, M. (2016, February 2). Ontario’s new prosperity? vs. Alberta’s anguish: The disparity in 6 charts.
Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-business-stories/ontarios-new-prosperity-vs-albertas-anguish-the-disparity-in-6-charts/article28505453/?servi.ce=mobile.
Statistics Canada. (2016, February 5). Labour Force Survey, January 2016.
Retrieved from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/160205/dq160205a-eng.htmc.
Tsaparis, P. (2014, April 27). Canada must develop our knowledge economy.
Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/leadership-lab/canada-must-develop-our-knowledge-economy/article18229988/.
Varcoe, C. (2016, January 30). Ottawa mulls up to $250 million in aid for Alberta.
Retrieved from http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/ottawa-mulls-up-to-250-million-in-aid-for-alberta.
Younglai, R. (2016, January 31). Men in Alberta bearing brunt of economic downturn.
Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/men-in-alberta-bearing-brunt-of-economic-downturn/article28474273/.

A native British Columbian, Scott Douglas Jacobsen is an AU undergrad and AUSU Council Member. He researches in the Learning Analytics Research Group, Lifespan Cognition Psychology Lab, and IMAGe Psychology Lab, and with the UCI Ethics Center, and runs In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal and In-Sight Publishing.

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2022-03-25

Meeting the Minds – Dr. Lorelei Hanson, Part II

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Voice Magazine (Athabasca University)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/03/11

Dr. Lorelei Hanson has authored two environmental studies courses and two geography courses at AU. She currently tutors her courses ENVS 200 and ENVS 435, and coordinates those as well ENVS 361 and GLST 243. She took some time to speak with Scott Jacobsen about her work with AU and general outlook in a two-part interview.

At the World Economic Forum, Prime Minister Trudeau discussed transitioning from Canadian resources to Canadian resourcefulness; in other words, going from things such as hydrocarbons to things such as human capital, (i.e., education, skills, expertise, and so on.)

How do you think Canada will need to diversify, whether it be the economy or the environment?

It is very clear from us losing a social license that we need to pay more attention to our environmental performance. For a long time, environmentalists felt like their voices weren’t being heard but I think recent developments show that their role in scrutinizing our energy system has had an impact.

I think It’s also a number of different things converging at once. People are recognizing more and more the impacts of climate change and saying, “You know what, climate scientists are telling us we don’t have very long and we’ve got to do something different soon.”

Those factors are converging and drawing attention to Alberta. One result of this is Alberta having been given the label of producing “dirty oil,” and people saying “no” to Alberta’s current system of oil and gas development.

But we’ve got this valuable resource and there’s no way we will have a completely decarbonized economy in the next couple of decades, so the value of that resource will exist for some time. There’s just no way we can transition over night from our current dependence on oil and gas to another energy system.

But we still need to critically look at that energy system, be innovative, and envision something different for the future. We’ve got to move forward. We can’t rely on our old way of doing things.

With respect to Justin Trudeau I’d want to see him back up his words with some concrete policies and programs that will make a difference. We haven’t seen that yet.

It sounds good, but let’s see how he’s going to move forward and do something about improving our environmental performance in Canada.

At the same time, we have an economy in Alberta, and within Canada, absolutely dependent upon natural resource extraction, and so you have to somehow find a way to transition that economy so that You’re not having people’s lives be devastated in the meantime.

You can’t have a province like Alberta lose 10,000 jobs every month. That’s not sustainable; if we’re going to talk abut sustainability we have to include in that analysis social sustainability.

Also, there’s no one person that has the answer to how to build a more sustainable energy system in Canada, and so the federal government needs to put in place a process to harness and nurture innovation on and good ideas of how to transition Canada’s energy system to be more sustainable.

It is only when we work collaboratively that we will come up with some solutions that work in many contexts.

What are the relevant experts? recommendations or timelines for implementation of the recommendations to solve these challenges?

Right, as I said before, when we talk about an energy system, You’re necessarily talking about, what we’re calling in some academic and professional circles, “wicked issues.”

These are issues that are so complex, cross so many different sectors, and are characterized by indeterminacy in time and scale, uncertainty and interdependency, that they necessarily require collaborative discussion.

These are also emergent issues, so the solutions that we develop for the next couple of years are not the solutions we can apply in the next 15 years. This means that we can’t approach our energy and climate change problems using traditional approaches.

It won’t work to have a small group of experts getting together, framing the issue, and putting forth what they think is the solution. We also can’t apply a cost-benefit analysis to wicked problems.

The conditions we need to examine with respect to energy and climate are continually in flux, and we have to learn to become much more adaptive and collaborative in how we resolve these issues, and That’s why the Energy Futures Lab is set up how it is, as a social learning lab.

It is also why the EFL Support Team purposefully chose 40 individuals from across Alberta that represent diverse sectors. You not only have my environmental and academic voice, but you have voices from the oil and gas sector, renewable energy, indigenous communities, government and community groups.

The EFL conveners purposefully put together this diverse group because they know that we have to learn to find ways to find common values and work together to identify solutions that achieve those values. We can no longer work in siloes.

It is not that we don’t need expert knowledge, we certainly need expert knowledge, but it has to play a role within a much broader collaboration of reaching out and looking at how are these energy and climate change are impacting people and the non-human world differently across time and space.

It also means asking questions such as what are people willing to trade off in order to move forward and what education do we need?

If people start to really recognize and accept a different way doing things, a lot of innovation will arise. But we have such entrenched bureaucracies, processes, and timelines that it will not be easy. It means going against all of those things that we use as our standard measurement tools.

At the same time, we have never faced a situation like this, where we’re in such dire need of doing something different.

So I think the Energy Futures Lab, the people who put that together fundamentally believe that we can dramatically change the way we orient ourselves and go about our business of daily living. we’ll see, right? It is an experiment for sure and it will be interesting to see what will happen in the next 18 months.

What is the direction of this research with respect to AU, and its initiatives relevant to it, for 2016?

I’m a professor at AU and a citizen of Alberta, and energy is an issue of fundamental importance to me, Alberta, and the world. The results that come out of the Energy Futures Lab I hope will include innovations that have an impact.

Of course, that is always the research my colleagues at Athabasca University and at any other university are tying to do. We want to make a difference in the world.

That is why we’re teachers and researchers. And this is one of the most fundamental issues facing our times, and we desperately need to find new ways to address it.
Thank you for your time, Professor Hanson.

For more information

Alberta Climate Dialogue. http://www.albertaclimatedialogue.ca/.
Dr. Lorelei Hanson. Athabasca University, http://envs.athabascau.ca/faculty/lhanson/.
B.C.-Alberts Social Economy Research Alliance:http://www.socialeconomy-bcalberta.ca/.
Energy Futures Lab http://energyfutureslab.com
“Environmental research at Athabasca University will help create a new energy future for Alberta” Athabasca University News. http://news.athabascau.ca/news/environmental-research-at-athabasca-university-will-help-create-a-new-energy-future-for-alberta/.

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2022-03-25

Meeting the Minds – Interviews with AU’s Educators

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Voice Magazine (Athabasca University)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/03/04

Dr. Lorelei Hanson has authored two environmental studies courses and two geography courses at AU. She currently tutors her courses ENVS 200 and ENVS 435, and coordinates those as well ENVS 361 and GLST 243. She took some time to speak with Scott Jacobsen about her work with AU and general outlook in a two-part interview.

You are an Associate Professor and Academic Coordinator of Environmental Studies at Athabasca University and a Fellow of the Energy Futures Lab. In brief, what tasks and responsibilities come with the associate professorship for AU and the fellowship for EFL?

Like every academic across Canada I have three responsibilities: first, teaching; second, research; and third, community service. Teaching at Athabasca University includes tutoring and coordination. Coordination includes designing, updating, or revising courses, and, as a part of coordination, I also am developing a Bachelor of Arts degree in Environmental Studies.

As a Fellow of the Energy Futures Lab, I am expected to attend and actively participate in the in-person workshops. we’re also expected to develop and test out prototypes or innovations that will help us move to a new energy system. And finally I engage with people within my network around energy and the work of the EFL.

EFL comes from The Natural Step Canada supported by the Pembina Institute, Suncor Energy Foundation, the Banff Centre, and provincial government. Your expertise in “critical sustainability” seems relevant with respect to energy and climate change. Can you talk about that?

Critical sustainability is an analytical approach that starts from the premise that there are many definitions and uses of the term “sustainability” circulating, and each of those understandings offer quite different perspectives on and implications for both humanity and the non-human world.

So, critical sustainability is a lens of analysis that that can be applied to interrogate how is it that somebody is using the word sustainability, and what the implications of that are for how humans should interact with each other, as well as how we interact with and impact the non-human world.

As a professor of environmental studies and also an environmental and food activist, I bring that framework to my research and teaching, and how I think about what means to develop a more sustainable and resilient energy system.

How have your past research collaborations with the Alberta Climate Dialogue (ABCD) (Alberta Climate Dialogue, 2016) and the BC-Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance (BALTA) (BC-Alberts Social Economy Research Institute, 2016) influenced your work with the EFL?

Both ABCD and BATA are research projects that are winding down; we no longer have funding for these projects. Saying that, I am still actively involved with both of those networks. With respect to BALTA, we are developing a new research proposal on the role of social economy and social intermediaries in scaling up and down sustainability transition projects.

With respect to Alberta Climate Dialogue I am currently editing a book tentatively titled, Changing the Conversations on Climate Change: Using Public Deliberation to Address the Wicked Problems of our Time, which is a collection of essays that explore the tensions and the trade-offs that exist when you undertake deliberative engagement that addresses wicked issues like climate change.

I bring experience and knowledge about collaboration on issues like climate change and sustainability transition that I developed through my participation in ABCD and BALTA to the work I am now doing with the EFL.

What are Alberta’s, and Canada’s, major energy challenges?

One’s perspective on that question depends very much on who You’re talking to, right? In Alberta, those questions direct us to consider the current state of the economy and the extraction, production, use, sale, and transportation of energy.

When people respond to questions about Alberta’s major energy challenges they often mention that we have to do this in a responsible manner, or a sustainable manner. If we go back to that notion of critical sustainability, for me, the question to ask is who is going to define those terms?

From my perspective, and building from the collaborative work that I did with ABCD and as a member of BALTA, as well as that which I am now doing with the EFL, we want to step back and say, “It is not for one person to define what is Alberta or Canada’s major energy challenge.”

The best way for us a province to respond to that question is to have a much broader discussion that starts with talking about what are the values that we really hold dear within our province and how can we plan an energy system that would work in accordance with those values.

Of course it is even more complicated than that within Alberta, because we don’t get to plan that system all on our own; we work within the context of a larger energy system, both nationally as well as internationally.

So many of the key leverage points in the energy system we don’t have control over. Nonetheless, considering our energy future does demand that we start to look at how we can influence those leverage points.

I think even within the hydrocarbon industry, many of the players there would say that we’ve lost some of our social license to go ahead and do those things that we used to do, whether that is in terms of the extraction, production, or transportation of hydrocarbons; those industrial practices have all come up for criticism, debate, and scrutiny in a way that they hadn’t before.

As a result, we are now having to look more seriously at things like our environmental performance, both in terms of our greenhouse gas emissions, and our impacts on the landscape, such as the impact of bitumen extraction on water sources.

As well we are having to carefully consider how are we impacting communities, and not only within Alberta; it is very important for us to be looking at the impacts of our energy system on communities, particularly disadvantaged communities that have been negatively impacted by the energy development system we have supported and developed in the past.

How can we create a more stable energy system within Alberta, but also across Canada and the rest of the world?

Answering that question raises a whole bunch of issues around social license, greenhouse gases, climate change, and working collaboratively, not only within Alberta but across Canada and with our international partners.

Recently the mayors in Quebec publicly opposed the construction of the Energy East pipeline across Quebec, which says to me that we in Alberta have to pay more attention to building good relations and developing partnerships across Canada because we need to find new trading partners; we have had too much reliance on the United States and That’s gotten us into trouble.

But we need access to tidewater in order to transport our oil and gas to places other than the US. And as a part of that we need to look at how do we create a different energy mix. How do we de-carbonize our economy and allow for other forms of energy production and distribution? That all has to be a part of a discussion about Alberta’s energy future.

Those are very good points, especially the point about diversification of partnerships to create a robust and sustainable set of energy partnerships.

We cannot have dominance on one trading partner; we’ve done that for far too long.

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2022-03-25

Presidential Interview – AU’s Interim President, Peter MacKinnon, Part III

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Voice Magazine (Athabasca University)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/03/04

Scott D. Jacobsen managed to get some time with Athabasca University’s interim president Mr. Peter MacKinnon. Scott interviewed the president over a wide set of topics, and the result is this three-part interview that we’re happy to present in The Voice Magazine. This is the third part of the series, you might also enjoy the first and second parts.

Coming into 2016, what initiatives should members of the AU community expect in the spring, summer, fall, and winter seasons?

I think the initiative of a presidential search is the single most important initiative on our agenda for 2016. The committee which advises the Board of Governors on this search has been established. It is an excellent committee.

It has conducted consultations already in Athabasca, in Edmonton, in Calgary, faculty staff, with unions, with others, consultations in the community of Athabasca itself. It is very important for this university to identify and to appoint an excellent president.

You engaged with appellate cases in the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada. What have these kinds of experiences at the apogee of the Canadian law system taught you?

Humility, I always thought of it as important for law professors, which I was for 23 years of my life, it was important for you to be anchored, not just in the academy and our law schools, but to be anchored in professional work too.

So, I was licensed to practice law in two provinces: Ontario and Saskatchewan. I sought opportunities. There can’t be too many because you have full-time commitments, as well, to the university, which I did, but I always was on the lookout for opportunities which would broaden and deepen my understanding of law and the legal system.

This included opportunities to participate in cases. One of the first things taught to an individual is humility. You discover sometimes that your best arguments, and the best answers to questions of judges, you discover on the way home from the hearing. [Laughing]

So, the experiences enriched my capacity to teach law and to research in law. It also taught me how diverse the legal world is, and one should approach it with openness and humility.

You do have a literary background, co-editing three books and writing one. (The three co-edited books were After Meech Lake, Elected Boundaries: Legislatures, Courts and Electoral Values, as well as Citizenship, Diversity and Pluralism.)

Your solely authored book was University Leadership and Public Policy. In brief, in terms of themes what were some of the general ideas and arguments presented in these texts?

They were all different. After Meech Lake came out of a conference that I was involved in, and helped organize, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord back in the early 90s, so the goal there was to bring people together.

It was the first major conference after the collapse of the accord. It was to bring people together to talk about “What now?” for Canada given that the Meech lake Accord has not been accepted, and, of course, the book contains contributions of many outstanding Canadians to that discussion.

The second work reflected an interest that we had at the University of Saskatchewan. Both in the department of political science and in the college of law, that we had, in democracy and the meaning of the vote, and electoral boundaries.

How they are drawn, where they are drawn, what influences are at work have a very important effect on the status of the vote, and the effectiveness of the vote, and so, that was a big interest there.

Citizenship, Diversity and Pluralism was the third volume that grew out of a major conference. I was involved in it. It was from the perspective of the year close to 2,000. What does citizenship look like in a world of diversity and pluralism? What do we mean when we talk of citizenship? What are its common and unchanging attributes? What are its evolving attributes?

The fourth volume I wrote here. Looking back, when you are a university president you encounter so many fairly substantial public policy issues. Who should pay for post-secondary education? What should the relationships between universities and governments be? What should the relationships between universities and commercial influences be? How should we appoint our leaders? What should we expect of our leaders?

These are fundamental questions. They are fundamental in universities. They are fundamental public policy questions. And if you were a university president, as I was for 13 years, you have the opportunity to encounter these issues. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to reflect on them, and to write a book. So, those were the influences at work in those publications.

You were the Dean of Law at the University of Saskatchewan for 10 years too. What tasks and responsibilities come along with being the dean as opposed to a president?

A dean is a leader of a particular faculty. You are responsible for the arrangement and the oversight of particular faculty’s academic activities. So, when I was a dean at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Law, I had overall responsibility for ensuring that the college’s academic programs and activities were effectively undertaken.

You’re there. You’re on site. You are there with your faculty. You are there with your students. You participate in the program. Throughout my time as a dean, I taught two courses, and so you are on site, as it were, in the academic work of the college. That’s how I would describe the work of the dean.

In contrast, the president is working for the institution as a whole. You have a broader set of responsibilities. You have a more external role. The biggest difference, I would say, is that you are more distant from the day-to-day teaching and research activities that dominate your life as a professor, and even as a dean.

Your bio says that you were chair of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada from 2003-2005, served for five years on the Science, Technology and Innovation Council of Canada, and continues to serve on the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee on the Public Service; the Chief Justice of Canada’s Advisory Committee to the Canadian Judicial Council; the Board of the Council of Canadian Academies; the Board of the Canadian Stem Cell Foundation; the Board of the Global Institute for Food Security; the Board of Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, PEI; and as Chair of the Honours Advisory Council in Saskatchewan” (Athabasca University, 2014). This is a very, very broad sweep of both experience and stations.

In terms of the stations themselves, how does one go about acquiring these positions or these stations? Connected to that, what experience, and some of them were for many years, does each teach you?

It should first be said that all of these positions are unpaid positions. They are public service. They are opportunities to provide the service in a particular sphere on activity, and you do not apply for them so much as be open to them. Invitations come along the way.

And if you judge it to be something to which you can make a contribution, it is important that you, where you can, try to do so. So, I see all of these activities to which you have referred, I see them all as public service, and I see them as being areas that my background prepared me to help in.

Lastly, you earned the Officer of the Order of Canada, a Queen’s Council, a recipient of the Canadian Bar Association Distinguished. In addition, you have honorary degrees from Dalhousie, Victoria, U of IT, Queen’s, Memorial, and Regina universities.

Each of these, to have even a single honorary degree, would be enough renowned for someone to be appreciated by the community in addition to take that as a strong accomplishment. However, you have many of these in addition to others of similar or greater stature.

What does each of these, in particular, mean to you? How does this affect personal perspective on the nature of both honors and responsibilities to the community?

You certainly do not do what you do to acquire honors, but they do come along from time to time. And do you appreciate them? Yes. Do you enjoy them? Yes. So, it is nice when you are recognized for doing the work that you do.

That’s what they mean to me. And It’s really that. It is nice to be recognized, but do you not do the work to be recognized. But It’s nice when it comes along. And I have been fortunate in that respect.

Thank you for your time, President MacKinnon.

It’s been a pleasure, Scott.

References

[Athabasca U]. (2014, November 7). Peter MacKinnon – Interim President of Athabasca University.
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKC_kEPJB84.
Athabasca University. (2014, July 3). President’s Biography.
Retrieved from http://president.athabascau.ca/.
Athabasca University. (2015, June 1). The Future Is Now: Report of the Presidential Task Force on Sustainability.
Retrieved from http://www.aufa.ab.ca/uploads/1/3/9/9/13991368/2015-sustainability.pdf.A native British Columbian, Scott Douglas Jacobsen is an AU undergrad. He researches in the Learning Analytics Research Group, Lifespan Cognition Psychology Lab, and IMAGe Psychology Lab, and with the UCI Ethics Center.

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Presidential Interview – AU’s Interim President, Part II

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Voice Magazine (Athabasca University)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/02/26

Student Scott D. Jacobsen managed to get some time with Athabasca University’s interim president Mr. Peter MacKinnon. Scott interviewed him over a wide set of topics with the president, and the result is this three-part interview that we’re happy to present in The Voice Magazine. You can find the first part here.

Last year, what were some of the major events of 2015 for AU in research, celebrations, or general momentous occasions?

I always cite convocation. Convocation takes place over three days in June. Convocation is a special event at all universities. It has a particular flavor at Athabasca University, in part, because for so many it is the first time students have met faculty members and fellow students in person. They come together to celebrate over those three days. That it’s an open, online university makes a coming together particularly special.

I’ve said in many settings that, in, my academic life, I have attended well over 100 convocations. The convocations at Athabasca University are very special because they feature the individual stories of our graduates and the barriers that they had to overcome to undertake post-secondary education, and I find convocation the most memorable time of the year.

In a previous interview for the Voice, you were asked about the likelihood of a distance-based Law School (Tynes, 2015). What seems like the chances or odds of this at this point in time through AU?

Some excellent work has been done at Athabasca University, especially in terms of mapping how this could be done. We attracted some excellent support from the legal profession and within the university.

To mount a law program, you need support – not only of the university, not only of the community, but of the governance and the legal profession across the country. We are at work there too.

Insofar as AU aims to transition to a research-oriented post-secondary institution, graduate level research seems well-established with undergraduate research in continued development, for example, research groups and laboratories, what initiatives seem ’down the road’ for 2016 to assist in research at AU, especially with the international statements by Prime Minister Trudeau on the necessity for utilization by the international community of Canadian human capital or resourcefulness (The Canadian Press, 2016)?

I don’t see research and teaching as dichotomies. An essential part of the university experience is acquiring a capacity for inquiry, which is what research is all about. We expect academic personnel to be effective in teaching.

However, to be effective in university-level teaching, you need to have a capacity for further inquiry, which is what research is all about. So, in any university course there should be a merger between these two ideas: being taught and further inquiry. Research is part of the life-blood of the institution for all who work in its academic activities.

Something comes to mind. The phrases “lifelong learning” or “education for lifelong learning” seems to mirror the merger of standardized learning and research-based endeavors.
I would add to that, by the way.

In the context of lifelong learning, we sometimes in the university world have been captive to the language of job-ready teaching and graduates – preparation for the world beyond the university. Sometimes, we have overdone the idea.

I emphasize the language of work adaptability in lifelong learning, which may feature more than one – often several – jobs over the course of a working life. Job adaptability means an important creative capacity to adapt to different working circumstances. The university’s fundamental purpose of educating the critical faculties becomes salient.

The age of AU undergraduates in 2010-2011 at least, is around 28-29 and graduate students around 38-39. 2/3rds of which are women. In the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report, Canada ranks 30th out of 145, and in education, we are number one in the world in terms of that same index (World Economic Forum, 2015).

With Athabasca having 2/3rds of undergraduates and graduates combined as women it appears we’re reflective (more than the national or international average) of international women’s rights metrics, or gender gap rankings. How does online education affect possible attractiveness to women as opposed to men for presentation and accessibility of education?

Online education is important for all. We can reach into rural communities, into homes, into employment settings, and wherever people have interest in furthering their education. Maybe, and I emphasize the word “maybe” because I haven’t done the research that would be required, we have tapped into, in these years, a pent up demand for online education, which has seen a lot of women respond to the opportunity. Now, that is more speculation than evidence, but it is speculation that I would be interested in testing.

You were an undergraduate student, graduate student, and practitioner of law for 23 years. What advice seems relevant to undergraduate students, graduate students, and as those in, or about to head into, their professional life based upon graduation?

[Laughing] Let me respond to your question in this way, my life in university was a simpler life than the ones now. Other than in the summer, I did not have employment commitments during the school year. I did not have family commitments at the time. I remember my pathways as being relatively easy compared to today.

So, in that sense, it would be presumptuous for me to offer advice. What I would say to anyone in the world of education is to be open to the future, to the possibilities of the future, to embracing the different experiences that are afforded through education, and to take maximum advantage of the opportunities to learn, those will remain as fundamental to success in the future as they have been in the past.

You mentioned Nelson Mandela as a hero in a previous interview. Why him?

When you think about the 20th century, and you think the names that come to mind, the great names of the 20th century. What name? What person has overcome obstacles, has achieved mightily, and has done so in such a wonderful spirit of magnanimity? So, with Nelson Mandela, a quarter of a century or more as a prisoner, struggling against deeply entrenched inequality, being instrumental in overturning that inequality, and in setting an example, not of achievement alone, but an example of humanity that I think was unsurpassed in the 20th century, and that’s why I mentioned him.

What seems like something everyone, and another thing no one, knows about you?

Without violating my own privacy from that question [Laughing], I would say that’s a good question. What would nobody know about me? Probably, some of my closest friends would know this, but few would know what a devoted fan of baseball I am. I am a baseball enthusiast. I follow the game closely. And I love the game.

It was the only sport I played reasonably well as a young person. I was a poor hockey player. I was too small for football, or, at least, to play football well. And, when I was growing up, soccer was not a significant North American sport. I played baseball. I loved it. And I love it to this day, and not many people would know that.

References

Athabasca University. (n.d.). Facts and Statistics: Student Demographics 2010-11. Retrieved from http://www.athabascau.ca/aboutau/media/aufacts.php.
Tynes, B. (2015, July 31). Interview with Dr. Peter MacKinnon
AU’s Interim President. Retrieved from https://www.voicemagazine.org/search/searchdisplay.php?ART=10675.
World Economic Forum. (2015). Economies: Canada. Retrieved from http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2015/economies/#economy=CAN.
The Canadian Press. (2016, January 20). PM to Davos: ’Know Canadians for our resourcefulness’. Retrieved from http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/what-justin-trudeau-plans-to-tell-davos/.

A native British Columbian, Scott Douglas Jacobsen is an AU undergrad. He researches in the Learning Analytics Research Group, Lifespan Cognition Psychology Lab, and IMAGe Psychology Lab, and with the UCI Ethics Center.

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Trudeau, The World Economic Forum, & Athabasca University

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Voice Magazine (Athabasca University)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/02/26

Athabasca University (AU) is in line with the future of education and the future economy. The future of education credentials, knowledge, and skills. The future of the economy human capital with creativity, education, and experience.

Human capital investments are an issue for students coming out of university, and employers looking for suitable candidates or employees. A salient set of facts for fellow students on track to complete their education at AU when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau represented Canada at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland from January 20th to 23rd to talk about the future economy.

Trudeau’s attendance at international events gives the basis to plan and negotiate with other world leaders for the future economy, and to present the strengths of the Canadian economy. But if the future economy is based on education, then the future of education will be the future economy by implication.

In turn, plans made on a global platform with other nations influence the trajectory of Canadian provinces and territories, and their respective universities such as AU. The WEF gave the opportunity to express the strengths of the Canadian economy.

Trudeau spoke on the shift from weight given to Canadian resources and transitioning more into Canadian human capital, “My predecessor wanted you to know Canada for its resources. I want you to know Canadians for our resourcefulness.”

The WEF meeting was, in part, based on the new and ongoing industrial revolution, the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It builds on the previous industrial revolutions that used steam-, electric-, and information-based technologies.

It will increasingly incorporate cyber-physical systems. Trudeau’s statement described the shift in the Canadian economic landscape from natural resources, “Canada for its resources,” to human capital, “Canada for our resourcefulness.”

Canada remains the most educated, or credentialed, rather, population in the world (Grossman, 2012), and AU is the largest online provider of education in Canada. In other words, AU is the largest online human capital investment in the country.

Insofar as Canadian resources are concerned, the drop in oil prices has hurt the resource-based sector of the economy of Alberta, but not necessarily the human capital sector. Students, in general, express concerns about acquisition of work upon graduation from university.

Employers express concerns over potential workers with relevant qualifications coming out of university. AU could, and should, play an even greater role in this transition towards a more balanced mixed economy: resources and resourcefulness.

That is, AU should perform an important intermediary role in the future of education and, by implication, the future of the economy in filling the jobs (worker concerns) and skills (employer concerns) gaps with the rapid development of this knowledge economy.

Human capital will increasingly become our greatest strength in the province and the country, and the international marketplace. AU resides at this juncture, and Prime Minister Trudeau statements on the global stage align with AUs purposes in education and education’s connection to the economy.

References

Grossman, S. (2012, September 27). And the World’s Most Education Country Is?.
Retrieved from http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/27/and-the-worlds-most-educated-country-is/.

A native British Columbian, Scott Douglas Jacobsen is an AU undergrad. He researches in the Learning Analytics Research Group, Lifespan Cognition Psychology Lab, and IMAGe Psychology Lab, and with the UCI Ethics Center.

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Presidential Interview – AU’s Interim President, Part I

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Voice Magazine (Athabasca University)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/02/19

Scott: You hold a number of distinctions in terms of educational background, previous stations, and academic and national honors.

In 2014, you spoke on the honor to work for the advancement of the Athabasca University (AU) community, the benefits of online education in provision of education for those that would not otherwise have it, a personal hero in Nelson Mandela, the need for leadership to make vision practical and compelling, and preference for Starbucks, Star Trek, The Beatles, iPhone, and dogs in a previous video interview published online (Athabasca U, 2014).

You spoke on some general issues relevant to the AU community and to let individual members know you.

With some of this background, since arrival in AU as the Interim President, with respect to online education, what similarities and differences seem relevant for some comparisons to the traditional brick-and-mortar institutions?

President MacKinnon: The first differences coming into a position like this one would be the differences in the online university environment compared to more campus-based institutions. Those differences are profound. Here in this community, of the university’s more than 500 academic employees, faculty and tutors, fewer than 10 live in Athabasca.

Our students come here for convocation, and from time to time for some work on campus in laboratories, particularly, but you do not have the same day-to-day, face-to-face, contact with your faculty colleagues, and with your students.

The other difference and the one that, frankly, I prize most about being here is the mission of the university. For me, at least, in an increasingly online dominated world, the openness of Athabasca University is a profound and positive part of its existence.

We never close the doors on anyone! 78% of students tell us that without Athabasca University they either cannot access post-secondary education, or would have more than the usual difficulty in doing so.

Scott: In Davos, Switzerland, from January 20th to 23rd, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke on issues related to the economic impacts of Canada’s resources – wood, coal, and oil – and Canada’s resourcefulness sometimes called human capital.

Now, to relate this to previous statements, if students with the inability to attend a post-secondary institution can attend a post-secondary institution – based on the 78% you mentioned before, how important is Canada’s largest online provider of education to the Albertan and Canadian economies? Of course, the provincial economy embeds in the national economy.

President MacKinnon: That’s a great question. I have strongly believed since coming here that Athabasca University is an important national university as well as an important Campus Alberta university.

If you look at student body demographics, you see students come from every province in the country, and large numbers of them from outside the province. So, yes!

Athabasca University plays an important role, not in Alberta alone, but in the country. In terms of adding to the human capital or the resourcefulness of our population, this is an important university.

Scott: To continue the line of thought from the first question, based on the differences provided, what best exhibit the greatest strengths of online education?

President MacKinnon: A great strength is the reach. The fact is when you can reach into people’s communities, when you can reach into their homes, when you can reach them where they work, when you can reach them wherever it is that they are. Online education provides accessibility and improves and increases accessibility.

Scott: What were your objectives when you took on the interim role?

President MacKinnon: My goal was to certainly contribute in whatever way I could to advancing the mission of this university. When I arrived, it was clear to me that there were some sustainability issues. These are documented in full in the Presidential Task Force Report at Athabasca University (Athabasca University, 2015).

I wanted to put the issues of our sustainability on the record. They were discussed before by the way, long before I came here, but it was important to put them on the record in a disciplined way to be dealt with in a disciplined way. That has been my goal, and that continues to be my goal.

Scott: The Presidential Task Force Report at AU contained four possible options for the future of AU. In terms of the options for the future of the AU community, what seems like the most probable one (Athabasca University, 2015)?

President MacKinnon: Those options were not meant to be exhaustive, or a full list, but they were meant to challenge people to talk about them as some among all the options. They were not mutually exclusive either.

For example, one of the options was to complete an educational review and a business process review. Those reviews are now underway. We expect reports on them by the end of April. So, that option has been implemented.

Some of the other possibilities included relationships with other institutions. Those relationships could be an association, an affiliation, a federation, shared service arrangements, or contracting out arrangements.

Those matters continue to be on the table as potential contributions to our sustainability in the future. Another one: this is a national institution as well as a Campus Alberta institution.

We have eCampusAlberta, a consortium of the universities in Alberta for online learning. We have eCampusOntario, eCampus Manitoba, Thomson Rivers University, (which embraced the former open British Columbia Open University), and TÉLUQ University in Quebec.

We have a lot of provincial initiatives in the world of open or, at least, online education. One of the points the task force report made was that, rather than hunker down behind provincial boundaries, there were opportunities for more in the way of national initiatives that could present a more ambitious Canadian face to the world in open online education.

(Come back next week to see the second of this three-part series)

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Presidential Interview – AUSU

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Voice Magazine (Athabasca University)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/01/29

The last time we talked to the AUSU President was just before the Council held its by-election. This week, Scott Jacobsen has a more personal interview into what makes AUSU President Shawna Wasylyshyn tick.

What is the story prior to becoming an Athabasca University (AU) student?

I had a successful career as a District Sales Manager for a company I loved! I realized that the chances of moving forward from that position or transitioning to a similar one without a business degree were slim, and then I found AU!

I had been studying political science online through the UofS, but transferred to the Faculty of Business at AU and enrolled in the Bachelor of Management program.

What are the reasons for choosing AU over other universities for you?

Flexibility. I have had 3 children since becoming a student at AU and I was able to take full courses while on maternity leave. AU allows me to balance all of the priorities in my life while completing my studies. I am able to continue with my studies while supporting my family and juggling all of my responsibilities!

What tasks and responsibilities come with leadership of the Athabasca University Student Union (AUSU)?

The list of tasks and responsibilities in student leadership are much too long to list here! The responsibility is something I take very seriously. On a daily basis, I am required to be the voice of over 25,000 students and ensure that voice is heard.

Often, it means asking tough questions, and at times I have to be more forceful than I like. It’s not easy to walk into a room full of University Administration who are all saying the same thing, and be strong enough to speak up and inform them that students disagree with them.

Thankfully, I’m not easily intimidated and I am inspired by the knowledge that AUSU members trust in me to speak on their behalf.

What is the experience of being a working mother of three, and one step-child, while a student?

It’s busy! The key to my success is to stay organized. Planning ahead is very important and sticking to the plan is essential. I plan everything from meals, kids’ activities, studying and work.

With that said, I have learned to accept that sometimes the plan has to go out the window because a child may get sick or an emergency could come up at work. It’s a constant balancing act.

Any insights into the differences for working-student mothers compared to working mothers, student mothers, or stay-at-home mothers?

When You’re a Mom, your kids come first. Mothers are always faced with the challenge of how to realize their own dreams, while encouraging the dreams of their children. I always say that every Mom is a working Mom, the difference is whether or not you get paid!

Involvement of other parents and grandparents and the ages of children are big factors in the amount of studying a Mom can get done as well. I got a lot more studying done when I had one baby who napped all the time!

Now that my children are aged 5, 3 and 2, it is a lot more difficult to find quiet pockets of time to sit down and study.

Any advice for aspiring students, student-mothers, or working-student mothers with political interests?

My advice to all students is to set a goal, and make a plan to achieve it. Be willing to accept that you may face roadblocks along the way to your goal, but don’t give up. Theodore Roosevelt said “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty? I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

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Meeting the Minds – Dr. Junye Wang

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Voice Magazine (Athabasca University)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/01/15

This week, making up for the holidays, we’ve got two installments of our Meeting the Minds column. This interview with Dr. Junye Wang was conducted by student Scott Jacobsen. Dr. Wang has come to AU as a research chair from the Campus Alberta Innovates Program

How did you become involved in Athabasca University?

My basic research is on multi-scale and multidisciplinary modelling. The Campus Alberta Innovates Program (CAIP) program provides long-term funding so that I can focus on development of an ambitious framework: the modelling framework of integrated terrestrial and aquatic systems.

This will lead to a model of integrated watershed management, and recommendations for land- and water-use decisions for Albertans and Canadians.

You are a CAIP Chair, which is different from a Canada Research Chair. What does this position entail in terms of tasks and responsibilities?

The CAIP Chair in Computational Sustainability and Environmental Analytics provides leadership and vision to establish an interdisciplinary research program in the specified area of environmental sustainability and environmental analytics, promote excellence in research, foster national and international research collaboration and contribute to the reputation of Athabasca University in this area as a leading centre of scholarly excellence to attract high quality students and visiting scholars.

What is your professional area of expertise?

It is hard to say what my expertise is. In practice, I have worked/studied on (chemical, aeronautical, energy, and computing) engineering, environments and agroecosystem for 30 years. Although my research work has been applied to very different problems from chemical and mechanical engineering (e.g., fuel cells and gas turbines) to biogeochemical processes in agroecosystems (e.g., soil physics and nutrient cycling).

These modelling work are all essentially based on three types of transports (mass, energy and momentum) and two types of reactions (chemical and biological). Therefore, this may be my professional area.

What is your teaching philosophy?

Because I have worked/studied on different disciplines, I realized that in the world of science and engineering, there were an infinite number of problems to learn, and, of course, it was impossible for anybody to study all of those that were related to his/her fields in one university. Hence, my teaching philosophy is summarized as a Chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.”

As a teacher, rather than giving my students the solution to their problems all the time, I would like it to be that my students are capable of analysing and evaluating on their own. Students need to learn the fundamental content of the science and engineering courses. But beyond that I hope to facilitate the acquisition of life-long learning skills, foster critical thinking, and develop problem-solving strategies.

Therefore, instead of searching for and solving all kinds of sample problems, they need to focus on the process of problem-solving in their science and engineering courses, and thus gain the ability to solve any problem whenever they need to do so. This will guide them toward becoming independent thinkers and lifetime self-instructors.

How do you promote capacities/skills of research students as a CAIP Chair?

As a CAIP Chair, I have promoted research-driven teaching and learning at AU. A cutting-edge research project is usually something that faces various challenges. Thus, it is an excellent opportunity for students to acquire the skills of critical thinking and problem-solving through real problems-driven learning.

Through the cutting-edge research projects, research students can be involved in discussions by asking interesting questions on the project or by facing challenging concepts and, sometimes, paradoxes from the real world.

Many cutting-edge research projects require teamwork, which helps students view different problems from different perspectives and disciplines. Thus, students can learn how the theory works and why different expertise and skills from different disciplines are required.

What research are you doing?

The Athabasca river basin (ARB) is ecologically and economically vital for the development and sustainability of northern Alberta communities. Industrial development and climate change are affecting both the ecological sustainability and the well-being of people along the river.

While the oilsands offer huge economic opportunities, much remains unknown about the impact of resource development on the environment and society. My research is to establish a modeling framework of integrated biogeochemical and hydrological processes to interpret data and environmental projections.

This framework will bridge knowledge gaps of dynamic interactions among nutrients (e.g., carbon and nitrogen), water, pollutants, soil and oil sands, vegetation, and climate.

This can deepen our understanding of the integrated river basin systems including, but not limited to, the land and water, which can determine future trends and relationships from multiple land-use activities in the basin.

It can also identify key factors of the cumulative effects of agricultural and unconventional oil and gas production for watershed management. This will provide a new tool for how we might better use land to manage soil, air, and water, and make recommendations for policy and to aid the decision-making of oil companies.

What has your research discovered?

There are also major knowledge gaps in how tailings pollutants will degrade and diffuse through biogeochemical and hydrological processes above and below ground once they are put into a reclamation site.

We are expanding the capacity of agroecosystem modelling and computational sustainability for assessing the environmental impacts of agricultural and unconventional oil and gas (oilsands and hydraulic fracturing) production on the agroecosystem.

Our initialized results have demonstrated that the framework can identify key factors for watershed management across Athabasca river basin, but more work is needed for a policy support tool.

A lot of your research will need interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary efforts. What is the process of incorporating interdisciplinary work in the midst of specialist work like for you?

A river basin is a complex system in which natural processes (e.g., hydrological and biogeochemical) and social processes (e.g., human actives) interact. It is necessary to incorporate interdisciplinary researches if people want to understand such a complex system.

In practice, it is not easy to incorporate different disciplines since researchers work usually on their own disciplines. Though we know these experts from different areas should collaborate to address the problems, different areas may use different methods and terminologies. A question is how different specialists could communicate effectively.

What interfaces are between disciplines? In spite of clear boundaries between different subject courses, there are no such clear interfaces in the real world problems. My multidisciplinary background may help to communicate among different specialists to find these interfaces that foster efficiency collaboration.

Any advice for students on becoming involved in cutting-edge research?

Students can study and apply fundamental knowledge of the science and engineering in cutting-edge research. Cutting-edge research includes processes of innovation and creation. This is an excellent opportunity to help students acquire the key skills of life-long learning, foster critical thinking, and develop problem-solving through the processes of innovation and creation.

They can learn how the theory works and why different expertise and skills are required. Moreover, a cutting-edge research project will promote teamwork and collaboration that helps students view different problems from different perspectives and disciplines. These skills may be more important than single knowledge in future career development and will be of life-long benefit.

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Jenna Valleriani, Doctoral Candicacy and CSSDP

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/04

I interview friends, colleagues, and experts, on harm reduction and its implications in Canadian society, from the theory to the practice, to the practical. I am a Member-at-Large for Outreach for Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy and writer for Karmik, Fresh Start Recovery Centre, and the Marijuana Party of Canada. Here I interview Jenna Valleriani.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In brief, how did you get interested in being involved in drug policy in Canada?

Jenna Valleriani: That is a big question! I am in sociology. I was interested in punishment and prisons, which is a natural extension of the consequences for drug prohibition. I was introduced to the medical cannabis program when a friend had back injury. He started talking about this process, where he earned a medical cannabis license.

It was fascinating from a sociological perspective because it was an underground route of access. It was knowing and talking to the right people. That year, I took a course with Dr. Pat Erickson. She is a drug policy scholar at University of Toronto.

It changed my outlook on what I wanted to study. That course made sense to me. Everything made sense. There is theory behind drug policy. I was fascinated by the history of prohibition in Canada and the social constructions around drugs and drug use.

I began narrowing into an interest in cannabis. I followed the story of a friend trying to gain access. It was about 8 years ago when access to medical cannabis in Canada was not as transparent and talked about as it is now.

I found that interesting. After the course with Pat, it opened a new door for me.

Jacobsen: You have a unique perspective. You are a doctoral candidate in sociology and collaborative addiction studies at the University of Toronto. You research transitions into federal medicinal cannabis programs in Canada, new industries, entrepreneurship, and social movements.

You are on the advising team and an advisor for CSSDP. How important is this advanced education and knowledge in advising people? What tasks and responsibilities come with this position?

Valleriani: With the advisory role, it is about mentoring young people interested in drug policy issues. It is about creating opportunities for involvement. People helped me. I want to offer that as well. An educational background is not necessary to take on a role in CSSDP.

We try to encourage all young people to get involved. We want young people who are interested in drug policy. It could be the perspective a drug user or a researcher. We try to take on the perspectives of the people who lives in everyday youth culture.

I am not sure if it is necessarily based on the education, but it might offer being in touch with changes in drug policy and the research around it. That is, it might help from a policy perspective.

I worked with CSSDP for 5 years. Therefore, I have a deep knowledge of the organization and changes in it. I see how we’ve grown. I served on the board for 3 years. I occupied a few different roles. I was the conference chair in 2015, which was our biggest conference. It sold out in Toronto.

I was on a few different committees. I was a vice-chair. The important part to the advisory role is a good understanding of the organizational structure and aims. Many people will ask if CSSDP is about encouraging drug use or attempting to deter drug use.

The answer is neither for us. We are focused on the creation of sound policy around drugs and drug use, and finding ways to promote evidence-based alternatives and solutions.

Jacobsen: What do you consider the core principle of the CSSDP?

Valleriani: For us, it is about youth engagement and empowerment around drug policy issues. We try to facilitate ways for young people getting involved such as starting chapters, dispensing different resources for ongoing policies, finding ways to get young people to conferences, and so on.

For example, for the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) 2016 meeting in New York, New York, we sent 10 youth to participate in the meeting. We want to empower and mobilize young people to become involved in it.

We look at policies around drug use and drug users, and how they treat those that do and don’t use drugs. Good policy is bigger than using drugs – it includes good policy for those that choose to not use drugs.

We take a human rights perspective and believe in harm reduction principles. It underlines everything for us.

Jacobsen: What do you mean by “a human rights perspective” underlying everything that you do?

Valleriani: When we are talking about human rights in drug policy, it is an acknowledgement that drug users have voices too. That young people have voices. They can participate. It takes a holistic approach for people’s rights throughout the whole process.

Jacobsen: Where do you hope the CSSDP goes into the future?

Valleriani: I want to see CSSDP grow. We are gaining more recognition with the government as a youth body, which is in tune with things on-the-ground and how drug policy in Canada affects young people here.

I want to see us grow in our outreach with the government. I would like to see us grow in chapter sizes. Also, we have a national board. I want to see this expansion continue.

I want to see the CSSDP grow in its capacity to take on more young people. I would love to see a mentorship program grow out of it for youth interested in drug policy.

I consider a grassroots approach to how we mobilize young people one of the most important things by us.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Jenna.

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Heidi Trautmann, Zero Tolerance and Harm Reduction

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/04

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Tell us about how you got an interest in Canadian drug policy.

Heidi Trautmann: My sister introduced me to it. She was volunteering. She was on the board. She informed me about the job. Before I applied to the job, I did posters and pictures for her. She thought it would be cool if I worked for CSSDP.

So, I did! I was really lucky to get the job.

Jacobsen: What tasks and responsibilities come along with the position?

Trautmann: One was work for the Support Don’t Punish event. That included videos from the Support Don’t Punish Facebook page and research found on their website. I did event posters such as Mapping the Mind with Mushrooms and the Support Don’t Punish event, and the t-shirt design. I created a drug infographic relating to certain drugs. I am continuing it.

Jacobsen: There are two major strategies. One is zero tolerance. The other is harm reduction. What method seems more reasonable to you?

Trautmann: Harm reduction because you cannot force somebody to give up. If someone is forced with the idea of drugs, they might feel hopeless. Drug use is not a legal issue. It is a health issue, which needs to be tackled in an appropriate way.

Obviously, we do not want people taking harmful drugs. They should not be punished with it. They should be helped to heal rather than surviving in jail.

Jacobsen: With regard to CSSDP, what is its core principle?

Trautmann: It is to spread information about drugs and drug use rather than promote drug use. The purpose of CSSDP is to spread information for individuals without forcing ideals on people rather than what is humane.

Jacobsen: With respect to some of the most vulnerable populations, if we take the homeless, the addicted, and children, and if we take some of the negative impacts seen with them through indirect harms, any recommendations for reduction of harms to those populations?

Trautmann: Volunteering is a good way to reduce harm. People in a higher class than others, more money and privilege, then these individuals could assist in spreading knowledge.

Jacobsen: Where do you hope CSSDP goes into the future – getting more funding, more people, more skill sets, and so on?

Trautmann: I hope, in Canada, if people hear about CSSDP, they won’t have to ask about it. It should be something known to people. People should have more knowledge on drugs and harm reduction.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Heidi.

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Nick Cristiano, Drug Policy and Executive Board Member of CSSDP

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/04

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did you become interested in drug policy in Canada?

Nick Cristiano: I majored in sociology in school, always having been interested in deviance, I became very interested in drug use. My reason for being interested was seeing it. Also, it was a grey area; it was not clearly wrong. Other crimes seemed less grey to me. I was interested in studying drug use because I found that the laws and stigmas arbitrary.

Murder is clearly wrong. Drug use, you need to know the climate to know why it’s deviant. In my masters, I continued research on drug use. I made a commitment to this path. I am happy. I went further than I originally thought.

I became acquainted with both the academic research as well as the stuff happening on the ground. That’s how I became involved with CSSDP. I wanted to move away from studying drug use. I wanted to become involved with an organization where I could build contacts and fight for things important to me.

Jacobsen: What tasks and responsibilities come with being an executive board member?

Cristiano: My position on the executive board is a personnel liaison; essentially, I am the human resources person. I make sure everyone is happy and in pursuit of something interesting to them. We want people to tap into their passions.

You want to love what you’re doing for the organization. Otherwise, you’re not going to do it if you don’t enjoy it. As part of the executive board, I am a vote for most major decisions regarding the organization.

Jacobsen: What do you consider the core principle of CSSDP?

Cristiano: The promotion of sensible drug policy is the core principle here. We want to promote sensible drug policy in communities across Canada. We want to raise awareness and equip people with the resources necessary as activists to speak out against irrational drug policies, mobilize and enact change.

By ‘sensible drug policy,’ we mean policy that is not harmful.

By harmful, we refer to prohibition where drugs are forced into an illegal market with unregulated quality. Many problems come with prohibition, which regulation and decriminalization would solve or minimize.

Jacobsen: Where do you hope CSSDP goes into the future?

Cristiano: I hope we continue to expand our network. We have a strong presence in Ontario and Quebec. I would love for CSSDP to move into remote communities. Remote communities are important because, despite drug problems existing there, they lack resources for minimizing the potential for drug-related harm, e.g. addiction counseling, harm reduction resources, etc.

Therefore, their experience with drug policy is unique and important. They are included in discussions about improving drug policies.

If we have a strong presence across Canada, a big national network, we can work together towards the improvement of drug policy. With the Liberal proposal for legalization, I hope CSSDP will be involved in bringing the youth voice to the decision-making processes.

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2022-03-25

Andras Lenart, Canadian Drug Policy and CSSDP

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/03

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In brief, how did you get involved with Canadian drug policy?
Andras Lenart: My interest in drug policy stemmed from experiences volunteering at a shelter, where I met many individuals struggling with substance use. Following this, I became interested in the policies surrounding these issues. I saw things could be done to improve policies and the way people were treated. So, I joined CSSDP to collaborate with others on this, and other related issues.

I joined the McGill chapter last September. Andrew and Nancy, two of the McGill chapter members, were starting the McGill chapter and I became involved with it. Then, in December of 2015, I joined the board of directors for the national organization.

Jacobsen: With respect to being on the board of directors for the CSSDP, what tasks and responsibilities come with this position?

Lenart: In addition to serving on the board of directors, I am the international representative for the organization. I [communicate with other youth drug policy organizations around the world, such as Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Together, we are planning an NGO training with different drug policy organizations, to take place in Thailand. We would acquire training in drug policy related issues and fundraising strategies.

I am also the chair of the conference planning committee. CSSDP is planning a 2017 conference in May in Montreal, so I am attempting to organize the logistics with some other volunteers and board members of CSSDP. The project is in the early stages and will develop with more work in the future. We need to find speakers and a location, and then plan the logistics for people coming from the United States and elsewhere. We’ll need to advertise the event and get local press for it.

Finally, as a CSSDP board member, I have been a representative of CSSDP at the SSDP conference. I was also a representative for CSSDP for a consultation held by the Canadian government through the Centre on Substance Use and Addiction too. The Canadian Government was attempting to inform Canadian drug policies. In general, my role in CSSDP is to provide representation for the organization itself. I have to find opportunities and guide the future acts of the organization.

Jacobsen: What do you consider the core principle of CSSDP?

Lenart: The unique aspect of CSSDP [in contrast to other drug policy organizations] is that most of us are students and we are directly representing the voice of youth. Most drug policy organizations do not have youth as the focus.

Jacobsen: Where do you hope the CSSDP goes into the future?

Lenart: There are chapters in universities across Canada. I hope for the organization to spread further and have representation throughout Canada in high schools as well. That is, to have more influence and opportunity in terms of student politics and drug policy, even at a local institutional level.

Here at McGill, we are hoping to have the student body or the student society provide drug-checking services. These harm reduction measures are not on the national or regional level, but it would make a considerable difference in the lives of students attending McGill and provide further impetus for change in other areas of the country.

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2022-03-25

Heather D’Alessio, Canadian Drug Policy and CSSDP

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/03

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In brief, how did you get interested in being involved in drug policy in Canada?

Heather D’Alessio: My interest in drug policy started out as a fascination with drugs when I was in high school. I was really interested in all aspects of drugs: their medicinal value, their historical significance, their cultural impact.

I’ve always felt they played a large role in the human experience, has been a large influence in the lives of many of my favorite artists, musicians, authors, and even scientists and entrepreneurs. Couple that fascination with my own mental health hurdles, and add the reckless abandon of adolescence, and long story short, I was hospitalized for what the doctors called a drug-induced psychosis (frankly, I don’t think it was induced by the drugs as much as the stresses of becoming an adult, my reluctance to act with any sense of personal responsibility, and the resulting existential crisis that propelled me into ‘adulthood’).

In a hospital, I’d plenty of time to reflect on my situation. It was a really difficult time, and all I could really think about was how bad I didn’t want anyone else to have to go through what I had experienced.

So I began to evaluate the policies that were in place to supposedly protect our youth. Considering so many punitive, prohibitive drug laws are in place on the very basis of protecting children, I was pretty upset about how much they failed to protect me, a vulnerable young person living in a border-town with a heavy flow of illicit drugs being smuggled in and out along the St. Lawrence River.

Upon further introspection, I began to see how much of a role drugs played in my own life, and the lives of those around me. From there, my interest in drug policy just took off.

Jacobsen: How much knowledge did you have beforehand about medical and psychological effects of drugs?

D’Alessio: Most of the knowledge I’d obtained prior to joining the board was more or less anecdotal, coming from my own experiences. Some of the earliest advice I remember my grandma teaching me was not to pick up dirty needles on the street.

My first boyfriend (if even, we were only in elementary) had not only lost his brother to an overdose, but found his body. It messed him up for a long time. I’ve had family members struggle with addictions to (legal) prescription opiates, and I’ve seen my uncle use cannabis (an ‘illicit’ substance) to aid in his recovery from an aggressive form of brain cancer. I also struggled with drug misuse in high school.

I had friends who were more than willing to share, and many a time I was that ‘generous’ friend. I’ve spent a lot of time lamenting poor decisions I’ve made in high school but frankly I didn’t really know any better and it taught me a lot.

I’d always been motivated by trying to educate myself, but being young and naïve at the time I may not have been quite as keen about verifying my sources and statistics as I am now. Especially now that I’m representing the organization, I’m very particular about where I obtain my information from and what sorts of statistics I used to inform my opinions.

Jacobsen: How did you get involved in CSSDP?

D’Alessio: Out of my perpetual curiosity with drugs I’d found CSSDP on Facebook sometime during my high school years, but it wasn’t until I started post-secondary that I contacted the Outreach Coordinator about starting up a chapter at my school, applied to represent them at some international conferences, and ultimately ended up running for the board.

Needless to say, it was a match made in socio-political activist heaven.

Jacobsen: What do you consider the core principle of CSSDP?

D’Alessio: In the most concise terms, I think the core principle of CSSDP is about supplementing evidence and knowledge in the place of stigma and misinformation to create a humanistic approach to drug policy.

What we’re really advocating for here is human rights and public health, which you’d think would be at the center of any effective drug policy (spoiler alert: the current policies aren’t effective). Unfortunately there’s a lot of external interest, political and economic, that are corrupting the majority of policies relating to drugs (in my opinion anyway). It’s created a largely misguided and misinformed public perception of drugs and drug use.

Removing the stigma is a key factor in addressing these issues. Social taboos make it a sensitive topic, but that only causes the problems to fester.

Jacobsen: Where do you hope CSSDP goes into the future?

D’Alessio: In the far future I hope to have eliminated the need for CSSDP by helping to establish effective and sensible drug policies in Canada. Realistically though, there’s a constantly changing landscape of drugs so I don’t know if that will happen, especially on an international level.

Different people using different substances in different settings creates this hugely elaborate web of social, political, and economic issues and it’s quite nuanced. In the immediate future I just hope to see more interest in CSSDP, because where it stands it seems to be a relatively niche interest. My only friends who are interested in these issues are in CSSDP, but all of my friends do drugs in some capacity.

I hope to see more people make the connection as to how these policies are effecting them and why they should care.

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2022-03-25

Gonzo Nieto, Positive Impacts of Harm Reduction

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/03

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are some local examples that show the positive impacts of harm reduction?

Gonzo Nieto: There’s an organization in Montreal called Group de recherche et d’intervention psychosociale (GRIP). They are a francophone harm reduction group based on Montreal with whom I have volunteered in the past.

They are invited to various events and festivals in Montreal, specifically events where people are regularly using drugs. They have well-trained and knowledgeable people staffing tables at these events, and they provide safer drug use information and answer questions that event attendees may have. This is an important service because many people have not have had an open place to have conversation about drugs and get their questions answered.

Unfortunately, the law prohibits groups in Canada from bringing drug testing equipment to such events, so they are not able to provide that service at this time.

Jacobsen: What about online resources, e.g. forums and discussion groups?

Nieto: There can be a lot of value in online discussion forums and groups. Although, in a forum, you might not know who is speaking or how much weight to put on what they say. It can be hard to ascertain the credibility of the information. It’s important to take things with a grain of salt and not rely solely on what one person said.

Because of the nature of drug laws and the stigma around open discussion on drugs in public and in person, a lot of great resources exist online. The website Erowid.org has provided thousands of people with very open, non-judgmental information about an incredibly large variety of drugs for years.

Outside of forums and discussion groups, many harm reduction groups have also built useful resources online. TRIP, a Toronto-based harm reduction group, is a great example. These groups provide reliable information on drug use. Many people turn to these groups because they provide an open and non-judgmental forum to find information and get your questions answered.

Jacobsen: What national harm reduction experts come to mind?

Nieto: I have to mention the executive director of GRIP in Montreal, Julie Soleil-Meeson. She’s wonderful. The work that she does providing harm reduction services around Montreal is very beneficial, and she is also very passionate about bringing drug checking services into Canada.

As well, I would mention TRIP as a whole. There are many staff there working in a variety of capacities. They are educated, open, and they do great work both onsite and online. From my interactions with them, they embody the attitude that people working in this field need to have to be effective.

Lastly, I would mention Karmik in Vancouver, which is a nightlife harm reduction group. They provide harm reduction services to events and festivals in their area, and they were founded by Alex Betsos, who is a former board member of CSSDP.

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2022-03-25

Gonzo Nieto, Harm Reduction as Philosophy

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/03

interview friends, colleagues, and experts, on harm reduction and its implications in Canadian society, from the theory to the practice, to the practical. I am a Member-at-Large for Outreach for Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy and writer for Karmik, Fresh Start Recovery Centre, and the Marijuana Party of Canada. Here I interview Gonzo Nieto, part 2. Part 1 here.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your perspective on the theory of harm reduction as a philosophy?

Gonzo Nieto: Harm reduction works from the perspective that you should meet people where they are rather than tell people what to do or not do. The reality is people will use drugs.

If you solely tell people not to use drugs and they choose to anyway, you’re not the one they’ll come to with questions or if they need support. We need to provide people with the best education tools, strategies, and services with the aim of reducing preventable harms and risks from drug use.

Jacobsen: Is the harm reduction approach the best way to minimize harm on youth?

Nieto: It’s important to note that prevention is a harm reduction strategy, but it falls short when it’s the only strategy. We have to recognize youth use drugs too, regardless of how good your work around prevention is.

Anyone who has gone through high school knows young people are using drugs, whether that be alcohol, cannabis, or other drugs. An educational system or approach that only preaches to not drink or use drugs is not sufficient — of course, that may be a sufficient deterrent for some youth, and that’s good, but others will still choose to try.

I think that the later into adolescence and early adulthood that we can delay the initiation of drug use, the better the health consequences. We know youth who are younger when they start drinking, smoking, or using other drugs are more likely to struggle with substance dependence and have other negative health outcomes.

I think prevention is part of a good harm reduction strategy – for youth and adults alike. The important thing is that work around prevention cannot be based on fear. It needs to be evidence-based by drawing on the available research and presenting it in a way that permits people to make their own decisions.

When we use fear-based approaches, which often rely on exaggeration, people find out sooner or later that the information they were given was false or blown out of proportion. This erodes people’s trust.

If this information comes from a teacher or a close adult, this leads youth to lose trust in someone who could have otherwise been a source of guidance and support on this topic.

Jacobsen: What are some general effects we’ve seen in Canada in practicing Harm Reduction?

Nieto: Broadly speaking, harm reductions strategies allow people to make safer and healthier choices for themselves.

Take cannabis, for example. if people are going to use cannabis, having appropriate information about dosage and what to expect can be the difference between having a negative and overwhelming experience or having a pleasant experience. Similarly, having clear and non-judgmental information about any long-term health consequences, or about substance dependence, can make a world of difference in preventing harm.

By and large, especially if this type of education is provided by the people youth trust, whether peer-based education or the education coming from adults, teachers, and parents, there’s more forethought, information, and consideration behind the decision to use drugs.

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2022-03-25

Gonzo Nieto, Drug Policy, Medical and Psychological Effects

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/02

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did you become interested in being involved in drug policy in Canada?

Gonzo Nieto: My interest with drug policy began with my own use, which started with cannabis as a teen. A lot of my peers were using drugs, both in high school and university. That all began to get me interested in the phenomenon of drug use in general.

What really caught my interest was psychedelics, after I had my first experience with psilocybin mushrooms. I began to educate myself pretty extensively about psychedelics. I would spend hours listening to lectures and talks by various people, reading books, and browsing forums and seeing what was there in terms of other people’s experiences.

This got the ball rolling as I began to discover how large and diverse the field of drug policy is, and I fell further and further down the ‘rabbit hole’.

Jacobsen: With respect to personal use, how much knowledge did you have beforehand about medical and psychological effects?

Nieto: Not very much, I didn’t come into drug use in a very informed way. It was youthful curiosity and blissful ignorance that led me to try cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms. These experiences stoked my curiosity, and then I got to educating myself more. When I started smoking pot, I didn’t know much other than that my friends were using it.

When some of my peers were using psychedelics in high school, I mostly recall hearing myths and lies about psychedelics. I remember hearing kids at school say that magic mushrooms make your brain bleed, and that’s why you hallucinate. Silly stuff like that. I remember others saying it was a fun trip, describing psychedelics like the next level up from pot, which I came to learn is not the case — they’re completely different.

But like most people, I wasn’t very well educated about drugs prior to encountering and trying them. I didn’t have good drug education at my school, at least “good” by my standards — what we got was police officers come to our school to scare us about the scourge of drugs.

Jacobsen: How did you get involved with Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy?

Nieto: After I graduated university, my partner motivated me to start writing a column on drugs using the knowledge I had amassed during the previous five years of my undergrad. I began writing a column in the student newspaper, which I called Turning Inward.

The column went really well. Pretty much every time I published an article, it became one of the most read articles in the student newspaper for that week. I continued writing articles regularly for about seven months.

One of the articles that I wrote was called MDMA: A Guide to Harm Reduction. I wrote it because several friends that previous week had asked me questions about MDMA that, to me, were fairly basic because of what I had been learning and reading about. I realized this sort of stuff wasn’t common knowledge for most of my peers.

CSSDP shared my article on Twitter. I contacted CSSDP to thank them for sharing it and to ask how I could get involved. They responded that I should try to attend their conference coming up in Toronto. At the conference, they were electing new members to the organization’s board, so I decided to put my name in the hat.

Jacobsen: What do you consider the core principle of CSSDP?

Nieto: Primarily, I would say the core value is the idea that drug use should not be treated as a criminal justice issue, but rather as an issue of public health and social cohesion.

Jacobsen: Two philosophies compete with regards to how to deal with issues like youth drug use, the zero tolerance approach, and the harm reduction model. Which do you prefer, and why?

Nieto: I stand by the harm reduction model, without question. In the debates around drug use, these two models are sometimes presented as though they are equally valid in some sense, but I think there’s a strong case to be made that the punitive approach is in denial of reality.

That perspective is based on the assumption that some set of actions could be taken which would result in total abstinence across the board. That’s just not true, as demonstrated by the decades that precede us.

Drug use appears to be a core component of the human species. To say that human drug use dates back tens of thousands of years is probably a conservative estimate. Any recorded history of humans shows humans using drugs. It’s not a new phenomenon. What is relatively new is outlawing and punishing drug use, and there’s an argument to be made that the punishments in place for drug crimes cause far more damage to the individual and society than the use of drugs does in the first place.

The harm reduction model recognizes that, no matter how refined the attempts at prevention may be, some people will still choose to use drugs, and there needs to be education and services in place that help reduce the preventable harms associated with that drug use.Harm reduction meets people where they are rather than telling them what they should or should not do. It says, “If you do use, here’s some information and services to ensure your safety and to help minimize preventable harms.”

Harm reduction meets people where they are rather than telling them what they should or should not do. It says, “If you do use, here’s some information and services to ensure your safety and to help minimize preventable harms.”

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2022-03-25

Harm Reduction Series, from Theory to Practice, to the Practical

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/02

Politics is “context” created by individuals and structures within society, in both formal and informal institutions. Context is defined as, “the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.”

Drug policy, then, is more than just a set of laws, but the circumstances which shape those laws in our societies. Those circumstances often relate to some of the most sensitive issues – such as drugs and youth activism. Leaders in Drug Policy show the importance of discussing, understanding, and analyzing the impact of bad drug laws and the reasons for drug policy reform.

Drugs are seen as the loci of social degeneration; youth activists are seen as social degenerates.

Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP) examines drug policies through the eyes of youth, citing evidence and inspiring activism. CSSDP is made up of both youth activists interested in drug policy and young people interested in positive reform in society.

From local chapters in universities to advisors to the executive committee, students operate the organization to advocate, demonstrate, and educate about sensible drug policy — drug policy based on compassion, evidence, and science, and the harm reduction model of drug policy reform.These students are Leaders in Drug Policy.

The youth and students that run CSSDP and the drug policy professionals, professors and researchers that inspire them provide context to the problem of prohibition. A minor contribution to the discussion about sensible drug policy, harm reduction, and alternative approaches to prohibition and drug law reform comes from conversations with relevant individuals, from the young activist to the expert professor.

My aim is to continue the conversation through interviews with Leaders in Drug Policy. Throughout the coming months, CSSDP will publish a series of interview articles outlining the thoughts, concerns and insights of board members, chapter members, and other leaders in Canadian drug policy.

This series will provide context to the ongoing conversation, and insight of how CSSDP and it’s partners are moving policy forward, sensibly.

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2022-03-25

An Introduction to Harm Reduction, Its Benefits and Application

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/02

I am a Member-at-Large for Outreach for Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Here is a short introduction to harm reduction.

Harm reduction models are misunderstood by many and unknown to others. The harm reduction model is in opposition, by implication of organizational structure, design, and outcomes, to punitive approaches or the zero tolerance model.

Zero tolerance models intend to punish those that use substances by making an example of offenders. Harm reduction models respect to drug users and work for social justice linked to human rights (Harm Reduction International, 2016; Harm Reduction Coalition, n.d.). Harm reduction implies implementing safety measures for all psychoactive drugs including controlled drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical drugs.

In this way, the zero tolerance and the harm reduction models are philosophies about drug use, which implies drug policy, too. The philosophies as the theory. The policies as practice. Harm reduction philosophies accept the inevitability of drugs in society. Their use and abuse.

Harm reduction philosophies emphasize individual substance users, communities, and policies in a singular framework. It contrasts with the zero tolerance approach, where the unification is the punishment of offenders divided into four big consequences for youth, for one instance of drug use, possession, trafficking, or in reality, simply being caught.

The Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) says, “Harm reduction is any program or policy designed to reduce drug-related harm without requiring the cessation of drug use” (Erickson et al, 2002).

Rodney Skager of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says the big four consequences for youth within the zero tolerance philosophy are “exclusion from extracurricular activities, transfer to another school, suspension, and expulsion…” (Skager, 2016). Skager claims zero tolerance approaches worsen the issue (Ibid.). CAMH concluded harm reduction should be implemented with “other proven successful interventions for those with substance use problems” (Erickson et al, 2002).

The main divide between the harm reduction model and zero tolerance model, philosophies, or strategies are the emphases on harm and punishment. The former focuses on the minimization of harm to individuals and communities through respect for persons and rights. The latter focuses on punishment for drug users to punish the individual drug user and set an example for others.

To conclude, Bill C-2 An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (Respect for Communities Act) (2015) describes the full support of the Canadian Medical Association for the harm reduction strategies with the “aim to reduce mortality and morbidity” in spite of “continued exposure to a potentially harmful substance,” especially with addiction defined as “an illness” and that “harm reduction is clinically mandated” as an “ethical method of care and treatment” (Canadian Medical Association, 2015).

Although this bill has limited harm reduction by making criteria for applicants and limited exemptions for new clinics, we’re excited that more supervised injection clinics are slowly opening in key cities around Canada, that prescription heroin was just approved as a new evidence-based harm reduction strategy, and that there is opportunity for CSSDP to work together with our local communities and politicians towards harm reduction and to raise awareness about what we can do to help!

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2022-03-25

Alex Betsos, Harm Reduction from British Columbia through Canada

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/01

Alex Betsos is a friend, and colleague through Karmik and Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, where I am a Member-at-Large for Outreach and Alex is an International Representative on the Board of Directors. Here is an interview with Alex about harm reduction, an educational interview. I trust this helps.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We met a few months back, last year in fact. Gonzo Nieto, who is a prominent – lots of press in the Canadian news – and well-spoken member of the community, recommended you to me.

You and I had some time, a few months back, to discuss harm reduction and the national organization of students for harm reduction and “sensible drug policy,” called Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP).

You work for Karmik, which is a west coast harm reduction initiative. You’ve been deeply involved with the CSSDP and Karmik, and harm reduction in Canada as a whole. That is our background together.

We conducted a short interview, which didn’t cover enough of your expertise a few months ago. So here we are, and I apologize for having to ask this, but it is an educational interview, what is harm reduction?

Alex Betsos: Harm reduction, in its most basic form, is an acknowledgment that life contains risks, and in order to lessen the likelihood of risks, we take certain precautions. Looking both ways when crossing the street or putting on a helmet are all harm reduction tactics.

Jacobsen: How does harm reduction, as a philosophy, influence Canadian drug policy?

Betsos: Harm reduction offers opportunities in Canadian drug policy, but it’s always a bit tenuous. We’re fortunate to have a government right now that acknowledges the importance of harm reduction even though sometimes it’s just lip-service. It’s important to note that harm reduction in Canada is frequently couched in the four pillars model, which allows parliamentarians to continue prohibitionist thinking with certain appeasements to harm reduction practices and ethos.

Jacobsen: With the National Anti-Drug Strategy of the Harper, launched in 2006, renewed in 2012 and 2014, the emphasis appeared to be more on enforcement. What is the evidence?

We need enforcement, but we need treatment and prevention. The previous Prime Minister Harper said, “If you’re addicted to drugs, we’ll help you, but if you deal drugs, we’ll punish you.” What is the ideal apportioning of funding for the substance use and misuse (or abuse) in Canada?

Betsos: First, the question assumes that keeping drugs illegal is a desirable thing. Ideally, enforcement would be downplayed, and some adaptation of a public health approach to drug distribution would be the real step.

If we have to keep some prohibitionist model, putting resources into harm reduction and treatment would be more useful allocations of this money, and to some degree prevention, however, I would point out that harm reduction can encompass part of prevention.

Jacobsen: What are some of the main organizations, and their mandates, for harm reduction in BC?

Betsos: There are lots. Each region has its own health authority, and within that, there are a variety of harm reduction organizations.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the time, my friend – take care.

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2022-03-25

Dr. Wayne Podrouzek, Philosophical Foundation of Psychology

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/01

Dr. Wayne Podrouzek works as an Instructor for the Psychology Department of University of the Fraser Valley and instructor in the Psychology Department of Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Dr. Podrouzek earned his a Bachelor of Arts in Child Studies and a Bachelor of Science (Honours) from Mount Saint Vincent University, a Master of Arts from Simon Fraser University, and Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University under Dr. Bruce Whittlesea. Here is part 4 of an interview from a few years ago.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What do you consider the prevailing philosophical foundation of Psychology? If you differ, what is your personal philosophical framework?

Dr. Wayne Podrouzek:Wow – you know how to pick your questions.

First, I don’t think there is ONE philosophical foundation in psychology anymore. We are all linked by our methodologies – but even those are much more diverse than before. Not too many years ago, anything that remotely smelled like qualitative methodology was looked at askance by most experimental psychologists. Now, in our own department, we find there are several faculties using these methods, and the rest of us still associate with them, if begrudgingly… (Ok, joke).

Some years ago most of us would likely have identified as some variant of positivism, but now I suspect that, again, it’s much more diverse, and many might identify as cognitive relativists. I don’t even know how many of us would identify as ontological objectivists (philosophical realists) anymore. Actually, this is an interesting question, and I could see an honors project in some variant of this issue.

So, if we’re looking for the kinds of underpinning that really links us altogether I guess (hope) it would be some lip service to the general tenets of “science” and empiricism (although I have to wonder, when in our ethics – provided to us by the tri-council guidelines, developed by “scientists” – we are to ensure the “spiritual” safety of our subjects – whatever that is: I just want some variant of quasi-objective measure of “spiritual well-being”).

Perhaps there are more Cartesian Dualists out there than I would have thought. (Still the issue of measurement, though). There is no specific set of methods on which we all agree, no set of criteria to which we hold ourselves – but perhaps a Wittgensteinian language-game understanding of the word “science” is broadly descriptive, and perhaps good enough.

Jacobsen: To you, who are the most influential Psychologists? Why are they the most influential to you?

Podrouzek: I wish I were better to read in psychology so I could better answer this question. I have great admiration for Skinner. I think he got the short end of the stick in evaluation of his debate with Chomsky (who I think is likely one of the brightest puppies to walk, crawl, or slither on the earth today – although I have always disagreed with virtually all of his psychology – considered “state of the art” when I was going to university: psycholinguistics, the preeminence of syntax, the existence of a language acquisition device, etc.).

I think that Skinner’s contribution to psychology has been undervalued, and that much of his work may well reincarnate later in our history. I really liked the “tightness” of Skinner’s work: methodologically sounds, often insightful while being atheoretic, clever.

I think he was a bit of an idealist and I don’t think his idea of Walden 2 would ever fly, but an interesting idea. I got an appreciation of Skinner’s work when I studied under one of his grades, Ron van Houten.

I was also quite influenced by Vygotsky’s work “Thought and Language.” In particular, he has helped shape my understanding of the relationships between thought, language, semiotics, and pragmatics, in a developmental context.

Of course, there are many psychologists in my own areas that have influenced my thinking. My advisor, Bruce Whittlesea, is certainly one of these. You cannot work closely with someone for a few years without walking away influenced. There are also big names – Tulving, Jacoby, etc. I tend to think about human processing in “Transfer Appropriate Processing” terms (a la, Bransford, Franks, Morris, & Stein).

However, someone who is not so well known, Paul Kolers (Procedures of Mind, Mechanisms of Mind) has most influenced me in terms of thinking about theories of the types of processing that occur in mind. And Gibson’s notion of affordances always haunts my thought when I bend it to thought and action.

A number of philosophers; Carnap (logical positivism), Quine (ontological relativism and the underdetermination of theories), Popper (falsificationism), Nagel (philosophy of science, anti-reductionism re consciousness), Putnam (excellent discourses on reductionism and functionalism), and other philosophers of science (such as Russell) have probably had more influence on my thought about the nature of theories (in particular, cognitive theories) than psychologists.

It’s kind of the difference between methods and substantive areas. The method is paramount; the understanding of the substantive area follows from the understanding of the method.

So, the short answer is gee, I don’t know. It’s all pretty much a swirl.

Jacobsen: Finally, many Psychology students are interested to know, do you know anyone famous within Psychology?

Podrouzek: I’ve met several, and spoken with them, but I would not say that I “know” them. We would not even count as acquaintances, although quite a few are nice and say “hi” to me at conferences.

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2022-03-25

Dr. Wayne Podrouzek, Controversy, Psychology, and the Nature of Time

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/01

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To you, what are the most controversial areas of Psychology? Why do you (and your colleagues) consider them controversial? What are your personal views on them?

Dr. Wayne Podrouzek:Lol – that’s a good one. I certainly won’t speak for my colleagues because I often play in the sandbox pretty much by myself.

Put 6 psychologists in a room and have them discuss any topic and you’ll get at least 7 positions. Except for perhaps bio, some descriptive developmental, low-end sensation (which is pretty much bio), some social, and some behavioural, most areas of psych are pretty controversial, although there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of controversy – we just choose to ignore the difficulties and bung on ahead.

And, for the most part, it doesn’t matter too much – we live in our little bubbles and every once in a while something we do becomes useful, and the rest of the time it doesn’t matter too much and it’s an excellent theoretical and intellectual exercise. Even in things like method and stats, there are different opinions on what is appropriate and why and how things should be interpreted, and so on.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that in the long run what we do will become incredibly important when we get to a certain point and it becomes integrated. All of it contributes to that corpus of knowledge, and even if wrong is very important. We learn most, I think when we find we are wrong in interesting ways – and that really does entail controversy.

Where I get my knickers in a twist is when what we do has real implications for real people, and we are less than totally rigorous. I remember the “repressed memory” debacle, in which folks were sent to jail on the basis of testimony by psychologists. It turned out to be, what word am I looking for here, ah right, “crap”, and it ruined people’s lives. That has now turned from the repressed/false memory debate into the “dissociative identity disorder” debate. That is pretty controversial (at least in some circles).

And how about the “facilitated communication” debacle (there was, perhaps is still, even an Institute for Facilitated Communication at Syracuse, NY) – again, folks lives were ruined. Now, as before, psychologists fixed that through continued study (although not before being hired by a lawyer to see if it “really” worked), but much damage had been done. But that was a few years ago, and we tend to forget our past errors.

Another area that doesn’t seem to get much controversy, but perhaps should, is the use of a certain measure of psychopathy. They are, as I understand it, being used outside of the parameters in which they were developed, and people’s lives are being profoundly affected by them. One girl (17 I think) was declared a Dangerous Offender and put in prison indefinitely based on misdemeanor crimes and her score on “the” checklist and the testimony of some “psychologist” or other. This was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada, but again, the damage had been done.

What I find controversial is, where was the psychological community in expressing outrage over this travesty? Let me guess, the same as we usually hear from the Department of Foreign Affairs, “working quietly behind the scenes”.

The problem with Psychology is the same problem we have with Medicine and biochemistry, just worse. Very few people understand it, and it is complicated stuff (which is why I don’t understand why most folks think psych is some kind of a bird discipline that anyone and his dog could do). Psychologists are human, they want to have their moment in the sun, and money and they say stuff and people believe it – without trying to critically evaluate it, and often in the absence of the ability to critically evaluate it. Sometimes it makes no difference.

Whether the memory is a series of stages or structures or is a set of differentially instantiable processes based on some form of information harmonic in the current circumstance is a very interesting question but is not likely to affect too many folks’ lives in the immediate future. So if people ignore the debate and believe one thing or the other makes little difference. However, the same cannot be said for so many other areas.

So, I guess that I think that much of psych is controversial. But that’s not a bad thing – it’s just that we should acknowledge that much of it is controversial not take ourselves too seriously. We are young, some 130 years old. Much of Physics is controversial as well – as the speed of light the limit of particle movement in the universe outside of the movement of the universe itself? (Although this result seems to be the result of a loose cable connection). Are there bosons? We speak of mass and gravity, but what the hell are they? Do causes always precede effects? What is the nature of time? Lots of debates = controversy. That is the stuff of science.

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2022-03-25

Dr. Wayne Podrouzek, Psychology Degree, Research Expansion, and Incentives

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/01

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Many students graduating with a Psychology degree will not pursue careers in Psychology. What are your thoughts on this?

Dr. Wayne Podrouzek: That’s great – I think society needs people who have the broad understanding of the principles of psychology in a wide variety of positions. Psychologists tend to be quite well trained in methodology and stats, and this certainly enhances their ability to think about things methodological – certainly one of the pillars of good critical thinking.

Perhaps some of those folks with a good educational underpinning in critical thinking could go into politics? That would be awesome. It would be good to have some folks in government who can actually think.

Psychology interfaces well with Law: Again, the methodological and thinking skills can be brought to bear.

Jacobsen: Kwantlen is attempting to expand that research on campus. What are the current attempts to expand research on campus? What is the progress of those attempts?

Podrouzek: I know there is a real push to expand research at Kwantlen. Outside of Psych, I’m afraid I’m not very knowledgeable about what’s going on. However, in the psych department, we have many faculties who have active research programs, within Kwantlen and in collaborating with other universities and agencies. Several have international reputations. Given the level of funding, and our workload in teaching and service, I am pretty impressed with the level of research many of faculty in psych are managing.

Jacobsen: If Kwantlen provided incentives via funding (grants), would you be interested in conducting research at Kwantlen?

Podrouzek: Grants might be nice – along with time release for doing research. However, in my case, a lot of what I need is tech support. Many of the kinds of experiments I want to do require substantial expertise in programming and integrating output from different technologies. I haven’t done any programming for over 20 years now, and everything has changed (and what I did then was on MAC), and I don’t really have the inclination to take a year or two to learn to do it well. I have quite a few (I think) fairly good ideas for studies, but without substantial tech support, I’m afraid, I won’t be the one to be doing them.

And, I’m getting a tad long in the tooth to retool for a substantial research career. It would likely take me 1-2 years to get up to speed in a new area, and that pretty much puts me at retirement age. So, I just like doing what I think is interesting “stuff” with like-minded students, at a very pedestrian pace assumptions, change your methods, and you change your field. Things loosened up considerably. Areas of enquiry and the acceptable methods and what could count as reasonable data become much more encompassing, and thus new areas of psychology emerged. We certainly didn’t have courses on sex, for example, or prejudice, cultural, gender (other than straight up sex differences, other aspects of that field would have been taught in “Women’s Studies”), and the list goes ever on.

When I attended university there were upper level specialty courses in Psycholinguistics (Chomsky) – a brilliant, complex theory of language (particularly, syntax and transformations, and semantics), Piaget and Vygotsky, behaviour, modification (applied behavior analysis), parallel and distributed processing, and other things that are now of historical interest, but at the time were all the rage.

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2022-03-25

Dr. Wayne Podrouzek, Evolution in Research Interest and Undergraduate Psychology

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/31

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your current position in the Psychology Faculty?

Dr. Wayne Podrouzek: I’m currently full time faculty and chair of the department.

Jacobsen: Where did you acquire your education? What did you pursue in your studies?

Podrouzek: I did my undergrad work in Nova Scotia at Mount St. Vincent U, although there is (was) an interuniversity agreement there where many courses can be taken at Dalhousie, Saint Mary’s, or the Mount and simply count at the other universities, so I took many courses at the other schools. At Dal and SMU I did quite a bit of philosophy and religious studies, some bio at Dal, some behavioural stuff at SMU, etc. It’s actually quite a good system. All the universities are within about a ½ hour drive of each other, offer diverse courses, and there are a minimum of administrative obstacles.

I got edjamacated ‘cause I was working with children and teenagers with the equivalent of the Ministry of Children and Families and the Provincial Attorney General (with teens who had been incarcerated) in Alberta and realized that to have more influence I would need some university education (I had obtained a diploma). Mt. St. Vincent had one of Canada’s only two programs for working with children (Bachelor of Child Studies – BCS) and so I sent back there to pick up that credential.

Jacobsen: What originally interested you in Psychology? If your interest evolved, how did your interest change over time to the present?

Podrouzek: As part of the BCS, we were required to complete a substantial number of bio and psych courses, and I became interested in psychology, subtype developmental psychology, specifically child language development. I completed my BCS, then did a BSc Honours in Psych (minors in Math/Stats and Biology), and started a Masters in Education (I picked this up in my last year of my Honours as extra courses) and completed all the coursework but not the project. I was subsequently awarded an NSERC, and some other money, and was accepted into the MA at Simon Fraser, so abandoned my MEd to come out here. I kind of wish I had finished the MEd now – but I really just didn’t see the necessity at the time. Because of its emphasis on counselling and testing I could have used it to become registered in BC – it would have opened some doors. Can’t y’all just seem me as a therapist? Hmmm, that’s scary.

At any rate, I originally went to SFU because it was supposed to get some equipment to do acoustical analyses of language (which at the time was about a $60K piece of equipment called a Sonograph, and today you can do the same thing with an A-D board that costs less than $100), and I had done my Honours Project on “An acoustical analysis of pre-lexical child utterances in pragmatically constrained contexts” (or something like that and wanted to continue that work.) However, the equipment fell through, so I switch to perception. I did my MA thesis in perception on the question of the order of visual processing (what do you process first, the global scene and then analyze for the bits, or the bits first and then synthesize them into the whole scene: the Global-Local question).

I began my PhD in perception, but then met Dr. Bruce Whittlesea, and became interested in memory theory, so I switched to that area and completed my PhD in his lab. I did my dissertation on Repetition Blindness in Rapid Serial Visual Presentation Lists (an examination of the phenomenon that you tend not to see repetitions of words in quickly presented word lists).

Since my PhD I have become interested in how the blind spot gets filled in, subjective contours, retrieval induced forgetting, and for a brief time, the science underlying neuropsych testing.

Jacobsen: Since your time as an undergraduate student, what are the major changes in the curriculum? What has changed regarding the conventional ideas?

Podrouzek: Wow, that’s a hard one – so much has happened in so many areas. When I started as an undergrad (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth with people), the areas then are usually considered the “core” areas now. These included methods, stats, measurement theory, bio, social, developmental, cognitive, and behavioural in the experimental areas, and testing, abnormal, and therapy in the clinical areas. We had rat labs in intro – every student got two rats and we ran experiments on the rats and wrote the experiments up in the lab books (something like doing chem labs. Then we got to kill them). Consciousness was not discussed – that was akin to studying magic. Evolutionary Psych did not exist (although its precursor, sociobiology did). Although Kuhn had published his controversial book “The structure of scientific revolutions”, his ideas were discussed but, I think, not taken to heart by most scientists.

Later, with other philosophers of science (e.g., Feyerabend, Lakoff), publishing works that in some ways augmented his, our assumptions and views of even methodologies changed. Of course, change your assumptions, change your methods, and you change your field. Things loosened up considerably. Areas of enquiry and the acceptable methods and what could count as reasonable data become much more encompassing, and thus new areas of psychology emerged. We certainly didn’t have courses on sex, for example, or prejudice, cultural, gender (other than straight up sex differences, other aspects of that field would have been taught in “Women’s Studies”), and the list goes ever on.

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2022-03-25

Marieme Helie Lucas, Observed Impacts and Religious Fundamentalism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/31

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.’ We discuss religious fundamentalism and women’s rights. Part 3.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What have been the observed, if possible, measured impacts of ‘Secularism is a Women’s Issue’ and ‘Women Living Under Muslim Laws?’

Marieme Helie Lucas: WLUML definitely was instrumental in putting on the agenda, worldwide, the issue of women’s rights in Muslim contexts. It projected not the usual image of the ‘poor oppressed Muslim woman’ (which was instrumental in justifying military occupations and wars), but that of universalist (believers as well as secularists) women human rights defenders.

As for SIAWI, it performs very similar tasks in a new political context where secularists and atheists are more and more endangered while they become more and more vocal especially among the youth. SIAWI takes part in the circulation of information on the struggles of secularists and atheists in Muslim contexts and in the diasporas by maintaining a website (siawi.org). It gives visibility to the new forces for secularism in Muslim contexts and in the diasporas; it supports struggles and endangered individuals; it produces analyses on secularism in the times of rising armed fundamentalism; it participates in secular gathering and conferences; it challenges cultural relativism in Europe and North America and supports women’s local secular demands.

Jacobsen: What are the historical, and ongoing, problems with religious fundamentalism?

Lucas: There always were reactionary forces aiming at governing in the name of god. Secularism, understood as separation, is the best way to keep them at bay, away from directly exercising political power. Historically, progressive religious interpreters and liberation theologians have been defeated within their own religions.

Jacobsen: Who is your favorite philosopher or scientist?

Lucas: he one who will enlighten us tomorrow.

We must not forget that all philosophers and scientists are grounded into their times. The French revolution failed to grant equal rights to women and executed Olympe de Gouges who drafted a constitution that incorporated women’s rights to the social revolution. So did Darwin. Many otherwise progressive thinkers did not see any problem with colonial exploitation of Africans and slavery. We do not need to throw the baby with the bath water but we definitely have to look for thinkers for our times and our future.

Jacobsen: What about activist?

Lucas: What is the question?

Jacobsen: Any recommended reading?

Lucas: I suggested some books and articles in the foot notes. To those who read French, I could suggest, Bas les Voiles by Chaadortt Djavan, any book by Mohamed Sifaoui, Marianne et le Prophète by Soheib Bencheikh, articles and books explaining the concept of secularism by Henri Pena Ruiz.

English-speaking people need to access original literature that makes the difference between separation and equal tolerance by the state… such a source of confusion in any discussion on secularism… Fight for translations into English!

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion about our discussion today?

Lucas: Secularism – understood as separation between state and religions – is today’s best response to growing communalism in Europe and North America, as well as to the murderous armed Muslim organisations that want to impose theocracies and eradicate democracies. As imperfect as democracies are in Europe today, we need to fight for their survival in wake of the growing danger of seeing them replaced by theocracies, in the name of religious rights, cultural rights, minority rights, etc…

Confront the erroneous idea of a ‘Muslim world.’ It exists no more than ‘the Christian world’ or ‘the Crusaders’ that Daesh pretends to destroy…

References

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2022-03-25

Marieme Helie Lucas, International Women’s Rights, Empowerment, and Advocacy

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/31

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: As an Algerian sociologist, i.e. as an individual with an expert opinion in sociology, what is the situation for women living under Muslim laws throughout the world?

Marieme Helie Lucas: As varied as one can imagine in one’s wildest guess. It ranges from being able to become an elected head of state, to being closeted between four walls with no education and no rights, and all the intermediary shades in between these extremes. There exists absolutely no homogeneous ‘Muslim world.’

However, I must add a few caveat:

Although very progressive provisions for women existed in different periods of history and in different locations around the world, in predominantly Muslim contexts, we witness everywhere today the rise of fundamentalism, i. e. a political extreme-right which camouflages its power greed behind religion.
Everywhere and at all times (3), women in Muslim contexts fought for their rights, using different strategies, just as we do today: demanding right to education, political rights, freedom of movement, financial autonomy, equal rights in marriage, etc…Religious interpretation was only one of the many strategies they used. The struggle still goes on now, in these very difficult times.
An important new dimension of the struggle now takes place in the countries of immigration. Every right we lose in Europe or North America to the mermaids of cultural relativism heavily impacts the situation in our countries of origin. Conversely, being able to bypass the smokescreen of the ‘main enemy’ to convey to our comrades and sisters back home the reality of Muslim fundamentalism having opened a new front in Europe and North America is part and parcel of building our common struggle beyond national borders. (4)

Jacobsen: What is the general status for international women’s rights, empowerment, and advocacy in these contexts?

Lucas: One cannot look at it in terms of ‘countries’ or cultures. For instance, one can find places where the promotion of economic rights improves women’s autonomy, while FGM is tolerated or repudiation legal, or countries where women enjoyed a notable degree of legal autonomy which is suddenly reduced in practice by the coming to power of extreme right fundamentalists.

One must abandon the idea that there exists a homogeneous ‘Muslim world’ where everything would function under the banner of religion. I believe this idea of a Muslim world, highly promoted by fundamentalists, is derived from that of ‘Umma,’ i.e. the assembly of believers, which exists also in the Catholic Church as ‘Ecclesia.’ In reality, we all know that countries are the location of various political forces and classes which fight for political representation or domination. This is in no way different in Muslim contexts, and religion per se has little to do there – except, as a generally right-wing form of political organisation.

Jacobsen: You are the founder and former international coordinator for ‘Women Living Under Muslim Laws.’ What tasks and responsibilities came with this position?

Lucas: It has been a very inspiring and rewarding time in my life, even if one had to work around the clock while raising small kids and living in poverty – a formative time, too. I came to realise that women’s struggles already existed everywhere in Muslim contexts but that they fought in isolation.Women needed to know about each other’s projects and be inspired by each other’s strategies, and eventually that they could come together on specific actions and/or support collectively the local struggles or initiatives.

The idea was timely and everyone grabbed it across Africa and Asia, quickly gathering together the very best of smart committed women activists.

This network was not a pyramidal organisation, it had no membership, it was a fluid network in which women and groups could step in and take responsibility for specific projects depending on their local needs.

It gathered together in mutual solidarity women who were religious believers, human rights advocates, secularists and atheists.

The tasks of the coordination office were that of a clearing house of information, of a publishing house, of a coordination secretariat for research programmes and for collective projects, of an urgent response/ emergency rescue organisation, of a board – lodging – therapeutic safe place for endangered or burnt out activists, etc… Now that most revolutionary women’s networks of the nineties have been tamed and ‘professionalised,’ my heart goes out to the Women In Black–Belgrade, whose humble coordination still performs so many of these exhausting and exhilarating tasks, under very difficult political circumstances. I salute these great resisters to NGOs normalisation!

Needless to say that, with the growing success of our network, funders were eager to ‘own’ it. There were growing pressures on me to come to my senses and conform to the corporate sector’s norms of organisation, believed – despite the evidence provided by the enormous success and achievements of our very network – to be the only efficient ones. A membership organisation with a classic top to bottom pyramidal structure, ‘professionalised’ activists appointed to specific tasks and responsibilities with afferent titles and fat salaries, and a well-paid ‘director’ (myself), with a clear religious identification, etc…

If you look at funding organisations’ NGOs normalisation plans during the nineties, you will see clearly exposed what I am talking about… I managed to keep them at bay and to protect the revolutionary spirit of the network for 18 years, till I left it.

As an organisation, the network WLUML circulated information on a regular basis; published a very good journal that mixed together sophisticated academic analysis and on the ground information on struggles and strategies of local women’s groups; produced knowledge that was needed to enhance women’s struggles through coordination of collective research; organised cross-cultural exchange of women from one predominantly Muslim area to another, culturally different Muslim areas so that participants could deconstruct the idea of a homogeneous Muslim world by living a very different reality; organised collective support for local actions; organised rescue; etc…

References

1. Knowing Our Rights: Women, family, laws and customs in the Muslim …

http://www.wluml.org/node/588

2 Dossier 23-24: What is your tribe? Women’s struggles and the …

http://www.wluml.org/fr/node/343

3 Great Ancestors: Women Claiming Rights in Muslim Contexts | Women …

http://www.wluml.org/…/great-ancestors-women-claiming-rights-muslim…

4 Dossier 30-31 The struggle for secularism in europe and North America

Click to access WLUML-dossier-30-31-v2.pdf

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2022-03-25

Marieme Helie Lucas, Political Awakening, Secularism, and Women’s Rights

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/31

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was the moment of political awakening for you?

Marieme Helie Lucas:Being born and raised in a colonised country and having lived through a very bloody liberation struggle from French colonialism… there is no way to ignore politics and their consequences on individuals. Moreover, I was born and raised into a family of strong feminists for several generations; let’s say that I fell into the pot from childhood…

Jacobsen: When did your personal and professional attention turn to activism, religious fundamentalism, and women’s rights?

Lucas: Well, prepared by the colonial situation and by my family’s political awareness, I was an activist – as well as a feminist one – since an early teenager, under various forms, depending on the period of time (pre-independence struggle, during the struggle for liberation, after independence, when women’s rights were curtailed by the new family code, under armed fundamentalists’ attempts to impose a theocracy in Algeria in the 90s, etc…). I became a full-time activist in the early eighties, when I left research and teaching in university, and founded the WLUML (Women Living Under Muslim Laws) network. I remained a full-time activist since then. But my academic research was already focused on people’s rights and women’s rights.

WLUML was a non-confessional network of women whose lives were shaped and governed by laws said to be Islamic, regardless of their personal faith. Our research (1) on laws affecting women in many countries – in North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, West Africa – show that these man-made laws (rather than of divine inspiration) borrow not just from very different interpretations of Islam, but mostly from local traditions, cultural practices, and even colonial laws, when it suits both patriarchy and religious fundamentalism. Over the past decades, we could monitor the progressive eradication of progressive laws and Muslim fundamentalists’ dedication to exhuming, picking and choosing the most backwards and reactionary practices and passing them off as Islamic. (2)

Interestingly, many journalists and human rights organisations failed to understand our sociological and political approach. They focused on the ‘religious’ flavour in our name, thus attempting to force us into a religious identity we never claimed. For instance, they often renamed us as women ‘under the Muslim Law’ (in the singular!) or even ‘under the Islamic Law.’ This recurrent ideological ‘mistake’ speaks volumes about their urgent need to put us ‘under religious/cultural arrest’ and deny us universal rights and our common humanity.

Jacobsen: You founded ‘Secularism is a Women’s Issue.’ Of course, the title provides the general idea. What is the more formal argument to derive the connection between secularism and women’s issues?

Lucas: Secularism is the legal/administrative provision that separates state from organised religions. It was defined during the French Revolution and later codified in the 1905-1906 laws on separation. Article 1 of the law guarantees freedom of belief and practice to individuals; article 2 stipulates that the Secular Republic does not recognise, therefore dialogue with or fund religions, their representatives and their institutions. The secular Republic only knows equal citizens with equal rights under the law.

The concept of separation at that time successfully challenged the political power of the Vatican and the Catholic Church in the French kingdom. (So much for those ignorant writers and preachers who now pretend secular laws in France were designed against Muslims, since there was NO significant Muslim emigration to France at the time of the French revolution).

In the UK, as the King/Queen is both the Head of State and the Head of the Anglican Church, the concept of separation was hard to swallow. This is why they developed a very misleading re-definition of secularism as equal tolerance by the state towards all religions – which indeed involves and ties together the State and organised religions.

This distortion of the original revolutionary concept spread across European countries where Churches had a strong base. In the present context in Europe, we witness an increasing trend to grant in the name of rights – what a perversion of the very idea of rights! – to separate laws to different religious ‘communities.’ This breeds communalism and creates inequalities between citizens, especially women. For instance, some UK citizens may have rights that other UK citizens will not have access to, if they are, let’s say, Muslims. Sharia courts do not grant equal rights to women in the family. All the recent attempts by Muslim fundamentalists in the UK to promote gender segregation in universities or sharia-compliant wills point in the same political direction. Governments are so keen to trade hard-won women’s rights to appease the religious extreme-right!

This is also the situation in the former British Empire. For instance, in South Asia, where the definition of secularism that prevails is not separation, but equal to tolerance by the state. We deplore that even the Left is hardly aware of this unholy colonial legacy …

It should not be necessary to explain here that, within all religions, reactionary forces generally prevailed that justified women’s oppression by god’s will. It is certainly the dominant political trend today, especially but not exclusively among Muslims.

Moreover, when laws are designed as representing god’s intentions on earth, they become un-changeable, a-historical. Theocracy is the antithesis of democracy where laws are voted by the people and can be changed according to the will of the people.

Women always have a hard time in getting patriarchal laws changed according to international standards of human rights, but it is obviously more so when they can be accused of hurting religious sentiments by doing so, or worse, of apostasy or blasphemy – crimes that are punished by death penalty in Muslim contexts.

In Europe today, xenophobic extreme right movements are attempting to co-opt and manipulate the concept of secularism and to use it against citizens of migrant descent, especially those deemed to be Muslims. This certainly does not make the struggle of secular opponents to Muslim fundamentalism any easier. We need to walk the fine line, challenging at the same time both the new religious extreme rights which condemn secularism and atheism, and ‘traditional’ xenophobic extreme rights which are hijacking the concept of secularism to justify their claim to white Christian superiority. Unfortunately the European Left and Far-Left, that should have our natural allies, have not yet understood that they should not throw themselves in the arms of Muslim fundamentalists in order to counter the traditional extreme right parties… thus choosing to support one extreme right against the other. Instead, they should support us, who confronted Muslim fundamentalists in our countries of origin and now have to do it all over again in Europe.

References

1. Knowing Our Rights: Women, family, laws and customs in the Muslim …

http://www.wluml.org/node/588

2 Dossier 23-24: What is your tribe? Women’s struggles and the …

http://www.wluml.org/fr/node/343

3 Great Ancestors: Women Claiming Rights in Muslim Contexts | Women …

http://www.wluml.org/…/great-ancestors-women-claiming-rights-muslim…

4 Dossier 30-31 The struggle for secularism in europe and North America

Click to access WLUML-dossier-30-31-v2.pdf

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2022-03-25

Karen Loethen, Parenting Style, Non-Negotiables, and Secondary Characteristics

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/30

Karen Loethen comes from the Midwest of America. She is an open and happy – nay joyous – atheist. She writes, and has for some time. Her core belief, as an optimist, is in the inherent goodness of all people. She has two children and an amazing husband. I asked about interviewing her on atheist parenting, but chose “Secular Parenting” for a more “inclusive” (as they say nowadays) title. So here we are, part 2, just for you.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are the main concerns regarding parenting style (authoritative, for example) when raising children?

Karen Loethen: Gosh, you’re not asking much, are you, Scott?!

I’m sure the internet has tons of great websites that discuss these styles of childrearing, but I’m happy to give some general concerns for each for you. In psychology, there are four major styles of parenting: authoritative, permissive, neglectful or uninvolved, authoritarian. These four parenting styles represent differing amounts of two major dimensions of parenting: the amount of responsiveness that a parent has to a child’s needs and behaviors, and the amount of control a parent seeks to extend to their child’s behaviors and choices.

Allow me to give you a brief rundown of each of the four styles beginning with authoritarian. As the name suggests, this parent insists on high levels of control and excessively low levels of response to a child’s needs and wants. This parent is often quite strict, has high expectations of their children, and an inflexible set of rules that the child is expected to follow.

Not surprisingly, children of these parents often experience depression, anxiety, difficulty making decisions, secret lives, difficulty making strong relationships, and a myriad of other problems that make emotional maturity a difficult thing to attain. Authoritarian parents, while intending to raise children that reflect well on the parents, sadly can pass along even more serious outcomes like substance abuse, emotional abuse, and unlawful behaviors of many kinds.

Unresponsive parenting might have a goal of raising highly independent children, or it may simply reflect a parent’s inability to raise children with their display of low levels of personal and familial control and low levels of responsiveness to the needs of their children.

This neglectful style of parenting can sadly raise children who have no skill in decision making, in learning to control personal behavior, in understanding what it means to be independent and mature. The children of these parents might be victims of major depression, suicidal feelings, personality disorders of all kinds, substance abuse, confusion about healthy and normal behavior in society, and unable to form close, healthy relationships.

Permissive parenting is when parents respond with low levels of control to their children and with high levels of responsiveness. These parents, probably with the thought that they were giving their children freedom and autonomy, actually neglect to give children something that they desperately need: parents who expect basic rules to followed in the family, essential schedules, reasonable expectations, necessary limits, and logical consequences.

The absence of these parenting essentials create children with oddly egotistical views of the world or children with extreme lack of a sense of self. These children will struggle to form healthy relationships, will indulge themselves while being unable to make healthy, smart decisions necessary for independence, and an overall absence of a basic understanding of social and community living.

The healthiest style of parenting is considered to be authoritative. These parents tend to display medium levels of control, a level that allows for learning and growth, and a warm and responsive atmosphere. Family rules are clear and understandable, parents expect good things from and for their children, and children are supported while being encouraged to be independent.

Children from these parents will often have higher levels of self-esteem because they have been taught how to operate optimally with regards to their own strengths and growth areas. These fortunate children are better able to form warm, lasting relationships and are generally productive members of society.

Jacobsen: Does choice in partner make all the difference in the world? From the perspective of a woman looking for a partner to having, bear, and raise children, what are the characteristics to look for, first the necessities or non-negotiables?

Loethen: Nah. LOL. Of course. Choosing a life partner is one of the most important and difficult decisions a human being will ever have to make. Depending on one’s parents’ styles of parenting, adults looking for life partners might be sadly attracted to immature partners, abusive partners, unhealthy partners of many kinds. I strongly believe that both men and women looking for partners need, always, to work to develop their own healthiest self first. The process of becoming emotionally healthier, working to gain

Choosing a life partner is one of the most important and difficult decisions a human being will ever have to make. Depending on one’s parents’ styles of parenting, adults looking for life partners might be sadly attracted to immature partners, abusive partners, unhealthy partners of many kinds. I strongly believe that both men and women looking for partners need, always, to work to develop their own healthiest self first.

The process of becoming emotionally healthier, working to gain self actualization, sets human being up to make healthier choices in their lives like choosing healthy partners, making smart financial decisions, becoming independent and interdependent, and many other growth qualities that ensure better decision making.

What qualities might one look for?Someone working on their own sense of self, someone seeking to improve themselves, someone who recognizes the necessity of fiscal conservatism, someone with interests and hobbies, someone who shares a similar philosophy to you, someone warm, someone who laughs, someone compassionate, someone who likes you back.

Someone working on their own sense of self, someone seeking to improve themselves, someone who recognizes the necessity of fiscal conservatism, someone with interests and hobbies, someone who shares a similar philosophy to you, someone warm, someone who laughs, someone compassionate, someone who likes you back.

Jacobsen: What are some of the secondary characteristics and attributes the partner must have when considering a partner for parenting with you?

Loethen: It’s extra nice when they are your best friend, when they are kind to strangers, when they love their family…

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time today, Karen – looking forward to next session.

Loethen: Next session? What have you got in mind, Scott? LOL

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2022-03-25

Karen Loethen, Secular Parenting, Australia, Brazil, and Being an Atheist Parent

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/30

Karen Loethen comes from the Midwest of America. Now, she lives in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia – say it with the accent in your head. She is an open and happy – nay joyous – atheist. She writes, and has for some time. Her core belief, as an optimist, is in the inherent goodness of all people. She has two children and an amazing husband. I asked about interviewing her on atheist parenting, but chose “Secular Parenting” for a more “inclusive” (as they say nowadays) title. So here we are, part 1, just for you.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Was the move to Australia a decision with the children in mind? Why there over the Midwest, or elsewhere, in any case?

Karen Loethen: Actually, Scott, we no longer live in Australia. We lived in Brisbane Queensland Australia for a year and a half for my husband’s work. We were SO fortunate to have the opportunity to take the kids there and set up a household. It was wonderful and we miss it every day. Our decision to move the kids (ages 14 and 11 at the time) was actually a very, very easy one to make at the time.

As homeschoolers, we are exceedingly free with our schedule and living arrangements. Being in Australia was a phenomenal life lesson for all of us. We also had the chance to move to Brazil at about the same time. We decided to go to Brisbane for several reasons, not the least of which was an opportunity to see an eclipse. There was an eclipse in 2014 and we were able to be in Cairns QLD for the occasion. In fact, astronomy was a huge draw for us to go to the Southern Hemisphere. Lol

But we would definitely have chosen the move to Brisbane for many other reasons had we known better at the time. The secular vibe of Brisbane was wonderfully freeing. We are a homeschooling family and are quite used to being in groups of religious families. While in Brisbane I can honestly say that I don’t even know the religious bent of many of the families we befriended. Religion is simply not a public issue there.

We are now back in the Midwest and happy to be here. We have a new grandchild in the family and she will keep us firmly rooted here in the Midwest!

Jacobsen: What are some bigger differences between atheist, or secular, and religious parenting?

Loethen: Actually the intro is very wrong about this one too…sorry. I definitely prefer the label Atheist Parent over any other descriptor. Many people bristle over the use of the term atheist; I do not. I embrace it loudly and proudly. In fact, secular means activity without religion so many parents consider themselves secular while actually believing in a higher power. So, verbiage notwithstanding, the differences are massive!

I couldn’t and wouldn’t attempt to characterize the labels you have asked about because, were I to do that, about a million people would find fault with the definitions and say That isn’t me! So I will try to answer you with the understanding that the word some remind us that there is no way to characterize people; there is no black and white, but many shades of grey. My responses below come from my own experiences and from real people and situations that I have encountered, in general, with an effort to portray each group honestly and with an effort to avoid extremism in my answers.

In general, though, some religious parents look to their religious texts for guidance in childrearing and sometimes this includes being pro corporal punishment for children, maintaining anti-LGBTQ philosophies, incredibly messed up ideas of healthy sexuality and relationships, teaching of mythology as fact, fear of free thought and intellectualism, and many other points that I find reprehensible.

My personal experience of being in this position is that religions offer a very black-and-white way of looking at the issues of humanity, of not allowing for the many different shades of grey. Of course, there are those religious parents who do not fit into this slice of a definition. Some religious parents are sadly motivated by fear. Fear of offending their deity, fear of losing the blessings of their church or religious community, fear of disapproving family members, and fear of operating outside of an approved, narrow margin of lifestyle, thought, and deed.

Some people who attempt to practice a secular parenting style seek to raise children within the religion and belief system of their choice while being less connected to the doctrine of that religion that troubles them. I would assume that these parents feel a greater sense of freedom to reject troublesome parts of their inherited religion while still embracing the warm feelings that can come from religious belief.

As for atheist parents, I would assume that some of these folks are able to consider each issue independently and come up with a preferred sense of personal integrity and choice. With no institutional connection or alliance, freethinking parents have the freedom, the responsibility to fully explore life issues and making decisions and choices that make the most sense for their families, embracing and celebrating the wonderful shades of gray, and other colors, in the world. Of course, these parents often have to eschew popular approval and/or familial connection for choosing to live outside of the popular mythology.

Jacobsen: What are some smaller differences between secular and religious parenting?

Loethen: Again, acknowledging the many, many parenting styles in the world, my guess would be that the day-to-day prayer, seeking of blessings, belief that a deity is real and involved in life, etc…these things are usually a normal part of a religious family’s life. Books read, conversations had, people chose to be in their circle, the level of freedom to explore ideas outside of their comfort zone…these kinds of things seem to be a few of the places I can come up with this moment where secular families differ from atheist families.

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2022-03-25

Lawrence Hill, Broom Dancer, R&B, Messages, and Interpretation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/30

Lawrence Hill is one of Canada’s most distinguished and published authors. In this extensive interview, we discuss everything in Hill’s purview. In his words, “I have to say that I don’t think I’ve ever been interviewed by somebody who had such a profound grasp of such a wide variety of things that I’ve shared, written, or spoken about whether they are personal, professional or things to do with my books or my family life.” This series will explore his life and philosophy, just for you, part 11.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In the Hill household, you are known as the broom dancer, especially to some good R&B music. You mentioned the playful tone of A.A. Milne’s Disobedience. What R&B music? What is the family reaction to this fun and silliness? What is the relationship between fun and silliness, and good prose?

Lawrence Hill: All great R&B music whether Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, and everything in between. There were several forms of music that dominated my childhood: jazz, blues (thanks to my mother and father), and R&B music. R&B music was ascendant as I entered into the teenage years, which was natural for anyone in my generation. I’m 59. It was a musical household. I played poorly.

My brother went on to become a professional musician. My parents weren’t musicians. However, they played music in the house and sang all the time. R&B, jazz, and blues were staples of our musical expression in the living room and the kitchen in the household. It affected all of the children. My brother, sister, and I were affected profoundly. It emerges in our work too.

Playfulness and silliness is vital. You could not love well without being relaxed and able to be playful. You cannot learn language well if you’re too uptight and unwilling to make mistakes. One key to learning new languages is willingness to make mistakes and make a fool of yourself. Of course, if you’re a child or an infant, you do not need to worry about those things. You haven’t learned those worries.

You have to relax to love well. You have to relax to learn language. In my experience, you have to relax to produce good art. You have to be able to be fun, silly, playful, and to rejoice in life in all of its forms.

If you do not relax, you will not get the most out of your mind. As a writer, you should be rejoicing in human play and the play of language.

I tend to be too serious most of the time. So, people like to see me fool around, dance with brooms, and play with and entertain children – who are now grown. They still like to see it. My father was an incredibly serious man in his role as a human rights activist and historian. He would wind down by watching Westerns, boxing, or track-and-field on television, maybe football.

He would holler at the TV. He needed to relax to be able to go back the next day to work that was often soul crushing. Most people who have healthy balance in life would appreciate and need to be silly and playful. It takes a certain amount of trust to know that the people around you will not judge or despise you because you are letting your guard down in being playful and silly.

Without that, there’s no hope for humanity.

(Laugh)

Jacobsen: If we take The Book of Negroes, The Illegal, Blood: The Stuff of Life, and Dear Sir, I intend to Burn Your Book, you more well-known works at least. What is the main message or set of messages that you wish to get across?

I always have trouble answering that type of question. I do not think about the message with a capital “M” when I write a work of fiction. Let’s set aside non-fiction for a minute, that is a little different. Readers do not like to be preached at or to be told what to think or feel. One stance to take as a writer is to assume that your reader is smarter than you. The reader does not need to be lectured on how to read or interpret things.

People come to their own conclusions. Present the story that you are able to present. Most discriminating readers react negatively to being held by the hand and told how to read, and having everything explained to them. It is dangerous to come to the job with a message to hammer into the heads of your, in my case, readers.

I do not begin writing a novel with the idea of disseminating a set of messages. Most writers of fiction hope that their messages will be a happy byproduct of drama. In my fiction, I meditate on the resilience of the human spirit and the miracle of being caring and loving even after suffering abuses of the worst kinds. Millions of people continue to display that resilience today. It is not Aminata Diallo or Keita Ali alone.

Many, many of them are showing the same resilience Aminata showed in The Book of Negroes. One message is to pause and appreciate the resilience of the human spirit. I do not try to jam that into the prose or attempt to willfully insert a message. I try to write a story. I hope that somehow between the lines the reader will divine the other things.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Larry.

I thank you for your time. I have to say that I don’t think I’ve ever been interviewed by somebody who had such a profound grasp of such a wide variety of things that I’ve shared, written, or spoken about whether they are personal, professional, or things to do with my books or my family life. I’ve been quite astounded by the reach of your work and I can only imagine that you’ve invested a huge amount of time in getting your head around a person’s life and expressions, in this case mine. Thank you for that.

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2022-03-25

Lawrence Hill, The Holocaust, Syria, Vietnamese Woman, and Aylan Kurdi

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/30

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If you look at the early 20^th century, we have The Holocaust. Similarly, if we look at the early 21^st century, we have a singular tragedy in the Syrian refugee crisis. 12,000,000 Syrians are refugees, or more. By comparison with the total Canadian population, that is about 1/3 of Canada, at least. That rhetoric of those mentioned and unstated can be damaging to people in a similar manner as with blood or on being a ‘real [fill in the blank]’ (American, Canadian, and so on). These are individual human beings going through extraordinary circumstances.

You worked for the Ontario Welcome House at Toronto Pearson International Airport welcoming refugees at age 16. My sense is deep empathy for refugees from you. Also, something unstated about them. This experience never leaves them. That is, it is important to get compassion right the first time. Related to The Book of Negroes, Aminata’s life is marked forever by the experience of being stolen and enslaved. Her entire travels, life story, and narrative of being taken against her will out of Bayo is ever after marked by this. This was important for The Illegal with Keita Ali as well. How did this and the current Syrian refugee crisis inform the foundation for this novel as the events in Syria progressed?

Lawrence Hill: The refugee crisis in Syria did not inform the writing of The Illegal. Like many Canadians and most people around the world, I was not aware of the buildup of refugees in Syria when I wrote the novel. The novel was finished well before we talked openly in the West, about that particular refugee crisis. However, there were many other refugee crises in the world and they did inform The Illegal.

Jacobsen: We have images of the Vietnamese woman fleeing napalm bombs, Aylan Kurdi, and so on. The phenomenon of genocide neglect is real. Individual images and stories move hearts more than statistics and news reports. How might the arts community humanize the downtrodden, the desperate, the fleeing, and the suffering?

There is a role for every type of person in talking about the downtrodden and the suffering, and in this case the plight of refugees. There is a role for great humanitarians in the field attempting to alleviate immediate suffering in refugee camps. There are advocates working for organizations. They speak up. They tell us the results of studies. There are activists and university professors.

There are lawyers. There are politicians learning a great deal about the plight of refugees. There are endless numbers of organizations from the United Nations onward. They produce reports for the public to read about it. There are people and organizations with things to share. There are journalists. They do a great job bringing the information about the world to us.

There is narrative too. Artists can more intensely, efficiently, and with more ardor, passion, and success than a typical historian, journalist or university professor excite and trigger the imagination. The artist is capable of taking somebody by the collar and saying, “Look at this person. Behold this humanity!”

The role of the artist is to connect with the humanity of the individuals perceiving the art. It is to excite and stir and provoke people.

It is the work that I do in life. It is my contribution. I do not want to overstate it. I do not want to understate the role of the artist. The artist is not unlike the rabbi, the imam, or the priest. A person who evokes the story of humanity to evoke or elicit faith. We all need story to understand ourselves. We need narrative to understand the world and our place in it.

Some of us look to religion. Others look to art for the same thing: guidance. For words that tell us how to be, remind us of the deeper truer values, that set us on the right path. Religion plays a similar role in satisfying a fundamental need to be told a story, how to be, and how to be good in the world.

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2022-03-25

Lawrence Hill, De-Humanization, Purity, Impurity, and Blood: The Stuff of Life

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/29

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Earlier in the interview, your work, focus, and emphasis in literary work and in personal volunteer work is a humanistic perspective. I was half-right. Not half-wrong, I missed one crucial element. There is a humanitarianism. For example, The Book of Negroes and The Illegal aim to humanize the de-humanized. That is, the contextualization of the humanity of a slave and a refugee, respectively. Did these novels succeed in the humanization of the de-humanized?

Lawrence Hill: I do not know if they have succeeded. I am not the best judge of my own work. Critics and readers are in a better position to judge my work. But yes, I did attempt to humanize the de-humanized in the world. Two types of people profoundly de-humanized in their experiences are those enslaved or subject to war and genocide — people forced to take refuge, often without legal documentation, in countries that don’t want them.

One of the justifications used by people who perpetuate genocide or state-sponsored oppression is to claim that the victims have impure blood, or are inferior human beings. It is almost a precondition to carrying out genocide and massive mistreatment of people. They are not the same as us. They are not human like us. They are less than us. Therefore, we can treat them badly.

In general, people hiding in countries where they do not belong – where they do not have any status as legal residents — are despised by the authorities. It is a negative thing living without legal right in a country that does not want you. You are made to feel base and less than human. You are not welcome. If you are caught, you may be deported. So how do you make a living? How do you care for your children? Who can help you if you are threatened or hurt? I tried in The Illegal and The Book of Negroes to give humanity to people whose humanity has been ignored.

Jacobsen: Earlier in the interview and in the response, you mentioned the purity or impurity of blood. My favourite part of Blood: The Stuff of Life comes from discussion about misconceptions of menstruation. Those conceptions were wrong from modern scientific standards. It was used to see women as inferior. As you document, these wrong theories continue to arise. You showed non-scientific ideas can have terrible consequences. What are your thoughts on the development of ideas about blood through non-scientific ideas as it relates to sexism?

I do not know if we can blame sexism on Aristotle, but he did fulminate about the supposed inferiority of women’s blood and speculate about the reasons women’s menstrual blood makes them inferior to men

As far as I know, the Spanish Inquisition in Medieval Spain represents the first time that a state attempts to link the ideas of blood purity and race and uses this vile connection to perpetuate genocide, torture and deportation.

During the Spanish Inquisition, thousands of Jews and Muslims were burned at the stake, dispossessed or deported because their blood was deemed impure in relation to the reigning Catholic monarchs. Since that time, over and over again we have drawn upon absolute evil notions of blood to ‘whip up’ hatred and justify mistreatment of those that we wish to subjugate.

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2022-03-25

Lawrence Hill, Prison, Literacy, The Illegal, The Book of Negroes, and Any Known Blood

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/29

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: With respect to the prison population and literacy, how might someone volunteer for prisons in the area?

Lawrence Hill: Often, one of the best things to do is to align with an active, reputable organization. I have been one of many volunteers for a non-profit, charitable group called Book Clubs for Inmates. It distributes books without charge to inmates in federal penitentiaries and organizes book club discussions in those same institutions.

So a person who is interested in promoting reading and literacy among prisoners might choose to volunteer for a group such as Book Clubs for Inmates.

I have recently become a professor of creative writing at the University of Guelph in Ontario, and one form of community service that I have been contemplating would be to be a mentor or teacher of creative writing to prison inmates. That is something I plan to explore.

Jacobsen: The Book of Negroes discusses the narrative of Aminata Diallo. A young African stolen from Bayo, Mali and sailed to America and enslaved. She was the same age as your eldest child at the time. You had nightmares in constructing this narrative. It was painful. In fact, you worked to write past this part, quickly. What were the contents of those nightmares?

People being murdered, orphaned, thrown overboard into the sea, watching their families or villages being burned down. All of the things that happened in the book.

Jacobsen: You’ve volunteered with Crossroads International in Cameroon, Mali, Niger, and Swaziland. To name your protagonist, you used the common Malian name Aminata based on meeting a midwife in Mali. The name means “trustworthy” and Diallo means “bold.” Selecting the name for a character is vital, why this name?

It is vital. It is a beautiful name. It is a common name. It is as common as Mary and Joanne in Canada. I could have chosen another name. It struck me as an immensely beautiful name. It is a mouthful, Aminata, but not too much of a mouthful. In North America, it seems foreign, but accessible. I love the sound of it. All of the vowels. It evokes the name of a midwife who was dignified, splendid, and courageous in her work. With my daughter, it helped me imagine a young woman who was in a way my own daughter.

Jacobsen: Your recent novel, The Illegal (2015), focuses on a man that runs in a literal and metaphorical way. For instance, he was in a place, Zantoroland, where there were great runners. He hoped to join the Olympics. That was shoved to the side in a moment. He was running for life. In one part of The Book of Negroes, I noticed Aminata described African peoples are “travelling people” and moves out of necessity, akin to Keita Ali, throughout the novel from Bayo to Carolina to New York to Nova Scotia to Mali to London. I note a thread through these two texts with movement, history, ownership, literacy, bonds, and survival. Each seems like threads in The Book of Negroes and The Illegal. What were some other threads brought into the novel that reflect personal concerns about the downtrodden for you?

I am interested in movement, voluntary and involuntary. We can agree Aminata’s abduction in Africa, being sent to North America, and enslaved until freeing herself is a form of involuntary migration. She did not choose to leave a village in Africa. She did not choose to move to America and leave Africa. That was involuntary. Keita’s movement in The Illegal might be considered voluntary. He chooses to leave the country. Although, it is a country where he is not welcome. His movement is voluntary on the one hand, but he does not have many options. If he does not leave his country, he will be killed.

In an earlier novel of mine called Any Known Blood (1997), I followed a family of five generations of men who move back-and-forth between Maryland and Ontario. Each generation leaves one jurisdiction and goes into the other over five generations. Those were, for the most part, voluntary as well, but we have people escaping slavery.

For instance, we have the underground railroad. You might see that as voluntary, but attempting to save their lives and freedom at the same time. I am interested in migration, dislocation, and alienation. I have an interest in how identity alters in one’s eyes and in the eyes of those around you, especially as you move across the world or a piece of land. These seem to be continually arising issues: dislocation and marginality.

Many writers have themes to which they return in their books. For example, the Canadian novelist Jane Urquhart writes about people in the Irish diaspora and explores the lives of visual artists, over and over again in her books. My work is preoccupied by dislocation, migration, and alienation.

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2022-03-25

Lawrence Hill, Friend’s Cottage, Book Burning, and Differences of Opinion

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/29

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That’s a good coda statement on it. What economic and political philosophy most appeals to you?

Lawrence Hill: I do not believe in unfettered capitalism. I do not believe in the Adam Smith idea. That is, the pursuit of one’s own individual profit above all as necessary to ensure that people thrive in society. Clearly, in pure capitalism, we would see some people abandoned and starving.

For people to thrive, in a loving definition of the word “thrive,” I flirted with ideas of socialism and communism at an early age. I find much to admire in it, but I am not a socialist or a communist. I believe in the hybrid of socialism and capitalism.

I believe that people should be free to pursue their individual economic interests, but that they should support a strong, democratically-elected government that tends to those who are disenfranchised or not thriving, and that focuses on the development and protection of public goods and services such as roads, schools, hospitals, health care, our environment, our water supply, foreign aid and international relations.

I also want to live in a society that embraces and encourages volunteer activity, non-profit groups and organizations serving a wide range of community needs.

Jacobsen: You write at home. You might write at a friend’s cottage. You leave a couple to a few times a year to enter into isolation to write, intensely. You wrote an essay entitled Dear Sir, I Intend to Burn Your Book: An Anatomy of a Book Burning (2013) based on a letter from a Surinamese Dutchman named Roy Groenberg. You wrote back in an “outrageously Canadian” way – with tact and politeness. Based on that tone, in hindsight, what would have been the appropriate response to Mr. Groenberg at the time?

I do not feel my response was inappropriate. There would not have been a point in being aggressive. I do not know if I would have done anything differently, if it happened today. I offered an explanation about the origins of the title of my novel The Book of Negroes in my first email to Mr. Groenberg. He was not interested in explanations, in reading the book, or in talking about it.

He was interested in escalating the conflict. It is hard to talk to somebody who seeks to escalate conflict. There does not seem to be a point. The other possibility would have been to ignore him, and not to confront the issue in an essay for The Toronto Star.

I don’t know if I wrote things perfectly. I don’t walk around with a great sense of pride about it, but I do feel that I reacted to the issue in accordance with my own values. I would not have reacted any differently today.

Jacobsen: On page 31 to 32, you closed:

The very purpose of literature is to enlighten, disturb, awaken and provoke. Literature should get us talking – even when we disagree. Literature should bring us into the same room – not over matches, but over coffee and conversation it should inspire recognition of our mutual humanity. Together. I can’t see any good coming out of burning or banning books. Let’s talk, instead.

Jacobsen: What emotion does book burning evoke you?

Fear and horror, a sense that we are witnessing a precursor to physical violence. It makes me think of people whose anger has run amok and are interested in wreaking vengeance and hurting. It makes me think of the Holocaust during which huge numbers of books by Jewish writers were burned.

It makes me think of a person or a group of people who have decided that there is no point in civil dialogue. It makes me think about people who want to intimidate, silence and hurt others. I am troubled by book burning – even a book that I despise. Every person should be entitled to write a book, or to despise a book, but when we discover differences of opinion, they should be addressed through conversation and debate – not by means of book burning or violence.

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2022-03-25

Lawrence Hill, Rwandan Genocide, Ethical Philosophy, and Humanism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/29

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We have the Rwandan genocide, Cambodian genocide, The Holocaust, and the Spanish Inquisition. Each relates to the ideas about the impurity of others’ blood. It justifies murder and subjugation in the mind of the murderer and subjugator. What other dangers exist with blood being associated with race or religion?

Lawrence Hill: That’s a complicated question. I wrote about this in Blood: The Stuff of Life (2013). In a nutshell, we have these ideas about blood, which are unscientific and unrelated to reality. Even as recent as the Second World War, the American government made it illegal for blood from black donors to be given to white recipients.

Even though, at the time, it was completely understood that compatibility between donor and recipient has nothing to do with race. Do the blood types match? That’s the question. If it’s a black donor and white recipient, or white donor and black recipient, it doesn’t matter.

Politics trump science. It becomes law because there’s fear of black people in white America. Bad science and bad social policies touch on this fear of blacks in white America. If you have wretchedly bad science forming wretchedly bad social policy and political interventions, even if it’s not a matter of genocide, it can lead to foul policy.

Also, it can lead to divisive ways of thinking about people. Over and over again, let’s say people in North America, have come to imagine, erroneously, that race can be equated to blood. That one’s blood parts can be counted up in racial bits. That you might be half black, quarter Japanese, and quarter Korean.

It doesn’t make any sense. However, we talk about racial mixtures. The language about racial mixing comes down to blood quantification. We’ve come to imagine that identity and racial identity can be defined by blood parts, which leads to vicious ways of thinking about people.

Jacobsen: What ethical philosophy most appeals to you?

I don’t have an answer in my back pocket.

(Laugh)

(Laugh)

Clearly, we can draw a great inspiration from the great religious traditions. Not harming people, and showing respect and love is a great start.

Jacobsen: That sounds humanistic to me. Does that seem accurate to you?

Is that opposed to religion?

Jacobsen: There’s humanism in and of itself.

Yes, that is accurate. It is possible to borrow, embrace, and accept the great traditions from religious texts without accepting the religious beliefs on which they are predicated. If I have to go to an ethical philosophy, not doing harm and trying to do good, and not showing hate and showing love toward all people in the world would be a good starting point.

I am going to confess. I don’t know the real meaning of humanism. You might attribute specific meaning to the term. I attribute the meaning in a general way. If humanism means that to you, that is wonderful. However, you might have a more complex and nuanced definition.

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2022-03-25

Lawrence Hill, Niger, Malcolm X, Alex Haley, Martin Luther King, and Cornel West

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/28

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You worked in Niger. You suffered from gastroenteritis. It kills millions of people around the world every year. It is a prominent killer throughout the African Diaspora. You were given blood transfusions. You nearly died. You have pointed out the important aspect of this to you. What was the importance of this event to you – and the blood transfusion?

Lawrence Hill: It was a turning point, emotionally. It was important because I almost died. Apart from getting over the moment of danger, it provided the chance to reflect on my own racial identity.

Something that had been worrying me until the time of when I got sick at the age of 22. With the illness, I dropped the worry in a nanosecond. I no longer felt anxious about my own racial identity or who I was, or what people saw in me.

I felt no need to worry about it anymore. I came to accept, much more calmly, being both black and white. I had family ancestry spanning two continents. I didn’t have to worry other people’s perceptions of me. It didn’t matter. I knew myself.

It was a significant moment triggered by the illness in Niger in 1979. It took me to a place of emotional calm and confidence with regard to my own identity.

Jacobsen: At the age of 15, Malcolm X was an important influence for you. What was the importance to you? How did that develop over time?

The Autobiography of Malcolm X written by Alex Haley. It was one of the first books for adults that I read. If you read a book that transports you and shapes you in your youth, then you’ll probably never forget it.

Books have a real mark on a young person, if that young person adores the book. You don’t forget it. Malcolm X, as he’s moving through prison, stepping out of prison, embracing Islam, hating white people, and declaring white people were devils incarnate.

He argued white people were devils. He believed that. He mounts a very racist, hateful argument during his early militancy. However, before the assassination, he becomes more compassionate. He envisions a more diverse picture of Islam. He comes to accept through his travels around the world that people of different racial backgrounds can be Muslims.

He was hard to read in print. That is, some ideas were nonsensical and oppressive to me. For example, such as his saying white people were devils incarnate. At the same time, he went to a better place with the diverse image of Islam. I was moved and shaken by Malcolm X’s writings as a teenager. He stayed with me all of these decades.

Jacobsen: Martin Luther King was concomitant with him in terms of the period and the importance. Did he have any influence on you as well?

Yes, I was born in 1957. It was easy to be influenced by Martin Luther King. Even though, I was a boy at the time of the assassination. I’m from a generation that was most affected by Martin Luther King. His message of love and peace, and a color blind world. It allowed people to search and develop regardless of their race, creed, and color.

Also, he was a pacifist. He gave his life to advance the cause of civil rights. He was a hero of the generation. He was essential to my notion of courage, dignity, love, and transcendence of human evil.

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2022-03-25

Lawrence Hill, Writing, “Giving Birth,” Fiction, and Non-Fiction

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/28

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You take three to five years to write a novel. You let the ideas, the contexts, and the personalities percolate for some time. Does this seem like an aspect of habit or personality?

Lawrence Hill:I let them percolate in a passive way. I’m writing, writing, and writing, and not feeling happy with drafts. I keep writing again, and then rewriting. I take a long time.

(Laugh)

Unfortunately, it takes me that long, 3 to 5 years, to write a novel. I need to feel satisfied with it.

I wish I could write faster, but I don’t seem to be able to do so. It takes time for characters to form, show themselves to me, and to get my head around the story. It is like giving birth on the page to a whole life or a set of lives. It’s hard for me to get my head around all of that and to bring it to the page.

Generally, I write non-fiction more quickly. I take 6-12 months to write a work of non-fiction.

Jacobsen: You used the phrase “giving birth.” That seems to mirror some common themes among many writers. In a way, their book is like a child to them. How do you view your books in terms of their personal importance, especially based on the effort and time put into them?

Hill: I’m using the expressions of my own soul. Each form is different. In general, I try not to rank them in terms of value. It is better for other people to decide which book is better or worse. I don’t want to be in competition with myself.

That is, I don’t want to love any work more than another. I want to love them all in their own way. Each book is part of my mind, heart, and soul at the time of writing. However, once you’re done the production, the healthiest thing is to set them aside and move on.

I might read a translation or adapt a work for a mini-series. And I will tour and give readings and talks. But aside from working obligations, I don’t return to a book once I have finished writing it.

Jacobsen: As you’re writing, it is not a passive percolation. Once done, the books are put to the side. At the same time, as you’ve noted, it takes time to get them out, but you’d rather get them out faster. What seems like the strengths and weaknesses of this writing style?

(Laugh)

The weakness is I’m a slow writer. Some writers might produce 40 or 50 books in their lifetime. That won’t be the case with me. I’ll be lucky to write 5 more. So, I don’t have a body of work as extensive as some.

Ultimately, that’s okay. I work on my own terms. In the final analysis, if I write 10 or 15 books, it doesn’t matter. I am pursuing art in the best way for me. That matters to me.

The upside, it is important to be honest and faithful to yourself. When I write and produce, I work on something that reflects my own heart. It is an authentic reflection of longing, loving, and living. I’ve managed to get in tune with myself. I’ve found a way to express myself that feels authentic and rich.

Jacobsen: You’ve written more works of non-fiction than fiction. Why?

Yes, I have written more non-fiction than fiction. I can write non-fiction faster. That’s the most practical reason. Two of the works of non-fiction were very slight, minor books. They were early career productions. Nobody knows about them. They are not available or no longer in print. They are in Canadian history.

I am proud of them. Even so, they are slight, minor books. If you put those books away, the slate is mixed. It leaves four more substantial books of non-fiction and four of fiction. In general, the works of non-fiction are more focused. They are thinner. They hone in on more specific targets.

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2022-03-25

Lawrence Hill, Reading a Sister’s Stuff as a Brother

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/28

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Your late sister, Karen, suffered from bipolar disorder. She went to a restaurant, choked, lost consciousness, and died in the hospital 5 days later. How did this life battle with mental illness and then the death affect you?

Lawrence Hill:It affected me in all the imaginable ways. It took my sister from me. I lost one of the people that I most love in the world. It was a visceral, immediate, loss. Many will face it. It is hard to lose a loved one unexpectedly far before their time. It affected me by taking someone from me that I love very deeply.

Jacobsen: For those that might read this in the future with family members suffering from mental illness, any advice for coping with the emotional pain that might coincide with it?

Hill: My advice: don’t be alone. It is tremendous work emotionally, intellectually, and financially to help somebody who suffers from mental illness. It is alienating if you have to do that alone. If you have a community of people to come and work together in supporting the ill person, it can help.

If you are alone, it can be brutally alienating, lonely, and crushing. However, if you have institutions, nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, friends, family members and neighbors involved with the ill person, everyone can help in their respective ways. It can become less overwhelming. That’s one of the most important things: to build a network. If you are helping an ill person, you will need help too.

Jacobsen: She wrote a book entitled Café Babanussa (2016) and an essay inside called On Being Crazy.You have read these.

Hill: Yes, I read them.

Jacobsen: Did her written work impact you?

Hill: I have been reading Karen’s fiction and non-fiction for decades. It has been a lifelong process. Karen worked on Café Babanussa for 20 years. I’ve been reading it, tuning into her life, commenting on it, encouraging her, and being a brotherly figure by reading her stuff for a long time now. The book was intertwined with her own life. Discussing it became an extension of our sibling relationship.

Jacobsen: One thing that comes from the written word by you. For me, the genuine compassion and open-heartedness in pursuit of real narratives and concern for people. You write on slaves. You write on immigrants. You write on freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of the press. Uncomfortable truths are still truths. The truth matters. To me, this seems humanistic. Universal truths relevant to everyone. What motivates this passion for compassionate truth?

Hill: It’s giving back. Most writers examine issues of injustice, imbalance, or societal wrongs, whether they are tiny wrongs or tiny instances of public awareness. No matter how heinous, tiny wrongs done in the household up to genocides perpetuated on the whole mass of people.

Writers tend to explore inhumanity. Hopefully, to put a stop to it or protest against it, I’m not alone in this. Writing is a profoundly moral act. You’re asserting your morality every time that you pick up a pen and take it to the page. For me, writing is engaging with the world.

Writing is a way of expressing our own humanity, failings, a way of struggling to make sense of life and inhumanity, and to push ourselves to a better place. But when I am at work writing, I don’t think on such a grand scale. Typically, it is pedestrian and manageable. I am burning to tell a story.

Jacobsen: Any religious or secular framework, perspective, or worldview supporting it?

Hill: No. Certainly, not a religious framework, I was raised by two atheists. Those two atheists in turn were raised by two religious people. On my father’s side, my grandfather and great grandfather were both ministers in the African Episcopal Church in the United States.

My father went from being a church minister to being an atheist. I have great interest in religion and people’s perception of religion throughout history. Religion sometimes informs my stories, but I’m not a religious person myself.

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2022-03-25

Lawrence Hill, Life with a Singer-Songwriter Brother

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/28

awrence Hill is one of Canada’s most distinguished and published authors. In this extensive interview, we discuss everything in Hill’s purview. In his words, “I have to say that I don’t think I’ve ever been interviewed by somebody who had such a profound grasp of such a wide variety of things that I’ve shared, written, or spoken about whether they are personal, professional or things to do with my books or my family life.” This series will explore his life and philosophy, just for you, part 2.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I’m thinking about your mother reading these stories each day to you. Was there a common author for each night?

Lawrence Hill: She read one a lot. I memorized it. It is by A.A. Milne. One of her favourite poems that we memorized quite young called Disobedience. It says:

…James James Said to his Mother,
“Mother,” he said, said he;
“You must never go down
to the end of the town,
if you don’t go down with me…

On it goes, it is this crazy story about a woman who loses it. It is quite a story.

(Laugh)

Jacobsen: (Laugh)

Hill: It is quite a dark story, actually. Also, it is playful, language-wise. Of course, we ate up Dr. Seuss. The crazier and more playful the language, the better.

Jacobsen: Following that influence from the first professional writer that you met, you were a journalist for The Winnipeg Free Press and The Globe and Mail. How did the time as a journalist at these publications inform the work writing to date?

Hill: It helped me learn, quickly. I learned to edit myself. I was able to call people ‘out of the blue’ and say, “Hey, there’s something I need to understand. You’re apparently an expert in the field. Can you explain it to me?” It made me feel confident approaching strangers and asking them to help me get my head around things that I needed to know as a novelist.

I also learned that words aren’t sacrosanct. That is, my world wouldn’t come to an end if people altered words of mine. I realized everyone can be edited. First and foremost, we can edit ourselves. I learned to write more rapidly and to allow the natural rhythms of thought to percolate unfettered onto the page, and then to come back and edit myself. Those lessons come from journalism.

Jacobsen: Would you consider self-editing one of the most important skills for writers?

Hill: Certainly, it is for me. Unless you’re born Mozart, your first drafts will be sloppy. Mine certainly are, so I have to rewrite my work and work it into shape. Editing is fundamental to progressing through the drafts of a novel.

Jacobsen: How many drafts?

Hill: In a novel, I easily work through ten drafts.

Jacobsen: Now, back to the family, your brother, Dan Hill, is a singer-songwriter. Has this relationship influenced professional work at all?

Hill: First, it influenced me as a person, which influenced professional work in every imaginable way. He is (and was) totally passionate with art. He lived for it. It was exciting to see my brother as an artist doing his thing.

I could see the personal fulfillment for him. It normalized the possibility of achievement in the arts. The idea of going for it, pursuing the dream, and believing in its achievability. His most important influence: being there, seeing him, and showing the possibility for me too.

Jacobsen: Any recommended songs by him for listening pleasure? Songs that you enjoy by your brother.

Hill: I love the song Hold On. It came out in the 70s.

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2022-03-25

Lawrence Hill, Coming Up and Loving Language

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/27

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To begin at the beginning, you were born in 1957 in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada. Now, you’re one of Canada’s greatest novelists. Let’s explore your story. In terms of geography, culture, and language, where does your familial background reside?

Lawrence Hill: It is complicated, like most people. My early ancestors came from Europe and Africa. On both sides, they have been in the United States for many generations. My parents met in 1952 and married interracially the next year.

My family culture spans Africa, Europe, Canada, and the United States. In terms of my family cultural background, Canadian, American, and black and white cultures.

Language-wise, I was raised in an Anglophone family who spoke only English, but my sister and I became enthusiastic language learners. Learning other languages and living in them has become central in my life.

Jacobsen: How did this familial history influence development from youth into adolescence?

Hill: It is difficult for a person to look inside of their own life and say, “This is how my family history influenced my development from childhood to adolescence.”

However, a vivid interest in identity, in belonging, in the ambiguity of culture and race, in moving back and forth between different racial groups: all of these things marked my childhood and adolescence.

Jacobsen: You mentioned your parents married in 1953. What was the origin and nature of your parents’ relationship with each other? Their love story.

Hill: They met in ‘52 in Washington, D.C. and fell in love, quickly. My father had just completed an MA in sociology at the University of Toronto. He went back to live in Washington and to teach at a college in Baltimore for a year. My parents met and married that year. The day after they married, they moved to Canada. They became ardent Canadians and never looked back. They never moved back to live in the United States, although they visited often and took my brother, sister and me with them.

Jacobsen: How did this relationship influence you?

Hill: For one thing, they loved each other. They were opinionated and argumentative, not about domestic things, but about political and social issues. There was always debate around the kitchen table. I was steeped in that culture. A lot of talk, especially around meal time.

Jacobsen: When looking at formal development, in standard major cross-sections in life, what about influences and pivotal moments in kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, high school, undergraduate studies (college/university)?

Hill: I had a fabulous Grade 1 teacher named Mrs. Rowe. She told us stories every day. I longed to get to school to be sure I didn’t miss any of her stories. My father was a great storyteller. My mother read every day to us. We came – brother, sister, and I – to love the readings.

My parents instilled a love of language and story. I had other great teachers. In high school, they encouraged me to write. I wanted to do it. I told them. They encouraged me, but they didn’t make me.

I was an avid runner and had a track coach. In addition to being my coach, he was a reporter for the Toronto Star. He was the first professional writer that I met. He encouraged me to write better and to expand the range of my reading. These were early formative developers. Adult figures looking on and leading me toward the excitement of writing.

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2022-03-25

Criticizing Islam, Becoming a ‘Criminal’, Being Tortured, and Leaving Islam

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/27

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 atheist. Here is an educational series on ex-Muslims in France, just for you, part 1.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did they torture you in Palestine?

Waleed Al-Husseini: It was many ways. They were left me standing most of the day and only slept 2 hours with only one meal of food in the afternoon. Some standing on one leg while I’m up on my hands. Sometimes, they left me to stand on small bottles! After it, they made me run to not have marks cos of that. And some beating with electric things, this was 4-month from 10 months I spent in jail!

Jacobsen: What was the purported crime?

Al-Husseini: Insulting the feeling of Muslims, insulting the gods of religion, and making trouble in the society. It was a military court.

Jacobsen: What did you write about? Why were you such a threat with mere words?

Al-Husseini: I had my blog in Arabic, which was, in the beginning, questioning Islam and discussing the issues in the Quran, then I start crisis Islam and Quran and Mohammed’s life and showing that Mohammed was just a man who lived his life in the 7^th century like everyone, and showing that the Quran has nothing special in it. Quran is a product its time and era.

I explained my atheism, and why I’m atheist and why I left Islam.

Jacobsen: With the foundation of the Council of Ex-Muslims of France, what is the main value for the members there? How do you build ties with the international ex-Muslim community?

Al-Husseini: Our values are based on humanity, universalism, and the laïcité values. We are fighting for the right of non-believers and leaving Islam. We fight for women rights; we fight for the civil rights!

How we build ties in the conference, such as the one in London, through this, we make people feel not alone. We give them the power to contact us. For me, I am sure there is at least one ex-Muslim in every family!

But they can’t speak in public because of the danger involved in it. I got arrested. Another got killed. Others still live hidden because someone will kill them. Others are waiting for one of these options.

Jacobsen: Is the problem inherent in the doctrine and principles, figures, and ideals of Islam, or in the surrounding culture, or something else, predominantly?

Al-Husseini: The problem is Islam, even most values in the culture come from Islam. I don’t mean political Islam, Wahhabism or whatever you wish to call it. I mean Islam itself, from the Quran and Mohammed’s life.

Jacobsen: What do those that have not been in the situations you and countless others have been in not get? Why is it crucial for them to understand this?

Al-Husseini: These people only who live in Europe or America. Often, they have never been Muslims. That is why they will never understand it. Even the situation of ex-Muslims, if you told them about this person was killed and another was arrested, they will answer it’s not Islam instead it’s the government. They will assert it is a special case!

These people have little knowledge about Islam and what it is. They just know about Islam and what they hear from their close friends!

Some of them are blind!

Jacobsen: Thank you for taking the time once more, Waleed, always a pleasure, my friend.

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2022-03-25

Thinking for the Future, Youth Humanism and Passing the Torch

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/27

Marieke Prien is the President of the International Humanist and Ethical Youth Organisation (IHEYO), which is part of IHEU. In this educational series, we will be discussing international youth humanism, part 2.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When you step down from the role, what will be the main lessons to pass on to the next president in terms of expectations and managing an international presence, which is no small feat?

Marieke Prien: You need a good team and good plans.

Without a working team, you cannot really do anything.

Of course, there will be ups and downs, people who do more or better work and others who do less.

But those should be single cases. In my opinion, people who have not done well deserve another chance and should be provided support if they need it. This support could be help with certain tasks or something boosting their motivation. But if it becomes clear that they are causing more work than they get done, it’s better to ask them to leave the team.

If overally everybody does a great job, is motivated and willing to spend time and energy, and you can trust them, that is the basis you need.

A hierarchy is necessary for productivity and decision making, but in my opinion, this should not be reflected in how people treat each other. For example, everybody must have the opportunity to say their opinion and voice concerns or make suggestions, and we should meet each other as equals.

Regarding the plans, you must have an understanding of where you are and where you want to go.

You must know what is currently going on: What is done or needs to be done in the background to keep things working, to have a stable fundament? And which projects are we doing based on this fundament?

The same goes for future plans. What do we want to do and what is necessary to do this?

Also, the plans have to be consistent with what is realistic. In IHEYO, everybody is a volunteer. Nobody is paid for the work, everybody does this on top of their job or studies. This gives us certain limits. The limits wont stop us, but they affect us.

Jacobsen: What are some of the main ways youth humanists tend to become involved in activism, e.g. in combating religious overreach in culture or law, in coming together for LGBTQ+ rights, and in fighting for the fragile rights of the secular and irreligious?

Prien: These topics are so important for the youth because they affect their everyday life. When you start having more freedoms, you immediately see where this freedom is cut and who is behind that. Becoming adults, the young people get a better understanding and more awareness of what is going wrong.

To be involved in activism, you need connections to other activists (or those who want to become active). Sure, you could do something on your own, but most people gather in groups.

In the beginning, something needs to challenge the person and make them aware of the problem they then decide to fight against. For example, a young person may be made uncomfortable for their sexuality, or they realize a friend is forced to follow stricts religious rules. Then, they try to gather more information and talk to others about the issue. This can be face to face or online. When I was in the USA for a semester abroad, I loved how many clubs the university had that got people involved. This is such a great way to help people become active, and it has a good scope.

The internet is also a huge help. It makes it super easy to find like-minded persons and interact with them, and to potentially plan activities.

We probably all know people who like to post articles and rant online about issues but without going out and becoming actually active. And oftentimes this is frowned upon. While I also believe that working in an organization or the like is way more effective and cannot be replaced, the online activities also do help the cause in that they can trigger fruitful discussions and get people interested in topics.

Jacobsen: On the note of activism, we both know of the attacks on women’s rights ongoing since, probably, their inception, but the recent attack appears to be focused on reproductive health rights. What are concerns for you regarding women’s rights, and especially reproductive health rights from a youth humanist angle?

Prien: One main part of humanism is that it wants people to live freely and make their own decisions, forming their lives and going their ways. Cutting reproductive health rights means cutting this freedom. It takes away women’s authority over their bodies and their life plans. The second point also affects men, though overally the effect is much stronger on women.

So this is one point where cutting reproductive health rights disagrees with humanism.

Another huge problem I see is that many people are unable or unwilling to make a distinction between their personal opinions and emotions (often influenced by their religion), and what may be “right” for others. For example, if you would personally feel bad about getting an abortion, you should still see the other side and accept that other people think an abortion is the right decision, and let them make their choice.

We must make a difference between opinion and fact, and many lobby groups mix these things up, actively misinforming or making false assumptions and relations. For example, some anti-abortion groups try to make people feel bad by saying that contraceptives and masturbation are immoral and against their religion.

Or they say that in the period where abortion is legal in some states, the fetus already has a heartbeat. That is true, but it does not mean that it can feel pain (or anything at all, for that matter), because its brain has not developed for that yet. But the fact of the fetus having a heartbeat is used to evoke emotions in people and to lead them to draw the conclusion that something with a heartbeat surely also feels pain.

As a humanist, I want people to make a choice based on facts and universal ethics, not based on opinions, superstitional beliefs and false statements. And I want people to understand that their personal opinion is just an opinion that does not necessarily count for others.

Cutting the reproductive health rights also causes a lot of other problems. It can lead to huge physical, psychological and social problems. For example, if a woman needs an abortion but cannot legally get one where she lives, she may decide to go through a very unsafe illegal procedure, or spend a lot of money (that she doesn’t necessarily have) to go to a place where abortion is legal.

That being said, of course an abortion could also cause emotional and mental damage. I am not trying to say that one should just get it carelessly. I am just trying to show that while it would be the wrong decision for some, it is the right one for others.

What really bugs me is the hypocrisy many anti-abortion groups or individuals show. They claim that they are pro-life, caring for everyone’s right to live. But they don’t care about the mothers’ lives, they don’t care about the circumstances for babies up for adoption, some even mistreat and judge single mothers working really hard to feed their children. That’s not charity.

Regarding women’s rights in general, things have changed for the better, but the fight is not over. Sadly, many people only point to the successes, ignoring that there are still problems. This also goes for other issues like racism. If you are in the privileged group, it is easy to overlook discrimination. But just because you don’t see it, it doesn’t mean that discrimination does not exist.

I also believe that many people choose to disregard concerns or complaints expressed to them because, if they believed them, they would have to admit they do or have done something wrong.

I wish that people would make more of an effort and listen, open their eyes, have empathy and change their behavior if necessary.

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2022-03-25

Youth Humanism as a Guide to Development of and Community for the Young

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/26

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You are the president of the International Humanist and Ethical Youth Organisation (IHEYO). I am an editor and contributor to Humanist Voices, and am on the Americas Working Group for IHEYO. I wanted to learn more from your perspective, and in the exploration — for me — educate others. To begin this educational series on international youth humanism — its purpose, contents, and future, what are the demographics of youth humanism?

Marieke Prien: IHEYO’s target group are humanists aged 18–35. This doesn’t mean that people younger or older than that are not welcome, but it is the age group we are mostly working with and for. This is also connected to legal issues, especially at events where people under age would need a custodian.
But in the national organizations, there are also members younger than 18. For example, in Germany, many teenagers join and start being active after having done a humanist coming-of-age ceremony at age 14.

Unfortunately, I cannot say much more about the demographics, such as gender or educational backgrounds, as we do not get sufficient information from the member organizations.

Jacobsen: Who are some allies for youth humanism, e.g. ethical societies and ethical cultures?

Prien: In a broader sense, an ally could be anyone introducing humanism to young people. Family members, teachers or maybe even friends.

But more specifically, there are several organizations that are allies. Sometimes, it is merely the name that is different, sometimes they focus on different topics and measures but have a humanist world view. Some examples would be the Ethical Societies in the USA, the Prometheus Camp Associations in Finland and Sweden, Freethought associations, or Effective Altruism groups.

Jacobsen: As the president of IHEYO, you have unique insights, and responsibility, on international youth humanism, what is involved in organizing the global community? What is necessary to build and maintain one?

Prien: There are two dimensions to this: age and internationality.

Regarding age, it is important to take into account is that the lives of young people can be very unsteady. There is always motion because of changes in school, work, and the social circle. Many people have not settled yet and are unsure about their future. Their daily life can go through quieter periods in alternation with very stressful ones.

Because of this motion, people think twice before committing. For example, the members of our Executive Committee are elected for two years. This means that, to be part of it, you should at least somewhat know how you are going to spend the next two years, if you will still have time and enthusiasm to work with us. This can be scary and discouraging. So I think it is important to show that it is perfectly fine and normal, nobody expects a young person to have their schedule and daily life fixed like somebody who has worked in the same job for 25 years. There will be ups and downs, but that should not discourage anyone.

The other dimension, internationality, also has its challenges but brings this great diversity which I don’t want to miss. I am not only talking about diversity of the people, I am especially talking about the variety of topics and issues we are dealing with as humanists. We have a common base — humanism — on which we build our projects. What these projects are aiming at depends on local circumstances.

To be able to account for this, IHEYO has Working Groups: for Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Of course a group cannot cover all local topics of an entire continent. But they connect the member organizations and plan actions together, targeting what they feel is most important in their region.

During regular meetings of IHEYO’s group chairs, communication officer, secretary-general and president, we keep each other updated, make plans and take decisions.

This structure allows us to aim at more local issues as well as worldwide ones. I believe it shows the people that their local affairs are taken seriously while at the same time connecting them to a global community.

Common events are of course the best way to maintain a community, the atmosphere is amazing at it brings such a boost in motivation and enthusiasm. But sadly, due to financial and other restrictions, not everybody who is active in IHEYO is able to join, at least not internationally. So the community also relies a lot on social media and other means of communication. We are lucky to live in a time where this is made easy.

Jacobsen: Some general provisions of IHEYO are associations, connections, a new publication (Humanist Voices). Can you describe some of these features of IHEYO in some depth?

Prien: As I mentioned above, there are events organized by us (in cooperation with the local member organizations) which contribute a lot to the community. They usually feature several talks and workshops providing information and know-how to the participants. The program points are held by either our members or external speakers, for example somebody from an Effective Altruism group. So there is a lot people can learn, which makes half of the outcome of the events. The other half is the deep sense of community, the heated discussions, and the ideas and plans people develop together.

I would like to mention that participation is not limited to our members, anybody can join and is very welcome to do so!

Humanist Voices is a blog that we started rather recently. It is a collection of thoughts expressed by different people, a platform for humanists who would like to publish articles, not a publication with a uniform opinion of IHEYO as an organization. We want to show that being a humanist doesn’t mean having a precast opinion that is entirely shared with other humanists. We want to encourage people to be sceptic, discuss, and form their own opinions.

Again — if anybody is interested, you are welcome to join!

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2022-03-25

Get Involved via Social Interest Groups

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/26

Men and mental health, we is a guy supposed to find support? I think about the Social Interest Groups (SIGs) hosted by The Good Men Project. It is important to recognize the importance of consistent, regular, and deep conversations with people of like mind. A group based around men’s mental health is one route.

Social Interest Groups (SIGs) are a place where people with similar interests, or intellectual engagements, social ties, and emotional commitments can virtually meet. The SIGs are an aspect of men having an outlet not only with other men but also with women on the same telephone line listening and commenting, which permits open expression and disarming discussions to emerge in an organic way.

If you haven’t looked at the Social Interest Groups, I suggest looking into them. They give a way to open up. It also provides a channel for learning about concerns of other individuals and difficulties in their lives.

Those contexts and environments, and implied emotional commitments can over time show the common themes in the life of ordinary people working through problems current in their lives. Those current problems are not necessarily solved, or even sufficiently covered or spoken about at the moment.

However, there is a sense of feeling less bound by the moment and the constraints of time to reflect, consider, analyze, and come together in a community of people with like mind to provide not solace or solutions but mutual sympathy and solidarity.

I find them helpful for the realization of honest, open conversation, which modern television news channels do not necessarily provide. The morning news media is degenerative from prior standards. The 21st-century is a century of atomization, at least in the early 21st century.

The atomization of people probably makes them feel alone. The Good Men Project effort is to bring us together through channels. It is one way to broach uncommon subjects for more people, not necessarily topics new to the older generations. They had other problems.

But we modern people have our own as well, which are distinct but not less important than prior generations. In that light, I hope you take the time to join one of the social media interest groups of The Good Men Project.

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2022-03-25

The World of Youth Humanism Around the Globe

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/25

Marieke Prien is the President of the International Humanist and Ethical Youth Organisation. I am in the Americas Working Group and an editor and contributor to its publication Humanist Voices. Here we discuss her background, work, roles, and views on a variety of topics in an exclusive interview, part 2.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen:IHEYO works on a broad range of initiatives, and with multiple organizations, including women’s rights, education rights, abortion rights, LGBTIQ rights, human rights. What are some of the notable successes in each of these domains?

Prien: Though some events and activities are directly planned by us, our job is more to be an umbrella organization connecting our member organizations.

For example, in November 2015, we held the charity week “Better Tomorrow”. We came up with the concept and asked our members to contribute to projects they thought of and planned themselves.

There are conferences that are planned by IHEYO in cooperation with the respective local member organizations. We provide know-how and funds for the events. Many of our volunteers are active in both IHEYO and their local organizations so cooperation is made easy. Alone this year there were three conferences in addition to our annual General Assembly.

These conferences were the African Humanist Youth Days (AFHD) in July in Nairobi (Kenya), the European Humanist Youth Days (EHYD) in July in Utrecht (Netherlands) and the Asian Humanist Conference in August in Taipei (Taiwan). During each conference, there are talks and workshops that are somewhat connected to humanism.

For example, during the EHYD we had a workshop on Effective Altruism, AHYD had panels about witch-hunts, and the Asian Conference featured a talk about secular values in traditional beliefs. Some talks/workshops are held by member organizations, others by people from outside of the organizations that were invited.

This way the participants can gain knowledge and know-how while at the same time spreading their own knowledge and letting others profit from their experience. Also, events like that are the best opportunity to network and come up with new ideas. We are a growing community, with growing influence, thanks to this.

So it is hard to measure our impact in numbers or clearly defined achievements. We are more about providing the basis for our members’ work and incentives to individuals. A panel like the one at EHYD, with Bangladeshi bloggers who have been threatened and prosecuted because they openly criticized religion, leads to a change of mind in the audience that can eventually bring huge change.

Jacobsen: Any personal humanist heroes?

Prien: This sounds cheesy, but my humanist heroes are the people that put their free time and their energy into IHEYO or other humanist organizations. There is always a lot to do and it is great seeing so many people work hard for this cause.

Especially work in an executive committee involves some boring and annoying tasks, particularly when handling bureaucratic stuff. Behind every meeting and every event, there is someone writing minutes, someone putting data into spreadsheets, someone handling the numbers and keeping an eye on the finances… I am very grateful for everybody who does this as it builds the base for successful projects.

Jacobsen: Any recommended authors?

Prien: I have not had time to read a lot of books lately, but I read many blog articles and can definitely recommend that. There is something about articles written by non-professionals who just want to express their thoughts. Especially when you know the person or they provide background knowledge about themselves.

It is so interesting to see their thought process and how they form their opinions. It helps understand why they have this opinion, even or especially if you don’t agree with it. Also, many blogs allow to comment on articles and possibly discuss with the author, so in the end, everyone can benefit.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Marieke.

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2022-03-25

Talk on Biology, Machines, Mind, Reality, and “Miracle” with Dr. Katsioulis

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/25

Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis, M.D., M.Sc., M.A., Ph.D., works as a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist through online psychotherapy and counseling for Psycall. He earned an M.D., Medical Doctor Diploma (2000), M.Sc., Medical Research Technology (2003), M.A., Philosophy (2012), and Ph.D., Psychopharmacology (2015).

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 an IQ score of 205 on the NVCP-R [Rasch equated raw 49/54] in 2002. 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.

Dr. Katsioulis writes articles, novels, and quotes including screenplays – ELLHNAS.com (2008) and TI PEI(2009). Also, he contributed to the web advertisement-management of NAMANIC.com and the web development of Charing Cross Scheme in Psychiatry (2006), Charing Cross & St Mary’s Membership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (2006), and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki – School of Medicine – General Biology Laboratory (2012). He lives in Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece.

Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis is a Greek friend and colleague through membership on the Advisory Board of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. Here is an interview with him, just for you, part 3.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you think biology and machines will merge? If so, how might this happen? Furthermore, how far would integration occur?

Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis: 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.

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. There are no limits in this integration. From your question, I could assume that we both like science fiction movies.

Jacobsen: What is the ultimate relationship between mind and reality?

Katsioulis: 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. Reality is an objective and independent set of conditions, events, happenings, incidents, people, principles, facts. 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. 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.

Jacobsen: You earned the Genius of the Year Award – Europe in 2013 from PSIQ. In your one-page statement on winning the award, you say, “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.” What motivates this passion for improving the lot of others?

Katsioulis: 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.

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.

I have undertaken this procedure myself and I offer the exact same to anyone interested. 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.

Jacobsen: As a final note to your award statement, you state, “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.” What do you mean by “miracle”? Can you elaborate on the maximization of every moment of our existence?

Katsioulis: 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.

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. So the time elapsed since the creation of universe supports the non-accidental, thus miraculous nature of life.

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.

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

Since we know nothing about the reasons of our existence, 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.

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2022-03-25

Discussion with Evangelos Katsioulis on Global Problems and Society

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/25

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What global problems do you consider most important at the moment? How would you solve them?

Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis: Identity crisis is the main global problem. People lost their identity, their orientation, their life quality standards. They don’t care about who they are, they develop personalities based on the mainstream trends, they play roles and they waste their lives in their attempts to adjust to what some few others expect from them and their lives.

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.

It is indeed a pity, however it is a fact. Education could be helpful towards 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.

Jacobsen: Generally, many interacting systems operate in societies: political, economic, religious, corporate, educational, and so on. If you could build and run a society, how would you do it?

Katsioulis: 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. The most capable ones should be leading the society functions, the strongest ones should help with their physical powers, 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. 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.

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. The most important element in any society is the citizen and people should realize their 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.

Jacobsen: If you do consider a general moral, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional progression or development, how do you view development from the basic to most advanced levels at the individual and collective level?

Katsioulis: [This is covered above]

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2022-03-25

Discussion with the World’s Highest Measured IQ, Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/25

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did you find developing from childhood through adolescence into young adulthood with extraordinary giftedness? Did you know from an early age? What events provided others, and you, awareness of your high-level of ability?

Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis: Thank you for your question. 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.

I can recall an instance that I was a little boy and I made a reasonable for me at that point assumption that given that the white sheep produce white milk, the black ones should produce cocoa milk. I should emphasize that I enjoyed more spending my time on my own instead of socializing, which lasted till my adolescence. Teachers’ feedback was positive and promising at all stages of my education.

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.

I was successful to enter the School of Medicine on my first participation in the entrance exams in 1993 and I was one of only six successful candidates who sat for the exams for the first time.

Jacobsen: You scored some of the highest intelligence test scores on record, nationally and internationally. In many cases, you scored the highest. For some of your scores on these tests, I recommend readers to your website: katsioulis.com.

You competed in the Physics National Final Exams (Greece, 1993), Cerebrals NVCP-R international contest (2003), and the Cerebrals international contest (2009). You earned the best performance in all three. In light of this, when did you find your first sense of community among fellow ultra-high ability individuals?

Katsioulis: Thank you for the impressive introduction to your readers. 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. 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 organization is the World Intelligence Network, (http://IQsociety.org), standing as an international collective entity dedicated to foster and support High IQ Societies. Currently, 48 High IQ Societies are affiliated with WIN.

Furthermore, I formed 5 core High IQ Societies covering cognitive performances from the 1^st to the 5^th standard deviations above the mean (IQ 115 to IQ 175, sd 15), (QIQ, http://Q.IQsociety.org), (GRIQ, http://GR.IQsociety.org), (CIVIQ, http://CIV.IQsociety.org), (HELLIQ, http://HELL.IQsociety.org), (OLYMPIQ, http://OLYMP.IQsociety.org), one High IQ Society only for children and adolescents (IQID, http://Child.IQsociety.org) and one only for the Greek people (http://IQsociety.gr).

Last but not least, I started a Greek NGO about abilities, giftedness and high intelligence named Anadeixi (http://aaaa.gr).

Jacobsen: If you could, how would you change the educational systems of the world? In particular, how would you develop an educational system to provide for the needs of the gifted population?

Katsioulis: 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.

Imagine the diversity and variety of the students’ profiles if you expand this hypothesis including all the students of any educational system. Any person is different from any other and should be treated as such.

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.

Anyone should know how to read and write, to make simple math calculations and to have some basic awareness of history, geography and the rest main fields of knowledge. However, some of the students have specific preferences and interests and the educational system should take these into consideration and respond accordingly.

Regarding the structure of such an educational system, there could be a 2-dimensional. 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. In such an educational system structure, there is no place for any age or other restrictions or limitations.

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2022-03-25

The Youth Humanist Movement in the Early 21st Century

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/24

Scott Douglas Jacobsen:What is your familial and personal background?

Mariek Prien: I was born and raised in Hannover, Germany. When I had finished high school, I spent a year in the Philippines for a volunteer service, then moved to Hamburg to study Cultural Anthropology and Educational Sciences. After getting this degree, I moved to Osnabrück and started studying Cognitive Science. Right now, I am in Oswego (New York) for a semester abroad.

I got involved in Hannover’s local group of the youth wing of HVD (Humanistischer Verbands Deutschland, the German Humanis Association) when I was 13 or 14. Since then, I have held different positions in the local and national young humanist organizations and eventually got involved in the International Humanist and Ethical Youth Organization (IHEYO), where I was first elected Membership Officer and now President.

Jacobsen: How did you become involved in humanism as a worldview?

Prien: Pretty much all of my family members are humanists, so you could say my sister and I were raised this way, though I don’t remember the term “humanism” being used. Our parents and grandparents taught us about this lifestyle not only with words but by living and acting according to these values every day. We were encouraged to be skeptical and question things, to think for ourselves, to not prejudge people, to take responsibility for our actions, take care of the environment, and be independent.

Also, my parents love to travel and get to know people from different cultures, and I think my sister and I have definitely profited from that. It made us more open-minded towards new things and different ways of life.

Jacobsen: When did humanism as an ethical hit home emotionally for you?

Prien: Since I was raised with humanist values, there is no specific event or time that marks this. It was simply the worldview I had. You could probably say I found out about the term “humanism” and actively chose to identify as a humanist when I decided to join our local Humanist organization and take part in their coming-of-age celebration. The next step was becoming a member and actively volunteering for the organization. By doing this, I dedicated myself to the cause, so to say.

Jacobsen: What makes humanism more true to you than other worldviews, belief systems?

Prien: I think about these things a lot. Ethics, religion, why do we act and feel the way we do? I try to stay objective about it and approach questions openly. And every time I come to the conclusion that humanism is the right way.

I found that the belief in gods does not withstand reason and never understood why people call religion the root of ethics, morals or values, and why they minimize the horrible things it has caused and is causing. Why do you follow rules that only exist to oppress you? Why would you need religion to love thy neighbors?

Some people will argue that being nice to one another is not a necessity or is even “unnatural”, that not caring about others will not cause them any disadvantages. But this is where love and empathy come in, a wish to live in a peaceful and kind society, something that I believe everybody has somewhere inside them.

To me, humanism is the derivation of being a compassionate and reasonable person.

Jacobsen: You are the President of International Humanist and Ethical Youth Organization (IHEYO). It was launched in 2004. What tasks and responsibilities come with this position?

Prien: As President, I am taking the bird’s eye view. I know what is going on in the organization and coordinate and connect people and activities. There are also decisions to be made, but I always make sure to consult with other committee members first because I want to get to know other peoples’ thoughts and perspectives before deciding on something that will affect the organization and the people involved.

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2022-03-25

Leading Youth Humanist on Gender, Masculinity, and Femininity

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/24

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Gender and sex get mixed up. What is sex, and gender, to you?

Mariek Prien: Just the regular definition: sex is something anatomical, gender is social and a personal identification. Unfortunately, many people do not make this distinction, even though not only does it make sense and is needed, it also makes it so much easier to understand people and their identity.

Jacobsen: You are the President of the International Humanist and Ethical Youth Organisation (IHEYO) of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). IHEYO is part of IHEU. Religions have ideals, archetypes, figures, gods, metaphors, allegories, to define gender. The roles, responsibilities, and rightness of an image for masculinity and femininity. Humanism may have them too, but do not have a text or holy scripture. Is there a conception of masculinity and femininity in humanism?

Prien: First I must make a distinction between gender and masculinity/femininity. Gender is an identity as described above. Masculinity/femininity are, in my understanding, terms used to say that something, like a character trait or facial feature, is “male” or “female”.

Regarding gender roles, my answer is that no, we don’t really have that. Humanism is about freedom, including that your way of life should not be restricted by guidelines and rules of society (as long as no one gets hurt, obviously). The humanist community is very diverse and everybody is encouraged to choose their role, choose how they want to live, and that nobody gets judged for that choice.

When it comes to masculinity and femininity, most of us probably have some concept of that and the opinions can differ. But I think you could say that these concepts just don’t mean so much, they don’t really matter. To use an obvious example, a woman is not expected to dress in a way that would be described as “feminine”. Obviously, people have different personal taste, but it is just that: a personal taste. Not a rule others need to follow.

Jacobsen: How much does this differ from religious definitions?

Prien: Most religious definitions are very strict in that they divide people into two sexes, equalize them with genders, and appoint roles to those groups. Women must do this, men must do that. If somebody does not live according to this, that’s frowned upon. I am not saying that all religious people tightly follow that, but these are the rules stated in many scriptures, archetypes etc. as you mentioned before.

This division and appointment of roles are what does not happen in the humanist definition.

Jacobsen: If it does, should humanism even have conceptions of masculinity and femininity and good or bad versions of them?

Prien: This is a hard question for me because I am not sure of what to think of these conceptions. They don’t make so much sense to me because I find it hard to make that distinction between masculine and feminine, and I don’t really know what benefits people have from using these terms over others. To me they sound kind of harsh and as if things could be 100% male or 100% female, which they are not. But if we use the words in a different way, to express that, for example, something is more common in males, but recognizing that it doesn’t mean it’s wrong for a female to have that trait, then that’s fine.

So I would say that we do not need the concepts, but I don’t want to go so far as to say that we should actively get rid of them.

Jacobsen: How can a modern scientific view of sex and gender update our views, and so expectations about men and women – scientific because of the humanistic principles and values as the framework?

Prien: If we look at the distinction we made about sex and gender, and recognize that gender roles are for the most part a social construct, then what this view does is take away the expectations we have.

There are some differences between the sexes, simply because of the biology. But the important thing is that these differences don’t exclusively define us, and they don’t make one group better than another. They don’t influence a person’s rights and responsibilities and must not be allowed to dictate our ways of life – a maxim that we are still struggling to live by. We must look at the individual, not at the group we think this individual belongs to. And that’s the humanist principle.

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2022-03-24

When a Phrase Really Strikes You, Again

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/23

I was struck by a phrase from Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka some time ago. It was a phrase around and associated with feminism and women’s rights. I liked it. It sparked a short article, which I am splitting into two for the convenience of reading in paces. Here you go, part 2.

Much of the information I’ve learned or reviewed, in the process of researching and writing this article comes from the comprehensive statements by her.

“Investment into the care economy of 2 per cent of GDP in just seven countries could create over 21 million jobs. That would provide child care, elderly care, and many other needed services.” Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

Women are left behind economically. When women are deprived of the equal access to the jobs market or the training for the jobs market, and I mean this emphatically, societies lose. Maybe, that’s another tacit take away, or even explicit, from the extensive statement by Mlambo-Ngcuka.

A modern problem without a single solution, which needs a multipronged approach. The relatively developed and the undeveloped, and outright failed, states in the early to middle 21^st century might be the ones, most else considered, that provide the implementation of women’s rights through advocacy followed by empowerment. It feels good.

It sounds easy, but, quite frankly, it will very much be a difficult road ahead of us. How do we move ahead and change the situation? How do we forge a new path into the world worth preserving? Identifying the problems – somewhat done, and staking out evolving ideals seems reasonable – more or less accomplished. Solutions, anyone?

I see predictive statements tied to a bunch of “ought to” or “should.” ‘Such, and such, a series of measurements in national performances correlate positively with the health of a nation and the empowerment of women’ – but then I think about it. What does this actually mean? And I kind of know.

These measurements are the basis for confidence in furtherance of women’s rights through these means without specification on the exact means in each case – cultures differ, histories differ, economies differ, and educational and literacy levels differ.

So within the statements by Mlambo-Ngcuka, I feel as though this means the specific solutions within ‘such, and such’ a set of boundaries will improve the economic performance of nations, which happen to, at the same time, improve the implementation of women’s rights. It’s moral if you want moral reasons. It’s economical if you want economic reasons.

But the trend lines are clear.

“More than half of all women workers around the world—and up to 90 per cent in some countries—are informally employed. We cannot ignore them. This sector is just too big to fail.” Mlambo-Ngcuka said, “…Lessons from countries already making change are important to share.

For this Commission, 35 countries have provided input on the review theme of how lessons from the Millennium Development Goals are being reflected in national processes and policies.”

That’s an incredible wealth of information and is the sincere reason for hope for finding specific general solutions to pervasive problems surrounding women’s rights within the international community.

“At the same time, over the last two years, a resounding global gender equality compact has been accumulated, through the Beijing+20 Review, Agenda 2030 itself, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the New Urban Agenda and the New York Declaration on Migrants and Refugees.”

It’s not only an outstanding reason for hope; it’s an outstanding achievement in motion towards equality by the stated 2030 goal, if not the comprehensive by 2186. And the right attitude can always be a good start. So how? Well: “constructive impatience.”

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2022-03-24

Growing Up Gifted, and Being a Geek Before It was Fashionable

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/23

Rick Rosner is a personal and professional friend. I interviewed Rick in an extensive interview on In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, which came to about 100,000 words. Rick claims to have the world’s second highest IQ. He is a member of the Mega Society and was the journal editor, as well Errol Morris interviewed him for the TV series First Person. Here we talk about his background as an exceptionally gifted kid, this is part 6.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Intelligence Quotient (IQ) pervades American culture more than most, based on my reading of the culture, with a litany of reactions ranging from reverence to laughter to skepticism – and serious scholarship.

Many neuropsychological tests developed by those with appropriate qualifications have developed some of the most well-used and researched tests such as the Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS).

However, mainstream standardized intelligence tests tend to have maximum scores at 4-sigma above the norm (160/164/196; SD-15/16/24, respectively). In the development of this work, some independent researchers and test constructors began to make tests for those earning maximum, or near-maximum, scores on mainstream tests.

In the process, tests and societies developed for the high-ability population. This environment set the stage for the flourishing of your obsession: IQ tests. For example, on a high-ability test called the Titan Test – one of the most difficult, you set a record score.

In fact, you earned a perfect score. You have taken much more. What are some of the other tests? In particular, where does your range, mean, and median lie for the set of high-range IQ tests taken?

Rick Rosner: It’s hard to pin down what my actual score might be. It’s silly to even think that people have one set IQ and that it’s precisely measurable. My lowest scores probably reflect less than my maximum effort, and my highest scores probably grant me some extra points due to crazily high levels of diligence plus vast experience with these tests.

It doesn’t really matter unless we want to turn IQ testing into a reality show sport. And we should – why do we have a bunch of competition shows about people cooking from Mystery Baskets and none with IQ showdowns?

Jacobsen: In the testing of intelligence, much criticism exists towards the potential for bias inherent in the tests themselves. For example, the use of an examinee’s non-native language in intelligence tests.

If an individual speaks a different native language than the test provides, they may score low on the verbal section, which may decrease the composite score. To solve this problem, nonverbal/culture fair tests exist.

However, many of these culture fair tests have lower ceilings. What do you see in the future for high-range non-verbal tests? How will this change general intelligence testing and the identification of gifted individuals?

Rosner: Intelligence testing has always been kind of a mess, often arbitrary and unfair. I think the best, easiest thing to do is test kids repeatedly, using a variety of tests. There are plenty of good, long-established tests. Trouble is, school districts are broke and don’t have the resources for repeated testing.

We can hope that tech will make schools more responsive to individual needs. Schools can be a little behind the curve. A century ago, the school was the most interesting part of a kid’s day – it’s where the information was.

Now, with the rest of our lives being so information- and entertainment-rich, the school can be relatively uninteresting, which isn’t helped by politicians and people who don’t like paying property tax starving schools of resources.

The school needs somewhat of a makeover – increasing automation and personalization, which the ongoing tech wave should help make possible. Don’t know if a push for better giftedness-finder diagnostics needs a special push. Would guess that this won’t be overlooked as part of high-tech changes to education.

Currently, a crazy thing is a pressure on a few tens of thousands of high-end students, with endless AP courses and brutal study loads, for a seven percent chance of getting into an Ivy.

When I was in school, the average AP kid took 1.3 AP courses; now it’s more than 7. I assume our weird college admissions system will get somewhat straightened out by technological advances in education or will become weird in exciting new ways.

Jacobsen: You have a great interest in health. In fact, you had an interest in health since a young age. Why the deep interest in the health from a young age?

Rosner: At first, I wanted to build muscles to impress girls. (This sort of worked, but it took many years of de-nerdification.) People were fit in the 70s – clothes were tight and high-waisted. The Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary, Pumping Iron, which came out in 1976, introduced many people to serious muscle-building.

Weight training incidentally introduced me to some healthy eating habits, plus I’ve always been a little fat-phobic and perhaps over-disciplined.

Only much later did I read Kurzweil’s book, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, and go from a few vitamins a day to a zillion.

I don’t buy Kurzweil’s entire argument – that the Singularity will happen around 2040, and anyone who can live until then can live forever – but I do think there will be many biotech breakthroughs in the coming decades which may offer extra years of life. I want to stick around – the future is where you can find a lot of cool stuff.

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2022-03-24

Growing Up Gifted, in the Don’t Give a Shit 70s

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/23

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Amidst the busywork of editorials and organization of the material, upon reading Noesis, one article struck me regarding the title and content entitled My Problem With Black People.

At the time, August 1992, other members of the Mega Society argued for the possibility of the intellectual inferiority of blacks. You argued otherwise. In that, by your estimate, all races have about equal intelligence.

Although in defense of all parties involved in the discussion of issue 72, the articles were written in 1992.

Much work written in public discourse has progressed on the issue of intelligence and race: ‘does race count as an appropriate scientific category?’, ‘do IQ tests measure intelligence?’ and so forth. Where do you stand on this issue now?

Rick Rosner: I don’t have a problem with black people – in my juvenile manner, just wanted an attention-grabbing title. I believe that most work which tries to or claims to establish a relationship between intelligence and race has elements of creepy bullshit.

Little good and lots and lots of bad have been done by people who claim that certain races or nationalities are mentally inferior to others.

Intelligence has a fluid relationship with the environment, and all sorts of things can happen during an individual’s lifetime which may or may not bring his or her intelligence to fruition.

Sometimes, being imperfectly adapted to an environment may elicit the expression of intelligence – think of perfectly adapted jocks who never had to learn to think versus awkward nerds who, because of physical imperfection, have to follow the riskier strategy of original thought.

So, people who want to eliminate or reduce the reproductive opportunities of groups that may be considered inferior (according to crappy, wobbly, arbitrary, prejudiced and culturally loaded standards) may actually be trying to eliminate one of the triggers for intelligence – being at odds with one’s circumstances.

More great art has been made by people who are ill-at-ease with their world than by people who are perfectly at home in it.

Furthermore, this is a particularly dumb time for arguments about racial differences in intelligence, as more and more of our effective intelligence comes from our interaction with technology.

Tech is turning us all into geniuses, though it doesn’t seem like it when you see so many people behaving stupidly with their devices. Since World War Two, the average IQ of all of the humanity has gone up by 15 points – the Flynn Effect.

One of the main suspects in this upslope is the pervasiveness of complicated modern culture. Culture and tech will keep getting more complicated, and humans in conjunction with our devices will keep getting smarter.

The tech that’s built into our bodies isn’t too far in the future. More than one percent of the population already has built-in computers – pacemakers, cochlear implants, etc. So who cares about some hard-to-measure few-IQ-point alleged difference among groups when we’re all going to end up being increasingly augmented geniuses?

People who insist on racial inferiority are creeps. We can discuss cultural differences – for instance, there seem to be cultural differences in causes of passenger jet pilot error – but the idea that some races need to be babysat by other races is gross. We’re all going to need to figure out how to work with each (augmented) other as tech reshapes the world.

Jacobsen: How many societies do you have membership inside of now? What use do you get from these societies?

Rosner: Don’t know how many societies I belong to. People ask me to click on things on Facebook, and sometimes clicking means that I’ve joined something. Could be 8 societies, could be 15. I’m not very good at Facebook and don’t live on it, as does your Aunt Angie, with her constant posting of cat and casserole pictures. Currently living on Twitter.

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2022-03-24

This Week In News, A Kevin and Benedict Narrative

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/23

Kevin and Benedict are colleagues. We have written and worked together. They have a podcast called This Week in News with Kevin and Benedict. I like them. Here’s their story. Kevin grew up in Sacramento California, where he conquered his enemies and saved the city from annihilation multiple times. He currently attends UC Berkeley as a Political Science major. He also worked as a heavy equipment mechanic for 5 years before college. He enjoys cigars, hockey (Go Sharks), politics, and saltwater fish tanks. Benedict is a Brit living in the US. Just for you, part 2.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why should this be entertaining as well? What does this mean for the individuality of news presenters?

Benedict: Also, a lot of news is very voiceless. In the sense that, it seems that the people delivering it do not have a personality. it is partly a conceit of the genre. You are reading from the newscaster and haven’t had time to think about it, necessarily, or present your viewpoint. The best news readers, you get a sense of their personality.

Oftentimes, you don’t. We have more time to plan and think about stuff, and let our personalities do our lifting for us. I say that as though we have fantastic personalities.

Kevin: [Laughing].

Benedict: Because obviously. It is something good about podcasts. Nobody expects it to be about news all of the time. There can be levity. You may be able to help people see things in a new light with its ridiculousness and funniness. It is different than putting yourself on the stage in the spotlight. I am talking into a mic. If people are interested in that, then it’s great.

Kevin: Both of us would agree to an extent. We are pundits. We read the news. We try to give as broad a spread of news as possible for our listeners, but we providing our opinion at the same time. At the core, that’s what a pundit is. It is an opinion-based analysis of the news.

Benedict: It comes with the intent to inform.

Jacobsen: Benedict, you mentioned critiquing Donald Trump now because he or the administration happens to be in power. Kevin and Benedict, do you think that critique of those in power is one of the main roles of “pundits”?

Kevin: Yes. No matter who is in power, those who are reporters, pundits, or whatever role you play, should be questioning the choices and decisions of those in power. They need to be held accountable no matter how you lean politically. President Obama, who I am now a fan of and was not when he was elected, there are a lot of things, which I am generally left-leaning now.

He did poorly or generally flat out screwed up. If he was in power now and continuing them, I would criticize Guantanamo and the drone campaign. There are a number of things, which I think is definitely there to be criticized. They need to be heard, so people have the opportunity to speak their opinion about it. That’s how the decision is made. Politicians, if they want to get re-elected, have to listen to what people want.

Benedict: It is tricky, though. Reporters are good at maintaining the lack of bias. They report on who is in power and the things they are doing or trying to do. I think it is tricky with pundits. The people whose voices get the most amplified tend to be the people who are mostly partisan. So, news networks will invite very pro-Trump or anti-Trump now. It is almost never the same people who were criticizing both Obama and Trump.

They don’t get invited on the news networks if you see what I mean. That’s something good about podcasts and being outside of mainstream, beltway politics. A good thing about being outside the loop of it all is you can be more objective. Kevin and I don’t know any politicians. We talk about what we think when we see stuff. We don’t care who criticize. if people do something silly, then we criticize those who do something silly.

We talk about criticizing those in power. I want to say we should criticize those who want power. You can criticize those who want power, “It would be a bad thing if this person were to take power.” People did this with Trump, and with Clinton. You should extend the criticism to people in active pursuit of power.

Kevin: I have a wall of post-it notes. I write jokes and thoughts on them. One says, “Everyone can be wrong.” It reminds me. We can’t turn a blind eye to people who we like and are on our side when they are wrong. We have to criticize them as well. While we are definitely and have an opinion, and people know what side we’re coming from, we have to retain objectivity. In that, we won’t overlook things simply because we like this person – or they are on our team.

Jacobsen: What are some limitations of the medium?

Kevin: They don’t get to see my beautiful face.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Benedict: Yes, that’s true. Another limitation is the time taken to make things. We can’t release on the day of a big news story when it breaks. It takes the time to record, plan, and edit everything. We can’t be as immediately reactive. It probably hurts a number of people who listen. It can be a positive too. It gives us more time to think about things and what we’re thinking, and what we want to say on a subject.

Kevin: We record on Fridays and release on Sundays. Being on opposite sides of the country, it is two days later, so it is last week’s news, which is the reason for covering everything from last week. So, we could, if we had the time, record on Monday and then release on Monday. But being me with the editing and trying to fit the schedules together for the recording, it is a major downside to not always be the spot.

Sometimes, when something happens, we will record a 10-minute reaction, and I’ll edit, and we’ll release it. Trying to be up to date with the news in this medium is difficult.

Benedict: It is difficult with this administration and time period because things change so much between a Friday and Monday. Things can get out of date and can be a real problem. Once things settle down, it will be a nicer medium to use.

Jacobsen: Also, you guys have a logo with both of you giving thumbs up in a cartoon format.

Kevin: [Laughing].

Jacobsen: Where did that come from?

Kevin: There is a website called Fiverr, which is awesome. I found someone who does web drawings, cartoons. I went back and forth with them. They drew up a design. They colored it. I like it. It is pretty cool.

Benedict: It is.

Kevin: We sure in the logo that Benedict has hair.

Benedict: He was given an old photo so it looks like I have hair.

Jacobsen: What are your hopes for growth in the future for TWIN?

Kevin: I love doing the show. Benedict, as much as I joke about him, I love him. We have a lot of fun on the show together. We built up a friendship together. I would do it if we had two listeners a week because it is so much fun to do. But as far as growth, it happens slowly over time. We have seen moderate growth. We are releasing a second show, a history show. It is getting some positive feedback.

We really enjoy doing this. Obviously, we want to get to a point where we have patrons enough to cover the costs for the show, but it is not so much that [Laughing] we are worried about all of that. It takes the time to grow a podcast audience. We have a couple of listeners who are very devoted. We have one who live tweets us while on the show. His thoughts while we’re on the show.

The biggest thing for me is the interaction with the listeners and that there are people listening, whether agreeing or disagreeing with us. One thing I would like for growth of the show, I would like to have conservative listeners. Who even though they do not agree, they listen and tell us. So, there is a back-and-forth. That is missing in society. People who disagree and listening to each other. That is something I would like to have as the show grows.

Benedict: In the future, for the growth of the show, I would like to have us do more interviews – as we’re doing more. We can get a few more diverse perspectives. We have started to chat to other podcasters and have them on our show. We have gone on a couple of shows ourselves now. I want to do more of it. It is fascinating to get more perspective – as much as I love talking to Kevin about this stuff. To be able to bring that to people, that is something exciting to me.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time, guys.

Kevin: Awesome.

Benedict: No worries.

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2022-03-24

Wonderful World of the Comedy, Life, and Family of Kelly Carlin

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/23

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: At UCLA, you did graduate magna cum laude with a B.A. in Communication Studies. As we’ve discussed at the start of the interview, you did earn your masters in Jungian depth psychology. Both are caveats to that description.

Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall: Yes, of course. However, I earned my B.A. at age 30. I was 8 years behind my peers, who were already in careers and doing big things in Hollywood. I was scraping myself out of a very insane 10 years of my life with Andrew.

I never doubted my book smarts. UCLA did help me. It helped my self-esteem. It provided the courage to leave Andrew. Creatively, who was what I wanted to be – an artist – in the world, I never gave myself a shot. I felt behind. I am a smart person. I knew that, but I had no courage. No creative courage, it took me more time to get.

It took more time to step into. It took the death of my mother to catalyze that. It took the death of my father, more recently, to do it more. I am writing a book about it now, which is about creative courage. How we get it, how we own it, and what happens when we start claiming our creative lives, I always knew I was clever and smart.

That wasn’t an issue. I didn’t have any cajones to put my ass on the line creatively. I regret that. I regretted it for years. I’m getting over it now only because I am living my creative life.

Jacobsen: Going through the counseling, going through the therapy, and presenting your life in your material, is that part of the healing process for you? Is that allowing you to talk more about creative courage?

Carlin-McCall: Yes, for sure, there was something about me needing to tell my story out loud, which was essential to completing some cycle around that. It was the period at the end of the sentence for me. Having been invisible and silent for my whole life, that was self-imposed in some ways. In some ways, it wasn’t. In others, it felt imposed upon me.

Feeling invisible and silent, to be seen and heard in my story, and to know I could tell it in an entertaining way, in a way people could relate to the universality of it, that I could, finally, say, “This is what I went through. This is what I was. This is who I am. This is what made me.” It has been huge.

The book came out in 2015, a little over a year ago. These things take time. Here I am, I am 53. My book came out when I was 52. Now, I am walking away from it all. I am walking away from my past, away from my story.

Not that I’m cutting it off, or being done with it. However, there’s something to being able to look forward, live in the present moment, and do the work that I am here to do now. I couldn’t fully do that work until I told this story. That might be true for some people. All art is ultimately telling our stories in different forms, in different frames, in different aspects, and with different transparencies.

The memoir is very transparent. A painting, maybe not so, but the artist is always there somewhere. I think we’re all looking to be seen, to say, “I matter. This happened to me. I did this.” To be able to sort through all of that, it is important to know who we are. “How did I get here?” is as much about “Who am I?” than anything else. So, it’s been very healing. Once again, not only going to graduate school and doing your own therapy… [Laughing]

Jacobsen: [Laughing]

Carlin-McCall: …but telling your story. It is a powerful means of healing. The tricky part about writing memoir is you have to be, in some way, a teller and true witness to your story. It has to become a narrative. You can’t be stuck living inside of it because you’re still doing the healing part. I have done a lot of the healing part. I have done 90% of the healing.

I’ve done a lot of healing such as meditation, therapy, and other modalities. The final piece was to present it to the world and to make it useful to the world. That was essential to my healing. I survived all of this. I am lucky. I came out on my own two feet with a sense of who I am and a love, and joy, of life. I want that for everyone on the planet.

If my story can help you work through your story in any way, and make you have a more joyful, fulfilling life, then it was worth every bit of suffering for me, for that to happen. That’s really the healing, ultimately. It is the healing we do for each other when we tell our stories because it helps us feel a lot less alone.

We all have these stories to tell. We have all lived through treacherous moments in our lives, great loss, stupidity, joy, and success. We need to share these stories because we connect with each other. The only way we’re going to get through the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years on this planet is by connecting to each other as human beings.

Not ideologies, not profit motives, not how big our bank accounts are, but just humans-to-humans. When we tell our stories, that instantly happens. So, I am very honored to be a member of the tribe that tells the stories of the humans and to have been able to tell my story.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Kelly.

Carlin-McCall: Thank you, darling. It was lovely.

Jacobsen: I appreciate that.

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2022-03-24

Growing Up Gifted, and Nerdy When Being a Nerd was Hellacious

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/22

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In reading through the available literature of Noesis, i.e. available online, three trends persist to me. One, the range of high-level and engaging material across the arts and science, e.g. the lucid description of relativity by Chris Cole at the end of issue 69 entitled Relativity – A Primer. Two, the mix of the occasional scatological material in the writing, mostly c. 1990-1996.

Three, the length of your time as the main editor from 1990-1996. How did you come into the world of the Mega Society? How did you earn the position of editor for six years? Do you think the journal fulfilled part of the purpose stated in the Constitution to “facilitate interaction among its members and to assist them in gaining access to resources to accomplish their individual purposes”?

Rick Rosner: When the editorship was offered to me, I was underemployed. I’d written for some TV quiz shows and thought that work would continue but didn’t know how to get that work. The publisher of Noesis said I could have the subscription money if I’d edit it. It wasn’t much, but everything helps when you’re a bouncer and nude model who’s trying to cover a mortgage and pay for hair transplants.

I edited Noesis for six years because no one else was clamoring to do it. Towards the end, I started getting TV work again and became even less reliable about getting issues out on time. Other members volunteered to take over.

As an editor, I didn’t do too much editing. Most material submitted to me went straight into Noesis. I may have left out some crackpot submissions claiming to have disproved Einstein and perhaps some angry letters from people who thought they deserved to be admitted to Mega though they didn’t meet the entrance requirements.

Some of the writing you term scatological may have been my writing about myself. While most of the material submitted to Noesis is at a high intellectual level or at least reflects striving in that direction, I was trying to be entertaining and tell the embarrassing and I hope the funny truth about myself.

I eventually became a professional comedy writer, and, without looking back on my writing for Noesis, I’m sure much of it was goofier and more obnoxious (and perhaps more entertaining) than the average article.

I’m fairly pessimistic about the effectiveness of most high-IQ journals, though I’ve seen some good ones. My editorship was at the very beginning of the internet era, so most communication was by snail mail. Now, of course, high-IQ organizations are online, which speeds up the discourse. The Mega Society online journal has some good material and discussions.

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2022-03-24

This Week In News, A Kevin and Benedict Story

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/22

Kevin and Benedict are colleagues. We have written and worked together. They have a podcast called This Week in News with Kevin and Benedict. I like them. Here’s their story. Kevin grew up in Sacramento California, where he conquered his enemies and saved the city from annihilation multiple times. He currently attends UC Berkeley as a Political Science major. He also worked as a heavy equipment mechanic for 5 years before college. He enjoys cigars, hockey (Go Sharks), politics, and saltwater fish tanks. Benedict is a Brit living in the US. Just for you, part 1.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I wanted to interview each of you together because you’re friends and do some decent work through a podcast. I wanted to explore some of that. You both agreed. What is your brief background?

Kevin: I first want talk about the statement where you said we are friends. We are acquaintances at best. How dare you put my name in with his, interview over!

Jacobsen: [Laughing]

Benedict: Now, we’re going to answer your question. I am originally from the UK. I studied at Oxford University, Spanish and Portuguese. I decided I didn’t want to do anything with that. I wanted to be a journalist or pundit, whatever I am now.

I have done a lot of writing for people for free to get my name out there. I stumbled upon Kevin. Now, we have a podcast. That’s how we got there today.

Kevin: I am from Sacramento, California. I took two semesters of Spanish [Laughing]. I worked as a heavy equipment mechanic a few years after high school. I radically changed my life from being a Right-wing dirt bag to leaning heavily to the Left.

It was a dual change of coming to atheism and realizing everything I ever believed was basically wrong. I was re-examining things and searching for the truth. This brought me there. I was a mechanic for 5 years.

I went back to community college, then got into UC Berkeley, where I am now. Then all three of us were working for an outlet, writing online. We met through there. Benedict was doing a podcast there at the time. It was terrible, I must say. Your form was off.

For a quick moment, can I critique your old podcast?

Benedict: You can if you want.

Kevin: I always wanted to do a podcast, but it was a matter of finding a partner. It is a matter of British accents. I thought, “This is a perfect podcast partner, who can make me sound better.”

Benedict: [Laughing].

Jacobsen: Kevin, you noted the transition from a Right-wing social and political, and so cultural, perspective. Was it all-at-once or slow transition? What was the feeling?

Kevin: It wasn’t all-at-once. It was a gradual thing. It started with some things I believed being chipped away at, starting with climate change. I was a climate change denier. People would introduce me to the facts.

It became more and more apparent that I am wrong here. That something else was going on here. In my mind, and the way I was raised, I had to look for myself and examine things. Once you can do that with one issue, it becomes easier with other things. It was looking at the bottom of it rather than what the Right-wing commentators had been saying all of my life such as the guy who ran The Blaze, Glenn Beck.

I had more Glenn Beck books that anyone should ever have. I had two.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Kevin: Five years ago, if Donald Trump ran for president, I would have voted for him. That’s how far gone I was.

Jacobsen: What about you, Benedict?

Benedict: I have left-wing tendencies growing up. I go through occasional center leaning wobbles, especially in high school. That kind of time because of the people I was surrounded by at the time. When I went to university, I solidified in left-wing and liberal thinking. At the same time, I came across atheism and being skeptical of stuff and trying to question everything.

I do not think I have changed much. I haven’t had a radical right-to-left swing like Kevin, but I have become more left-wing as I study politics more. Europeans tend to be more left-wing anyway, so definitely in the American sense – maybe for a European perspective too. If anything, I have become more left-wing with time, but probably more centrist than leftist.

Kevin: Was high school your Tory years?

Benedict: Yes, when I write my autobiography, I will become famous and those will be the “Tory Years.”

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Kevin: You had a picture of Margaret Thatcher up on your wall.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Benedict: Yes, it was when we went through the recession and had a left-wing government, so we felt there must have been some reason for this to be wrong and a change must be necessary away from the established way of thinking. But you could more left-wing than the Labour government had been to that point, I assumed the natural change was to be Right-wing.

It wasn’t necessarily the “Tory Years,” but more like the “We need change” years – from the status quo. An obvious change at the time was to lean more Tory, though I don’t think I’d agree with myself now.

Jacobsen: You founded TWIN or This Week in News with Kevin and Benedict. What was the inspiration for it?

Benedict: I am a very grumpy person. I like to complain the news. I spend too much time thinking other people are dumb [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Benedict: We spend a lot of time critiquing the Trump administration because that’s who is in power. I like to think we’d be critiquing whoever else might be in power. We simply have a lot more to talk about with the Trump administration because they are in power. Do you agree with that Kevin? We are both democrats, but we wouldn’t not critique Democrats simply because they are of our party.

Kevin: I asked, “What will we do when Donald Trump is out of office?” Well, then is the time to start looking at more of the mundane issues, I feel like right now we are in crisis mode. I feel there are many bad and dangerous things. It is important to focus on them. I believe other things are worth focusing on our side when our people do wrong, but there is a limited amount time. It is more important with constraints to focus on Donald Trump and the administration.

It is important to critique people on our side when it is appropriate. We do try to get those smaller stories and criticize people on our side when it is appropriate to do so. We made a point of critiquing Kathy Griffin, people on our side, and say stupid things. In the show recorded today, we talked about how the new Democratic Party slogan is stupid [Laughing]. It is not just news. We try to keep things light and entertaining too.

As a news consumer myself, I like nice and dense news, but I want it to be entertaining as well.

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2022-03-23

Growing Up Gifted, in the Laissez-Faire 70s Era

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/21

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have a long history with forging identities beginning with entering high school another time, and many more. What motivated this behavior? How long did you pursue this ‘calling’ of entering high school? In particular, how did each experience turn out? How many times did you do this?

Rick Rosner: Though I had started trying to de-nerdify myself as early as ninth grade, it wasn’t effective. In my small town, my classmates were well aware of my nerdiness – there was no erasing that. After years of trying to be cool and failing, I was very frustrated and had something like a freak-out. I decided that I would not leave high school a virgin. So after graduating high school with the class of 1978, using forged transcripts, I went back to high school for a second senior year (class of ’79) with my other family in Albuquerque. I only lasted ten weeks and didn’t come close to even making out with a girl.

A note on inappropriateness: I think standards have changed since I did this. The creepiness factor has increased. But since I was just 18 – still roughly high school age – and barely talked to any girls much less date them when I returned to high school, it was pretty harmless.

1980: Went on a double-date to a high school prom because my girlfriend (who, like me, was in college) had a best friend who was still in high school and thought we should all go to her prom.

Also 1980: I went to L.A. to try to sell my back-to-high-school story to a Hollywood producer. Thought it would help sell the story if I were back in high school at the time. Tried to talk my way into a couple of L.A. schools without any transcripts, just a class of ’81 letterman’s jacket.

I eventually spent several more semesters in high school, but rather than tell about them here, I’ll just tease my forthcoming book, Dumbass Genius, which will detail my more than ten years as a sometime high school student.

Jacobsen: In terms of your ideas related to cosmology and physics, at 10, you began thinking about the universe. The reason for existence.

At 21, you came to a realization. You note, “All the big theories are built around big equivalences.” Namely, your realization of an equivalence between the operation of information in an individual consciousness and the operation of space & matter in the universe. Both have self-consistency.

In addition to this, and later in response to a similar topic in Noesis 58, you state, “I believe in matter and space as information held in some vast awareness…” What do you mean by these? In particular, the idea of a great equivalence. How have you developed the idea from the original equivalence to the present day?

Rosner: I’ve continued to think about this stuff and think I have a pretty good theoretical framework, though it needs more math.

I believe that it’s almost impossible to have a large, self-consistent system of information without that system has some degree of consciousness – probably a high degree. Consciousness can be characterized as every part of a system knowing what’s going on, more or less, with every other part of the system, within a framework that assigns (emotional) values to events perceived by the system.

(Of course, there are processes which are peripheral to consciousness – most of the time, we’re not aware of the finer points of breathing or walking or why we like looking at cat videos and butts.)

Plenty of people think that the universe is a massive processor of information. Quantum mechanics mathematicizes the limitations of the universe’s information-processing ability. Being finite, the universe cannot observe itself with infinite precision.

Jacobsen: Provided the nature of these particular equivalences, especially related to the universe, do you have a mathematical model to represent this equivalence? Furthermore, do you have a layman analogy for this equivalence?

Rosner: I think the most efficient model of the information contained in a complex, self-contained and self-consistent system of information looks like the universe – locally three-dimensional (spatially) with linear time and particles and forces that transact business more or less the way they do in the universe itself.

I don’t believe in the big bang – instead, I believe that what looks like a big bang is kind of a trick of perspective, based on the universe being made of information. Parts of the universe which have less information in common with us are more distant and red-shifted. The apparent age of the universe is a measure of the amount of information it contains (or has in play). Somewhat similarly, train tracks don’t really touch at the horizon.

Kind of picture the universe as being at a slow boil. Some parts are energy-rich and expanding, while other parts are burned out and pushed to the outskirts by the expanding regions, waiting for their chance to expand again.

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2022-03-23

Carlin at Comedy, Home, Life, and Harmony

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/22

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Your mom didn’t bring home stray dogs but brought home stray people.

Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall: [Laughing] She was a rescuer.

Jacobsen: Later, she got breast cancer. As she was healing, you became her nurse. To me, it seems like you took on the role that she had performed for others throughout her life.

Carlin-McCall: Oh, yes! When I brought Andrew into my life, that was my first rescue. I figured if I married Andrew that he would get his life together. That was the co-dependence in me. Nursing my mother was different, this rescuing thing is a pathology.

It is a way of not having healthy boundaries around creating these situations. Being my mom’s nurse, what’re you going to do? It was difficult, but you can’t say, “No.” It’s your mother. No matter how terrifying it is.

Jacobsen: What is the motivation there – to care for strangers that are going through any myriad circumstances that you may or may not know at the time?

Carlin-McCall: It is a deep need to alleviate other people’s suffering. That motivates it, ultimately. At times, it is wanting to heal our own suffering. Maybe, it is easier to do it outside of ourselves with other people. Sometimes, if you get motivated by feeling wanted and needed, that’s part of the co-dependent relationship.

The rescuer role is the one that feels high and mighty because they’re doing the rescuing. However, if that’s unconsciously motivating it, over time, it will become oppressive – the helping. There’s a way to be of service. There’s a way of encroaching your own pathology when you’re helping them.

When I went Andrew went into rehabilitation, the first family therapy group session I attended, I told my story. The therapist said, “You’re sicker than he is.” I took great offense to that because A) I was the victim to his insanity and B) I had taken the high road by being there for him and caretaking for him.

She pointed out the victim and the caretaker role were just as pathological. When it is unconscious, all of that behavior is not healthy because you’re being run by your unconscious scripts. It is only when you can own up and take care of yourself first, and be healthy around that, then you can take care of others in a way that is healthy and real.

Jacobsen: To go back to school, you were clinging to Miss Morgan in school. You were a very good student. Also, you had validation from Mrs. Dresser. She would bring you around and introduce you as one of the smartest kids. You deduced the smartest because she would bring the smart kids out, but you were the only kid brought out.

Carlin-McCall: [Laughing] Yes.

Jacobsen: Another footnote to that is you only ever received one C. Based on the acknowledgments in the interview, and the narrative within the book, I see patterns and themes. We have a highly gifted and talented kid in a troubled surrounding.

So, likely more sensitive to surroundings, emotionally and experientially, and enduring Carlin craziness, but you ruined your SAT scores. Even knowing you were bright, even knowing you had good grades, the SATs were insufficient for Ivy schools. What were the feelings at that time?

Carlin-McCall: Also, the year I was taking the SATs, my junior and senior year in high school, I was in a difficult emotional place. I had depression. I had anxiety. I had an abortion. I was in this abusive relationship with this boy. Taking those tests were hard, I am not good at taking those tests.

It was a blow. Also, I don’t think I could’ve handled going 3,000 miles away from my parents at the time. I wasn’t capable of it. So, it saved me from having to make the choice. Thank God, I got into UCLA. Even though, after two weeks at UCLA, I couldn’t handle it. I was emotionally unfit to handle it.

I didn’t know I was having anxiety and depression at that level. I didn’t know what those feelings were at the time. I felt crazy inside. I felt as though I couldn’t handle anything. I felt something was wrong with me. I had no idea how to ask for help because, on the outside, I wanted everyone to think I was fine and okay.

It was another big theme in my life, by saying, “I am fine. I am fine,” when they asked how I was doing. It was devastating. It made me feel behind all of my peers. I stayed behind because I didn’t go to college until I was 25. That set me up for the next 20 years thinking, “I am behind. I am behind.”

So, any sense of being smart, bright, and creative, and is the daughter of this very smart and creative man, and mom too, was non-existent. I felt as though I fucked it all up.

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2022-03-23

Growing Up Gifted, and Desperately Wanting a Girlfriend

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/21

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have coined the phrase “lazy voodoo physics”. How do you define “lazy voodoo physics”?

Why resort to this form of considering major interests such as the structure and fate our universe, or existence of other universes, and other concepts arising from 20th and 21st-century cosmology and physics?

Rick Rosner: Lazy voodoo physics is my term for crappy metaphysical theorizing (which I’ve done some of, particularly as a little kid). I prefer to think that my current metaphysical theorizing is less crappy.

It is possible to think about the universe without a full mathematical arsenal. George Gamow, who came up with the big bang, was notoriously unschooled in math.

Immanuel Kant was among the first people to endorse the idea of galaxies, and Edgar Allen Poe offered a reasonable solution to Olbers’ Paradox.

Einstein himself had to be pointed towards the mathematical framework for general relativity by his friends. Trying to imagine the processes of the universe with the math to come later is not voodoo physics. Metaphysics doesn’t have to be voodoo physics, either.

Jacobsen: When did you enter into the world of the ultra-high IQ community? In particular, the Mega Society. In it, once more, you forged an identity. What motivated this resurgence of forging an identity?

For instance, the use of the pseudonym Richard Sterman within the publications of the Mega Society journal, Noesis. To make amends, and needing stating, you did apologize to members and readers of the journal for the false identity portrayal.

Rosner: When I first qualified for the Mega Society in late 1985, I was depressed from a bad breakup and would try to make myself less depressed by doing stupid stuff.

After receiving a score on the Mega Test that qualified me for the Mega Society, I wrote to Marilyn Savant (who must’ve been in charge of membership at the time) and asked, “Hey, can I join your club…and want to go on a date? I’m a stripper.”

Marilyn wrote back and said my score didn’t qualify me for Mega. She had no response to the personal invitation. (Later, my score did turn out qualify me for Mega. My score’s IQ equivalent jumped around as more scores came in and the test was repeatedly recalibrated.)

On the Mega Test, I had tied for the second-highest score in the country. The CBS Morning News called to invite me to be on the show. I asked the producer if I should wear my tux or my loincloth.

She immediately cancelled me for being a crazy person. In my defense, I worked in bars until two in the morning and didn’t wake up in time to see what morning news shows were like. I thought, stupidly, that the CBS Morning News would want somebody really fun. (Fun = loincloth.)

The other people with high scores were two Los Angeles math professors, Solomon Golomb and Herbert Taylor, and the Governor of New Hampshire. People seemed really annoyed that I, a roller skating waiter, stripper, bar bouncer, and amateur undercover high school student, was in their company.

In 1990, when the Titan Test came out, I remembered how appalled at me people were after the Mega.

So I decided to take the test using my girlfriend’s last name instead of my own, figuring that if I did well on the Titan, I could get a fresh start at talking to reporters without being tainted by being the person who shocked people the first time around. If this sounds dumb, it’s because it was.

My Twitter handle is @dumbassgenius because I tend to do a mix of smart and dumb stuff (not usually on purpose). I wasn’t trying to fool anyone for test purposes, I was just trying to sidestep my stupid past.

I did really well on the Titan, finally joining the Mega Society and becoming editor of the Mega Society journal. After a few months, I told everyone, “Hey, I’m the same guy who did well on the Mega Test.”

I don’t think anyone was outraged. (I also took the Mega Test for the second time as Richard Sterman. But I soon came clean.)

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2022-03-23

Home Companion of a Carlin Life in Comedy

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/21

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Then you met Andrew Sutton, who was a 29-year-old cocaine-snorting mechanic. More or less, as far as I got from reading that part of the book, you bared your souls to one another. What was like to you to be able to be open with someone who was older? When a lot of the time, you were trying to be the good kid.

Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall:Yes, it was very heady stuff. Andrew was 10 or 11 years older than me. There was looking up to him with a father-figure part of it. The fact of him being a peer. The sexual relationship, the bonding over the drugs, and the illicit part of that.

Then there were the complications that went along with it, which was ridiculous, crazy, and insane. It showed my very poor choice-making skills at that time. I was not prepared for adulthood and those relationships. My lack of self-worth and the inability to have any healthy boundaries in a relationship with a man. I was so vulnerable in that moment.

Being able to finally bare my soul to someone of the opposite sex was very powerful because all of the other boys in my life, even though they were friends or boyfriends, when you’re in high school you’re trying to pretend that you’re a great person and desperately be liked and loved, it was tough to bear who I really was, and my pain around my childhood and upbringing.

Being able to have someone to relate that to who someone had their own pain in adolescence was a profound bonding for me, it created a safe space. That was our connection initially, Andrew and I. It was the sense of safety and intimacy around that stuff. Unfortunately, it was a ridiculously insane, chaotic situation for me to get into. I didn’t have any ways to separate from it.

All I saw was someone who saw me, adored me, and loved me unconditionally. That was more important than all of the things I was saying, “Yes,” to. I was in way over my head.

Jacobsen: With that relationship, the sex and cocaine and orgasms were sufficient reason to keep him around too, but you did quit, eventually. Up to the present, is there any substance use or misuse, if I may ask?

Carlin-McCall: I drink alcohol. I smoke weed. I don’t smoke a lot of weed. I don’t drink a lot of alcohol. I haven’t used cocaine since 1988. I know it’s around at parties, but I don’t use it. It is not part of my scene. I walked away from it. I am very, very cognizant of alcohol in my life because of my mother.

Alcohol was never really my thing. I don’t really like it that much. I do smoke one hit of pot once per week if a friend is around or there is a party. I am lucky. I am one of those people that don’t have a substance abuse problem.

I have a way of being in a relationship with it, in a conscious way. I can quit for a year or two at times because I find it distracts me. However, everyone has their relationship with it. Others need to completely abstain. Others can have a beer with dinner. I am lucky to be one of those people.

I am lucky to be alive too. The cocaine, it is a dangerous drug. Any form of it. Any offspring of it: meth, crystal, and others. It is a scary drug. It completely hijacks your brain, the dopamine loop. It makes you a slave to it.

It is meaningless to me today. It doesn’t define me. I see other people, who have the genetics for it. It is scary to watch people teetering and playing with that dangerous stuff. I am blessed. It has been 30 years next year since I have seen cocaine. [Laughing] That’s crazy.

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2022-03-23

Onward With the Fight for Women’s Rights, Right?

Author(s): Anya Overmann and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/21

Anya Overmann and I came across this report on the Freedom From Religion Foundation and its efforts to protect reproductive rights and proper education. Just for you.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation announced the aim to combat another bill designed to attack women’s reproductive rights (FFRF, 2017). It deals with abortion, which, to be fair, is a split issue among women, and the general populace, in the United States.

Based on research into the general public’s views on abortion from 1995-2017, the Pew Research Center reports (circa 2017) that “57% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 40% say it should be illegal in all or most cases” (Pew Research Center, 2017).

However, more than half of American adults do not take an “absolutist” view on abortion. They will be somewhere between most or some of the time in their views, whether pro-life or pro-choice. Note, the terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life” are not formal terms used in the Pew Research Center report, but seem implied to us.

This bill would essentially prevent OBGYN students at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health from training to perform abortions. It’s not just discouraging women from getting abortions — it’s cutting off access to abortions at the source.

The FFRF opposes this bill due to its perpetuation of the age-old attack on women’s rights, as well as restricting the education of medical students at UW. There’s absolutely no secular reasoning for passing a bill like this. All it does is simply reinforce the fact that in 2017 women’s rights are in continued need of strong advocacy and implementation., and protection.

If this bill were to pass, it would set a legal precedent for the rest of the United States, which would open the doors for more significant regressive initiatives. Ultimately reversing not only women’s rights, but scientific and medical progress as well, the FFRF is one of many organizations taking a stand – as they should.

References

Freedom From Religion Foundation. (2017). Freedom From Religion Foundation. Retrieved from https://ffrf.org/.

Grover, S. (2017, July 19). FFRF fights for education and women’s rights. Retrieved from http://www.patheos.com/blogs/freethoughtnow/ffrf-fights-for-education-and-womens-rights/.

Pew Research Center. (2017, July 7). Public Opinion on Abortion: Views on abortion, 1995-2017. Retrieved from http://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/.

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2022-03-23

Home is Where the Carlin Is, Comedy

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/21

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That makes me think of Terry. If I can be indulged, it was one paragraph (and a sentence):

A few days later Terry showed up at our house. I’m not sure why he came – to apologize, to charm me again, to tell me I was a whore? My dad saw him outside the gate at the end of our long driveway. He went into his office and grabbed his baseball bat. As my dad marched down the driveway toward Terry, he said, “You come near my daughter again, I’ll bash your fucking skull in.”

It was the proudest day of my life – my father had finally fathered me.

Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall: Yup, says it all. [Laughing]

Jacobsen: [Laughing] Was that your first experience of feeling truly fathered, or were there other minor events that you did actually feel fathered?

Carlin-McCall: Obviously, my dad would get things for me, or protect me, or stand up for me with my mother at times. He was always teaching me things about the world – politics and the cultural stuff, the ethical/moral compass things. But as far as being a dad who is like “Who are you going out with? Where are you going? Are you going to be safe?”

He would check in with me about stuff like that, but there was never any sense of fear that they would take anything away, like driving privileges, or search my room for drugs. There wasn’t that type of fathering going on, which is what I mean in that comment. The protective father who wants to create boundaries, teach me boundaries, and show me what is safe and what is not safe. That hadn’t shown up in my life up to the point. It had become a type of crisis point.

Jacobsen: There was not only drug abuse and misuse, depending on the term of preference, within the household. In a way, there was an involving you in it. From a young age, you were able to roll and clean cannabis/marijuana.

Carlin-McCall: I couldn’t really roll joints very well, but I definitely cleaned the weed. By watching people, I learned how to roll a joint. When it came to adolescence and knowing how to roll a joint, I was way, way, way ahead of my peers! [Laughing]

Jacobsen: [Laughing]

Carlin-McCall: Because I had been studying it for quite a long time.

Jacobsen: [Laughing]

Carlin-McCall: [Laughing]

Jacobsen: You started smoking marijuana/cannabis at age 14.

Carlin-McCall: That’s when I started self-medicating. I started smoking cigarettes, then started stealing roaches from my dad’s stash. That’s when I started altering my consciousness in order to feel something I didn’t want to feel anymore.

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2022-03-23

Growing Up Carlin, A Comedy Story

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/20

Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall, B.A., M.A. is known for her work in comedy and writing. Here we discuss a wide range of issues in an extensive talk on comedy and life. Here is session 4.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You mentioned this as feeling, with respect to wanting to master school, “the charge of having power over something”. Between the transitional object of clinging to Brenda, to then clinging to Miss Morgan, and then wanting to master school to have power over something, both of those speak volumes to a lack of control you felt in your own life up to 4 years old as well as not knowing what to attach to – other than another caring object or person, in this case, Miss Morgan.

Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall: Yes! Yes, we moved to LA. My mom was falling apart. You need a safe place for the storm. School became that for me. Having a good mind, and being able to master school, and soak it all up, it was a sense of control and power. Thank God! Thank God I had that, who knows where I’d be without that? All of us have to find some sense of stability internally in order to develop into adults. Without that, there can be some serious mental health issues. Attachment disorders and all sorts of things.

I had this true foundation. I knew my mother deeply loved me. I knew my father deeply loved me. I didn’t have a sense of being thrown out on the curb and not loved, but things felt very unstable at home because dad was on the road so much and mom was having intense anxiety and panic attacks. She was self-medicating with alcohol. Thank God, I had 6 hours or so a day with a stable adult to connect to, and an environment that fed me.

Jacobsen: Your father, in an interview with Jon Stewart, described his mother as wanting to control his life. You describe your father controlling whether your mom worked or not, and heavily leaning towards the latter option.

Yet, what I am getting from you a little bit is there was almost the opposite, a lack of control, but that might be because he was on the road and gone so much. I want to get your perspective on if you felt as if there was a lack of oversight and control of you from your parents.

Carlin-McCall: My mother had to be both mother and father because he wasn’t home. She resented that. My dad really didn’t know how to be an adult, let alone a parent. He didn’t have a father himself. He was raised by a single mom and rebelled against her authority. He didn’t want to impose her controlling nature on anybody.

The only thing he asked my mother not to do was work because his mother worked and he had no one around, so he wanted to make sure one parent was around the home with me. My parents were busy getting screwed up on drugs and alcohol. My father was busy with his career. Because I was very precocious and a good girl, there didn’t have to be a lot of parenting.

I didn’t create a lot of a challenge around that. I was great at school. I was a great student. I did what I was told. When there is a lot of chaos in your environment, at least as a kid, my reaction was needing to be in charge of myself. I needed to figure out the rules by myself and live by them. I could discern the rules pretty easily. I was pretty smart. I knew what it was to be a good kid, so I was. My mother used to say, “Thank God, we didn’t have a boy.” She didn’t know what might’ve happened if I’d been a boy.

Jacobsen: [Laughing]

Carlin-McCall: Because in some ways my dad didn’t know how to father, but he did. He did the best he could. He did it his way. He didn’t know how to father like the regular run-of-the-mill guy. He might’ve been great at it if I’d been a boy. But who knows? But that laissez-faire parenting became more dramatic and more of an issue around my adolescence when I really did need parenting and guidance.

My parents were pretty hands-off with me. That was the circumstance of it. They were always there in the end. They were there for lots of things. They protected me, in some ways. They paid for everything. They put me in good schools. They made sure I had what I wanted, but they weren’t good at setting limits with me. That would have been helpful in adolescence, but it didn’t happen with me.

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2022-03-23

Growing Up Gifted, and Pathetically Awkward in the 70s

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/20

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In terms of geography, culture, and language, where does your family background reside? How do you find this influencing your development?

Rick Rosner: I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, with my mom, stepdad, and brother, and spent a month each summer with my dad and stepmom and their kids in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My ancestors came from Eastern Europe and the Baltics by way of Cincinnati and Shreveport. I’m Jewish, but out west, Jewish cultural influence is somewhat attenuated.

Jacobsen: In Noesis issue 57’s article When Good IQs Happen to Bad People, you describe some of your experience as a kid. Could you elaborate on some of the histories before entering grade school?

Rosner: I showed some signs of being a child prodigy – by the age of about 18 months, I’d learned the alphabet, and by age 3 ¾, I’d taught myself to read at a near-adult level, which was unusual for the era. I was good with puzzles and math – but this wasn’t encouraged. My parents thought I’d do better growing up as a normal kid, which did not go smoothly.

Some non-prodigy stuff – the theme music to Perry Mason scared me – I’d have to go hide behind the couch. My first crush was on Patty Duke on The Patty Duke Show, who I somehow conflated with my dad’s sister, Aunt Janice, whom I saw during summer visitation with my dad in Los Angeles. My first memory is of the Raggedy Ann & Andy curtains and bedspread in my room.

We had a very nice cocker spaniel named Tinkerbell, who died when I was four. (This is before cockers became overbred and high-strung.)

I was terrified of swimming, which was part of my generally being a wuss – had to be peeled off the side of the pool by the swim teacher.

Jacobsen: What about your time in grade school, junior high, high school, and college? In particular, what do you consider pivotal moments in each of these cross-sections of latter portions of your early life?

Rosner: I grew up nerdy and interested in science, deciding at a young age to make it my job to figure out the universe. At age six, I was left with a scary babysitter, which led me to start spinning clockwise, chanting to God and to be sent to my first shrink.

I was uncoordinated. Each year, I’d enter the 50-yard-dash on track & field day, and each year would come in last. (Maybe the other not-so-fast kids knew not to enter the race and avoid the embarrassment.) Even as a kid, I had gross caveman feet with weirdly long second toes. I used to take off my shoe to make girls scream and run away – I liked the attention.

In the 1970s, there was no such thing as nerd chic. If you were nerdy, you were probably lonely. But, like many misguided nerds, I thought my intelligence and niceness would inspire a girl to look past my nerdiness. I spent the second semester of ninth grade building a Three-Dimensional Gaussian Distribution Generator to demonstrate to my honors math class.

The machine dropped a thousand BBs through a pyramidal tower of overlapping half-inch grids into a 24-by-12 array of columns. It was a supercharged Plinko machine with an added spatial dimension, forming a half-bell of BBs, thanks to the laws of probability.

During its construction, I thought, “A girl will see this elegant experimental apparatus, think I’m brilliant, and become my girlfriend.” I completed the BB Machine in time to demonstrate it to the class on the last day of school. No one cared. Of course, they didn’t – it was the last day of junior high, and a dweeb was pouring BBs into a plastic pyramid.

Realizing that my nerdiness was standing in the way of ever having a girlfriend, I began changing myself – lifting weights and wearing contact lenses.

Towards the end of high school, I saw my IQ test scores, which maxed out at about 150. I decided that a 150 IQ wasn’t high enough for me to become the world-changing physicist I wanted to be, so I decided to become kind of a meathead – a stripper and a bar bouncer. At about the same time I was beginning my meathead career, I started to take high-end IQ tests, scoring in the 170s, 180s, and eventually 190s.

I also found out that among the reasons I’d never scored much above 150 on school-administered IQ tests is that the tests themselves don’t go much above 150. (This makes sense – if you’re a teacher or administrator trying to figure out whether a kid needs educational enrichment, it doesn’t matter much whether a kid’s IQ is 150 or 165. With either IQ, that kid will go stir-crazy in a regular classroom.)

I’d never quit thinking about physics, but my new, high scores gave me more confidence that I might eventually be able to theorize productively. Of course, a few points should probably be subtracted from my IQ for basing my life on IQ scores.

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2022-03-23

When a Phrase Really Strikes You

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/20

International Women’s Day is done and gone for the year. But Women’s History Month marches forward into its twilight days until the 2018 version comes around, one of further change, but the issues, concerns, and obligations arise year-round. Also, here’s a bad segue:

‘What a Wonderful World’ was a great song by Louis Armstrong – 26,000,000+ views, wow. Anyway, this song – lyrics and tune – were running through my mind when I came across a phrase recently by the executive director of United Nations Women (UN Women). I thought, “What a wonderful saying.”

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is the UN Women under-secretary-general and the executive director of UN Women. She made a statement at the 61^st Commission on the Status of Women (CSW61). I loved it. Mlambo-Ngcuka called this “constructive impatience.” I’ll explain in a bit. But I loved it because I hadn’t thought about that before. Maybe not “thought about that before,” but ‘thought about in that waybefore.’

It was about a week ago on March 13. Mlambo-Ngcuka spoke in front of group of distinguished internationals. She noted that the Commission included a series of reviews on the progress made for women and girls.

These are ‘barometers’ “of the change – of the progress – we are making on achieving a world that is free of gender discrimination and inequality,” she said,”…a world that leaves no-one behind. It will help us measure achievement of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

2030, as far as I know it, is the date set for the 50-50 world agenda set by the United Nations (UN). It seems ambitious, and doable, but, gosh, that’s a lot of work. Just take the World Economic Forum (WEF), with its Gender Gap Report, these are annual reports on the equality of women.

I suggest even a skim of them. It is rather remarkable. It’s not a total equality metric, though. Why’s that? Because if women surpass men by more than 50% in a given domain, this is taken as equality, even if the domain is dominated by women at 95%, say.

But given the massively tipped scales against women on numerous metrics, then the analysis from the WEF in the Gender Gap Reports can provide comprehensive, relatively fair, representation of the situation for women, and by implication men.

And by the WEF estimation, the gender gap will not close until 2186. Not much for to do then, so two options: pick up the pace, or make this a legacy project (or both). I like the third tacit option. We need to hand the torch at some point, but can do much, much better than now.

According to the Secretary-General report on the CSW61 session, the “priority theme” was “Women’s Economic Empowerment in the Changing World of Work”. That means economies inclusive of women in ways that can break the cycles of poverty. Women appear to be a linchpin in the inclusive, and I would add sustainable, economies.

In the statement, she continued, “Currently, in the gender equality agenda, we see progress in some areas, but we also see an erosion of gains. The much-needed positive developments are not happening fast enough. We also need to work together to make sure we reach a tipping point in the numbers of lives changed.” How many, and how quickly? That’s her emphasis.

I am paying attention, and in a Canadian context – work with what you know, and try to set an example here-ish and now-ish to give legitimate grounds for changing the world the better outside of my maple syrup wonderland.

Mlambo-Ngcuka talked about the Sustainable Development Goals for a wider vision and renewal of that image for those, especially at the bottom of the global strata. And as you know from a second’s reflection are mostly women and girls.

Young women affected by violence around gender, even sexual harassment in the workplace. And with the recent “Global Gag Rule,” we can be sure the restriction of what Human Rights Watch calls “first and foremost a human right.” So there are examples of the restricted equitable access, which isn’t equitable at all, to abortion and reproductive health services.

“Intersection” is an overused term, almost stripped of meaning and left bereft of substance. But it seems popular, so why change? I’ll use it for sake of ease. The intersection of the sexual harassment, workplace discrimination, varying degrees of inequality seen in the provision of abortion and reproductive health services, and the extrapolation of 2186 as the year for equality by the WEF Gender Gap Report lead to the consistent, if not conclusions then, themes.

She spoke to the additional, specified concerns of other minorities within minorities based on “sexual orientation, disability, older age, race, or being part of an indigenous community.”

These various intersections, even intersections of these intersections – see, fancy and academic – as statistical tendencies might be grounds for more often real rather than perceived mild to major discrimination in these arenas of professional and public life.

Now, what was the phrase in context? Here:

We need swift and decisive action that can be brought about by the world of work so that we do not leave women even further behind.

Excellencies, let us agree toconstructive impatience.

The Sustainable Development Goals give us a framework to work for far-reaching changes. In this session of the Commission we will be able to bring renewed focus to the needs of those who are currently being left behind and those who are currently furthest behind.[Emphasis added.]

The Commission was organised around the needs of women. CSW61 was a high-level international event through the UN with specific emphasis on UN Women. Mlambo-Ngcuka said, “Constructive impatience,” because of the continual denial of human rights to women.

Of course, these rights are newer than, say, the divine right of kings. But how long is reasonable to wait? Millions of women’s lives are adversely affected, so girls and children and families, each day. Change needs to happen. And outside moral, and health and wellbeing, arguments, we can reflect on the economic benefits, which Mlambo-Ngcuka covered in her statement.

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2022-03-23

Arab Countries and Women’s Rights

Author(s): Sarah Mills and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/19

There are interesting questions on the margins of sensitive topics such as the consideration and reflection of the progress of women’s rights and in the contexts of the Middle East, doubly so when together. Sarah Mills, a friend, and colleague, and I write and reflect on this. Please find part 2 here.

By Sarah Mills and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

What about moderate countries like Lebanon?

When discussing Arab countries and their treatment of women, we look to moderate nations as examples of what can be achieved within the framework of societies influenced by religion in a negative way. Lebanon comes to mind, a country often the object of international contention and internecine strife but that has nevertheless been able to achieve relative stability between its numerous factions.

While the Lebanese constitution formally recognizes equality between all its citizens, the power is distributed among diverse religious groups, the values of which differ widely and influence the rights women to have in their respective communities. An article from Human Rights Watch (HRW) states the following:

“Lebanon has 15 different codes – for Sunni, Shia, Druze, Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical groups and others – governing divorce, child custody, and the financial rights of spouses during and after marriage”

Lebanon is comparatively progressive to other Arab League countries. Women earned the right to vote in 1952, five years after men. Married women have the right to independently own and manage the property. And yet, neither the woman’s spouse nor her children can inherit her citizenship. While problematic in and of itself, it is not comparable to the injustices women endure in the legal realms of divorce and rape.

Article 503 of the Lebanese Penal Code defines rape in the following terms: “forced sexual intercourse [against someone] who is not his wife by violence or threat.” In other words, Lebanon does not recognize spousal rape. While laws against domestic abuse do recognize violence and threats thereof, whether the penalty of jail time is enforced or not depends on the state of the victim, and whether she has required a minimum of ten days to recover. The fine itself is paltry, equivalent to anywhere between $6 and $33 USD. Civil marriage is not recognized in Lebanon; religious law dictates how divorce is handled.

Sunni, Shia, and Druze men can divorce their wives simply by uttering the words, “I divorce you.” If the women, however, wish to divorce their husbands, the process is arduous and the grounds are limited. The burden of proof is on the women to supply evidence pointing to “hardship and discord.” Progress on some of the more egregious violations is a recent phenomenon. As of February 2017, Lebanon has abolished Article 522, which allowed men convicted of rape to avoid a penalty if they supplied a valid marriage contract.

In August 2011, Article 562, which had been previously allowed perpetrators of honor killings to commute their sentence, was repealed. Adultery and abortion still remain illegal and women are significantly underrepresented in politics. If Lebanon, a country that boasts a reputation for being progressive, still contends with these issues, where does that leave other nations in the Arab League?

Sethrida Geagea, a member of parliament and wife to the leader of Lebanese Forces, says that to effect change, women also have a responsibility to ‘stop giving priorities to the son over the daughter in terms of education.’ She references other instances in which men and women both might combat stereotypical roles that have their origins in the notion that women are inferior, such as the portrayal of doctors or business persons as men and women as their secretaries.

While working to change collective mentality is essential to overcome harmful views of women, it is idealistic if not accompanied by international pressure and cooperation on the part of those who influence public opinion. We must above all fight at the legislative level to provide a legal framework in which women may assert their right to the same education, work, opportunities, and protection as men.

The way a country chooses to view and treat its women often means the difference between a developed country and a developing one. Investing in women is investing in the country’s economy, in untapped potential. As women have increased access to education, proper nutrition, and reproductive healthcare, they have more time, energy, and resources to invest in children. With the individual children better provided for, and with equitable and safe access to reproductive health services, including abortion, women tend to have fewer children, as is the case in the most developed nations.

Women who are educated and independent have control over their health and their finances. They have a lesser chance of being exploited. They do not settle for low standards and unsafe working conditions. Denying women fundamental rights directly impacts other vulnerable groups, including workers and children. Economies and societies lose potential growth by denying women their rights. Human rights, and therefore women’s rights, go hand in hand with development.

Those who can, who are either in positions of power or privilege, must not stay silent on the abuses endured by women in developing countries. We must be especially critical of any beliefs or cultural norms that only serve to legitimize the mistreatment of women. We must fight against the blatant permissiveness in the face of these continuing offenses. They are an affront to human dignity. What is more, no country can benefit, or has been shown to benefit, from the mistreatment of half its population.

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2022-03-23

Is It Wrong to Assume Arab Countries Violate Women’s Rights?

Author(s): Sarah Mills and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/20

By Sarah Mills and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

“Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.” – United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner

Article 25.

(2) 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. – Universal Declaration of Human Rights

To make the case for the disproportionate implementation of women’s rights in the Arab League compared to other regions of the world, we need to define our terms. Our discussion implies some questions: What defines a right? What defines women’s rights? Which countries are the worst, and by what metric(s)?

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It sets the common standard for all Member States to abide by in the treatment of their citizenry.

It’s thirty articles define human rights and freedoms in straightforward terms: freedom from oppression, including slavery; freedom of thought, speech, and religion; freedom from discrimination based on race, color, sex, and political opinion; equality of all before the law; the right to education and to work. Among the different stipulations, there are rights specific to particular groups. Mothers and children, for example, are entitled to “special care and assistance,” as stipulated in Article 25. Workers have the right to safe conditions and equal pay for equal work.

The overlap between countries in which there is a high risk of violations of both human rights and women’s rights is neither coincidental nor inexplicable. Sub-Saharan countries, for example, consistently hold their position as high risk due precisely to their high levels of sexual violence, among other factors.

The worst offenders are those that deny women their fundamental rights as humans. Those countries violate the inalienable right to enter marriage consensually, fail to ensure favorable work conditions, and legislate guardianship laws so extreme that women cannot vote freely.

These de jure violations are unspeakable, in and of themselves. What about the de facto restrictions imposed on women and girls? For example, the innumerable societal pressures and the constraints imposed by religion or custom? Or those that negate the freedoms women have under the law? What of the economic disadvantages do women face? What about the pressure to marry and start a family at a young age?

These can impede access to other fundamental human rights, such as the right to education, making attendance or completion impossible. News stories emerge at a consistent rate about Arab League nations and their violations of women’s rights. With the image of a women’s conference in Saudi Arabia making its rounds on the internet – women conspicuously lacking- we can reflect closer on the countries ranking the worst in their treatment of women.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) in article 25(2) – and throughout it.

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).

There is an international tradition devoted to women’s rights. Since 1948, at least, these documents have represented efforts to establish parameters for the equal treatment of women.

One general assertion is that the Arab League disproportionately violates women’s rights compared to other regions of the world. Before this can be argued for, or against, we must consider the facts through the analysis of metrics including the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Gender Gap Report and the Human Development Index.

The WEF’s Gender Gap Report “quantifies the magnitude of gender disparities and tracks their progress over time, with a specific focus on the relative gaps between women and men across four key areas: health, education, economy and politics.” In a total ranking of 144 countries, of the bottom 4 on the listing, 3 are in the Arab League: Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen, numbers 141, 142, and 144, respectively. The gender gap becomes even more pronounced when considered in the context of a country’s total development. The Human Development Index is a significant metric in this case as it can be used alongside the Gender Gap Report.

On page 3 of the 2016 Human Development Report, the Human Development Index is described as the integration of “three basic dimensions of human development. Life expectancy at birth reflects the ability to lead a long and healthy life. Mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling reflect the ability to acquire knowledge. And gross national income per capita reflects the ability to achieve a decent standard of living.”

When we take both metrics into consideration, the gap between the genders and the development of the citizens of the country as a whole are shown to be significant. Women’s rights fall behind. Take, for example, the case of Saudi Arabia. Although the Human Development Index for Saudi Arabia is improving, the GGR places it among the lowest on the ranking for its treatment of women. While Saudi Arabia ranks 38^thout of 187 countries on the HDI, which is rather high on the rankings of human development, it is among the lowest in terms of gender equality.

Syria ranks 142^nd out of 144 on the GGR, but only 149^th out of 187 on the HDI. Life quality is poor for Syrians in general but is worse for women even in those circumstances. Yemen has the worst ranking in the Gender Gap Report. The Human Development Index ranks it 168^th out of 187. While life quality may be poor in Yemen, it is, like the other countries we considered, predictably worse for its women.

These are extreme cases – the worst in the Arab League.

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2022-03-23

A Carlin’s Comedy Life in Focus

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/20

Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall, B.A., M.A. is known for her work in comedy and writing. Here we discuss a wide range of issues in an extensive talk on comedy and life. Here is session 3.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Looking back, would you have preferred it to have been a different way in terms of how the bonding happened rather than in a survival mode?

Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall: Of course! [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Carlin-McCall: Who wouldn’t? There’s a time in healing your personal story. Yes, you want it to be different. You wish it had been different. You’re mad that it wasn’t different.

You’d do anything to have it be different. You cross your arms and don’t get on with life because you’re almost demanding it to be different, but it can’t be.

That’s not the way life works. Things are what they are. The past is the past. People did the best they could in that moment. So, you can’t live in regret. Otherwise, you’re not living your life. You’re stuck in the past. That’ll never change. You are kind of a zombie if you’re living in the past.

That’s why in writing my book I knew telling one’s personal story, whether to a therapist over a certain amount of years, through art, through memoir, or whatever it is, is really healing. It is important to tell your stories to be able to put them down and walk away from them at some point.

Jacobsen: Did your graduate training allow you put that narrative into an actual structure and then be able to put it down?

Carlin-McCall: Yes, it was a couple of things. I had been doing deep work. I was in therapy for some time. I had perspective on it before I went to grad school.

I began to get my hands around the narrative of my life with that. Grad school was a place to help me start from the beginning and walk through all of the developmental stages of my life as a psychologist, but then apply them to my own life – which is the thing you do in your first year of grad school.

You go through all of your baggage, work through the theories, and do the work around them. So, when you enter a room with a client, you are not bringing your baggage with you. If you do bring your baggage with you, you can see it. You can see how to separate from it. There was a deep healing for me in grad school around all of this stuff. A lot of my confusion and pain around the chaos part of my life was validated.

It was held up as, “Yes, this is what happens to little kids when their parents aren’t present emotionally or physically.” These are the ways in which that can manifest in your adulthood, the choices you can make, in your worldview, and how you see yourself. Your sense of power. Your sense of autonomy. Your sense of self-responsibility. It was very illuminating for me. I highly recommend it! [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Carlin-McCall: I think everyone should spend a year of their life learning this stuff, going through their life story. It would be incredibly healing for the world. There would probably be a lot less crazy people running things if we all did this. [Laughing]

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2022-03-23

Skepticism, Humanism, Atheism, and Right Wing Upbringing

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/19

Angelos Sofocleous is a friend and colleague. We write together a decent amount. I asked about an interview for an ebook, where we would discuss his background. I wanted to diversify the content of the e-book, free one, with not only the articles written with friends and colleagues but also interviews with the writers themselves. Here is Angelos.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To begin, we have been writing partners. In fact, you’ve been one of my more prolific writing buddies, activist work, for about a year – coming into a year-and-a-half. It is cool because we’re on almost opposite sides of the globe, but we work on common initiatives relatively consistently. I wanted to diversify some of the content of this volume with some more diverse interviews with people beginning their active careers. Their lives in other words, so here we are after you agreed to be a willing interviewee (victim). What was early childhood to college life like for you? Was there an activist background? How do you find the developments within the EU throughout your lifetime?

Angelos Sofocleous: Thank you for the opportunity, Scott. You are one of the most active, intelligent, and knowledgeable people I know. It is a joy to be able to work with you on a number of projects.

To begin, I have been through many phases of “metamorphoses” from early childhood to college life. I can think of periods in my life with which I have very little in common with the person I am now. From a very young age though, I always remember myself going through the encyclopedias in my grandma’s house, trying to figure out what interests me; from biology to politics, from astronomy to philosophy. Soon, I found out that I was interested in one thing: Knowledge.

Luckily, I was a very introverted and shy child. This gave me the opportunity to be able to spend my time wisely on what regards social interactions while I very carefully allocated my (limited) energy on things that could benefit me. Hence, I spent a lot of time with myself. And I felt totally fine with it. I never get why people consider it weird for someone to stay at home on a Saturday night, or go to the movies by themselves, or pick a book and sit on a park’s bench. I was thus involved in activities through which I would spend time having discussions with myself, exploring my mind, and writing down my ideas and thoughts.

Writing, o writing. I started my anonymous personal blog when I was 14, in which I still write 9 years later, although the person who started the blog is different from the one who still writes on it. Words in my mind have no voice, no physical expressions; they can only be expressed through writing, and this is what I did for most of my life. Had it not been for writing, my mind would be a chaotic mess of unstructured and unorganized thoughts, probably expressed in non-conventional ways. And I wouldn’t like that. Writing, thus, saved my mind from going crazy. A mind that cannot be expressed, either stops thinking or stops expressing itself. Both can lead to insanity.

The year when I started writing signified a turning point in my life. Growing up in a right-wing religious family, the opportunity arose through my teenage years, to revolt against what I had grown up with, and explore new ideas, while questioning my own, deeply held at that time, beliefs. I no more consider ‘belief’ to provide an appropriate basis on which to base arguments – What is needed is knowledge, and in case of knowledge is not possible (yet), one must suspend belief until there is appropriate and satisfactory evidence for knowledge. This is science.

Apart from some close friends, I was never able to discuss my atheistic and agnostic beliefs, as well as my opposition to religion and my endorsement of science, with my family or even at school. This is how it is growing up on a small island, with less than 1 million population, which claims to have one of the biggest percentages of religious followers in the European Union. My ‘teenage revolution’, then, was not verbal and not physical, it was mental.

That being said, my ‘activist’ background was limited to sharing my ideas, trying to encourage people through my writings and influence them, while I was doing the same with other people’s writings. No action out in the streets, no discussions outside social media, limited involvement in groups. I would not say, then, that I had any activist background when it comes to my teenage life unless you want to call writing a form of activism.

In any case, I drew myself more and more into skepticism, freethinking, and humanism, and tried to educate myself on these issues, waiting for the time when I would apply this knowledge into the world.

This could not be done after high school though, as I had to spend two years doing mandatory military service. I will not waste much space here to talk about it, as it’s not worth it. I am ashamed of my country that treats its 18-year-olds in such a way, still having remnants of ‘hegemonic masculinity’. There is great potential for encouraging young people to develop themselves, and military service is definitely not a way to do this, at least in my country.

Things had changed, however, when I entered university. Having spent two years of physical and mental inactivity, I decided that it was time for me to become active. At the moment, I’m the president of two student societies, Durham Humanists, and Cypriot Society of Durham, while I’m a Sub-Editor at my university’s newspaper (Palatinate UK), a writer at ConatusNews.com, and a co-editor at Secular Nation magazine.

I have also just published my second poetry collection. I am therefore active in writing again, this time having the opportunity to meet like-minded people and be active in groups, promoting campaigns and influencing students and the general public to a greater extent. I feel that most of the chains that held me back to my teenage years have broken, and I am now able to take action on the issues that concern me.

Now, moving onto your last question regarding the developments within the EU within my lifetime, I witnessed a major shift in Europe, from conservatism to liberalism and progressivism. Mutual respect and recognition of human rights across Europe, of course, need to take place at a personal level, within societies, but also at a national, and even pan-continental level.

This is what I feel the EU has achieved, bringing European countries closer to each other without erasing any aspect of their unique identities but, in contrast, managing to protect, secure, and enrich each nation’s identity through mutual recognition and respect for each other nation’s identity.

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2022-03-23

Telling the Truth and Facing the Consequences

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/19

Imam Shaikh Mohammad Tawhidi is an Australian Shi’i Muslim. He is an author, creationist, educator, preacher, researcher, and thinker. He has Iraqi origin and was born in Qum, Iran. Here we discuss Islam and atheism, and media representation and being silenced.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The first question: Why do you think you’re being targeted?

Imam Shaikh Mohammad Tawhidi: I’m being silenced because my following grew 45,000 in 3 months and the radical Islamists are complaining. I was receiving an average of 20k views for my videos and over 7k comments. Facebook didn’t even explain what’s going on.

Jacobsen: What is the main message of peace? What are the some of the more prominent reasons youth become radicalized?

Tawhidi: My message on Facebook was exposing extremism in Islamic books. And youth are being radicalized because of the lack of condemnation of terrorism by Mosque preachers

Jacobsen: What does Facebook need to do to be welcoming to you? There are anti-Israel and Anti-Jew pages. They are not shut down. Atheist Republic was shut down. The Council of Ex-Muslims of North America was shut down. Now, you are shut down. What does this mean for atheists, and those that left the faith and are ordinary reformers within the faith?

Tawhidi: I was not made by Facebook. Therefore, my Facebook page being shut down doesn’t slow me down, but it’s affecting my audience who were on my page daily and it’s hurting their feelings

Jacobsen: Why do you think atheist pages are taken down? Do you think atheists and peaceful Muslim s can unite against those trying to silence them and take them down?

Tawhidi: Yes, I have been calling for all Peaceful Muslims to unite with the West against Islamic radicals from their own faith.

Jacobsen: What have been effective tactics and communication channels – outside of Facebook – to get the message of unification against Islamic radicals out to the public?

Tawhidi: Gab, minds.com, Twitter, and national media

Jacobsen: What do you think of those trying to silence you?

Tawhidi: They’re giving aid to radicals and slowing down the message of peace

Jacobsen: Even with their feelings hurt, and while the Facebook is down now – while you were a paying customer for promotions, where can people get in touch with you?

Tawhidi: Twitter: @imamofpeace.

Jacobsen: You have become big in the media, lately. Why do you think your message is resonating?

Tawhidi: Because people are attracted to the truth.

Jacobsen: Who are other, secular and religious, exemplars who are telling the truth?

Tawhidi: And they’re realizing much of the attacks against me are not true. Many people are doing what they can but none of them are being censored like me

Jacobsen: What about the issue of fake reformers? What can be done about them? How can the West best help?

Tawhidi: Fake reformers are everywhere I have written an entire article about it on the Huffington Post.

Jacobsen: Why can’t people who disagree come and argue with you, rather than simply silence you?

Tawhidi: I have invited the Australian National Imams Council for a debate, however, there has been deafening silence from their behalf.

Jacobsen: Atheist Republic and Council of Ex-Muslims of North America were shut down too. You are a Muslim page. Why were you shut down now? What does this portend since this extends from the ex-Muslim and atheist community to the ordinary, peaceful Muslim community – through at least one of its leaders: you?

Tawhidi: It seems to me that Facebook does not want any voices opposing their agenda.

Jacobsen: What are the common tactics of the Islamic radicals?

Tawhidi: Mass reporting of pages they disagree with, and in return, Facebook’s Automated system shuts down the page and blocks the administrative accounts from posting.

Jacobsen: Who are personal heroes or heroines for you?

Tawhidi: Imam Hussain.

Jacobsen: What are your favourite verses in the Quran?

Tawhidi: “And we created you as nations and tribes so that you may get to know one another. Verily the most honorable amongst you is the most pious”.

Jacobsen: What do the Islamic radicals most often use to justify their ideology and actions?

Tawhidi: The corrupt teachings of Sahih Bukhari

Jacobsen: Why can’t people who disagree come and argue with you, rather than simply silence you?

Tawhidi: Because I know their arguments and how to invalidate them.

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Tawhidi: The dawn of freedom is near.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Imam Tawhidi.

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2022-03-23

Iranian Feminism’s Mother is Important to Reflect On

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/19

Based on work by Fuuse called sister-hood, I recently came across someone whom I did not know about before, and will never know in person or in correspondence – to my detriment – named Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, who was born in 1882 in Estafan.

She is described as the founding mother of Iranian feminism and one of the pioneering figures in the Persian women’s movement.

But this does not limit taking in the data with a critical eye and sympathetic heart. And hey, it’s the way to go. Her heritage was an “old and respected family” in the area. While studying in Tehran, she married at age 15, while divorcing shortly after.

Age 35, she created the “first girl’s schools and women’s organization.” However, the school was attacked – by Conservative clerics – in addition to Sediqeh being beaten by them. 2 years later, so age 37, she founded “The Woman’s Voice” – or Zaban-e Zanan – in Esfahan.

The publication was banned by the authorities in Iran. It only accepted submissions from women and girls. With the closing of the magazine, she worked to fight the British influence on Iranian politics as well as continued the campaign for women’s rights.

Come 1926, she went to Paris’s Sorbonne University and earned a degree in education. In sister-hood it reads, “1926, she served as the representative for Iran at the tenth congress of the International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage.”

She became the supervisor of Women’s Education in 1928, when she returned to it – as well as the director of the Inspectorate of Women’s Schools.

Also, she was crucial to women’s suffrage, according to the profile. That is, Dowlatabadi “persuaded Mohammad Mossadeq to grant women the vote; but due to the British/American sponsored coup, this never came to pass. In 1962, Sediqeh died, at 80 years of age.”

In her will, it said: “I will never forgive women who visit my grave veiled.”

However, you have the possibility to change yourself in a good direction.

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2022-03-23

Phrase Matters: ‘Good Without God,’ ‘Under God,’ and ‘In God We Trust’

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/19

Humanists, as noted by the American Humanist Association (AHA), believe in the principle of “Good without God” (AHA, 2012). In this, we can derive the philosophy of secularism, as in secular humanism, which strives for a secular government with the separation of church and state. The United States has violated this separation on occasion and so has violated principles inherent in humanism.

This is important because millions of American citizens do not adhere to a faith or a religion (Pew Research Center, 2016; Newport, 2016). They remain unaffiliated with religion. Faiths with preference in the legal system make the law unequal for Americans in general.

Take, for examples, the uses of the phrases “Under God” and “In God we Trust” (IHEU, 2016). Of course, these are explicit theistic terms, of which millions of American citizens will disagree (Alper & Sandstrom, 2016).

It has a history too. Since the Cold War, there was paranoia about atheism because of association with communism (Ibid.). The phrase “Under God” was interpolated to the Pledge of Allegiance by “The Knights of Columbus.” What is the issue here?

The implication is those without belief in a God, or gods, cannot take the Pledge of Allegiance with total legitimacy. “In God we Trust” was established in 1956 as the motto of the US. It is a recent addition to the public discourse around religion in the American canon.

As the Freedom of Thought Report notes, the secular and minority religious groups have worked to establish the separation of church and state. This is for the betterment of all, including the attempts to make the Pledge of Allegiance and the motto secular. The most recent attempts, among many prior, to the supreme court and appeals court cases being in April of 2014.

For another example, there was an AHA campaign in 2015 to remove the mandatory statement of the Pledge of Allegiance with the encroached religious phraseology and language by students, in academic settings. This is an ongoing issue of concern and needed deliberation and subsequent activism. Many American citizens don’t want theological verbiage in public statements — including mandatory ones — such as the pledge, especially the irreligious members of society.

References

Alper, B.A. & Sandstrom, A. (2016, November 14). If the U.S. had 100 people: Charting Americans’ religious affiliations. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/14/if-the-u-s-had-100-people-charting-americans-religious-affiliations/.

American Humanist Association. (2012). American Humanist Association’s Key Issues. Retrieved from https://americanhumanist.org/key-issues/statements-and-resolutions/issuessummary/.

IHEU. (2016). Freedom of Thought Report: United States of America. Retrieved from http://freethoughtreport.com/countries/americas-northern-america/united-states-of-america.

Newport, F. (2016, December 23). Five Key Findings on Religion in the US. Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/poll/200186/five-key-findings-religion.aspx.

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2022-03-23

A Life with Comedy from a Carlin

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/19

Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall, B.A., M.A. is known for her work in comedy and writing. Here we discuss a wide range of issues in an extensive talk on comedy and life. Here is session 2.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In the United States, women got the right to vote in 1920. 1918 in the UK. 1919 in Canada, depending on the area. In the early part of the book, Alice, your mother’s mother, said, “Women don’t go to college,” to your mother, Brenda after she earned a full scholarship to go to Ohio Wesleyan to study piano.

Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall: Yes, yes.

Jacobsen: I don’t know if that is the perpetuation of limitations for people in society. Do you think that statement by Alice to Brenda was reflective of that?

Carlin-McCall: Yes, this was in Dayton, Ohio. In Alice’s family, no one went to college, especially a woman. Maybe, a few men went to college, but it was a working class family. Women could only be teachers, nurses, or wives. You were only a teacher or nurse until you got married, basically, and then you were an old maid. [Laughing]

Jacobsen: [Laughing]

Carlin-McCall: Those were your only choices, in the Midwest, certainly. When you’re not given a lot of choices, and people around you are not given a lot of choices, you can’t visibly see those choices, even with my mother earning this scholarship. It is limited thinking. My mother was someone hoping to break free from her small, Midwest life – very shackled and imprisoned by that.

Jacobsen: Ken, the good boy next door, impregnated her. They got married. She had a miscarriage of twins. They divorced. All by the age of 20. For those growing up in more recent generations, that is a drastic story.

Carlin-McCall: Yes, yes.

Jacobsen: Later on, your father asked Art, your grandfather, to marry your mom in the Spencer’s Steak House urinal in Dayton, Ohio. (Carlin, 2015, p. 9)

Carlin-McCall: Yes. [Laughing]

Jacobsen: [Laughing] These are dramatic experiences for families, especially because, in a way, family narratives can become their own mythology, where these are the stories families tell each other.

Carlin-McCall: Absolutely, 100%, 100%. Yes.

Jacobsen: Were these percolating in your mind when you were coming up?

Carlin-McCall: The reason I wrote the book was that I knew I had such great stories to tell. Everything we learn about our parents when we’re children we use to try to figure out how the world works. I only knew my mother’s experience of her childhood through her eyes.

I didn’t know it through her mother’s eyes, or her father’s eyes for that matter. Those apocryphal tales that your parents tell you when you’re first meeting them. It shapes your identity as a child, as a family member, and how you see the world, and what are the rules and who breaks them.

We’re trying to figure it all out. I know that my mom’s story about how her mom was so controlling of her did affect me. I didn’t understand the connection between that and my mother’s pain and alcoholism growing up. I was a kid, but I did feel the oppression.

The same oppression from her mother. Not necessarily from my mother, but through my mother because she hadn’t worked through it herself enough. She carried so much bitterness and rage about it all. The oppression acted through me too and affected how I comported myself in the world as a powerful woman. Or, at first, not a powerful woman.

Jacobsen: There are numerous little heartwarming stories from when you were young throughout the text. The ‘stink pot or baby doll’ game. Of course, you were never stinking pot.

I think about the time your parents got Hobo Kelly to send you Colorforms. You cherished watching your father pack, with OCD qualities, before leaving town, for 2-3 weeks.

But at the same time, my feeling that I get from that is a desperate sense of wanting to connect in any way possible. With respect to those moments, where there were genuine family time and connection, and then the other times when there wasn’t, but you made up your own connection through simple observation of your father packing and paying attention to the minute details such as the OCD nature of it, there was – I hate the cliché – a hole needing to be filled.

You were, as children are more creative, finding more ways to fill that.

Carlin-McCall: Yes, I think it’s always difficult to connect with fathers. Fathers may be different nowadays, but, certainly back then, fathers were the ones who left the house, didn’t do the parenting, and brought home the pay cheque. There are that natural hole and void that was around for kids to that time, besides my own personal history.

But having my dad on the road for so long, all of the time. He was gone 1/2 to 2/3 of the year. That is a long time without a dad. Add to this the complication of my mother’s alcoholism and mental health issues (anxiety and depression), it created times without true connection. We were in survival mode. Luckily, the first couple years of my life had deep bonding, which is essential for deep connection.

So, the deep connection was there on some deep level, but from age 3 onward, until my mom’s sobriety in some ways, into my adulthood there was a need for deep connection. There was a melancholy around it. From there, my dad’s ambition and creative genius, and the creative drive were focused on the work, not on the family. There was a deep longing for connection, for all three of us.

When those moments of coming together and ordinary family moments, or even the extraordinary ones too, those bonded us. Even with the bonding of the chaos, I think created this sense of this mythology around my life. Here we are bonding over the stories like Summerfest in Milwaukee and dad getting arrested, things like that. They became funny cocktail party stories later, but there’s a deep bonding when you survive with people through harrowing moments. So, we did have a deep connection in that way. A profound connection, also.

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2022-03-23

Can You Be a Humanist Without Being a Feminist?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Anya Overmann

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/18

This question is one of the most controversial within the humanist and feminist community:

Can you be a humanist without being a feminist?

Our short answer: No. If you are a humanist, then you are [likely] a feminist.

Humanism, broadly or expansively construed, is an ethical and philosophical worldview including religious and irreligious perspectives. Some definitions will exclude the religious because of the assertion of the religious as only focused on the theistic and the supernatural.

For example, it could be seen, like in IHEU’s official definition, as a democratic and ethical life stance that affirms the worth of every human being and advocates for building a more humane society without a need for religious systems, and instead based on ethics and reasoning through human capabilities.

We disagree. Religion is practices and values, and so is culture and heritage, too. Humanism in a general definitional context incorporates these considerations such as, say, humanistic Judaism. As well, humanism remains theoretical; that is, humanism remains ethical and philosophical in nature. Its practice implies other terminology too.

For example, the development of a more humane society based on reason and free inquiry — and equality in fundamental human rights among and between human beings — posits a tacit egalitarianism.

What is egalitarianism, exactly?

Egalitarianism is a socio-political philosophy that advocates for the equality of all humans and equal entitlement to resources. Humanism, as a theory incorporative of equality for all, implies egalitarianism — as it advocates for and works towards full equality for all. In this, humanism implies egalitarianism. But there are different forms of equality, e.g. ethnic, educational, gender, and so on.

Equal access to quality education. Equal treatment regardless of ethnicity. As well, of course, the equal treatment in legal and social life regardless of gender. Mainstream feminism accounts for gender equality. For instance, the right to vote incorporates the legal equality of women and the advocacy for social equality between women and men.

Feminism is the advocacy for gender equality based on the belief that women do not have equal rights to men.

Thus, if you are a feminist, then you are egalitarian, and if you are egalitarian, then you are for gender equality, and if you are for gender equality, then you are a feminist. Therefore, if you are a humanist, then you are a feminist, but not vice versa.

One can be a believer in God and be a supernaturalist, but also engage in feminist activities and believe in gender equality. Hence, you can be a feminist and gender equalist without being a humanist, by some definitions. As well, you can be for equal rights in all relevant respects or egalitarian — so education, gender, ethnicity, and so on, and a believer in God and supernaturalism.

Hence, you can be an egalitarian — which implicates gender equality and feminism — and not a humanist, by some definitions.

So, can you be a humanist without being a feminist?

We say [likely] no. If you are a humanist, then you mustbe a feminist. However, by our definitions, you can be a feminist without being a humanist.

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2022-03-23

Growing Up in Comedy, a Carlin Story

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/18

Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall, B.A., M.A. is known for her work in comedy and writing. Here we discuss a wide range of issues in an extensive talk on comedy and life. Here is session 1.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let’s start with a little bit of your background, you mother, Brenda Hosbrook, felt “like a stranger in her own life” (Carlin, 2015, p. 6). She was like her father, Art Hosbrook, who was a jazz musician in the 1930s. Alice Hosbrook sensed the wild nature in Brenda.

So, she kept her on a “tight leash,” except for the childhood boy, Ken. The approved of the boy next neighbor. I find that amusing. You can’t necessarily make that stereotype up for a real situation: good boy next door. Did you feel, as with your mother as a stranger in her own life, as not quite in place?

Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall:Yes, absolutely, I am guessing most people feel that way, and it takes a lifetime to feel as though you’re living life in an authentic way. I think we are all trying to figure out what the rules are as a kid, in general, and then there’s the family rules and the parts of ourselves that have to hide from the world because they are deemed “unacceptable,” whether it’s your chaotic self, or your anger, mischief, or sexuality. All of that stuff.

Robert Bly has this great essay called The Long Bag We Drag Behind Us (Bly, n.d.). It is about how, from day 1, we take parts of or aspects of ourselves to hide them in a bag behind us. By the time we get to adulthood, we are dragging this bag behind us, which are now shadow parts because we are not allowed to have them. So, yes, I think so. I did feel like a stranger a lot of the time in my own life.

Jacobsen: The terminology you used there was the “shadow self.” Does that come from your graduate training?

Carlin-McCall: The shadow is an aspect of the personality that Carl Jung talks about. In the end, it is the part that we don’t like. It is the part we don’t approve of, which means it is the part society does not approve of. We tend to push that behind us. What we put out front is our persona, the good version of our self.

The upstanding citizen version of our self. Our true nature and a lot of us have the same stuff in our shadow, which is a lot of stuff society rejects and tends to be the same list over, and over, again. It is something that keeps leaking its way out. We like to pretend it’s not there. It is the ‘emperor with no clothes’ thing.

Jacobsen: Is this a Joseph Campbell thing?

Carlin-McCall: Joseph Campbell was someone who stood on the shoulders of people like Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. Carl Jung is the one that talked about archetypes and mythology, where the archetypes are forms of thinking, forms and ways of being, e.g. the father and mother archetype. We are hardwired for them. We know how to be a father, instinctively. We know how to be a mother, instinctively.

We know how to be these things. There’s the child. There’s the Devil. There are all of these forces inside of us. Campbell studied this, and the various philosophies and put them together. He showed the same archetypes and forms across every civilization and every culture. He began to connect the dots, specifically around those things. He was a great thinker.

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2022-03-23

You Can Make Change, For a Change – Now

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/18

Dr. Janet Metcalfe is the principal investigator in the Metacognition & Memory Lab. Her research is focused on metacognitive abilities, which is how people know what they know. It is evolutionarily advantageous for us, and for self-control. Here we discuss her background and research, session 3.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If any, what responsibility do academics and researchers have for contributing to society and culture?

Dr. Janet Metcalfe: Oh, enormous responsibility! In terms of keeping everything really honest, the pure sciences, the quest for truth is what it is all about. It is not the quest for money. It is not the quest for fame. It is not the quest for personal anything. It is the quest for truth. That is an extremely valuable contribution.

I love being at Columbia and many of the Canadian universities, the liberal arts, and the value of culture. It is treasured in the universities. It’s so important that we treasure that. I mean, I go to a lecture and an hour and a half on just on the meaning of a leaf in one painting made by Leonardo.

The fact that we have gotten people that were supporting the intense investigation and thinking of details about how things work and the meaning of being a human being. That is what the university is about. Of course, we need money and food. But that core mission is so important for what it means to be a human being. We have huge responsibilities! (Laughs)

Jacobsen: If you have a take-home message about your research, especially related to recent research on metacognitive abilities in relation to learning, what would you have for people to understand?

Metcalfe: Oh my goodness, I don’t know. Metacognition is kind of the highest level of thinking that you have got. And the ability to think about your thinking gives you the possibility to control your thinking and to take responsibility – for you to be free.

For you to be responsible for shaping your own mind, it gives you that little prod. In that, you can take control of your own mind and future. It is a little bit, but you have this possibility to change yourself. I think that is a fascinating possibility and people can because we have got this possibility – and maybe the other primates have it or so it looks, but most animals do not have that capability.

However, you have the possibility to change yourself in a good direction.

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2022-03-23

Incredible Power of Metacognitive Abilities to Make Change

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/18

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What do you consider your greatest emotional struggle? How did you overcome it?

Dr. Janet Metcalfe: Well, it is pretty hard having a baby, getting a thesis done, and having my whole salary going into my baby. It was a conflict between career and family life. It is hard being an academic with a family life fighting for tenure.

I think women more than men have more assumed responsibility for children than men. There is a biological clock. This usually becomes an issue when you are coming up for having a child and going to compete for jobs and tenure.

That is when your children need you the most too. It is very, very hard. I think we should do a lot more. People helped me! When I was a post doc at UCLA, Elizabeth Bjork was on the board of directors of the Wesley Presbyterian Nursery School, which is a couple of blocks from the lab. It was a great nursery school.

She negotiated on my behalf so I could get free childcare there. I got to see my kid all the time. I got to know the other kids. And I got free tuition. She totally ran interference for me. It happened again and again in my career. People helped me a lot. We need to help people a lot. We need to help women a lot. It makes their life possible.

Jacobsen: Your current research focuses on peoples’ metacognitive abilities. In particular, the use of metacognition for self-control. How do you define meta-cognitive abilities?

What have you found with your research on metacognitive abilities since around 2010 onward?

Metcalfe: I have been focusing on the agency. On people’s sense of doing what they’re doing. I have been really focusing on metacognition and agency. I think this is an absolutely fascinating problem. How do I know that I am me, right? So we created a little computer game lovingly called space pilot.

There are Xs and Os all over the screen. You move the cursor to catch the Xs. We can intervene in things such as noise into the system and time delay into the system. We can ask people what the performances were like – what is called straight metacognition, “How in control did you feel?”

We are finding that there are very dramatic differences and similarities in this judgment of control, knowing when you are in control. For example, people who have schizophrenia do not have control. They can judge the performance. So there’s straight metacognition is okay.

There is judgment is okay. But they do not know if we have intervened. There are a whole lot of consequences, I think, in their real life, if they cannot judge real life – if they cannot judge what is coming from the external real world. It is very central for their ability to get around in the real world.

People with Asperger’s have some problems too. For example, they have problems with self-boundaries. We have found some interesting glitches. They will take credit for magic. Other undergraduates will not take credit for magic. If it is good and it is kids, it is because of them. There are these very interesting differences.

We have put participants in brain scanners. There are several components that we are able to isolate. It looks like there are a variety of cues that people use to make this very central judgment that your grandmother sings is just obvious, I know I have done it. It is direct knowledge.”

Well, it is not direct knowledge. It is inferential knowledge, but the inferential knowledge that we mostly get right and it is a good thing that we do. We are starting to know that right temporal-parietal junction in the brain has something to do with detecting when things are not going the way they should when you feel that things are not in your control.

We know the frontal-polar area, behind your forehead more or less, has to do with making the judgment itself. It has to do with all kinds of self-relevant judgments. It seems to have to do with all kinds of attributions of the kind of person that you are, but you have to know at some level that this is you doing it.

Also, we know striatum, in the old brain, is the reward system of the brain is connected so that you feel the reward for your feeling in control – for you being an agent. So we are starting to get an idea of the neural components and psychological cues that people use.

So we are starting to understand it, which is kind of fascinating. That is the stuff since 2010.

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2022-03-23

Think You’re Not Trying to Get Laid? Think Again

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/18

Rick Rosner is a friend. We discuss a broad range of topics. One of interest is evolutionary theory and the implications for mating behavior. We aren’t experts but are having a fun conversation between friends, and so decided to conduct some recorded sessions about this in a series on mating strategies. Here is session four, just for you.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In the past, we talked about the differentiation between different partnership options, or not, in developing countries as technology causes a massive change in social and cultural life, and in political orientation.

What we’re talking about now is sub-cultures that come somewhat out of 70s and 80s, and some new ones with regards to technology, that amounts to fringy outcroppings of what might come in different forms.

I mean, an alteration in the way people partner or don’t, so I mean a greater variety in partnership expression.

So, guy culture, anti-social culture, or, the one that you were describing, the not quite anti-social but non-social bro culture – which may include little contact with women or society and not getting higher education and just dropping out, in addition to variations on that theme via becoming hooked on some form of electronic stimulation rather than engaging in moderate use.

What does this mean with regards to some of our older conversations about the broadening of the landscape? For example, we see much more acceptance of LGBTQ+, which opens the landscape for people to feel more comfortable in their own skin, and to partner-up in the ways that they would have otherwise if not for oppression or repression from society: covert and direct.

Rick Rosner: There are several things going on. Maybe we can find the main themes. For me, the main theme is that I grew up in the 1970s, which was a particularly sexual time. It was also a time that thought—the sexual attitudes of the 60s and 70s, during that time, were thought of being essential and more natural than the attitudes of any other time that came before.

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2022-03-23

Academia, Psychology, Growing as a Young Woman Academic

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/18

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In terms of geography, culture, and language, where does your family background reside? How do you find this influencing your development?

Dr. Janet Metcalfe: I grew up in Toronto. And I think being a Canadian and having a good educational system is a very good thing for everyone, which is not as accessible here in the US as it is there.

Jacobsen: What motivated an interest in science and the mind?

Metcalfe: I have always been interested. In high school, I was one of those nerdy kids in the library reading Aristotle and Plato. But I was very naïve. I did not realize that there were actually people studying those kinds of issues in the universities.

It was not until much later that I realized I could actually do that with my life and not become a sales clerk, Lawyer, or some other field.

Jacobsen: How did you find your early study and investigation into the human mind?

Metcalfe: The first couple years, I was doing theater design at the nationale in Montreal as a designer. Theater design is pretty wonderful from the outside. From the inside, you have to be extraordinarily talented.

It is also very political. You have to be so amazing. I am in awe of people who can do it. You also have to starve for a long time to do it. The odds are very, very against you. I ended up doing a B.A. in costume design in Ottawa.

And doing the odd show in Ottawa, working in my spare time with a children’s program, and I loved being with children. It was so great. They were kids from Lower Town, Ottawa. There aren’t many slums in Ottawa, but I would not say this is a slum.

However, I would not say these kids were privileged. I would take them around to all of the various cultural events to try and give them an opportunity. Then I realized that I really loved doing that. I decided to go back to school and do things in learning.

I had to do my learning course at Ottawa. It was Behaviorism, but it was with rats and stuff. So that was out to sleep. I wanted to work with kids and know how they learn. Because we did not know; we still do not know. (Laughs)

We know a bit more. We did not know how to teach them. I was pretty convinced that the kids in Lower Town, if they could just get their grades up in school, then they would be on track. That would be their ticket. I went back to the University of Toronto. I started school again.

I sat myself in, although I did not know it, the University of Toronto and Stanford were the centers of memory research. I took a class and the professor–Bennet Murdock– asked, “I need a research assistant. Just come to my office if you want to be a research assistant.”

I went with ten other people. He decided simply on grades. That was me. So I got the position because I had the highest grades. So I was his research assistant. It was amazing! Because he was studying memory and the minds, how we think, and mathematical models of memory, I was put in, as an undergraduate, put in with his postdocs and Ph.D. students.

It was fantastic! He’s been my mentor ever since. He’s still in Toronto. He’s 92. I still see him from time to time. It was such luck. At the University of Toronto, there were so many great people at the time doing such wonderful, great research.

So I lucked into it. It was fun.

I applied to two schools for graduate school: York and Toronto. I really wanted to go to Toronto. I didn’t know, but people later told me that I’d get into Harvard. But I was a Canadian! (Laughs) It didn’t occur to me to go anywhere else.

It didn’t matter to me because I got into Toronto and it was a great place. It was very lucky for me.

Jacobsen: In terms of working in the academy as a woman, how did you find your early studies, research, and work? Have things changed?

Metcalfe: Yes, it is interesting. I was in Canada during my early time and I think there was a lot less discrimination in Canada than in the US at the time. I later taught both at Dartmouth and currently teaching at Columbia.

I could not have been a student at either of those places. In Canada, there was a tradition and some wonderful women in the department already. Well, there was one time. I had a baby in graduate school while I was doing my Master’s thesis. My Master thesis was published.

Jacobsen: Usually they were not published, at least at the University of Toronto. Mine was published. It was a very good thesis. They had a prize for the best thesis, but they gave it to a guy. They said that they gave it to the guy because his wife had a baby.

Metcalfe: That was the only time I thought, “My thesis was better than his was. And it was because his wife had a baby! (Laughs) I was writing this while in the hospital.” There were times when it was very rarefied. I was in the Society for Mathematical Psychology, where there were very few women, okay. I did not feel discriminated against.

There was simply a lack of women in it. I think it is pretty transparent. I think some of the women now helping women to have self-confidence, and not take personally rejection letters, are doing a great service. I do not think it has gone away.

But Canada was not so dead. Because there were some women in the department already, they had some pretty strong women there. I remember one woman there in her 60s. She had been in the field for a long time.

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2022-03-23

Queer is and is not Only a Word

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/17

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: “Queer,” as a term, means “someone with a non-normative sexual orientation or gender identity.” Within this umbrella term, according to the general mandate ofQmunity, what sub-populations become implicated in it?

Dara Parker: We welcome everyone under the rainbow umbrella that identifies, queer or trans, so anyone with a non-normative sexual orientation or gender identity, as you noted. Some of those identities within those communities would include gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, two-spirited, intersex, asexual, pansexual, gender, queer, and lots of words that we get to use to name ourselves.

And then, we’re also looking at the intersection of our gender identity and sexual orientation that we carry. For instance, being a person of color, or having a disability, or being a newcomer, et cetera.

Jacobsen: Approximately, how much of the British Columbian and Canadian general population might fit into this categorization of “queer”?

Parker: Well, that is a challenging question. A lot of people ask. A lot of people have various theories of response. The short answer is we do not count it in census data. We do not ask about sexual orientation. We ask about gender identity, but only in a binary concept, which is very limited in our perspective. You are still not capturing folks who are transgender versus cisgender.

We just don’t know. So there isn’t any countrywide survey data that accurately represents, and so you’re drawing conclusions from other indicators. You might look at how many people self-identify on a smaller-scale survey. And you get varying ranges of answers from that. I would suggest that it is an underreported population because there is still fear of discrimination, a fear of being out.

And so when you are asking folks to report, they might not be fully answering. And the studies that do exist, if you compare self-reporting versus behaviors, so for example, a man who has sex with a man who does not identify as gay. That is my long answer that does not give a number

Jacobsen: Qmunity provides a number of support services including Bute Street clinic, counseling, naturopathic clinic, older adult services, referrals, support groups, and youth services. What remains the greatest importance of these services in unison through Qmunity?

Parker: Ultimately, we exist to improve queer and trans lives. And I think there are multiple pathways to doing that. And so we like to think we do our work in four pillars. We believe in meeting individual needs and empowering people where they’re at by providing direct support.

So, for example, that would be something like the counselling program, the naturopathic clinic, or our peer-facilitated support group, but we also believe that sometimes just having physical space is critically important to building healthier lives, and so we provide meeting rooms, and volunteer opportunities in our centre, as well as coming out special events like our queer prom and our honoring our elders tea in order to create spaces for people to connect and engage, and feel safe.

We also do a lot of education and training. So we go out into community, businesses, government, other service providers to provide workshops on how to create more inclusive spaces, and we develop our own resources. For example, our LGTBQ glossary, which you were perhaps quoting earlier, which provides tools for people on language, which is a tricky thing to navigate.

And then lastly, the media work that we do. We might be called on to share expertise around queer and trans lives. We consider that some of our advocacy work around raising visibility and providing queer expertise in the community.

Jacobsen: Of these provisions, what one gives the most services to the queer community?

Parker: It depends on how you’re measuring it. I would suggest that our youth program is our most active programs if you’re just looking at a number of participants. We have two weekly drop-ins that regularly serve between 40 and 60 youth that come from across Metro Vancouver, and sometimes beyond. So that’s one of the core programs that our organization offers.

Jacobsen:Qmunity hosts a number of events including Spring Fling (Adults 55+), International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia Breakfast (Fundraising event), Honouring our Elders High Tea (Adults 55+), Queer Prom (Youth 14-25), Pride Parade (All ages), Gab Youth Summer and Winter Cabarets (Youth 14-25), Volunteer Appreciation Party (Active Volunteers), Stack the Rack (Fundraising event), and Holidays Celebration (Adults 55+).

How does bringing in every sector (age, gender, orientation, and so on) of the queer community provide the necessary environment of inclusion through Qmunity?

Parker: As an umbrella organization, we do serve a very diverse population. We try to provide opportunities for everyone in the community to come together. We also recognize there is a need to serve individuals of communities within the much larger community.

And so, we do a combination of both. Some of our programs are restricted by identity. We have women-specific programming, trans-specific programming, youth-specific programming, et cetera, cutting along various identity lines. And some of our programmings are open to everyone and encourages bringing various identities together to connect, share, engage, learn.

Jacobsen: In your speech entitled Reconciling Injustices in a Pluralistic Canada at Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue, you said, “Canadians are fortunate to live in one of the most progressive countries in the world when it comes to queer rights. This is especially important in a world where being queer is a criminal act in 76 countries and punishable by death in 5 countries.”^[16]With some of these statements from last year in mind, what near, and far, future seems most likely for the queer community internationally, nationally, and provincially?

Parker: Those contexts are very different when looking at both a policy and cultural perspective, and those two things intersect. So I think the differences will be extreme. The good news, I think, is we’re all headed in the right direction. I think, as evidenced by the SCOTUS decision. You know, there are many of my colleagues in the states who never thought they’d see marriage equality in their lifetime. And now, the US has declared marriage equality across all 50 states.

So that’s pretty exciting. I think we’re moving in the right direction, progress is being made toward more inclusion, more equity for queer and trans folks, and simultaneously, yes, there are many countries where it’s illegal to be gay and in 5 of those countries you can be punished by death. While I see the conversation shifting, even internationally, I think it’s happening much more slowly in some of those contexts.

And I also see that sometimes when progress happens in certain regions, for instance, the US recognizing that, there are places that are more regressive. There can be a backlash against that progression because people are afraid. In Turkey, the Pride Parade was canceled in Istanbul. I do not know why they did that, but it is interesting that as one region gains rights another used tear gas and rubber bullets to restrain a previously-approved Pride Parade in Istanbul.

I think we have to be conscious that there are communities that might suffer disproportionately when rights are gained in other areas. And then fundamentally, in contexts like Vancouver, BC, Canada, where the majority of our legal rights have been enshrined for over a decade, it doesn’t necessarily mean they translate into lived equalities. That is where our work is centered in taking those legislative changes and shifting the culture to raise the visibility, create more inclusion, safety, acceptance, et cetera.

Jacobsen: For those with an interest now or in the future, how can individuals donate, volunteer, become a member, or take action through Qmunity, or for the queer community in general?

Parker: A good place to start is the website. If you are new to the organization, you can find all of the details on some of the options you just listed: volunteering, donating, or getting involved in other ways. And I think a more general starting point is to learn and embrace [allies]. And that’s both for folks in our community and external too.

I think we all have the potential to be allies. As a white, cisgender, queer, able-body, Canadian, woman, I am an ally to almost everyone I work with. I am an ally to gay men, queer people of color, trans folk, et cetera. I think there’s an opportunity for all of us to do learning around our own communities and people we can be allies too, within, and outside our own communities.

We can do that by using the internet. (Laughs) There are an incredible number of resources out there in terms of articles, and films, and books. You know, to get to know culture outside your own, and learn how to be a good ally.

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2022-03-23

The Unacceptable Decline in Women’s Global Empowerment

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/17

United Nations (UN) secretary-general, António Guterres, made an open statement about the declineof global women’s rights. There was a 2-week conference on the fight for gender equality at the UN headquarters in New York City, New York.

In reaction to the recent “global gag rule” from the Trump Administration of the US, women’s rights and empowerment became an important international issue. The global gag rule cut US funding to groups that offered abortion services.

Around the same time, Putin’s Russia, known for its flouting of women’s rights, removed the punishment for domestic violence. These ‘cast a long shadow on the annul gathering of the Commission on the Status of Women’. Guterres considered this a generalized attack on the rights of women—their equality and empowerment.

“Globally, women are suffering new assaults on their safety and dignity,” Guterres said, “Some governments are enacting laws that curtail women’s freedoms. Others are rolling back legal protections against domestic violence.”

Guterres reaffirmed the aphorism that women’s rights remain human rights. In the important speech, he made note of the ongoing difficulties for women around the world, but without specific mention of a particular place.

Some have speculated that the direction of the commentary was towards the Islamic State, according to Conservative Review. Nicole Russell, in the Conservative Review article, said, “Guterres couldn’t be more right in saying women around the world face incredible discrimination, violence, and other atrocities just for their gender.”

While Trump himself, and the administration by decision and political maneuvers—and economic ones too, have openly made their anti-abortion views known, the curtailment of the funding for abortion and reproductive health services will likely have more women, and so girls and children in general, suffering because of the known benefits for women and children that have access to these vital services.

There are nuances to the discrimination. For example, in the other prominent nation case of Russian, the Russian President Vladimir Putin, in signing the Bill, reduces the penalties for the jail term, “if the assault is a first offense and does not cause serious injury,” Daily Nation reports.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the UN Women executive director, said the need to come together around the sexual and reproductive health rights of women was more important than ever. If protections are waning, then they need to be more protected.

By 2030, the UN made the ambitious goal of have gender parity or equality.

Will this happen? Is it reasonable?

Will this happen? I do not know. Is it reasonable? Yes, and no. Just from a mildly informed level, not an internal-to-UN perspective, yes, for the most part, it seems as if doable.

At another level, no, because too many nations violate them, some states with the power to change the international situation for women act irresponsibly based on ignorant, non-scientific positions. I don’t despair here, but there will be hardships.

And make no mistake, many women who would otherwise not die in childbirth or in getting an unsafe abortion, where previously a safe one was available, will either be seriously injured or even die based on the “global gag rule.” It is an ominous rule title to me.

But these are the main, current concerns for women – the domestic abuse Bill and the global gag rule. The ILO, the International Labour Organisation, said, at the current pace, it will take about 70 years to close the gender wage gap.

So there’s the perennial issues of work – “perennial” relative to the Millennial generation – and economic empowerment. Mlambo-Ngcuka, relatively accurately with a hint of hyperbole, describes this as “daylight robbery,” or a loss of security and income into the future.

Guterres continued that men need to become involved in women’s advocacy, empowerment, and rights. I agree with him.

As a man, and (obviously) so not a woman, and taking part in advanced industrial society and its fruits, I am given a life, likely in the top 1/10^th of 1% in the world. Some questions arise. Do privileges emerge? I think so. Do responsibilities arise? Possibly. That raises more questions.

Do responsibilities, or obligations, that are necessarily attached to it come about in a free society? Yes, and no. Yes, the responsibilities or obligation necessarily attach to them; no, individual citizens should not, or can not, be coerced or forced into enacting them in a free society, because it’s a free society. That means the freedom to do wrong by doing nothing; that also means the freedom to do right by doing something, and even sometimes nothing.

If someone lives a good life – with good health and well being, then responsibilities or obligations exist with it, to some degree, to one’s fellow human beings within reason, one is surely responsible to one’s fellow human beings?

Put another way, if a free society provides for an individual—and if an individual in a free society should not or can not be coerced, or forced, to think or act in specific ways, then the living of a good life – with good health and well-being, it implies responsibilities or obligations, to some degree, to one’s fellow human beings within reason without coercion or force to think or act in specific ways.

So the obligations are there, but the freedom to act rightly or wrongly is there too. These are perilous times for women’s advocacy, empowerment, and rights. And men have a role, as per Guterres; that is, necessary obligations, but still have the freedom to choose wrong over right, as some leaders and administrations have apparently done.

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2022-03-23

Sex Strategies in the Hipster Age

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/17

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There is a psychology of failure to adapt to these rapid changes with older men followed by younger men. It is the psychologizing it, or providing new diagnoses of it, with things like “Arousal Addictions.” Have you heard of this?

Rick Rosner: No, but go ahead.

Jacobsen: It is not developing a tolerance and need more of the same substance, as with cocaine, for example, but need more of different varieties of a thing, and so arousal addictions. It would be something like “Pornography: Variations on a Theme, of Addiction.”

What happens is you get a shot of dopamine in the reward system in the brain, in particular, the nucleus accumbens, it feels good.

Typically, what happens as you grow up is the prefrontal cortex, which is the house of executive function, allows you to plan, be conscientious, be moral, delay gratification, and so on, from which then once you accomplish these plans and delay this gratification, and succeed for the thing that was a later gratification, and so on, you get that shot of dopamine from the nucleus accumbens.

So, you have a system: planning ahead, delaying gratification from the prefrontal cortex for executive function, getting a reward – the nucleus accumbens activates and you feel good, so you value real-world context. You get the context. But with pornography and video games, you get the reward and no context.

Rosner: All of this stuff spreads across other parts of life. Trolls feel as though they won’t get laid, but also a lot of them also feel as if there’s no path to good employment. They feel as if there is no achievement path for sex, for work, and so that increases the alienation and the hostility.

Also, there are more paths to pretty high levels of easy gratification than there were 40 years ago. Entertainment is more entertaining, food tastes better now, I’ve said this before. In the 70s, many more things sucked and sex was definitely one of the best things to aspire to.

Now, there were so many other awesome things, more entertaining stuff in the world compared to the 70s. Sex doesn’t have to be the main thing you aspire to – so that is, even more, the reason for trolls not to aspire.

Video game culture is about achieving gratification via entertainment rather than building a path to the future. I don’t know whether gamers, if you survey them, view what they do as temporary, followed by grudgingly attempting to fit into the traditional adult world.

I mean, if you survey Guidos, I assume they’ll say Guidoing is a temporary thing they’re doing while they can and eventually they’ll settle down and get married. The people on Jersey Shorehave settled down, have married and had kids. Snooki has written three books so far, maybe more, including one on parenting. Fucking Snooki, who used to pass out while pissing next to dumpsters, has written a bunch of books. So has her friend J-Woww, also a dumpster pisser.

Jacobsen: I do not have experience with dumpster pissing.

Rosner: When I wrote for late-night TV, I had to watch a lot of Jersey Shore. There’s a lot of pissing by dumpsters because you’re drunk and can’t be bothered to go back inside the club.

I don’t know whether trolls or what percent of them, consider trolling a temporary phase and then they’ll take on some kind of adult role – will try to grow up.

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2022-03-23

A Call for the Open Reclamation of Transcendental and Ordinary Music

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/17

Steve Martin produced one of the first hymns for the atheist crowd in, well, probably ever, which he termed the “the entire atheist hymnal” (Martin, 2017; V1de0Lovr, 2011).

And it’s actually very good, not only because he’s a talented musician and an extremely gifted comedian — among the best ever by a reasonable IMDb peer review measurement, but because a) there’s nothing to compare it to so the hymn remains both the best and the worst of its kind by definition internally and b) I have sung in a university choir and find the song ‘pleasing to the ear’ (IMDb, 2013).

Martin sings the hymn with a quartet of male singers in the performance, which has, likely, become the first staple of the atheist hymnal genre — hopefully, more to come — and goes against the expected stereotype from two angles.

Angle one, those looking for the rather thin, tawdry, and rather small set of texts — simply Hume and Voltaire for starters — devoted to atheism as compared to those — such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas — oozing with praise to the Heavens, and God the Almighty Father, and with tacit, nay explicit, statement of how “so absolutely huge” or simply big is the Theity reflect the musical world (247adam, 2008).

Religion, or worship and communal rituals, dominates the historical, and so the present, landscape.

Take, for example, Herz Und Mund Und Tat Und Leben, or “Heart and Mouth and Deed and Life,” a beautiful piece of work by Johann Sebastian Bach and one of the more memorable pieces of music in the older Western canon, which brings mist to my eyes, sometimes (Umut Sağesen, 2007; Marshall & Emery, 2016).

Or one closer to home, by Bach once more, played with a dead, reasonably famous, Canadian pianist named Glenn Gould and accompanied by another artist, a singer, named Russell Oberlin, it was entitled Bach Cantata 54 (Xiaolei Chen, 2011). It is another moving piece with a sentiment for the transcendent; something outside and other, even infinitely mysterious — lovely piece.

So angle one is the communal and social, and well-established, music is seen as religious. Many people coming to think of the ways in which the religious music is in congregations as, in some way, akin to these pieces of music.

Angle two, the music typically associated with irreligious individuals does not tend to associate with the communal or the social, but, rather, with the a-social, antisocial, or the deviant. There seems to me a negative valuation of some music, which then becomes associated with irreligiosity, even Satanism, including the rock n’ roll and head bangin’ band movements.

Those two angles, of many, seem to influence the perception, and so the motivation, for the development of an irreligious genre of music, even hymns — until now.

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2022-03-22

70s Sex, Today’s Sex, and Opting Out of Sex

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/17

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you think there is an aspect of time perspective in this culture or cultures? Where if you look at the perspective of time that someone emphasizes – the past, present, and future do you think they’re focusing on the present?

Rick Rosner: I’m not understanding entirely.

Jacobsen: If you look at rave culture, these are people experiencing the present in a hedonistic frame. There is a whole psychology of time perspective. If you look at the Guidos, the bros, the guys…

Rosner: …I see what you’re saying. As a successful species, one of the things we have to burn is time. There’s an aspect of time consciousness – that we have time to burn on foolish, youthful lifestyles. No one plans on being a raver or a Guido forever, but, right now, it’s fine.

The cost of time is fairly low. Colleges, to some extent, are holding pens of parties, (depending on which college and what people’s goals are) – to some extent, you can see college as a way to reduce excess productivity.

For hundreds of years, we’ve experienced increasing productivity through industrialization and automation, To the extent that millions of people graduating high school don’t join the workforce to personally survive or to help the nation survive.

Instead, they can spend four years or more learning further skills and/or partying in college, which is an indication that we have excess productivity and that colleges can be seen in some lights as sponges to soak up and squander excess productivity.

College gives many people a place to waste time. (It worked that way for me.) There are plenty of other activities in society that are time sucks that we get to engage in because we have time to spare. You can have entire lifestyles that are time sucks and time-wasters.

You can be a Guido and sow wild oats. And then get your shit together in your late 20s. It’s the same with rave culture. Rave culture is outwardly about everybody being loose and free and at least temporarily not addressing the constraints and responsibilities of everyday life.

But behind that, it is still a demonstration of dominance and fitness. Ravers wear not much clothing. People who are in—

Rave culture is among other things, a competition to look sexually attractive. Take Coachella, which is southern California’s biggest rave-type event. It’s hot. It’s in the desert. People wear super-skimpy outfits. Despite being packaged as a place of freedom, Coachella is a place to display of sexual fitness.

If you ask most people attending a rave, hooking up will not be their number-one stated objective. Nevertheless, hooking up is a huge underlying theme.

Jacobsen: You see these play out in preferences of expression. [Laughing] That is a really abstract way of putting it. Men and their titles; women and their makeup. Typically, women will emphasize their looks; men will emphasize their status.

Also, there’s denigration of competitors. Then there is denigration by men against other men’s status, or women denigrating other women’s beauty.

Rosner: You have straightforward strategies, then you get into ironic, less-straightforward hipster culture, where the criterion is authenticity, about living authentically. People riding antique bicycles, having old-timey facial hair, using old, artisanal technologies.

In hipness culture, you try to arrive at a state of hipness authentically, through having honest interests in throwback handcrafted culture as opposed to being a poser who’s only interested in it because everyone else is interested.

Jacobsen: What about people on the fence who just want to fit in and so adapt to the culture or sub-culture?

Rosner: You can try to choose a culture. You can turn out to not be well-adapted to any niche. You can choose to opt out, and just be adversarial. The 2016 election included all sorts of adversarial groups, like the 4Chan groups, or Pepe the Frog people – people sharing intolerant messages, and a lot of the pro-Trump people – or the more visibly offensive pro-Trump people, or the alt-Right people. A lot of those people belong to cultures of opting out.

Guys who have given up on being popular and getting girlfriends. Lonely basement guys, trolls basically. Troll culture is an opting-out strategy.

Jacobsen: The trolls, the MGTOW, much of the men’s movement…

Rosner: …there are a lot of guys in those cultures who have decided it’s not worth it for them to find a niche to compete to hook up with girls, and so they are going to stay on the sidelines and amuse themselves by trolling.

That points at masturbation culture.

Jacobsen: Which overlaps with porn culture.

Rosner: They’re close to being the same thing, I think. Most everybody in the 21^st century is still horny, as humans have always been. But it’s easier than ever to relieve one’s horniness without social contact. It’s easier to get off without social contact.

So, you have people opting out and giving up on social contact, and giving up on productive, positive social contact altogether, and living lives that are pretty solitary except for online interactions. They can be hostile because they don’t have to meet any societal standards to have orgasms.

A paradise of porn.

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2022-03-22

Conversation About Brazil on the Cruciality of Feminism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/16

Pamela Machado is a contributor to Conatus News, and a journalist based in London, UK. She took some time to sit down and talk feminism and Brazil. Here is her thoughts, the second session of them. Session 1 can be found here.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Also, there’s the impact of the stereotyping, as a defense mechanism against feminism, where we need to clarify terms before a discussion can be had with an opposing viewpoint. Again, as you know as well, it is more or less conscious and done to impart the image of a cranky woman feminist and an obsequious male feminist. I heard one stereotype from a Canadian academic of the “sneaky male feminist.” The landscape of stereotyping is diversifying, but the purpose is consistent.

Pamela Machado: The woman feminist stereotype is a big problem in Brazil – they are popularly called ‘’feminazis’, and I see it as a perfect example of how careful we need to be when we attempt to teach ideologies to others. It seems a simple concept for us, educated and non-religious people, but the reality for the majority of people in developing economies is pretty different. Once again, I think we need empathy and understanding the story of communities.

Jacobsen: Let’s simply clarify here, what does feminism mean here to you? Outside of the generic definition of social and legal equality of the sexes, something seen in John Stuart Mill with Classical Liberalism.

Machado: It is in essence social and legal equality of the sexes, but we need to understand that men and women do not function the same way. There are biological, neurological differences between them – just to name a few, which must not be ignored. Feminism is ultimately about freedom. Women deserve to be free to live their lives as they please – whether as a single professional, a housewife, married with no kids, and so on… A woman’s life concerns no one but herself.

Jacobsen: Once in awhile, and sometimes often, the landscape of the experience of an activist becomes rather unpleasant and even possibly unbearable with the continual barbs at work, with colleagues, even outright in the public sphere, which can make adherence to the unpopular ideological stance for change to a more secular future in line with human and women’s rights more likely to feel something that that activist wants to give up. It’s tough, especially with most of the world adhering to the magical-mystical ideologies where women are not equal to men – and feminists are seen as threat number one. How do you push through these tough times, as a minority view and so as a minority activist?

Machado: That’s an answer I don’t think I have. We brace ourselves, right? If we look back in History, we see swings to the left, to the right, populism, fascism… So far, no ideology stays in power forever. I would say that keep strong on your principles and hold on to the ones who share your values.

Jacobsen: Catholicism, as you described earlier in some detail, has cultural hegemony over Brazil, and so over the people of the country – even the irreligious conceptualizations that may not even have to be verbalized; things that are taken as first-person truths, but are not anything akin to that, where the truths about the ‘world’ are not in any way related to the real world, the natural world.

Christianity and Islam hold cultural hegemony over half of the world’s population, which is a staggering statistic and truth. That leaves me stunned in reflection on it, but it is true, well-documented, and important to know when considering the future of feminism in the international scene.

So going from the particular to the general here, from London and Brazil and Canada to the globe, the state for women in the developed world, which tends to be an admixture of Christian and secular, and the undeveloped or developing world, which tends to be an admixture of dictatorships and Islamically-run countries. These faith-based initiatives, as the Bush Jr. administration would call them, seem almost as if implacable barriers to the implementation of the secular ethic, international human and women’s rights.

Machado: I am not an academic or expert in the subject at all, but it seems to me that fighting for feminism goes beyond religion and secularism. There are plenty of awesome feminist Muslim women – and not only women, as well as there are Christian ones. The fight for gender equality should not impose that one gives up their faith – even if a more literal interpretation of their doctrine could imply that women and men do not enjoy the same privileges as individuals.

Jacobsen: What might the next wave of feminism or women’s rights campaigning and activism look like in the future?

Machado: One particular feminist issue in Brazil is the fight against the ‘culture of rape’ we live in. Almost every woman in the country knows has been through some kind of verbal sexual harassment. Men justify saying they intended to compliment when it truly is intimidating and grotesque. It almost became one of the slogans of a feminist campaign the statistic that there a one rape case in Brazil every eleven minutes, 47,000 cases in one year.

Therefore, I see the fight for women’s right closely tied in with cases of sexual violence and repression to media and public services that are not punishing aggressors.

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2022-03-22

Modern Women’s Rights, Atheism, and Ideological Warfare

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/13

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 in the atheist movement through her involvement with Minnesota Atheists, The Moral Atheist, National Organization for 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 crystallized in an educational series. The first part of this series can be found here – Session 1 and Session 2.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Even with groups such as NARAL, NOW, and Planned Parenthood, the onslaught against women’s rights, reproductive rights and so on, continue to take place. The most vulnerable – poor and minority women – tend to be the main victims, and so their children and the associated families – and so communities. In a sequence, I see attacks on women’s reproductive rights as attacks on women, children, so families, and so communities, and therefore ordinary American citizens. What can be some buffers, or defenses, against these direct attacks on the new media and communications technologies, e.g. to educate and inoculate new generations?

Marie Alena Castle:

No one cares about any social effects so this has to be made personally self-serving. Start with sex/contraceptive education in schools. Impress the girls that they are NOT a public utility and whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is entirely their business, not the church’s, not the state’s, not their sexual partner’s and not the Roe v. Wade regulations. Impress the boys with the fact that if they get a girl pregnant they are liable for 18 years of child support. Use social media to pass this around so it gets to the students at religious schools.
Try for some social effects by calling to account the “pro-life” propagandists as misogynistic, ignorant liars. (They make outrageously stupid claims about embryos and fetuses.) Put up billboards next to their 6-month-old-white-baby ads showing women (various ethnicities) asking why it is anyone’s business but hers and declaring she is not a public utility and asking what the “pro-lifers” have done for real babies lately other than only opposing welfare/child care/educational aid.
Run anti-terrorist ads everywhere pointing out the group that has done and is doing the most damage – the anti-abortion violence prone clinic vandals, death-threateners, bombers, murderers (give the numbers since 1973). Note the clinics’ need for excessive security, bullet proof vests, randomized doctor routes to get to clinics, etc.
OK to note the desperate situation women find themselves in and needing an abortion (rape, abusive relationship, health issues, fetal deformity, poverty, etc.) but don’t do much of this because the general public doesn’t care.

Jacobsen: Who are the unknown women’s rights heroes, men and women, that people should more into – to self-educate?

Castle: They are the people who work at abortion clinics. They all have stories to tell. One of my friends managed a clinic and she was constantly threatened with violence and pickets at her house. I went there a few times to help in case the picketers got violent. One August I suggested she hook up her garden hose to a bottle of sugar water and set it to spray on the picketers and attract hordes of hornets. She wouldn’t do it but I would have. The leader of the picketers was the local fire department chief (with expert knowledge of how to set her house on fire). She wanted to move but dared not for fear the fire chief would send a “potential buyer” to case the house for fire-setting purposes. She needed some carpentry done but feared getting someone she didn’t know who would have a violent anti-abortion agenda. I got an atheist carpenter friend for her who was reliably safe.

Jacobsen: Once the shoe bites, people then become active, politically and socially, typically. These people can rise and protest in an organized and constructive way. Do you think this era of – yes, alternative facts, but at the same time – mass accessibility of information can hasten people realizing their shoe is being bitten, even when they weren’t aware before?

Castle: Lotsa luck on this. Most people really do assume that, as child bearers, women really are something of a public utility and in need of regulation. Why else would there be any discussion about how Roe v. Wade should be interpreted? What we need are new court challenges to Roe v. Wade that say it should be repealed and replaced with a ruling that says abortion is a medical matter to be handled by a woman and her doctor and is not the government’s business. Let’s have a major public discussion about women’s bodily autonomy and why their bodies need government oversight.

(While I’m at it, let me note that I am also opposed to men being drafted into the military. The government does not own their bodies any more than it owns women’s bodies. You get men to voluntarily agree to kill people and you get women to voluntarily agree to give birth or you do without.)

Jacobsen: For centuries, and now with mild pushback over decades, the religiously-based, often, bigotry and chauvinism against women, and ethnic and sexual minorities is more in the open, and so more possible to change. Because people know about it, and can’t deny it. And when and if they do, the reasons seem paper thin and comical, at times. What expedites this process of everyone, finally, earning that coveted equality?

Castle: The mild pushback has come because more people are losing interest in religion, and religion has always been the driver of bigotry and prejudice. The loss of interest has come from Internet sources that expose the absurdities and failings of religion.

To expedite the process you change the laws. You change the laws by organizing for and electing legislators who support civil rights. Then you elect a President who will appoint judges who support those rights. Nothing changes if the laws don’t change. The laws helped bring civil rights to the South because it gave pro-civil rights citizens the protection they needed to treat people with respect. We started getting civil rights by public agitation that led to legislation that led to court review and rulings that did or did not affirm those rights. One exception: We got women covered by the Civil Rights Act when “sex” was introduced into the language in the expectation that it would be seen as such a joke that the Act would be voted down, but it passed.

To get women out of the “public utility” category, we need to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed. That failed the first time precisely because opponents said it would give women the right to have abortions. What is about abortion that sets some people off so violently? None of them show any real practical interest in born babies. Why this obsession with controlling women? Something about species survival? So many men with so many zillions of sperm and frustrated by women’s limited ability to accommodate all that paternal potential? Who knows?

The only thing holding up equal rights for all is the Catholic and Protestant fundamentalist religions (and maybe also misogynistic Islam but we have to see how that immigrant population votes after being exposed to the relatively civilizing effect of living here). It’s always those religions that protest against women’s rights, gay rights, and that so ferociously supported slavery.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Marie.

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2022-03-22

In a World of Wonders, Sex Remains in Charge

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/16

Rick Rosner: In earlier sessions, we were talking about dominance behavior in species. It started when I saw a finch or a sparrow in a park in New York. I decided that that bird’s consciousness was less focused on that individual bird’s position in bird society than humans are on their positions in human society.

I did a little reading and found out that my offhand theory is not true to the degree that I thought it was. There are dominance hierarchies and pecking orders in many, many species. The potential for dominance hierarchies to form may be present in most species.

Dominance hierarchies provide efficiencies that limit animals from spending too much energy fighting amongst themselves by giving them social structure. Some fighting takes place initially, and eventually, everyone decides they’re cool with where they are in the pecking order.

You don’t have members of the species constantly battling with each other. This saves energy for other aspects of survival.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You don’t need much extra to put more towards cognitive and behavioral flexibility. Also, estrus is year-round for our species.

Rosner: Things get weird when you look at a hyper-fit species, as humans are. The natural world is not much of a threat to the survival of individual members of a very well-adapted species, such as humans, as it is for most other species.

Most humans survive to reproductive age, and many of our displays of dominance aren’t directly related to reproductive fitness. Things with humans are more complicated, more baroque. Displays of fitness and dominance hierarchies in humans are weirder and less straightforward than they are for many other species.

Within my lifetime, I have seen displays of fitness and dominance change from what can be seen as direct and basic demonstrations of physical vitality to what can be seen as demonstrations of hipness. When I was growing up, things felt more straightforwardly like jocks vs, nerds with jocks being cool and nerds being uncool.

Muscularity and fitness became more explicit in 1976, when Pumping Iron came out, making Arnold Schwarzenegger a star and weight training no longer a niche activity, but a widely accepted activity in America. People strived for trim and muscular V-shaped torsos. Clothing was tight with shirts tucked in.

That was 40 years ago. Now, physical fitness is de-emphasized compared to that era. People have the bodies they have. Clothes aren’t tight. For demonstrations of dominance, I think more in terms of Brooklyn hipsters.

The comforting stereotype that I was told growing up was “You’re a nerd in high school and junior high, but when you grow up you’ll be in charge. Everyone who was cool and a jock will be working in gas stations.”

Jacobsen: That sounds fantastically optimistic.

Rosner: It’s among the things you tell the unpopular kid who plays tuba in the band. You say, “Other kids are jealous and don’t like you,” to make an unpopular kid feel better. I think that tuba thing came from a 1980 movie called The Hollywood Nights. It was about nerds trying to get laid. The tuba player’s mom was trying to comfort him.

But our entire culture has gone nerdy, though you still have bro-types striving for physical perfection as a sexual dominance strategy. You’ve got Guido culture, which can involve hair mousse and lifting and hitting clubs at night, and aggressively be trying to hook up with women who also emphasize displays of sexual attractiveness.

Jacobsen: There are two aspects to that. One is traditional masculine with men as the head of the household. The other is bro culture which is drinking, smoking, not wearing sunscreen, riding dirt bikes and motorcycles, and focusing on hitting on women.

But beyond bros, there are strategies to appear dominant in ways that appear more awkward, less Rambo-ish and less cool than before.

Rosner: There is fragmentation – not everyone follows the same strategy. I never read John Nash, but I saw his movie biography, A Beautiful Mind. He says that if you’re trying to find a mate, then one strategy is to eliminate the most desirable females from consideration and then choose from among the best remaining females.

You look for the best deal with reduced competition. You find the females that have the most competition for them, and then you ignore them and look for the best options based on relatively ignored females.

In A Beautiful Mind. there’s a scene in a bar in which many guys are hitting on a blonde. Nash says to ignore the blonde and consider a nearby brunette. A stereotypically less attractive female becomes more attractive because there is less competition for her.

So, in a super-successful species where you’re not struggling directly with nature or physically confronting rivals for mates, in that species there is going to be the potential for niche forming – for a number of different strategies for finding and attracting mates.

People will aggregate themselves to maximize reproductive potential by forming groups where their individual attributes can be manifest to best advantage; biggish guys who like to bench press will form bro culture, which gives an advantage to people who are best at being bros and broettes.

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2022-03-22

Brazilian Women’s Rights Struggle, Strife, and Successes

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Pamela Machado

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/15

Pamela Machado is a contributor to Conatus News, and a journalist based in London, UK. She took some time to sit down and talk feminism and Brazil. Here is her thoughts, the first session of them.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You and I have written together, especially on the subjects of women’s rights. Something of note since, at least, the Suffragettes. The development of women as legal persons in First Wave feminism, as deserving of equal access to work in Second Wave feminism, and, at present, deserving of the right to reproductive health services in Third Wave feminism.

Third Wave feminism is the current battleground. Associated with each of these changes is the increased inclusion of women into society on multiple levels, whether cultural, economic, political, even religious, and social. You lived in Brazil. You moved to London. You work and study there. So we have researched these things. You have seen the modern situation for men and women.

What is the current state of affairs for the relations between men and women in London?

Pamela Machado: As a Brazilian, the reality for women in London surprised me greatly. Despite being the capital and a busy city, I feel very safe at any time during the day or night – a ‘luxury’ I do not enjoy in many cities in Brazil. There are plenty of women acting as CEOs, Directors and it seems to me, in general, we as a gender as well represented in the job market. That said, this might not be the view of British and European women, as you can see in papers like the Guardian.

Brazil and Latin America as a whole is a very sexist place. I am not able to give a scientific reason behind that. It probably is a result of a lot of things but mostly religion and lack of education. Feminism is a much more needed fight where I come from – I am not saying that the UK and Europe enjoy perfect gender equality. It is just a matter of perspective.

Numbers of rape and ‘femicide’ in Latin America speak for themselves.

Jacobsen: If we responded directly, frankly, does religion seem like the main impediment to women’s equality, especially patriarchal religions?

Machado: It does play a role but, in my opinion, is not the main one. I would particularly blame a ‘coward’ political representation, an inefficient judiciary system and, unfortunately, poor education.

Jacobsen: But doesn’t religious faith, in general, enshrine male values, superiority, divinity – as in being the main image-bearers of the creator of the universe – and as the owners and protectors of women?

Machado: Yes, that is true and it is definitely a challenge to be faced. Brazil is one of the most Catholic countries in the world and the vast majority of the population is Christian. Some local churches and religious leaders seem to be more… let’s say, modern, recognizing things such as divorce and contraception but they are still rare cases. And we have more reasons worry: religious political parties are becoming stronger – and they are very conservatives in their beliefs. If all goes well, next year Brazil will have presidential elections and Jair Bolsonaro, a religious far right congressman seem to be getting increasingly popular support.

Jacobsen: Also, if you take the more explicit examples in the United States, the conscious, cynical misrepresentation of women’s rights and feminism, and the historical and pervasive denigration and distrust of women in general, and disgust reactions to women’s bodies and especially the strange enshrinement of virginity (and so the control of women’s sexuality). In a Catholic culture, and so country and society, how can women overcome this, or at a minimum liberalize the non-reality-based belief systems found in this ubiquitous faith?

Machado: I think the best way to fight this regressive system is to educate. We need to spread the word about what feminism is really about – there still people in Latin America who don’t know. It is true though that some women do condone such behavior, simply because they are strong believers. We need to have empathy, we cannot blame them. In a country where the government does not look after its people and education are very poor, people hold on to what they have.

I would say that above all, we need empathy, understanding, and patience. Implementing feminism in Brazil will be a long process, it might take generations, but it is possible and is already happening. Despite still low female representativity in Congress, we do have laws to protect women and abortion is a recurrent topic in discussion. We just need to hope and act to minimize the growing influence of far right and church-affiliated parties, otherwise, our achievements so far are at risk of being useless.

Jacobsen: What policies underly the cowardly aspects of the political system in the appropriate recognition and the implementation of women’s rights? Of course, and bearing in mind, the young nature of the women’s rights movement and women’s rights in general, as well as human rights, and so their general fragility. Something of concern to me.

Machado: As I noted above, the main threat to progress in women’s rights is the rise of far right and conservative views. Leaving aside economic aspects, the left government left a good legacy for women and human rights in general.

However, with the impeachment brought to office former vice president Michel Temer, from the right front. On this year women’s day speech, he went so far as in praising women for the housekeeping skills, saying that ‘we are vital to the economy because we note the changes in price at the supermarket.’ After having a woman in the highest position in the country, hearing such thing is insulting and infuriating.

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2022-03-22

Gender Equality Planning with Iceland as the Apogee

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/15

By Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Anya Overmann

March is Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day is March 8, 2017. It is a day where every “person — women, men and non-binary people — can play a part in helping drive better outcomes for women.” The other is a month devoted to the catalog, display, and public representation of women’s accomplishments in history. Why is this an important day for reflection? It is important because, according to the World Economic Forum(WEF), the overall gender gap based on the index called theGender Gap Reportpublished each year will not close until 2186.

That’s a super long time. Even with that dire report, United Nations Women (UN Women) has themed this International Women’s Day, which is less than a week away. The theme is “Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50–50 by 2030.” Maybe, not the political, educational, or health outcome areas, but, rather, the world of work, which continues to be an area of major concern. Even if 2186 is the fate of eventual total equality, then the piece-by-piece fitting of the equality puzzle can start with the world of work. But there are difficulties for women here too. Hardships related to the ongoing revolutions before us.

Globalization and the digital revolution are changing the way we work, bringing big opportunities for all, but continue to present issues within the context of women’s economic empowerment. According to the UN, the gender pay gap stands at 24 cents globally, with many of these gaps appearing in leadership and entrepreneurship roles. Not to mention, the glaring gender deficit in care and domestic work.

The UN is calling for all economic policies to be gender-responsive and address job creation, poverty reduction, and growth in a sustainable and inclusive manner. It’s also pertinent, with the way human work is changing due to technology, for women to have better access to innovative technologies and practices that are good for mother nature and protect women against violence in the workplace.

International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month are important moments — a singular highlight day and an entire month — to reflect, celebrate, and declare the inherent equality of women based on human rights and women’s rights. We’ve got a long road ahead. And if you do not feel like waiting for the year 2186 to come around in your lifetime, you can always travel to Iceland. It’ll be just like time travel!

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2022-03-22

Gloomy Impacts Associated with Regressive Abortion Policy

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/15

By Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Phoebe Davies-Owen

Times are changing, and fast, especially regarding reproductive technology, rights, and, in some dominant areas of the world, the repeal of women’s reproductive rights and technology. It’s rather extraordinary on both sides of the proverbial moral coin.

Extraordinary to see the implementation of women’s rights in areas of the world with women and girls in exceptional circumstances, e.g. war ravaged countries or cultures with female genital mutilation practices. Extraordinary to see the repeal of those same rights, hard won and fought for, in countries with the wealth, freedom, and citizen leisure to implement them. The global situation is all over the map.

Same with the United States. But there is a definite direction. This trend in the United States (US) is a reflection of the erratic and fecund hand of President Trump to issue executive orders. Recently, in a series of swift executive orders by the American President, the landscape of American political and socio-cultural life has begun to shift.

One huge detriment is the immediate decline in available money for women’s reproductive health services in the form of funding for NGOs providing abortion services in the world, which were previously provided resources by the US. America is a nation of zeal. It wants to export its values, whether directly or indirectly.

Whoever holds the levers of power and influence, they will set the tone for the values to be sent out into the world. Any funding for reproductive health services is an internationalist value because, as stated unequivocally by Amnesty International (AI), “…equitable access to safe abortion services is first and foremost a human right.” My Body My Rights was a campaign devoted to awareness of this, by AI.

The Trump Administration defunding has been termed the “global gag.” That is, global reduction or elimination of funding for NGOs and other organizations providing abortion services, whether directly, e.g. safe abortions, or indirectly, information about abortions.

When abortions are made illegal, women will resort to unsafe abortions, which is a common phenomenon because of the taboos against abortion as a super-minority procedure within women’s reproductive health services. The World Health Organization (WHO) says, “Women, including adolescents, with unwanted pregnancies often resort to unsafe abortion when they cannot access safe abortion.”

An estimated 22 million abortions occur each year with 47,000 women dying in complications associated with unsafe abortions. Not only outrageous in the number of deaths, some 5 million women suffer from disabilities associated with the unsafe abortion. This is, frankly, outrageous. It’s at once unfair and unjust.

Progressive actions in the advancement of contraceptive use have made “impressive gains” in the reduction of unintended pregnancies and, by implication and therefore, have resulted in the reduction of complications with unsafe abortions because women will not resort to them.

Therefore, there has been more contraceptive use with unintended pregnancies prevented, which is a good thing for the mother and the child. Simultaneously, there are still unsafe abortions with tens of thousands of deaths and millions of disabling conditions as a result of these risky procedures.

“To the full extent of the law, safe abortion services should be readily available and affordable to all women. This means services should be available at primary-care level, with referral systems in place for all required higher-level care.” WHO recommended, “Actions to strengthen policies and services related to abortion should be based on the health needs and human rights of women and a thorough understanding of the service-delivery system and the broader social, cultural, political and economic context.”

John Ikenberry in Foreign Affairs, described how Joseph S Nye, Jr. created the term ‘soft power’ in the 1980s. That’s the core of the conversation here. The ways in which American hard power, military and economic dominance since the end of the Second World War, and its flourishing exporting of its culture, its soft power, have consequences.

“U.S. culture, ideals, and values have been extraordinarily important in helping Washington attract partners and supporters.” Ikenberry said. That is, American society arguably sets some, but not all, international standards. If something happens there, then other international actors will justify their actions within the framework of

That is, American society arguably sets some, but not all, international standards. If something happens there, then other international actors will justify their actions within the framework of

That is, American society arguably sets some, but not all, international standards. If something happens there, then other international actors will justify their actions within the framework of behaviour set by the United States.

Abortion remains the same. Yet, even with Northern Ireland and the Republic residing within the sphere of soft power influence that the US dominates, it still has the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, more so than even Poland, which has traditionally taken a hard line on abortion.

Terminations within the jurisdictions of the island of Ireland are only permissible on the grounds that the foetus threatens the life of the mother, in contrast to equally as strict Polish laws where abortion is banned with the exceptions of: there being a severe and irreversible damage to the foetus, a serious threat to the mother’s health, or when pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

Most abortion news has been distressing if not depressing, especially for women and girls, since even the ongoing 2010s. Chile has moved closer to decriminalization of abortion. El Salvador has a total ban on abortion, which is harmful to women and girls.

The Dominican Republic Senate postponed the vote for decriminalization of abortion while women’s rights activists have been receiving increasing pressure from conservative and religious groups. Even in the general Latin American region, the “draconian abortion laws and policies” continue to, punish millions of women. On the other side of the world, in East Asia, South Korea penalizes doctors for performing illegal abortions.

There remain issues in Spain and Portugal too. Abortion is still a contentious issue. Portuguese women are required to pay for a termination and undergo rigorous testing. There were plans in Spain to further tighten abortion accessibility – making abortion illegal except in the case of rape, risk to the health of the mother, and having two doctors verify the conditions – but were scrapped after numerous demonstrations in 2014.

The US may set an example, but it is rare that it is kept to, even in its own states. Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s nominee for Supreme court justice, has not made any current declarations as yet on his position on reproductive rights, but previous statements would suggest that he would take a stand against Roe vs. Wade. His positions on abortion are opaque, but possibly inferable from other views.

On assisted suicide, he views “intentional taking of human life …is always wrong,” according to reportage, on a book on the subject by him, by Forbes. And considering the views on abortion rights coming from Trump’s administration, it doesn’t hold out much hope for the women of America.

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2022-03-22

Tremendous Equality Landmarks Carved Throughout Iceland

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/14

Human rights are a new invention. Same with women’s rights. Have you heard the phrase? ‘Women’s rights are human rights,’ it’s a darn good phrase, I feel—wish I’d thought of it.

There are more details, but those come from more knowledgeable, experienced people than me —like ‘women’s rights are a subset of, and partially distinct from,human rights.’ Anyway, that’s a tiresome, boring, and over-precise slogan, right? I agree.

The UN Charter was signed on June 26, 1945, so was instantiated only 71 years ago. It’s young. So both modern human rights and women’s rights are young. Many citizens of the world come from times without the charter, the imagined landscape of, by simply being human, deservedness—of rights, for humanity, and its women and children.

Imagine that: a world without rights. Well, we live in one naturally, but socially, culturally, even societally. Heck, they’re pretty darn important. Human’s, children’s, and women’s rights help enforce decency.

Those times without the charter and similar documentation do have a response, I suppose. With validity and bumpy consistency, which can be applied to some sectors of some nations and some whole countries today, places without them, knowledge or implementation. Scary.

Women earned the right to vote in the US in 1920. Pretty good. In Canada, 1919, depending on the province, little better; in the UK, 1918, even better, and so on, Saudi Arabia only in 2015. Technically, our democracies are young.

Lots of societies deny children and women rights. Children and women, even some men, in sections of a society without rights, or other citizens as second-class citizens, non-persons, simply persona non grata—an unwelcome person.

“Why are you here? And while you’re here, you will not have the rights and privileges of us. Got it, buster!” Not fun. But there are other cases. Societies as exemplars with some outstanding standards and people. Bars are set by them. Precedents are made by them. Iceland is one of them. It’s a land of firsts, I feel.

As described by Kirstie Brewer from Reykjavik, in 2015, about 40 years ago—as delineated at the time—women in Iceland went on strike. That wasn’t the first strike ever; however, it was a preliminary salvo.

When November 1980, swung around the corner, Vigdis Finnbogadottir (“dottir” as in daughter, of “Finnboga” back in the day, I assume) won the presidency in Iceland. To boot, and to break taboos, Finnbogadottir, or more properly Vigdis, was a single mother. Not bad; so that was a first, and an unlikely first because single mothers tend to be near the bottom of the social strata.

Not only for the region but for the world, Vigdis was a first for democratic elections. She was the first female or woman democratically elected as a head of state.

There’s a common sense saying about a woman leader then influencing girls with the assumption of all girls. I doubt that, but think some, even most, girls saw President Vigdis as a representation of possibilities. It’s a good thing, but not an all-encompassing inspirational deal.

Many women and girls do succeed without the need for prior representatives, but, for others, helps give a beacon. Different strategies for different women and girls for women’s and girls’ empowerment.

And Iceland, not only is a place of firsts, it is #1. The World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Gender Gap Index 2016states the nation is first in the world for the gender gap as well.

The Guardian has reported on it, too. They say, “The Icelandic government has pledged to close the gender pay gap by 2022.” Also, a first, as far as I know, and the short list here likely extrapolates to other unlisted aspects of Iceland, the place of firsts.

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2022-03-22

Gender Stereotyped Roles and the Middle East

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/14

Joana Aziz is a student in Spain. She is a friend with experience growing up in Syria followed by Lebanon. Now, as a student, she is in graduate school. I wanted to get her perspective on gender roles in the Middle East based on real experience. This is part of an initiative, from me (possibly others), to expand the flavor of narratives for and in The Good Men Project. Here is the first session in this educational series.

*Audio interview edited for clarity and readability.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I wanted to talk about gender roles in the Middle East. I ask you this because we are friends and colleagues and have discussed these issues casually over Skype. I wanted to make a short educational series from an educated person – and gather their thoughts on the Middle East or the Middle East-North Africa region, generally, and those roles. What is the range of restriction on gender roles?

Joana Aziz: From my knowledge, I would say three countries in particular. One is Saudi Arabia, where gender roles are followed rather strictly. Lebanon is more liberal in that sense and Syria comes somewhere in between.

Jacobsen: When it comes to the first example, Saudi Arabia, what are some of the restrictions on, for example, women to start?

Aziz: When it comes to Saudi Arabia, you need to consider the religion. Any restriction comes from a religious background. For example, there is a strict code for what to wear and there is a punishment for not wearing it. Driver’s licenses are not issued for women.

Jacobsen: What about the men, for the mix of religion, law, and custom, if they’re not following the particular attire?

Aziz: Men have a traditional attire, but they are not forced to wear it. Usually, men do the enforcement roles.

Jacobsen: What about Syria? I know it ranks low for gender equality and for women’s status generally. However, there are tragic cases such as war and refugees at the moment.

Aziz: When you focus on gender roles in an area, you want to focus: religion and culture. How much is this religion influencing things? Is it a collectivist or an individualist society? In Syria, for example, religion is not as pervasive, but there is still the adherence to a stereotypical man and a stereotypical woman. From this, the gender roles follow.

Jacobsen: What are the stereotypical man and stereotypical woman in this context?

Aziz: It is the macho-infused archetype. The man here is defined by wealth, status, domination, and the power he exercises; the woman, in this case, is seen as an extension of the man. This is something that you can see by the language that is used. When we are in Syria, we say, “The man took this woman. He took Fatima.”

The man makes the decision. He chooses; the woman gets chosen. That’s how such roles play out.

Jacobsen: Does this reflect terms such as “Mr.” and “Mrs.”, where the terminology reflects the historical trend of ownership or property status of women.

Aziz: Definitely: yes.

Jacobsen: Where is the separation between religion and culture there?

Aziz: They have become so infused that it is hard to separate them. What happens is the woman internalizes this notion, that she becomes this property. For example, marriage is really focused on. It becomes a right of passage or an achievement.

I don’t want to generalize, but some women in Syria I assume would feel lacking if they don’t get married. It is not emphasized on the men.

Jacobsen: If a man sleeps around, what are the consequences culturally? If a woman sleeps around, what are the consequences culturally? If we take the two examples discussed, Saudi Arabia and Syria in these instances.

Aziz: It is the same thinking. If it is a man, it is a man fulfilling his needs. It is similar in religion. The Quran has an agreement that lets you sleep around. Of course, for women, you can’t sleep around.

Jacobsen: That begs the question. From a secular perspective, who are these men sleeping with? [Laughing]

Aziz: [Laughing] Special women.

Jacobsen: Let’s turn to Lebanon, what is the status of the gender roles there? What is some specifics from experiential or personal background insight?

Aziz: I think Lebanon is really trying to move forward with activism there. There are some organizations such as KAFA and ABAAD campaigning for women’s rights and fighting against violence against women and their effort is recognized as they are producing actual change on the ground by repealing laws and attempting to introduce new ones that guarantee equal rights. There is this tug-of-war between those who want to progress and those who want to resist.

This tug of war can be seen by those who want to progress and those are afraid of change.

Jacobsen: It is the context of saying, “She was asking for it. She was wearing little clothing or revealing clothing.”

Aziz: “Were you alone? Was it late?” and so on.

I saw an interesting note the other day. High Schools boys in Michigan, US left a note in the girls’ bathroom asking them to reconsider their outfit as it is affecting their concentration.

The same logic, found in religions like Islam, is present here. It shifts the blame for actions committed on to women or girls moreover attempts to resolve it through control.

Jacobsen: I believe the term is “victim blaming.” It seems like another instance in a different culture, with a different history, a different people, a different context, and a different majority religion still having the same outgrowth of perspective – of an expectation of purity of women.

Those that do not meet that – even in the cases against their will such as rape or sexual assault – then still get blamed.

Aziz: Exactly.

Jacobsen: You live in Spain, which is a different context. I don’t know the culture, though. I know it is different, but don’t know how different. Reflecting on your sense of Saudi Arabia, and personal experience with Syria and Lebanon, how does Spain differ? How is it the same?

Aziz: It is the same because I still get cat-called the same level that I used to back in Lebanon or Syria. Here I feel women can answer back, they can put those boundaries. Where in Syria or Lebanon, I would feel more taken back, not protected, and not as supported. Perhaps, it’s just me as I know many brave women who do answer back.

Such were the brave women who, as of late October, last year were campaigning in Douma, Syria. Women wanted to increase female representation in the council. This happening during war time signifies strong will and determination.

Jacobsen: That is remarkable. Thank you for your time, Joana.

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2022-03-22

Interview with Sikivu Hutchinson

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/14

Sikivu Hutchinson is an American feminist, atheist and author/novelist. She is the author of ‘White Nights, Black Paradise‘ (2015), ‘Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels‘ (2013), ‘Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars‘ (2011), and ‘Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles‘ (Travel Writing Across the Disciplines) (2003). Moral Combat is the first book on atheism to be published by an African-American woman. In 2013, she was named Secular Woman of the Year.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your family and personal story – culture, education, and geography?
Sikivu Hutchinson: I grew up in a secular household in a predominantly African American community in South Los Angeles. My parents were educators and writers involved in social justice activism in the local community.

Jacobsen: What informs personal atheist and humanist beliefs, as a worldview and ethic, respectively? What are effective ways to advocate for atheism and humanism?

Hutchinson: Through public education and dialogue about the role secular humanism and atheism can play in dismantling structures of oppression based on sexism, misogyny, heterosexism, homophobia and transphobia.

Jacobsen: What makes atheism, secular humanism, and progressivism seem more right or true than other worldviews to you – arguments and evidence?

Hutchinson: For me, they are a means of redressing the inherent inequities and dogmas of religious belief and practice, particularly vis-à-vis the cultural and historical construction of women’s subjectivity, sexuality and social position in patriarchal cultures based on the belief that there is a divine basis for male domination and the subordination of women.

Progressive atheism and humanism are especially valuable for women of colour due to the racist, white supremacist construction of black and brown femininity and sexuality.

Notions of black women as hypersexual amoral Jezebels (antithetical to the ideal of the virginal, pure Christian white woman) deeply informed slave era treatment of black women as chattel/breeders. These paradigms continue to inform the intersection of sexism/racism/misogyny vis-à-vis black women’s access to jobs, education, media representation and health care.

Jacobsen: What is the importance of atheism, feminism, and humanism in America at the moment?

Hutchinson: Over the past decade, we’ve seen the erosion of women’s rights, reproductive health and access to abortion, contraception, STI/STD screening and health education. We’ve also seen virulent opposition to LGBTQI enfranchisement, same sex marriage, employment and educational opportunities for queer, trans and gender non-conforming folk.

These developments are entirely due to the massive Religious Right backlash against gender equity and gender justice that’s occurred both in State Legislatures across the country and in the political propaganda of reactionary conservative politicians and fundamentalist evangelical Christian interest groups.

Feminism/atheism/humanism are important counterweights to these forces because they underscore the degree to which these political ideologies are rooted in Christian dominionist (the movement to embed Christian religious principles public policy and government) dogma and biases.

Jacobsen: What social forces might regress the atheist, feminist, and secular humanist movements in the US?

Hutchinson: I have no doubt when I say that the election of Donald Trump and the continued neoliberal emphasis of American educational and social welfare policy will surely undermine these movements.

Jacobsen: You wrote Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics & Values Wars, White Nights, Black Paradise & Rock n’ Roll Heretic. It will come out in 2018. What inspired writing it?

Hutchinson: Rock n’ Roll Heretic is loosely based on the life of forerunning black female guitar player Rosetta Tharpe, who was a queer gospel/rock/blues musician who influenced pivotal white rock icons like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis but is largely unsung. The book explores racism, sexism and heterosexism in the music industry in addition to the fictional Tharpe’s rejection of faith.

Jacobsen: What is the content and purpose of the book?

Hutchinson: The book is designed to shed light on the travails and under-representation of women of colour musicians in a highly polarised, politically charged industry that still devalues their contributions.

It’s also designed to highlight the nexus of humanist thought and artistic/creative discovery in the life of a woman who had to navigate cultural appropriation, male-domination, the devaluation of white media and musical trends that were antithetical to supporting or even validating the existence of black women rockers.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Sikivu.

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2022-03-22

Conversation with David Miller on the Background, Life, and Views: Member, Glia Society (1)

Interviewer: Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Numbering: Issue 29.A, Idea: Outliers & Outsiders (24)

Place of Publication: Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Title: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com

Individual Publication Date: March 22, 2022

Issue Publication Date: May 1, 2022

Name of Publisher: In-Sight Publishing

Frequency: Three Times Per Year

Words: 2,137

ISSN 2369-6885

Abstract

David Miller is a Member of the Glia Society. He discusses: growing up; a sense of an extended self; the family background; the experience with peers and schoolmates; some professional certifications; the purpose of intelligence tests; high intelligence discovered; the extreme reactions to and treatment of geniuses; the greatest geniuses in history; a genius from a profoundly intelligent person; profound intelligence necessary for genius; work experiences and jobs; particular job path; the gifted and geniuses; God; science; the tests taken and scores earned (with standard deviations); the range of the scores; ethical philosophy; social philosophy; economic philosophy; political philosophy; metaphysics; philosophical system; meaning in life; meaning externally derived, or internally generated; an afterlife; the mystery and transience of life; and love.

Keywords: Catholicism, David Miller, German, God, Italian, Glia Society, I.Q., intelligence, mathematics, Newton, non-religion, United States.

Conversation with David Miller on the Background, Life, and Views: Member, Glia Society (1)

*Please see the references, footnotes, and citations, after the interview, respectively.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When you were growing up, what were some of the prominent family stories being told over time?

David Miller[1],[2]*: Both of my parents are immigrants so there were some stories about their lives before immigration. No story was very prominent though; just memories from childhood regarding different foods they would eat and playing in the woods and such.

Jacobsen: Have these stories helped provide a sense of an extended self or a sense of the family legacy?

Miller: No; that has never been important in my family.

Jacobsen: What was the family background, e.g., geography, culture, language, and religion or lack thereof?

Miller: My mother is German and Italian and my father is Scottish but we are all Americanized and grew up without our parents bringing their home cultures into our childhood. My two brothers and I all grew up on the East coast of the United States and learned only English. As for religion, we were all raised Catholic but only one brother remained Catholic into adulthood.

Jacobsen: How was the experience with peers and schoolmates as a child and an adolescent?

Miller: The overall experience was good I would say. In grade school, ages 6 through 11, there was some bullying but nothing too serious. I mostly stuck to my books and had one good friend who I spent much of my time with. We would play almost every day after school and talk about different books we were reading. In junior high and high school, ages 12 through 18, I had a small group of friends whom I could trust entirely. We would talk about normal teenage boy things such as school, girls, our families, and hobbies.Outside of my friends group I was mostly invisible to the other students at school, which I preferred.

Jacobsen: What have been some professional certifications, qualifications, and trainings earned by you?

Miller: I have a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering as well as a Microsoft Excel certification. Excel is fantastic, by the way. Too few people see all the potential it has. I have it open at this very moment!

Jacobsen: What is the purpose of intelligence tests to you?

Miller: I think intelligence tests are hugely important and that intelligence is an interesting field of study. The purpose for serious psychometricians is of course to accurately measure intelligence in whatever range is interesting to them. Most mainstream psychologists apparently design I.Q. tests with the low-mid range in mind to detect mental retardation and assist in diagnosing various psychiatric disorders. There are many non-mainstream high-range I.Q. test constructors too but almost none of them should be taken seriously. It’s obvious many of them don’t know the first thing about statistics, they are lacking in what they are attempting to measure, and they are too emotional and subjective when grading test answers.

That is not to say that all high-range I.Q. tests shouldn’t be taken seriously though. Paul Cooijmans, the world leader in high-range I.Q. testing, has the most accurate I.Q. tests ever designed for the range he is attempting to measure. To be clear, that is not an opinion but an objective fact based on his test’s statistics. As for my personal motivation in taking these tests — it is just for the satisfaction of solving very hard problems. If that helps with studying intelligence then that is a great bonus.

Jacobsen: When was high intelligence discovered for you?

Miller: There were hints at that starting from when I was a toddler but it wasn’t until I was 7 that my teacher sat my parents down and told them I was “gifted”. Earlier that week in class the teacher was showing us basic arithmetic and I was doing it in my head faster than the teacher could do it with her calculator. To clarify, these were easy problems such as 14*5 or 28:4. When we learned fractions and percentages I would do those in my head too and my teacher and classmates thought it was amazing, not realizing that it was no harder than any other kind of basic multiplication.

So that you can amaze your friends and colleagues too: If you’re ever asked a problem like “what is 15% of 74?” just move the decimal point, get the product, then move the decimal point back afterward to get your answer. In this case 0.15 * 74 becomes 15 * 74 which can be done in your head to get 1110. After moving the decimal point back two places we get the answer: 11.10.

As for discovering very high intelligence, I took an I.Q. test in high school and got a “beyond ceiling” score but did not know what that meant at the time. Later for work an employer had every applicant take an I.Q. test and again I had every answer right. Decades later in late 2021 my son discovered Paul Cooijmans’ website on a forum called Reddit which resulted in me trying my first high-range I.Q. test the following month.

Jacobsen: When you think of the ways in which the geniuses of the past have either been mocked, vilified, and condemned if not killed, or praised, flattered, platformed, and revered, what seems like the reason for the extreme reactions to and treatment of geniuses? Many alive today seem camera shy – many, not all.

Miller: Ha, the reason for this is actually so sad it’s almost funny. The average person has no ability to grasp, understand, appreciate the work of a genius. Even in art or music they cannot possibly see the meaning behind any of it. The reason a few geniuses are praised is because some “experts” who are barely able to understand their work praise them, and the masses believe whatever experts say. If consensus among experts was that Albert Einstein was retarded then most people would believe that too.

Unfortunately, experts often don’t understand the genius and when that happens the genius is mocked or ignored until someone with authority finally does understand them. This usually happens decades or centuries after their death so they are basically screwed and at the mercy of people who are too stupid to understand them.

Jacobsen: Who seems like the greatest geniuses in history to you?

Miller: Newton, Tesla, Imhotep, and Archimedes come to mind. There is also someone I recently learned about that is very well-known for his work in psychometrics but my crystal ball says his contributions to music theory will be what make him a household name initially.

Jacobsen: What differentiates a genius from a profoundly intelligent person?

Miller: A genius must be intelligent /and/ have a high degree of persistence and obsessiveness combined with resistance to mainstream thinking. More on that last point; when someone accepts everything they are told by authority figures they are doomed to always have many false beliefs and are unable to produce original work.

Jacobsen: Is profound intelligence necessary for genius?

Miller: Yes, if by profound you mean about three standard deviations above the mean. Actually, most geniuses probably aren’t much smarter than that either. I’d guess the average genius, even Newton, had an I.Q. between three and four standard deviations above the mean.

Jacobsen: What have been some work experiences and jobs held by you?

Miller: I worked briefly as a civil engineer but thought it was very unrewarding so found work as a data analyst and have done that ever since.

Jacobsen: Why pursue this particular job path?

Miller: I’m good at math and prefer to do things which I’m good at. = )

Jacobsen: What are some of the more important aspects of the idea of the gifted and geniuses? Those myths that pervade the cultures of the world. What are those myths? What truths dispel them?

Miller: Something very important regarding gifted people and geniuses is that we need more resources put into discovering them and finding ways to help them achieve their potential. It makes no sense for the very brilliant children to study in the same classroom as the normal children. We put a lot of resources into helping intellectually disabled children and I think those efforts are catastrophically misplaced. Maybe that seems unempathetic but imagine how much worse it is for the brilliant child to be left behind compared to the retarded child? It makes me shudder.

Also, almost every mainstream belief about intelligence and genius seems wrong. Some truths are that intelligence is about 80-90% genetic, cannot be trained (but can be lowered), and is highly correlated with success and happiness.

Jacobsen: Any thoughts on the God concept or gods idea and philosophy, theology, and religion?

Miller: Yes; I do not believe in God and am not religious.

Jacobsen: How much does science play into the worldview for you?

Miller: Science is very important to me. When it’s good science; that is, not warped for political or personal reasons by the researcher, I will incorporate that information into my worldview.

Jacobsen: What have been some of the tests taken and scores earned (with standard deviations) for you?

Miller: In high school I took an I.Q. test and scored 150+ (16 S.D.) but do not know which one. Later, for a job application I took what I think was a shortened form of Raven’s Matrices and got everything right. From January 2022 onward I’ve been taking high-range I.Q. tests by Paul Cooijmans and have most of my scores around 167 +/- 10 (15 S.D.). My highest scores are on Narcissus’ Last Stand with I.Q. 180 (44 raw) and Divine Psychometry with I.Q. 177 (30 raw). My first high-range test was The Sargasso Test where I scored 161 (42 raw).

Jacobsen: What ethical philosophy makes some sense, even the most workable sense to you?

Miller: I think ethics are absolute, universal, objective, and black-and-white. When someone says that ethics are relative, subjective, or that “everybody is right in their own way” please slap them (legal disclaimer: I’m kidding).

As for philosophers, I like Kant.

Jacobsen: What social philosophy makes some sense, even the most workable sense to you?

Miller: The golden rule: “do unto others what you’d have them do unto you.” Many people misunderstand the golden rule and don’t realize it is most applicable when talking about social behavior in general. If you want others to help you when you are unwell then you should help them when possible. That is outside of ethics, by the way. There’s nothing unethical about not helping others; it’s only unethical to be the one intentionally hurting them.

Also, a general remark on socializing is that people should strive to be more introverted. I find people who have many friends and talk a lot tend to have nothing of substance to say and that those with few friends who rarely talk tend to have the most interesting things on their mind.

Jacobsen: What political philosophy makes some sense, even the most workable sense to you?

Miller: My advice for people who want to know the answer to this question is to study world history and pay very careful attention to Greece, China, Egypt, and Rome. I can say no more than that.

Jacobsen: What metaphysics makes some sense to you, even the most workable sense to you?

Miller: I cannot say for reasons I cannot say.

Jacobsen: What worldview-encompassing philosophical system makes some sense, even the most workable sense to you?

Miller: To achieve mastery in whatever one is naturally good at and to not waste time with things like hedonism. One only has this life, why waste it never reaching one’s potential? If one is not talented at anything then they would probably make a good school teacher I think.

Jacobsen: What provides meaning in life for you?

Miller: My wife and son; they are the most meaningful things in my life.

Jacobsen: Is meaning externally derived, internally generated, both, or something else?

Miller: Everything has a function and in nearly all cases they have no control over it. For humans we can derive some personal meaning in our lives but there is also an inescapable function we each serve in addition to that.

Jacobsen: Do you believe in an afterlife? If so, why, and what form? If not, why not?

Miller: Nope; nothing after death. It’s sad that everybody around me will eventually die and then no longer exist. I cannot die myself though.

Jacobsen: What do you make of the mystery and transience of life?

Miller: The ultimate function of all life is to achieve the highest level of awareness possible.

Jacobsen: What is love to you?

Miller: My feeling is that romantic love is when one cares for another so deeply that they put their own happiness second to their lover’s and their lover does the same. Platonic love is less intense and doesn’t require reciprocity.

Footnotes

[1] Member, Glia Society.

[2] Individual Publication Date: March 22, 2022: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/miller-1; Full Issue Publication Date: May 1, 2022: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.

*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. 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.

Citations

American Medical Association (AMA): Jacobsen S. Conversation with David Miller on the Background, Life, and Views: Member, Glia Society (1)[Online]. March 2022; 29(A). Available from: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/miller-1.

American Psychological Association (APA, 6th Edition, 2010): Jacobsen, S.D. (2022, March 22). Conversation with David Miller on the Background, Life, and Views: Member, Glia Society (1). Retrieved from http://www.in-sightjournal.com/miller-1.

Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S. Conversation with David Miller on the Background, Life, and Views: Member, Glia Society (1). In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 29.A, March. 2022. <http://www.in-sightjournal.com/miller-1 >.

Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2022. “Conversation with David Miller on the Background, Life, and Views: Member, Glia Society (1).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 29.A. http://www.in-sightjournal.com/miller-1.

Chicago/Turabian, Humanities (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott “Conversation with David Miller on the Background, Life, and Views: Member, Glia Society (1).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 29.A (March 2022). http://www.in-sightjournal.com/miller-1.

Harvard: Jacobsen, S. 2022, ‘Conversation with David Miller on the Background, Life, and Views: Member, Glia Society (1)’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 29.A. Available from: <http://www.in-sightjournal.com/miller-1 >.

Harvard, Australian: Jacobsen, S. 2022, ‘Conversation with David Miller on the Background, Life, and Views: Member, Glia Society (1)’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 29.A., http://www.in-sightjournal.com/miller-1.

Modern Language Association (MLA, 7th Edition, 2009): Scott D. Jacobsen. “Conversation with David Miller on the Background, Life, and Views: Member, Glia Society (1).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 29.A (2022): March. 2022. Web. <http://www.in-sightjournal.com/miller-1 >.

Vancouver/ICMJE: Jacobsen S. Conversation with David Miller on the Background, Life, and Views: Member, Glia Society (1)[Internet]. (2022, March 29(A). Available from: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/miller-1.

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2022-03-22

Ancient Mythology, Scripture, and Believers’ Archetypal Genders

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/13

Armin Navabi is the Founder of the Atheist Republic. One of the most popular pages on Facebook for atheists that faced repeated censorship and shutdown from Facebook authorities. He was born in Tehran, Iran, and raised as a Muslim. Now, he is a former Muslim and an atheist living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Here we explore, in an educational series, the figures in the Abrahamic faiths from the view of a leading former Muslim, this is session 1.

*Audio interview edited for clarity and readability.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I asked about doing a series. We did an interview for Conatus News. I wanted to focus on The Good Men Project. In particular, masculinity within Islam and outside of it, and progressive developments that come from leaving it – and some that are inside of it. But you mentioned something about scripture and female and male figures, that you wanted to explore within Abrahamic faiths.

Armin Navabi:Yes, I think most ancient religions before the Abrahamic religions, if you look at their pantheon of gods, you can see female and male gods. People look at gods as parental figures, sometimes. If they look at the male gods as father figures, then the female gods as mother figures.

People they pray to when they need help. One thing I think was missing inside of the different versions of the Abrahamic faiths were the female figures. They were missing the female or mother deity. They miss something emotionally.

If you look at Catholics, they dealt with this through Mother Mary. Even though, the Bible has no reference to Mother Mary as holy or divine. This has been known scholars and Catholics. You can see Catholic doctrine introducing her assumption to heaven; it was a popular story at the time for them.

Based on popular demand, they made this canon. They added it to the doctrine. If you compare Catholics and Protestants, the Protestants focus on Jesus and God and pray to them. The Catholics pray to saints.

They ask for favors from saints. They do something Protestants don’t do, which is praying to figures other than God. One of the figures is Mother Mary. Protestants do not see Mother Mary as holy, but Catholics do.

When I was in the Philippines and Mexico, I felt as if Mother Mary is even more popular than Jesus. Some people prefer a father figure. It comes with someone who has power or control or wants to bring about wrath or punishment.

The mother figure is often someone we would want to appeal to for her compassion or sympathy. That is where Mother Mary comes in for a lot of Christians because the Christian doctrine didn’t have such as a female role or a mother role.

The Catholic’s added that role for Mother Mary based on popular demand, even though there is no mention of her rising to heaven in the Bible. In Islam, we see something similar in Shia Islam. As with Protestant’s focus on Jesus and God, you see something similar with Sunnis, as they only pray to Allah.

Even though they revere Muhammad so much, sometimes, it can be considered worship they themselves claim that Muhammad is never worshiped, and worship only belongs to God. Sunni Islam’s four Khalifas are not revered remotely close to how Muhammad is. They are not holy by any means.

In fact, there is a famous quote by Abu Bakr, the first Khalifa, right after Muhammad’s death: “He who worships Muhammad (peace be upon him) Muhammad is dead now, but he who worships Allah he is ever living and never dies.”

Their reason Sunnis revered Muhammad is that he is the role model of Allah and the perfect way to live, but not divine in any means.

The Shia have 12 Imams rather than 4 Khalifas. One of the Imams is the same as the fourth Khalifas of the Sunnis. The way the Shia look at the Imams is different than the way the Sunnis look at their Khalifas. These are holy infallible figures.

Shias pray and appeal to the Imams. They make requests, what is called dua. For Sunnis, this is Shirk. Shirk is one of the greatest sins in Islam. Shirk is the act of partnering others with God in worship.

Shias don’t consider this worship, but many Sunnis do, and because it is worship it is shirk. For example, when Shias put the shrine between them and Kabba while praying towards the Kabba, they are in effect also praying to the shrine of the Imams. This is highly offensive to many Sunnis.

If you look at Shia shrines, in Shia dominated countries, like Iraq or Iran, they are glamorously designed and in beautiful temple-like shrines. Shias consider these holy ground. But in Sunni dominated countries, like Saudi Arabia, where imams are buried, their burial is much more simple.

Even Sunnis look down on praying on Muhammad’s burial ground, the kings of Saudi Arabia are buried with very little ceremony because the dead should not be worshiped, even somebody as high as Muhammad.

For example, when Shias go to Sunni dominated countries to the burial grounds of their Imams, they are not allowed to pray to them. There are many reports of the religious police beating them because they found them praying to imams, which is an act of idolatry, dead worship, or shirk in their mind.

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2022-03-22

Canadian Small Perspective on Women’s Recognized Progress

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/12

I feel happy at the advancement of women in the important areas of life: arts and culture, education, politics, science, and religion. In order of presentation: women in the arts and culture, from the Canadian perspective – that I know best and not even that well – which is, frankly, individual arts and culture incubators – both of which herald in new eras in Canadian society such as Alice Munro, Joy Kogawa, Lee Maracle, Margaret Atwood, Nellie McClung, and some others.

For specific sectors of Canadian society, women and girls have earned (e.g., Lee Maracle, whose narratives focus on Indigenous women and feminists), through hard work and hardship, the broad praise of the arts and culture community in Canada, especially the longstanding, prominent, and productive hands of Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood, both of whom appear to garner respect and dignified approval outside of the borders of Canada. A mark of truly outstanding lives.

Some women, recently, up-and-coming such as Madeleine Thien, who won the prestigious Giller Prize, recently, come to the fore. As well, the intimate work written by Tracey Lindberg entitled Birdie, which tells another important Indigenous story. Arts and culture remains integral to the Canadian identity, which seems plural—dominated by some based on time and quantity of people with the history—and more, and more, diversified in voices.

Education remains another important domain of female, or women’s (a more personal and preferable term), achievement in this sweet country o’ mine. In the world, women tend to have fewer opportunities for education; and if chances for education, then fewer odds of advanced education without discrimination in it. Women and Educationby Statistics Canada states:

Women have progressed considerably in terms of education and schooling over the past few decades. Just 20 years ago, a smaller percentage of women than men aged 25 to 54 had a postsecondary education…Education indicators show that women generally do better than men. This gap in favour of women is even noticeable at a young age, since girls often get better marks than boys in elementary and secondary school.

As well, more girls than boys earn their high school diploma within the expected timeframe and girls are less likely to drop out. More women than men enrol in college and university programs after completing their high school education. A greater percentage of women leave these programs with a diploma or degree.

Most Canadian praise this, and share concern for boys and young men in education—which seems like a valid, important concern in developed nations, but, in an international analysis of the issue—on International Women’s Day, Canada does well in the education of girls and women in contrast to other nations.

In politics, ‘because it was 2015,’ the Canadian Prime Minister instantiated both the tactical political and equality maneuver for the first 50-50 sex-split Cabinet in Canadian history.

And, as far as I can discern, the first legacy Prime Minister–following in the cut brush of Pierre Trudeau, or his father—in Canadian history is the second Trudeau, the historic, and politically savvy motion, presented Canada to the world as a place of political equality.

When I think of science, some women exist in the history books, who seem less known—and I had to look some up, such as, in 1938, Elsie MacGill became the Chief Aeronautical Engineer at Canadian Car and Foundry where she was selected to assist in the construction of the Hurricane aircraft for the British Royal Air Force and Roberta Bondar with extensive training in neuroscience and medicine and selection for NASA based on the numerous academic credentials earned by her.

Lastly, religion, or irreligion for those so tended, Marie Morin was an exemplar. One women who was the first Canadian-born women that became a religious sister. In fact, she became a bursar and superior at Hospitalièrs of Montreal.

Lois Miriam Wilson was the first president, who was a woman, of the Canadian Council of Churches. And to the famous Canadian atheists, many exist: Kathryn Borel, Patricia Smith Churchland, Wendy McElroy, Hannah Moscovitch, and, of course, the wonderful Reverend Gretta Vosper.

Whether arts and culture, education, politics, science, and religion, International Women’s day as one peak to Women’s History Month is an important reflection, and, from one obscure Canadian’s view, this appears praiseworthy to me.

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2022-03-22

Cyberbullying Frays the Social Fabric, Cyberkindness Threads It

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/11

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In some recent research, you note the unfortunate global occurrence of bullying. In particular, the existence of cyberbullying. For readers, can you define cyberbullying? What negative psychological, emotional, and physical consequences arise from cyberbullying for the victims and the perpetrators?

Professor Wanda Cassidy: ‘Cyberbullying’ is bullying through online sources such as smart phones, Facebook, e-mail, blogs or chat rooms, or any of the various technological tools at our disposal. It involves sending harmful, derogatory, harassing, negative, sometimes repulsive – even sexual, messages or images to somebody with the intent to harm or hurt them. The impact is often quite devastating. It can cause sleeplessness, anxiety, depression, fear, inability to concentrate, and sometimes leads to suicidal thoughts. Cyberbullying is different from face-to-face bullying in that it can be anonymous: “Where is this coming? A friend, an acquaintance, a stranger, someone I sit next to in class, why are they doing this to me?” People are so connected online. They open their social networking sites and see a derogatory message from someone. How do they deal with it? Oftentimes, they cannot get rid of the message, which results in them being bullied over and over again.

Research shows that cyberbullying can start as early as age 9 or 10, extending into adolescence and dying down somewhat by age 15 or 16. In our current study we are looking at the extent of cyberbullying at the post-secondary level, among undergraduates and towards faculty members. We were surprised to learn that approximately 1/5 of undergraduate students at the 4 universities we studied had experiencing cyberbullying from another student, and approximately the same number of faculty members had been cyberbullied either by students and/or by colleagues. These messages can be hurtful—indeed devastating– at any age.

Jacobsen: Your conceptualization of ‘cyberkindness’ seems to me, in essence, digital civility, bringing civil discourse in the real world into the electronic media.

Cassidy: Yes, I call the internet and other outlets for communication a ‘flat medium’, in that, they cannot convey facial expressions, body language, or tone of voice, and therefore the intent of a message may be misinterpreted. Further the sender does not see the impact a message might have on the recipient, such as they might see in face-to-face bullying. We have yet to learn more effective ways to communicate through technology.

Also, we have cyberbullying because bullying is present in the wider society, and too many are rewarded for their bullying behaviour. Politicians bully each other and sometimes seem to relish in the experience. Countries bully each other, employers bully employees, corporations bully each other to get an edge in the market, and so on.

We need to look at what is being modelled by adults, since modelling is one of the most powerful teachers. Young people learn not only from what they are told, but what they experience and see being modeled around them.

Jacobsen: What strategies can students employ individually and collectively to reduce the occurrence and harms of cyberbullying and bullying in general? In addition, within your recent work, you discuss the development of “cyber-kindness” and an “ethic of care”. For readers, what is the abridged definition of this terminology, and the practical application and outcome of them?

Cassidy: I began researching cyberbullying because I had done research on the ethic of care and the positive impact this philosophy had on students, teachers and the school culture. When I began to investigate cyberbullying, I did not want to deal with the negative alone. I wanted to look at the notion of “cyber-kindness” and the ways in which technology could be used to communicate positive, respectful and kind messages. This notion of care is situated within the broader philosophical worldview of Nel Nodding’s and Carol Gilligan’s work – caring being a relational ethic. Here caring is not a ‘fuzzy’ feeling, by rather showing empathy towards the other, understanding the needs of the other, and working in the other’s best interests.

Schools that embrace the ethic of care have less bullying and cyberbullying, because they focus on relationships, empathy and the understanding of others. For example, a couple of years ago, we worked with a school where five grade 7 girls were actively cyberbullying each other with really nasty comments on a social networking site. The principal, rather than suspending them, saw their leadership potential and re-directed the negative energy they had towards each other into working on productive projects at the school. She met with them once a week and, as the discussions unfolded, they apologized to each other about the hurtful messages they had been sending. They stopped these negative interchanges, but more importantly, ended up contributing to the school, and influencing the culture of the whole school. Their enthusiasm for doing positive things was infectious and spilled over to the other grades as well.

What this principal demonstrated is that it is important to address the root causes of cyberbullying, not just the symptoms (i.e. the behaviour).

Jacobsen: In a hypothetical perfect world with plenty of funding and time, and if guaranteed an answer, what single topic would you research?

Cassidy: Ways to create a kinder world, how do we change the ‘human being’ to become more respectful and kinder to one another? I am somewhat of a utopian in this regard.

Perhaps we can start by getting to know our neighbour, and by this, I mean getting to know others outside of our circle or enclave. Entering into a dialogue, listening to others and learning from others. A kinder world would be a more peaceful world and a happier world.

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2022-03-22

Powerful Historic and Present Attempts to Obliterate Reproductive Rights

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/10

Paul Krassner published The Realist (1958-2001), but when People magazine labeled him “father of the underground press,” he immediately demanded a paternity test. And when Life magazine published a favorable article about him, the FBI sent a poison-pen letter to the editor calling Krassner “a raving, unconfined nut.” “The FBI was right,” George Carlin responded. “This man is dangerous — and funny, and necessary.” While abortion was illegal, Krassner ran an underground referral service, and as an antiwar activist, he became a co-founder of the Yippies (Youth International Party).

Krassner’s one-person show won an award from the L.A. Weekly. He received an ACLU (Upton Sinclair) Award for dedication to freedom expression. At the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, he was inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame — “my ambition,” he claims, “since I was three years old.” He won a Playboy Award for satire and a Feminist Party and in 2010 the Oakland branch of the writers’ organization PEN honored him with their Lifetime Achievement Award. “I’m very happy to receive this award,” he concluded in his acceptance speech, “and even happier that it wasn’t posthumous.”

Paul is a friend, and colleague through the Advisory Board for In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. He asked to do an interview with me. I agreed.

Paul Krassner: Do you think that Donald Trump will face an impeachment and a criminal case or will he get away with it? Same with Mike Pence? If they are both kicked out of the White House, would Paul Ryan become the next president which he wanted when he ran as Mitt Romney’s vice president?

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To preface, I will note: personally, neither an expert nor an authority – good rule of thumb, do not believe me. I’m simply Scott trying to reason through things. I may veer off the tracks of the question.

As a necessary statement at the outset, often, prediction seems best left to historians. Also, prediction seems harder than ever because the world became more complicated. Synoptic judgments about anything seems hard, let alone near future extrapolations from the synopses.

Even so, many of these thoughts will not seem novel or necessarily profound, at least not to those railroaded through life on propaganda. As per Paul Mooney’s statements about the US, it has a propaganda system that is unreal, in its influence and ubiquity.

Although, if I can reason to a possible outcome, I should note Bob Wilson’s observation: the political Left’s view of big business and the Right’s view of government are both probably correct.

In America, there are over 320 million citizens looking at the spectacle, even the circus act or “freak show” – as someone dead mentioned on many occasions. Most things go noticed now. Social media makes everyone a commentator too.

Also, I say this, apparently, as a Canadian, and in other ways not so much. Not only the United States of America, the world as well, with the velocity and power of modern high technology, sits in the front row seat to the freak show. Some things became obvious to more American citizens, and the world, than before, especially the fence-sitters.

A friend of mine in California is an independent mathematician. He has been keeping intermittent track of Trump compared to previous presidents. By his estimations, Trump has done worse than any other president this early in their administration.

Most of the others ‘had the courtesy to die’ before potential impeachment. For these first questions, I looked at various sources. They did not help me. Some say high odds for impeachment. Others tell of low chances. It depends, but seems like a possibility.

With the antics on the campaign trail, whether word or deed, some thought Trump, as a Republican presidential candidate, would fail. Once elected, and past the shock, the open attacks on women’s rights, science and, therefore, medicine, shook some of the country.

Especially women, which seems to have the silver lining, citizens continue the venerable American tradition: community and societal mobilization for the good. I suspect with the ugly behaviour and talk around, and about, women tied to attack’s on women’s rights.

Women in the US will continue to protest and fight for their rights more, probably than ever. It seems instructive to note. The current generations of women represent the most formally educated and free women, globally speaking, likely in human history.

As long as things do not become too acrimonious, though things will likely become worse before better, American citizens may gather together from the ground up. To an extent, I agree with the official Pryor torchbearer, Dave Chappelle. It is important to show “local politics reigns supreme.”

In the North American countries, as appears known in tacit sub-cultures, we live in technologically advanced and ideologically primitive societies with majoritarian or democratic rule. In that, in the democratic system, the majority rules the state, the nation, or the country.

Most Americans adhere to the eldest ideological stances, relative to recorded human history, in the canon. Through the majoritarian vote, the same dominant sector’s adherence to the archaic ideologies with emotional appeal linked to high technology yield enormous power.

We need constructive alternative programs for civil society outside of the mainstream of politics. We need Americans to revive, and Americans – in Christian terms – need the ‘resurrection’ of, the ‘spirit’ of the 1960s.

That means the time of flux, change, and expansive vision, and so the possibility for the constructive future rather than destructive one based on anger, desperation, and contractive conceptions of human possibility.

Take, for example, the American protest of the Vietnam War. The protests happened during the fighting. US citizens protested the current, ongoing, wars prior to the main fighting. Now, citizens continue to protest with proportioned critical thought about institutions with power too, in the world’s most powerful democracy – though much evidence to the contrary, simultaneously.

Now, to the Wilson point, in a strange, or maybe not so bizarre, coming together, big business and government became one. It is flaunted too, especially cruelly as the majority of ordinary people see stagnant or declining wages for decades – and the need to be competitive with sweatshop workers, often in slave labour conditions, halfway around the world.

American citizens, with good reason, distrust institutions – and, unfortunately, each other – and have the indignation and anger to make change, but directed in messy, destructive, and even counterproductive, ways. I see a big signal of this being true.

Both the political Left and, some of the, Right, speaking loosely and simply, became enraged over Trump’s election, and the administration’s decisions. Even so, the hammer is pounded on the Left and laid to rest on the Right, as a partial observation.

Hammer blows to the Left’s goals, principles, and values. Mild, consistent pressure on some of the Right’s ones. It’s not equal opportunity punishment. Two big targets seem attacked, with one common victim set.

The least among us, as the victims. Women’s rights and science, in general, as the targets. To the former, women won the right to vote, in 1920 – not simply propertied or land-owning women. Women won the right and privilege to equal access to jobs and careers, to a significant extent.

Now, take the “Global Gag” rule, the targeted defunding of, by Human Rights Watch’s analysis, a human right: “equitable access to safe abortion services is first and foremost a human right.” Women will die throughout the world as a direct result of the recent Global Gag rule.

As you know, when decades prior running an underground referral service, abortion, and reproductive health technologies in general, continue to remain new, and the frontier of the modern attacks on women’s rights.

By the way, based on Human Rights Watch, any, even most or all, pro-life positions become anti-human right by implication. Denial of abortion equates to denial of a human right – take your pick, for or against.

To the latter, to the assault on science and scientists, the placement of non-scientists or non-science fact respecting people into positions of both tremendous power and influence, and relevance for science, and the further defunding of scientific programs.

The United States will damage its scientific and cultural reputation. Also, the reduction in the quality of science education, and provisions at the highest level, will reduce the depth and precision of the scientific decisions made by America. Decisions that speed global warming.

If not impeached, with Trump, we seem lucky, even in another colder country – though warming. We know the president’s ideology: me. We understand Trump’s motivation: to be liked. He can, by accident, benefit the general population, if benefits exist for his ego through feeling liked by people.

If Pence becomes president, we have a whole other set of issues with a sincere Christian fundamentalist: “I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.” If Ryan, the federal government may outlaw carbohydrates.

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2022-03-22

111 (Votes) to 1: the Not-So Golden Ratio

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/09

International rights stipulations provide the basis for fundamental human rights. As Ban Ki-Moon has said, “We are all different from one another, but we all have the same human rights. I am proud to stand for the equality of all people – including those whose are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.”

Numerous resolutions, from both the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly, make human rights inclusive of LGBT peoples, and LGBT rights distinct and important too. These are not some distant considerations, but immediate, impacting people’s lives, and violated on a consistent basis – hour-by-hour. One recent national event, from Chad, came from a distressing ratio of votes – 111 to 1 – and reiterated this perennial truism.

Last month, Chad’s National Assembly voted for a new penal code which criminalises homosexuality with 111 MPs voting for it, 1 against and 4 abstaining. This made Chad the 77th country internationally, and was the 37th country in Africa to criminalise homosexuality. Under the new law, people engaging in homosexual acts can be heavily fined (£60-£600) or serve a 20-year prison sentence.

In fact, according to a legal report by the US Library of Congress all African states, with the exception of South Africa, recognises and permits same-sex marriage. More specifically, in Nigeria, Sudan and Mauritania, homosexuality is punishable by death. This action of Chad’s National Assembly comes after Gambia passed a bill imposing life imprisonment for homosexual acts.

The fact that the vast majority – only 1 exception and 4 abstentions – of Chad’s National Assembly supported the new penal code is worrying. This bill was also supported by the country’s former Prime Minister, Delwa Kassiré Coumakoye, who mentioned that “homosexuality is condemned by all religions. We do not have to forgive something that God himself rejects because Westerners have said this or that”.

There are two issues we need to discuss here: First, the fact that religion plays a role in determining what is legal and what is not. Second, the fact that the former Prime Minister considers that it is a strong point of the new penal code that it does not conform to “Western” styles and principles.

In an era that nations fight for secularism, supporting the complete separation of church and state, some African nations, including Chad, make decisions solely on religious grounds.

What is more, Chad’s cabinet mentioned that the new penal code intends to “protect the family and to comply with Chadian society”. It is indeed a worrying fact how nations, like Chad, commit the argumentum ad antiquitatem (appeal to tradition) fallacy and base a whole penal code on tradition, family values and religion.

There is no reason or logic involved in supporting the new penal code apart from subjective statements of this nature. And it is scary to think that because of subjective statements people are going to end up in prison or get heavily fined. The former PM even called the bill a “fair balance”. This leaves us wondering, however, what may ever be “fair” about the bill when it criminalises basic human rights.

Furthermore, there is every reason to argue that anti-Westernisation is not considered a valid reason for supporting the country’s new penal code. In fact, it shows quite the opposite – its weaknesses.

First of all, the issue is not even about what Western countries do. It’s what humans do. As the great journalist and religious critic Christopher Hitchens has said: “I say that homosexuality is not just a form of sex, it’s a form of love — and it commands our respect for that reason”.

Granting homosexuals the right to engage in relationships, sexual acts or marry is itself the same right we are talking about when talking about heterosexuals.

No difference is or should be made. In fact, criminalising homosexuality is itself an act that does not serve to protect people of any society or tradition as it on its very basis does not take into consideration that a respected part of the population is attracted to people of the same sex, or even to people of both sexes. Any appeal to religion or tradition fails to provide us with a logical basis on which to support the claims that supporters of Chad’s new penal code which punishes homosexuality make.

Indeed, this “form of love” can be outlawed, and made extraordinarily risky and even lethal in its practice because of cultural and legal factors. Take, for example, the case of Tanzania suspending the outreach programmes for HIV. Why would there be a suspension for outreach programmes for HIV? The reason: homosexuality is outlawed within Tanzania and, therefore, within the logic of the system, seen as not worth considering for appropriate, and needed, outreach for HIV.

And it is not like there aren’t campaigns devoted to the implementation of the international rights via international movements – the UN Free & Equal is one such campaign, and “is an unprecedented United Nations global public education campaign for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality” (OHCHR, 2016b). These are old prejudices, and they keep cropping up. Again, why? It is easier to hate than to love, at least in the short-term.

Which leads back to the international Moral-Educator-in-Chief, Ban Ki-Moon, who said, “It is an outrage that in our modern world so many countries continue to criminalise people simply for loving another human being of the same sex…Laws rooted in 19th century prejudices are fuelling 21st century hate.”

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2022-03-22

Cognitive Thrift 72 – Aida

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It’s like Aida: “Fortune favors the brave.”

Rick Rosner: It’s this one frickin’ gambler and it seems like a rare chain of events, but you’ve got hundreds of millions of years to work with and so rare events are what evolution is built out of anyway, and it is one more way for variation and innovation to sneak into evolution.

It’s kind of like a little ramp to let species jump to other species or to incorporate new behaviors, which eventually, if they persist long enough may be reflected in physical changes to the species.

Throughout evolutionary history, you probably have a bunch of losery animals that turn out t be heroes just like somebody in a John Hughes movie.

Jacobsen: Could there have been moderate to major steps throughout these low probability events in the species to drive cognitive systems to favor compactification of information?

Rosner: Yes, but let’s talk about – the deal is that old school evolutionary theory, just a few years past Darwin thought it was all gradualistic. Darwin was a gradualist, like water flowing through the canyons for tens of millions of years as opposed to the catastrophists who thought that huge single events happened that made these huge mountains shoot up.

New school evolutionary theory or semi-new evolutionary theory thanks to guys like Stephen Jay Gould includes Punctuated Equilibrium, which more accurately reflects the fossil record, which shows animals existing in a steady state for generation after generation until something disturbs them and then in a fairly short time you have new species.

Maybe, it is like one of those things like a bunch of those animals end up isolated because a path gets washed away, what is a peninsula is now an island.

They’re on warthog island afraid to make their own set of new warthog principles based on the genetics of the 18 warthogs who were isolated there from the pack of several hundred, or Darwin’s finches – whatever finch island gives you a new set of whatever.

People who are anti-evolution love to say show me the gradual things. Evolutionists say that nothing changes gradually. Dog changes gradually as all of history would let them change.

Things are the same…things stay the same for hundreds of thousands of years in a species, and then there’s some chance set of occurrences, genetic changes, changes in the niche, and all of the sudden you’ve got speciation over a period of probably a couple of thousand years, and even as quickly as a few hundred years, but fast and the anti-evolutionists are like “Oh no! Show us the missing link” and the evolutionists say, ‘What change comes happens relatively fast…” and so it’s easy to find steady-state examples of trilobites, and where they change into something else is a little more difficult, and this is jump one more ramp to make the jump from species to species, which is periodic stress induced fluidity of thought.

A low probability behavior, but one that is necessary because species face stress, and sometimes it pays off big time.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 71 – Survival

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Evolution tends to have its presentation in the public sphere as species and their stories. However, there is another aspect to do with individual members, members of the species. Their survival is related to the species survival in low probability, extreme events.

Rick Rosner: The way people think about evolution is competing members of species with the – as competition among members of species with the most physically able members prevailing and sending their genes down the line, their lineage, and survival of the fittest to be a group of fairly interchangeable hyenas or gazelles and the best one’s survive to send their gazelle or hyena gens down the line, and the environment changes and still the gazelles still change with environment.

But there’s still another story that is just as important to evolution, little offshoots of species on the one hand or a set of a few members of the species find them geographically isolated or find a new geographic area and reproduce among themselves and become different from the parent species, and this is something you don’t get unless you’re doing cognitive thrift.

Evolution is also the story of the animal under stress. That the losery animal that takes a gamble that is forced to take on non-standard behavior and non-standard thought, and gets lucky that this pays off and that this, maybe, becomes part of the species’ repertoire long enough to put evolutionary pressure on the species the members that good at this particular behavior and it eventually becomes hardwired into the species.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 70 – Range

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It’s the same with Google Glass.

Rick Rosner: It’s the same, but that cell phone technology is so delicious and convenient to everybody that there was no stopping everyone from being drawn to it eventually, when they became cool enough, easy enough, to use. It will be the same thing with a lot of future technology that seems creepy to us now or seems like the same to humanity now.

Some of it will be so delicious, so intriguing, exciting, convenient that at adaption will become the norm. You’ll have a technical cultural evolution. We’re already in the middle or beginning of that. We’re already in that process.

We’re at the beginning because you don’t see a big division between colonies of tech rejecters and tech super adaptors, but as with natural evolution where over time you end up with a range organisms of varying complexity and varying life strategies.

You’ll see a spreading out of humanity into various groups based on how much and what tech they embrace, and increasingly the embracing of some tech will reflect life strategies. It will reflect a life strategy, which will often reflect a thought strategy.

In the arising of humanity, there is the rise of fairly consistent and competent thought, where we reached a level where we’re god at thinking about stuff. If you look at a dog, a dog is just confused by everything.

A dog knows what a dog knows, and is decent as dog stuff, but beyond that is hopeless. But with humanity, we reached the point where we can pretty much decode whatever part of the world we focus our attention on.

So, the payoff matrix to go back to that thing for divergent thought. The value in that box is changed now because we’re good at thinking. The payoff for divergence is such that it becomes a stable strategy, disruption becomes its own thing.

And we can look for that to continue into the future in ways that are both qualitatively and quantitatively different.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 69 – German Blood

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Some people might feel confused because you were talking about the creepiness of eugenics, genetic manipulation for some deal. We can bar crazy ideas like the purity of German blood and all of those nasty things, but that technological adaptation and reconfiguring of people is in a way a silicon eugenics.

How do you bring those two together and reconcile the rejection of the eugenic view and accept the technological adaptationist view?

Rick Rosner: You can call it eugenics, but that just makes it kind of creepy. It is a going beyond or a no longer being subject to evolutionary genetics and using genetics and other tools to willfully engineer yourself or other entities instead of playing the genetic lottery.

And a general theme of science fiction of turning into reality is science fiction predicts all sorts of weird things, and you can even leave science fiction out of it.

Advances, science fictioney advances how up first often in weird or creepy ways or used by weird or creepy people and then it’s only later when they get adapted by just about everybody.

There was a time when people had car phones and most people thought that the first people with car phones were dicks. And most people thought the first people with cell phones were dicks walking around with cell phones talking in public.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 68 – Artificial Intelligence

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s something that comes to the head with all of the things that we’ve been talking about in this conversation. These have to do with the two major themes of evolutionary theory.

One, species survival; two, individual survival. With an individual’s drive for reproduction, an expression of species survival. Therefore, they are not as easily demarcated, but to simplify let’s look at strategies for the future when artificial intelligence becomes a lot more prevalent.

Rick Rosner: There are two main evolutionary forces in people. Due to evolution, we have two main drives. One is for individual survival. The other is for species survival or reproduction.

In the near future, the one that will be the most changed is the drive for reproduction as technology means that we can live longer and longer, then the drive to reproduce in our 20s, 30s will be lessened.

If people are living healthy and attractive lives to 100, they won’t necessarily want to have kids at the ages that people want to do now.

Eventually, as lifespans become even longer, many people may not want to have kids at all. The main divide where the spectrum of strategies among people will be how technically advanced or how technically Amish you want to be.

At the Amish end, people will decide that it is important to preserve humanity as humanity in using traditional forms and lifestyles and bodies, and knowledge, and we’ll very – depending on your level of technical Amishness, you’ll avoid more or less of the available technology.

Then there will be the technologically satisfied masses, who are like mid-adapters, mid-adopters. They go along with everybody else and take the path of least resistance to technological change.

And then on the other end there are the people who want to completely reshape themselves and their communities using all available technology and this will involve re-examining all of our evolved drives.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 67 – Sets

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We’re talking about meta-game theory as applied to cognitive thrift. If we want to define this in more formal terms, we can define this as sets and elements with the elements as individual organisms and meta-game theory including sets with greater than one element and the payoff matrices between 2 or more sets – where sets can be groups or species.

Rick Rosner: What you’re calling meta-game theory is game theory applied to multiple groups or more complicated situations with, I guess, averaging across groups, what groups do rather than large numbers of individuals do in some instances. Anyway, it’s more complicated game theory.

One thing that evolution has revealed is that there is more than one successful general strategy as far as thought goes and half of the organisms on the planet have no brains and do no thinking, and they’re very successful.

People misunderstand evolution. Among the misunderstandings that people have about evolution is that evolution proceeds in the direction of increasing complexity, which is not exactly what happens.

Evolution having no agenda wanders randomly from a base of zero, no life. Life originates. It’s going to be pretty simple because it’s the first kind of life. In terms of complexity, over the next 4 billion years, species wander all over the place. Some becoming more complex.

Some becoming less complex. Some becoming stable. As new species arise, they can go in any possible direction and one of the directions is towards increasing complexity, and so over billions of years the niches that require increasing complexity get occupied.

Other niches that don’t require that kind of complexity mostly stay occupied. We still have relatively simple forms of life. It is not a march towards complexity. It is a random march in all sorts of directions, which continues to order proof that there are various strategies that lead to successful species because there are all these niches that require anything from zero thought on the part of viruses -there’s so much stuff that viruses don’t have including neurons.

Things like starfish, which are fairly large organisms that I don’t think have brains, but which are a successful species.

So, if you want to move onto groups of humans, I live in LA. So I get jealous when I see somebody in traffic who is obviously succeeding because they are obviously cute or super studly and they are driving a range rover, and they are obviously kind of an idiot.

You can tell sometimes. But they have followed a different life strategy which involves being attractive, but not necessarily smart. Occasionally, somebody like that will surprise and be really smart. There are plenty of examples – anyway.

As we move into the future with an increasing, there’s a coming proliferation of artificially engineered thought coming. People will have to decide what their strategy is going to be in terms of embracing technology that aids thought.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 66 – Richard Pryor

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You mentioned comedy. One prominent example: Richard Pryor His circumstances seem to indicate what you’re saying. He had terrible circumstances, but had tons of original thoughts.

Rick Rosner: Yea – it helps to have – sometimes it helps to have an unusual background. I think he grew up in his aunt’s whorehouse.

Jacobsen: His grandmother’s whorehouse. He was born with a prostitute mother and a pimp father. His mother abandoned him. His father beat him. His grandmother beat him.

Rosner: Some kind of dictatorial do-gooder could have shut down that whole lineage at some point for being or having anti-social and criminal tendencies or something, and then we wouldn’t have a Richard Pryor.

In a more pastoral sense, nobody was going to sterilize Charles Darwin’s family for any reason, but just in terms of having a different background leading to great thoughts. The guy goes on a five-year sea voyage and sees a selection of animal life and geologic formation that pretty much no one had – it’s not that anybody had seen that stuff before, but nobody was ready to see the stuff they saw in the way that Darwin was – without the constant goading for five years of novelty. Who knows if he would’ve come up with his theories?

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 65 – Everything

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Or what seems like everything.

Rick Rosner: Yea – one more thing. There’s a guy in the 19th century, early 20th century, Francis Galton. He was pre-genetics, but looked at the heritability of giftedness, and was one of the first people to come out in favor of eugenics.

Darwinism and genetics got all mixed into a stew of half-understood science in the 1920s and 30s. You had people coming out in favor of eugenics. The genetically inferior should be prevented from reproducing. It is super creepy, especially when you look at the Nazi involvement in it, and if different behavior and different thought is triggered by stress and tough circumstances, then eugenics has things completely backwards.

That if you only go with the fittest and best, you’re going with the most well-adjusted, and if you’re going for originality of thought, that may not be the place to look. You may have to look at the inferior, the broken, the under stress because those people may be the ones to come up with new ways of doing things and looking at things.

We can probably look at history and find dozens of examples of the supposedly genetically inferior overcoming inadequate circumstances. Both in themselves and in their environments to come up with new thought.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 64 – Jocks vs. Nerds

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We’ve talked a lot in this particular interview. We’ve talked about a new field or discipline called cognitive economics or cognitive thrift. One of the themes you have brought to the fore with evolutionary history and human history is ‘jocks vs. nerds,’ which seems to reflect high school experiences. Can you elaborate?

Rick Rosner: I was born in the 60s. I was going to high school in the 70s, back then it is junior high and high school in the 70s. Back then, nerds were seriously socially handicapped by being nerds. Jocks were super cool. I wanted to be super cool and I did a lot of thinking about how to be, and failing at trying to be, and resenting that people couldn’t see my inner qualities.

Basically, I was every kid in every freakin’ John Hughes movie and high school movie in the 70s about the sensitive kids that wins the girl because of his inner qualities, which is not the way it works at least in the 70s.

Anyway, the dynamic seems to be one that is reflected in and rooted in game theory seems to be a running theme throughout the history of life. Where stable behavior, the fit organisms in stable niches are rewarded for standard behavior, and organisms less fit, less fit organisms, or organisms less fit at changing niches in order to go for any kind of payout have to go for the gamble of aberrant behavior or divergent behavior, different behavior.

And standard behavior is cognitively compact. Everything’s been worked out or most things have been worked out, and it doesn’t take as much thinking as effective divergent behavior and thinking. Divergent different behavior is a risk, which means that it’s only for the desperate. For less fit organisms, gambling on a new way to get what they need or organisms under pressure, niche pressure.

But over all of evolutionary history, organisms will develop some capacity for flexibility of thought and behavior. That kind of pressure shows up too much. The pressure to change for organisms not to have or not to develop the ability to change. Eventually, you get to primates and us, who have embraced cognition and change as a niche of its own.

Where we’re free to look for regularity, exploitable regularity wherever we can find it. In early evolutionary history, divergent thinking is on a very small, almost non-existent scale, and it may not or probably does not work that well most of the time, but now we are creatures who niche is based on constantly changing our minds.

I want to note that the writer George Saunders had the same idea at the expression of joy at information gained at little expense. Same as I, not that I’m stealing from him. It’s just that we came up with the same idea. He should be cited for that.

Another point is the idea that appropriate stress. One possible reaction of stress in an organism, especially a higher organism is higher thought. Things, if you’re under pressure and standard behaviour hasn’t worked, it may make or we may have or evolved creatures may have tendencies to think more fluidly, where standard behavior is the default mode, but the default mode under stress is not working is fluid behavior and thought.

One very iffy clue is life supposedly passes in front of your eyes when you’re in mortal danger. I don’t know how well substantiated that is, but perhaps if true that that is some kind of desperate last ditch information dump that you might be able to pull anything or something out of that to save yourself when nothing seems to be working, or it can be seen as the extreme expression of – if normal stress unlocks locked up thought then maybe extreme stress unlocks everything.

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Cognitive Thrift 63 – Compactification

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Now, that we’ve define thought, somewhat. We can describe a little more about compactification because things seem to be coming to a head here.

Rick Rosner: The brain wants to think about stuff so it doesn’t have to think about it anymore. You brain wants to sort stuff out, make stuff rule bound, and make relationships as concrete as they can possibly be, it is expensive to throw information into consciousness and when information enters consciousness, and it becomes available to your entire conscious brain.

All of the different modules that together constitute your conscious awareness. It is a big heavy-duty arena for dealing with novelty. You hope that your brain can find relationships, produce confusion, sort stuff out so you don’t have to think about stuff anymore, and so you can learn with learning being hardwiring information.

So, it’s associations. It’s relationships and new information, and new information’s relationship to old information is compactified. You figure out what the relationships are and it’s locked in so it’s used, easily retrievable and not confusing.

It’s clean. It takes up less room in your brain. You can think about stuff as it shows up so you don’t have to think about it later, and later you can, if your brain is working right, when the information is relevant you can retrieve it and the landscape of associations pull it back up when it seems to be relevant to new situation and new information.

So, one major function of consciousness is to take big blobs of information, boil them down into small and clear associations, among the things that are already in your memory or consciousness.

And, for instance, I am a joke writer for TV or have been one, and I have been looking at jokes as an example of something that used this process, though probably to no good purpose, but they illustrate how it works.

A joke has a setup, which is often fairly complicated with a lot of moving parts. A priest, a nun, two penguins, and a rabbi walk into an airplane that they are about to jump out of, and then the punch line takes that whole situation and resolves into one or two supposedly amusing truths.

The rabbi, it may be something about how depending on – this is racist or whatever – maybe, it is about how Jews are good with money. The nuns are sexually repressed, and there’s nobody flying the plane. Who knows what?

It takes a complicated situation and resolves it into one simple truth and you’re happy that you’ve got a complicated piece of information resolved into simplicity and you laugh because you’re happy that you learned something cheaply, even though it’s fake learning.

It might not be fake learning. If it is a joke that reminds you that Kim Kardashian owes her entire career started with her making a sex tape, then maybe that is something valuable to know because maybe it reflects something about celebrity at this point in history, but the brain is interested in compact information. And also, we’ll have to figure out how this fits into everything, how information is gained cheaply.

I guess that means pre-digested information in the context of cognitive economics, when I was a kid and wanted to get big and muscly so I could get a girlfriend.

I used to drink this stuff called pre-digested protein and they would take all the junk parts of cows like hooves and render it into amino acids, hence it was pre-digested protein, and supposedly it was already broken down, and your body didn’t have to work as hard to turn it into muscle. It was nasty and it tasted like vomit, but cherry flavored.

I think jokes are an expression of glee for getting a piece of predigested information, where you didn’t have to work it out. It’s been worked out for you, and it is as somebody else’s expense and you got a piece of knowledge and you’re happy, and reflects the brain’s natural tendency to want information and want it cheaply.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 62 – Thought

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Maybe, we should define thought. What is thought? What defines thought?

Rick Rosner: Okay, so, there – off the top of my head, there are a couple different kinds of thought: thought and pre- or sub-conscious. Thought that you are aware of because it is part of your consciousness to the extent that you are paying attention at all, and thought that is still kind of taking place in your nervous system, in your brain, and down your spinal column, but is still pretty automatic. Reflexes, walking, breathing, wincing when somebody you hate, your hated political candidate comes on the TV.

So, and in a more general sense, thinking is information processing done by your nervous system above a certain level of complexity, and you’re free to – if you play your hand back from a hot … that reflex action is generally, it is nervous action that is more complicated than that. Although, I’m sure nervous reactions are more complicated than that.

If you want to get really tautological, it’s what your brain does with information.

[End of recorded material]

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Conversation with Gary McLelland – Chief Executive, International Humanist and Ethical Union

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/19

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How does IHEU fight for the rights of the religious and the non-religious?

Gary McLelland: The IHEU is the only global democratic membership body for the range of non-religious organisations in the world. We are a network of atheist, humanist, laique, skeptic, ethical cultural and other groups.

IHEU does a range of activity to promote the rights of non-religious people. We primarily do this through the lense of ‘freedom of religion or belief’ or “FoRB” as it’s known to many. This is the idea that people should be treated equally regardless of their religious or other beliefs, such as humanism, atheism and so on.

The power of this approach is that it’s grounded in international human rights laws (Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights). This means that we can use global and regional institutions to highlight and challenge states who violate, or fail to protect, atheists and other non-religious people.

We do this by speaking out at the United Nations on the danger of so-called ‘blasphemy laws’, calling for the protection of dissenters and apostates within Islam, but because the ‘FoRB’ agenda also calls for the protection of religious groups – it means that we can work with religious leaders to call for secularism and freedom of expression.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t also criticize religion and religious organisations. Recently we published a video interview with Armin Navabi, who founded the world’s most popular online platform for atheists – Atheist Republic.

Jacobsen: If a state has any position on faith that isn’t neutral, it favours one faith over others as well no faith. What countries are leading the way for fairness and justice at the level of the law and public institutions?

McLelland: I’ll refer here to the IHEU Freedom of Thought Report. This looks at discrimination against the non-religious in every country, and therefore looks at public institutions and the attitude of the state to religion. States that fare best in our rating system in the report are countries like Belgium, Netherlands, also Taiwan. Iceland and Japan also do pretty well. France, which of course is renowned for its laïcité secularism, believe it or not only has a nearly clean sweep: some local exceptions and exemptions for overseas territories are problematic.

Interestingly, both Netherlands and Belgium, which get clean-sweep ratings in our report, both use a kind of “pillar model” of secular neutrality, as opposed to a strict separation model. It means for example that they might fund certain religious groups in some way, but would also do the same for comparable secular groups. Now that’s not to every secularist’s tastes, but it does exhibit neutrality and non-discrimination.

Jacobsen: What countries simply aren’t doing the aforementioned?

McLelland: Most countries have some degree of religious privilege in how the state treats some religious groups. It can take the form of subsidies that are open only to religious groups, or probably more often in fact these subsidies just exist solely for the purpose of propping up some particular denominational church with historic significance to the state. That’s common in Europe and Latin America for example. There’s state funding for religious schools in many countries. A lot of predominantly or historically Catholic countries have very problematic arrangement with the Catholic Church. And in so many countries there’s a kind of deference or official recognition to certain religious groups that sets them apart and elevates their beliefs above those of their neighbours. There’s really too much to mention here: all countries except those I mentioned above are going to be contravening secularism in some way. And of course across much of the Islamic world the word ‘privilege’ doesn’t even begin to cover it anymore: in states like Iran, Saudi, Pakistan, and increasingly even in places like Indonesia, Maldives and so on with resurgent Islamist influence, you see the massive repression of freedom of thought, and the unapologetic alignment of the state with a particular set of really fundamentalist religious values, imprisoning people for blasphemy, even threatening ‘apostates’ with death in some cases.

Jacobsen: Who seems to be the most reasonable and reasoned irreligious person you’ve ever met? Why this person? How do they penetrate to the core of the issues around faith and secularism, and society?

McLelland: That’s a tough question! Different writers and thinkers place emphasis on different things depending on their experiences and interests.

I think one of the most interesting and stimulating thinkers for me is AC Graying. I find his sober, engaging and optimistic analysis very interesting. He is able to analyse situations and formulate ideas which are, in my view, of great value to those of us working in campaigning or advocacy.

I would recommend any of his books, and there are lots of videos available on Youtube.

Jacobsen: What book is a good primer on humanism? Where can folks get it?

McLelland: I think a good overview of humanism is Peter Cave’s book “Humanism: A Beginner’s Guide”, you can get it very easily online. There’s also a very good book on the history of the IHEU called “International Humanist and Ethical Union 1952-2002” by Bert Gasenbeek and Babu Gogineni.

I also think it’s important that we recognise that while for many humanism is an intellectual position, there is a growing number of people around the world for whom it is a lived experience. I think we need to be more open to that, and avoid intimidating people who might not be as interested in the intellectual side.

For instance another great way to get involved in humanism can be through attending event and conferences, b getting to meet and speak to like minded people. I often find these kind of personal engagements some of the most rewarding.

Jacobsen: Does humanism align closely with internationalist principles and values enshrined in various documents such as the UN Charter?

McLelland: Yes, very much so. The post-war developments in human rights law and internationalism were heavily influenced by humanist thinkers. As an example, Julian Huxley who presided over the opening Congress of the IHEU was also responsible for setting-up UNESCO.

It’s not a huge surprise that humanist thinking was a leading inspiration for the development of human rights. When we think about it, human rights are based on the self-evident goal that we all share for the enjoyment of the greatest amount of happiness and well-being which is possible. There is no divine motive, or reference to authority – it’s quite simply humanist thinking in practice.

This is way even today one of the most important parts of IHEU’s work is to maintain delegations at the major international institutions, such as the United Nations, Council of Europe, African Commission on Human and People’s Rights and many others.

However, there is a risk to these hard-fought battles. As we see the reemergence of nationalism and populism across much of the world, we see a tendency from radicals of different political perspectives to want to break the principle of universality which has guided our work for decades. Instead they want to insert narrow differences, divide and seek to foster disagreements for their own cynical means.

Our challenge is to be able to communicate the success of international cooperation and universal human rights in a way which makes sense in people’s lives.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Gary.

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Conversation with Terry Murray on Sexual Minorities, Religion, and the UK

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/18

SJ: What is the general perspective of the Christian population of the sexual minority population in the United Kingdom?

TM: I’m an ex-Christian so I can’t speak as a member of that group. My answer will be my impression as an outsider. For sexual minorities of faith, there is always a dilemma between reformation or apostasy. The problem for those who wish to reform from within, which is a worthy aspiration, is that their efforts may be repeatedly thwarted for decades, with little more than nominal “changes” occurring.

We saw a good example of that last February when The House of Bishops report was received with widespread disappointment by lesbian and gay members of the Church of England. While the report said the church needed to repent of homophobic attitudes and called for a “fresh tone and culture of welcome and support” towards lesbian and gay Christians, it also said that it did not propose to change its “one man – one woman” definition of marriage. The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement’s chief executive Tracey Byrne said: “The Church of England has spent almost three years and £350,000 in a careful process of ‘Shared Conversations’ about sexuality” and that “LGBTI+ people who have participated in this process in good faith, at considerable personal cost, will feel angry and disappointed that there appears so little real change.”

In July 2017, however, The General Synod of the Church of England passed a motion on welcoming transgender people. Members of Synod, meeting in York, supported a call for the House of Bishops to consider preparing nationally commended liturgical materials to mark a person’s gender transition. The vote comes after bishops overwhelmingly backed a motion calling for a ban on “unethical” conversion therapy for gay Christians. I think most LGBTI Christians will be naïve in viewing the embrace of ‘transgender’ blessing ceremonies as a progressive move by the Church, but I have argued that the ‘transgender’ identity itself functions as a diagnostic label, and is itself just a highly persuasive (and apparently ‘liberal’) re-branding of gay conversion therapy. This would explain the Church’s inconsistency in maintaining its homophobic ban on same sex marriage while showing encouragement towards re-naming ceremonies for people who claim they are transgender.

Now, instead of being subjected to conversion treatment by parents or doctors, self-described ‘patients’ have voluntarily consented in using gender reassignment surgery as a cure for their ‘condition’ (gender dysphoria). The problem is that this whole conceptual model is deeply conservative in its premises about gender, as well as in its methods and tactics (basically stigmatizing and then censoring anyone who disagrees with those premises as some kind of bigot, which actually reverses the real situation).

SJ: Is religion one of the major sources of bigotry against sexual minorities?

TM: Without doubt. However, religion is not univocal. In the ‘big three’ monotheistic religions there are humanitarian, modernising liberal strains and more traditional conservative doctrines. But conservative religious figures can always monopolise the religion, as is happening in Islam with Salafi-Wahhabists defining how Islam is actually practiced in Muslim immigrant communities. Meanwhile, well-meaning fully integrated Muslims who do not live in conservative sub-communities sanitise the image of Islam, unaware that they are helping Salafists to maintain good PR. In each of the big three monotheistic religions, the authorities tend to be conservative. In general, they also have an inordinate fixation on sex – and particularly on female sexuality. This might explain why pornography is most popular in religiously conservative countries like Pakistan where sexual relations are strictly policed. According to data released by Google, six of the top eight porn-searching countries are Muslim states, with Pakistan toppings the list at number one. Repression breeds perversion and leads to a distorted fetishization of human sexuality, not as a natural part of human life like anything else, but as a ‘problematic’ area that must be obsessively policed and controlled.

Conservative religious views of ‘creation’ cling to the view that all healthy humans possess innate heterosexuality – a belief based on the compatibility of male and female genitals for procreation (reproduction). Accordingly, homosexuals are defective or disordered heterosexuals. Even when the Vatican finally acknowledged that homosexual orientation is innate (not a choice) in its 1975 Encyclical Persona Humana, they pathologized it in the same stroke, calling it “intrinsically disordered” and “incurable”. Effectively they regarded the homosexually orientated person as born with an innate predisposition to ‘sin’, which made the person’s homosexuality a kind of moral illness or defect.

What makes this diagnosis interesting is that ‘illness’ is religiously defined. The ‘patient’ actually feels better than ever when he expresses his inner (“disordered”) nature; he finds a sense of well-being that repressing his “incurable disorder” had rendered impossible. But natural theology would nevertheless say that he is sick.

SJ: Are sexual minorities more or less likely to be religious?

TM: A PEW survey of Americans (I can’t find stats for the UK) found that LGBT adults are less religious than the general public. Roughly half (48%) said they have no religious affiliation, compared with 20% of the public at large. Of those LGBT adults who are religiously affiliated, one-third said there is a conflict between their religious beliefs and their sexual orientation or gender identity. And among all LGBT adults, about three-in-ten (29%) said they have been made to feel unwelcome in a place of worship.

Many sexual minorities have no safe choice but to live as though they were heterosexuals, and in many cases they also choose prudently to live as though they were believers. More than seventy countries continue to outlaw homosexual behavior, with penalties ranging from one year to life imprisonment. Six Islamist states impose the death penalty, and in provinces of other countries gay and lesbian acts are punished under Sharia law by stoning. Even in states where it is perfectly legal to ‘come out’ many homosexuals risk rejection and disinheritance from their families if they do so. This might explain the higher rates of depression and suicide among homosexual teens. Recent North American and New Zealand studies of large populations (especially the US Youth Risk Behavior Surveys from several States) indicate that gay, lesbian and bisexual adolescents (and males in particular) can have rates of serious suicide attempts which are least four times those in apparently heterosexual youth. It also explains the higher rates of homelessness among LGBT youth. The UCLA Williams Institute, found that 40% of the homeless youth served by agencies identify as LGBT. This is especially alarming given that LGBT youth represent a relatively low percentage of the general population.

Then too, many religious sceptics are forced to live as though they were believers. A recent Pew Research Center analysis found that, as of 2014, about a quarter of the world’s countries and territories (26%) had anti-blasphemy laws or policies, and that more than one-in-ten (13%) nations had laws or policies penalizing apostasy. The legal punishments for such transgressions vary from fines to death. The Study found laws restricting apostasy and blasphemy are most common in the Middle East and North Africa, but blasphemy laws can be found in all regions, including Europe (in 16% of countries) and the Americas (29%).

Many sexual minorities have been brought up within a religious culture. Religion may form an important part of their belief system or ‘identity’. But a person’s religious identity can come into conflict with other aspects of the person’s identity, such as his or her sexual orientation or his or her intellectual curiosity. I like how Amartya Sen thinks of identity not just as something we discover, or find ourselves inhabiting, but as something we acquire and earn. It is not that we can just chose any identity we wish to, as though we had no background conditions, but that we have some freedom of choice (within cultural constraints) in the priority we give to the identities we may have. Despite the tyrannical implications of putting persons into the rigid boxes of their given “communities”, says Sen, “that [communitarian] view is frequently interpreted, rather bafflingly, as … individual freedom.” Sen asks, I think rightly, whether a person’s relation to [his nation] must be mediated through the “culture” of the family in which he or she has been born.

SJ: Does the irreligious community provide protections for sexual minorities in the United Kingdom from the dominant faiths that tend to explicitly (in religious texts and in social life) express open bigotry and even contempt for sexual minorities?

TM: There is a genuine will to do so among secular organisations and in the UK there are also ex-Jehovah’s Witness organisations and Ex-Muslims groups. However, the latter face constant accusations of bigotry – the new trope used by real bigots (religious bigots) to shut down freedom of speech and criticism of their intolerance. Sexual minorities within the practicing religious communities face real dangers and threats of violence from family members and others in the community. They can always leave the community if they have sufficient financial means and language ability, but some do not…. especially women.

Then too there must be a frame of reference from which an individual can recognise his own possibilities. One cannot recognise oneself as “gay” or “lesbian” if one cannot fathom this possibility. Homosexuality is frequently the love that has no name. I know this myself from my own past experience. I had internalised my community’s Christian homophobia to such an extent that I was homophobic, and it takes a long hard struggle to shake that off and to recognise one’s own longings for what they are. One needs opportunities to meet homosexuals or at least to see them represented in some form.

SJ: What is the main confusion about sexual minorities that people simply don’t get?

Heterosexuals just know, and do not need to be taught, what turns them on (sexually). It is the same for homosexuals. All of the available empirical evidence suggests that being homosexual is not defective heterosexuality, but another natural variant of human sexual nature. Now one could wonder how homosexuality could conceivably be natural, since it seems to contradict the reproductive function of the human genitals. Apparently, homosexuality could only be a malfunction or ‘mis-match’ between the brain and the genitals. But this is to read the body too literally, and not down to the genes and chromosomes, where most evidence for a ‘naturalistic’ homosexuality is to be found. Darwin himself understood that survival of the species is not only about competition but also about cooperation. Only Herbert Spencer’s followers and Social Darwinists over-emphasised the competitive ‘survival of the fittest’ competitive struggle. Where resources are scarce, and the population is growing at a rapid rate, homosexuality provides a benefit to the population by lowering the birth rate and thereby the population. This means that there are more resources available for the population as a whole. Not all humans have to reproduce. It is actually better for everyone if some do not. Aesthetically, heterosexuals may not like people who do not conform to stereotypical ideals of masculinity or femininity, but biodiversity is not only about human constructions and tastes…. it is about us as a diverse species with beneficial variations. We eliminate biodiversity at our peril.

SJ: What will it take to broaden the landscape of perception about sexuality and gender identity?

TM: I will sound biased for saying this, but less religion and myth. Fewer cultural fantasies that are propagated by religion, the mass media and porn industries, and more empiricism. This is unlikely, however, since all of our experience, our empirical observations, are today ‘mediated’ through the lenses of a culture that powerful capitalist hegemonic forces have implanted in our minds from a very early age, and projected onto our experiences. So it is hard to see the world stripped of mythical prejudice or bias. Taking off those lenses is almost impossible but I think a return to Plato’s cave analogy is appropriate here – we need to see the light of day.

SJ: In a way, the mainstream faiths have been around longer and have forced through even threat of death the idea of a sexual binary, or the idea that men and women were created in God’s image in the Garden of Eden.

They have been around longer and have used harsh and brutal methods to inculcate this in societies, whether through the Russian Orthodox Church in the Putin Regime, in Constantinian Christianity with Constantinople, as well as America with evangelical Christianity, and so on, to take one faith.

Then when fields such as gender studies conceptualize a broader landscape, granted in over-complicated terminology, about human sexuality and gender identity, the dominant faith representatives, who are often heterosexual men, grumble, moan, and hurl epithets such about “radical gender ideologues.” How do we bridge the gap, broaden the landscape, and not get bloodied in the process?

TM: Well, as I said above, the dominant faith representatives will embrace new conceptualizations and new semantics about sexuality so long as doing so confirms their idea of a sexual binary. One thing most people don’t know is how insidious religion is. For example, despite the traditional wisdom that “Hollywood is run by Jews”, the Catholic Church have a very longstanding ‘relationship’ with the Hollywood film industry, which now has global reach.

Religious authorities today continue to spread the gender ‘binary’ faith – ironically – through the Trans movement, which they support. This is because the Trans concept maintains the gender binary and its conservative stereotypes about men and women, as I have argued elsewhere.

The epithets go both ways. Gender-critical feminists like myself are liable to be branded and stigmatized as “femiNazis”, ‘TERFs’ or “Transphobes” before anyone actually listens to our arguments. A better term for us would be ‘Trans-sceptics’. ! I come to this topic as someone who personally (before giving it much reflection) self-diagnosed as “gender dysphoric”. As my understanding of the role of gender in patriarchal culture deepened, and as I came to understand that the disciplinary technologies and institutions like medicine work in a less than objective way, I came to realise that I had been duped.

As soon as Trans Activists see that we have some reservations about the “Trans rights” movement, they dismiss us, assuming that we could only be motivated by bigotry. This is dangerous not only for us but equally for them – because Trans sceptics are trying to explain how the category of “Transgender” has been incorporated into a medical framework that will be used eugenically in the future, and not for the progressive ends of fostering diversity.

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This Week in Religion 2017–09–17

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/17

“Late in the NDP leadership race, fault lines are emerging in the NDP caucus over what Quebecers are looking for in their federal leader.

Heading into a caucus meeting Sunday morning in Hamilton, NDP MPs were quick to distance themselves from comments made by Quebec MP Pierre Nantel Saturday about perceived frontrunner Jagmeet Singh. Nantel told a Radio-Canada reporter that Singh’s leadership bid doesn’t align with what Quebecers want to see in their political leaders, and that “ostentatious religious symbols” are “not compatible with power, with authority.” Singh, who is Sikh, wears a turban and a kirpan.

“I feel that Mr. Nantel’s expressing something I don’t believe New Democrats agree with, whether they’re from Quebec or elsewhere,” Quebec MP Matthew Dubé told reporters Sunday. “I would qualify (his support) as tepid. It seemed kind of out of the blue.””

Source: http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/division-over-religious-symbols-in-quebec-takes-centre-stage-ahead-of-ndp-leadership-showcase.

“Much has been written over the last week or so about the interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg on Good Morning Britain, in which he defended his position on same sex marriage and abortion. The coverage and subsequent media backlash have certainly brought pro-life issues to the fore and allowed debate to take place. For this we should be extremely grateful. However, one concern that I have is that the interview and all the associated coverage has implied that opposition to abortion is only a matter of faith.

There is a sense that there are those who wish to portray pro-life views as purely religious because such views become much easier to disregard and dismiss. This is something which we need to be keenly aware of when debating in public or sharing our views with others.

Appealing to the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of life can actually be counterproductive when trying to make a pro-life case to someone who doesn’t believe in God. In such situations, we can inadvertently weaken our pro-life arguments by giving discussions a religious framework. This is something that Phyllis Bowman, the great pro-life pioneer, was aware of during her many years of tireless campaigning within the anti-abortion movement in Britain. Her love for the unborn child and for her Catholic beliefs reinforced one another and she was a person of great faith. Despite this, she was well aware of the importance of a secular evidence based approach to pro-life campaigning.”

Source: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/09/13/opposing-abortion-is-a-matter-of-reason-not-religion/.

“in 1966, just over 50 years ago, the distinguished Canadian-born anthropologist Anthony Wallace confidently predicted the global demise of religion at the hands of an advancing science: “Belief in supernatural powers is doomed to die out, all over the world, as a result of the increasing adequacy and diffusion of scientific knowledge.” Wallace’s vision was not exceptional. On the contrary, the modern social sciences, which took shape in 19th-century western Europe, took their own recent historical experience of secularization as a universal model. An assumption lay at the core of the social sciences, either presuming or sometimes predicting that all cultures would eventually converge on something roughly approximating secular, Western, liberal democracy. Then something closer to the opposite happened.

Not only has secularism failed to continue its steady global march but countries as varied as Iran, India, Israel, Algeria, and Turkey have either had their secular governments replaced by religious ones, or have seen the rise of influential religious nationalist movements. Secularization, as predicted by the social sciences, has failed.”

Source: http://theweek.com/articles/723456/sorry-scientists-religion-here-stay.

“The number of Scots who say they are not religious has risen to almost three quarters, according to new research.

Just under a quarter (23.6%) said they were religious, while 72.4% said they were not, figures released by Humanist Society Scotland showed.

This was up from a similar poll in 2011 when 56% said they were not religious while 35% said they were.

The Humanist Society said the findings raised concerns about official statistics on religion in Scotland.

It suggested that the way in which census data and other studies of religion were being carried out gave higher figures of religiosity due to the way the question was framed.”

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-41294688.

“More than a quarter of England’s secondary schools do not offer religious education, despite the law saying they must, suggests research given to BBC local radio.

The National Association for RE teachers obtained unpublished official data under Freedom of Information law.

It says that missing the subject leaves pupils unprepared for modern life.

But the main union for secondary head teachers said many schools covered religious issues in other lessons.

“They might be teaching through conferences, they might be using citizenship lessons, they might be using assemblies,” said Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders.”

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/education-41282330.

“Last Friday, friends and admirers of Michael Cromartie gathered in Virginia for his memorial service. Cromartie was a devout Christian, a vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and in one of his many gregarious exploits, a one-time mascot for the Philadelphia 76ers. Reporters knew him as the founder and organizer of the Faith Angle Forum, which brought together journalists and scholars twice a year to talk about religion, politics, and society.

Will Saletan writes about politics, science, technology, and other stuff for Slate. He’s the author of Bearing Right.

Cromartie was an ambassador from religion to journalism. Those of us who attended the Forum were supposed to communicate, in turn, with the wider world. I could have taken the opportunity, as a representative from Slate, to build a dialogue between faith communities and the secular left. I didn’t. But as believers say, there’s always time to repent, and the truest repentance is action. So here’s what I learned from my years with Michael Cromartie: In a world full of religious hatred, religious violence, religious oppression, and religious stupidity, there’s a better kind of faith. It’s rich, sane, and healthy. It can teach us to think critically, not just about society at large, but about religion itself.”

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/faithbased/2017/09/michael_cromartie_s_good_religion.html.

“Any exemptions for ministers of religion and religious bodies in a same-sex marriage law will not be sufficient to protect freedom of religious belief and practice unless they extend to all members of religious bodies and organisations — not just to ministers of religion but to all adherents of those religions.

It is inconsistent and illogical to create exemptions for ministers of religion but not extend them to individual religious adherents.

In respect of beliefs about who can contract marriage, there is no distinction between ministers and those to whom they minister; the beliefs of a religious body normally define members of that body or organisation, not simply the ministers.”

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/letters/religious-exemptions-should-be-extended-to-all/news-story/d01829f43c913259d8e31d82014220ac.

“(Beirut) – Saudi Arabia’s school religious studies curriculum contains hateful and incendiary language toward religions and Islamic traditions that do not adhere to its interpretation of Sunni Islam, Human Rights Watch said today. The texts disparage Sufi and Shia religious practices and label Jews and Christians “unbelievers” with whom Muslims should not associate.

A comprehensive Human Rights Watch review of the Education Ministry-produced school religion books for the 2016-17 school year found that some of the content that first provoked widespread controversy for violent and intolerant teachings in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks remains in the texts today, despite Saudi officials’ promises to eliminate the intolerant language.

“As early as first grade, students in Saudi schools are being taught hatred toward all those perceived to be of a different faith or school of thought,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The lessons in hate are reinforced with each following year.””

Source: https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/13/saudi-arabia-religion-textbooks-promote-intolerance.

“PARIS — Religion and ethnicity have been the major focus in local and international news coverage of the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar. Such persecution is part of a long and cruel history suffered by the Rohingya people.

But there are limitations to this explanation for the current phase of that long-standing violence. Two recent developments make me question whether religion gives us the full picture of what is happening now.

The first is the Myanmar government’s 2016 decision to include a relatively significant 3 million acres of Rakhine rural land in the national list of land allocations for “economic development.” Before this, according to government documents, Rakhine was only in the list for a mere 17,000 acres allocated in 2012. In Myanmar, the government’s language of “economic development” describes allocations of land that the military has de facto control over and have been selling to Burmese and foreign firms for the past 20 years. But Rakhine, a forgotten poor area at the margins of the country, had not really been part of such allocations. To some extent, the international, almost exclusive focus on religion has overshadowed the vast land grabs that have affected millions of people in Myanmar over the years, and now also the Rohingya.”

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rohingya-land-grab-military_us_59b96400e4b02da0e13e79f4.

“Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders is deeply concerned about Muslim integration. In our series Islam in the Netherlands he is warning about the “perishing”of our culture. “It is not five to twelve or two to twelve, it is almost morning!” The leader of the second party in the country is pondering about very far-reaching measures.

Geert Wilders (54) is not surprised at the shocking poll results released by daily newspaper De Telegraaf. The fact that only thirteen percent of the Dutch population feel that the problem of integration will solve itself is a writing on the wall, according to him. And that only eleven percent of the Dutch see Islam as an enrichment proves in his opinion that what he has been calling for years. “If I had said that three years ago, I would have had tens of thousands of police reports thrown at me. But people are completely fed up with it.””

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11009/geert-wilders-in-my-opinion-islam-is-not.

“The religious community has told government to back off from trying to regulate the sector.

Parliament is expected to debate a report by the CRL Rights Commission looking at the commercialisation of religion in South Africa.

Professor Pieter Coertzen, of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Stellenbosch says government has no jurisdiction over the religious sector.

“The regulation that we are asking for must come from inside the religions themselves. Our big problem with this report is that it’s bringing in regulation, but it’s regulation coming from the side of the State.””

Source: http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/ed655280429e8b83a3adbbde535d67b8/Religion-must-self-regulate:-Academic.

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Talk With Sarah Mills – Assistant Editor and Contributor, Conatus News

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/15

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How can religion change to adapt to a modern world in which women are increasingly educated?

Sarah Mills: As people become more educated, they are more likely to identify as atheists. It’s a product of scepticism and reason-based thinking. This is not to say educated people cannot also- for cultural, familial, or personal reasons- hold spiritual/religious convictions that run parallel to their evidence-based ones, but organized religion generally demands a level of dependency while education liberates and encourages independent thinking. Having said that, I’ve always believed that people make of religion what they choose. Religion, in order to survive in a world of scientific hegemony in which there is no basis for the belief that females are inferior, must loosen its grip on the public sphere and shift to the personal realm. Religious authorities must favour teachings that exalted women and reinterpret those that legitimized misogyny- or dismiss them as fallible altogether. They must either do the gymnastics (and many scholars have) to come out and say misogynistic teachings are metaphoric or explain them in a historical context while clearly conveying that they are no longer, in any way, appropriate. For us atheists, it may seem like apologetics and wouldn’t be as ideal as eschewing the whole thing as the mythology we see it as, but it’s the next best thing.

An Interview with Emily Newman — Communications Coordinator at American Ethical Union

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/15

As our correspondence has unfolded, I have discovered that, not only you but, your family is steeped in ethical humanism, and ethical societies. So what is the deal? Where did your family first come into contact with ethical humanism?

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.

Ethical Culture started with Felix Adler. When was your first encounter with his ideas? What definition really stood out for you?

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 was not 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.

We’re on the Americas Working Group for IHEYO together, along with other people. Personally, what does IHEYO mean to you?

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 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?

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.

Who seems most drawn to ethical humanism? What are the main demographics?

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 socioeconomic statuses but that is not always reflected in our organizations’ membership due to restraints on transportation, time, and money.

Who/what remain the main threats to the free practice and advocacy of ethical humanism to you?

I think we need more strong humanist leaders, spokespeople, advocates to broadcast the message and organize 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.

What are your hopes for ethical humanism within your lifetime?

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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Cognitive Thrift 61 – Capacities

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/01/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It’s not like – a lot of these things are basically another small group. They aren’t doing yoga, or meditation, psychotherapy, or some psychedelic treatment to alter their consciousness or anything like that.

They are doing their rituals and enjoying their time. A lot of the time it is a place to meet, and why not?

Anything, there’s more about the capacities of the brain there, too.

Rick Rosner: Well, the brain is the only organ where there’s a saying that we say there’s 20% of it. We don’t go around saying we only use 10% of our heart or 70% of our kidneys, but wow if we could harness the whole power of our kidneys, then that would really be doing something. The 10% is BS.

Things are designed to work the way they work within our bodies. You can sometimes do more, sometimes organs are asked to do more, but generally organs are generally working the way they’re supposed to work, and they aren’t leaving all of this untapped capacity. It doesn’t mean that we can’t do more with our brains, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not doing enough.

There’s something kind of Calvinistic in that you’re lazy that you’re not getting a PhD. That your brain is lying fallow. Our brain has a full-time job, which is helping our surroundings and making decisions about what to do with our circumstance, and because the brain is finite.

And because the brain is the only just about as good as it needs to be within a margin of error, error lurks around the corner all the time.

Error is not getting ready to kill us every day. We don’t make potentially or come close to potentially fatal errors every time, but I live in LA. Every driving decision, or any city, can lead to jeopardy.

We have our principle of evolutionary sufficiency, where organs aren’t going to be much, much, much better than they need to be because there’s been no evolutionary push for organs to be that way, especially crazily complicated organs. So, some of the areas where the brain can be challenged; it’s going to have limited ability.

That sufficiency most of the time. Limited speed, the brain can only calculate at a certain speed. Limited accuracy, which is that in combination with our perceptual system, knowing what it’s sensing – knowing what’s being sensed and correctly characterizing it.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 60 – Freemasons

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In a lot of these things, we find a community, in the Freemasons, for instance.

Rick Rosner: They just remodeled the masonic lodge next to one of the gyms that I go to, and it looks like a really good time. It is very tempting to go check out being a mason. There are guys at the lodge all the time.

My dad was a Shriner, a mason. He went to the Elks club. He had a weekly poker group. He got a lot of satisfaction out of masculine community.

Jacobsen: You can find this in religious communities as well, even in fraternities. Things get morphed according to the time. For instance, the current masonic traditions in addition to the Rosicrucian tradition seems to come out of a man burned in 1600 named Giordano Bruno.

Rosner: People who belong to the masons don’t give a crap about Giordano Bruno. Jacobsen: No, they don’t, nor Galileo Galilei.

Rosner: It goes back to Hermes, whatever his name was –

Jacobsen: Trismegistus.

Rosner: Yea, that guy. And all of these arcane mystical traditions – I mean that if the masons. I mean some people distrust the masons, but stuff that is alternative to Christianity, say.

Jacobsen: Or Islam.

Rosner: Yea, but because that stuff is just kind of part of a ritual at this point for most masons. You learn and you go through to join. It doesn’t. I would guess that the groups of Christians are higher in the masons than in the non-masons.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 59 – Ancestors

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/02/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Thought is hard. It costs a lot. Our ancestors had less resources to spend on those things in terms of coming to correct beliefs about the world.

Rosner: You can see gods as hypotheses. People didn’t talk like that back then. But if you’re going to invent explanations for stuff, invisible helpers is going to be a durable explanation because it is hard to disprove because they are invisible.

Sometimes, they are invisible because people have mistaken perceptions and come to mistaken conclusions.

Jacobsen: This reflects the mystics’ views now. For instance, their communion with the Holy Guardian Angel. It has by no means disappeared, by and large.

Rosner: People are going to invent things you can’t see or put things into a morally satisfying framework.

Jacobsen: There might be overriding things to do with community because any reason to have a community in any case is better than none.

Rosner: Yea.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 58 – Trial-and-Error

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/02/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I think in a lot of ways – basically, trial and error –

Rick Rosner: Let me mention another thing, in addition to evolutionary sufficiency, part of evolutionary sufficiency is a buffer against error. If you – your heart is designed to go for 80 or 100 years in most cases without screwing up over that period of time because an error for your heart can be fatal, and if people suffer enough fatal errors, then that’s going to screw up the species because everybody is going to be dying of heart attacks.

Jacobsen: I think there’s an aspect of the beliefs before: ghosts, UFOs, angels, devils, heaven, hell, and the way they relate to individuals and to groups. They can be taken as trial and error heuristics.

If you do one thing, then x, y, or z good thing will tend to happen to you. These can get codified into belief systems. That might play into what we’ve talked about in other discourses about the compactification of information in the brain.

Rosner: I think what you’re arguing is that gods, ghosts, angels. Anything whose existence is hard to substantiate are a consequence of the brain wanting to find patterns. You said not to use – but the brain finds patterns or looks for explanations.

We want to understand the world. We want explanation. If it is 5,000 or 8,000 years ago and we understand very little about the world, then a primitive joke to make is to invent gods for a lot of stuff.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 57 – Prayer

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/02/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It depends on the belief. For instance, people pray believe they truly believe prayer works. Many people pray for many things.

Rick Rosner: Some beliefs provide spiritual solace. There might be a little evolutionary pressure for people to feel good about being human in the world because the realistic view that we’re evolution’s bitches.

Our behaviors are driven evolution, and then we get old and then we die might be depressing to a lot of people without beliefs systems and/or without the ability to ignore what might be considered the sadness of every human’s situation.

Jacobsen: It goes against part of what you said before. That prayer and other things are associated with larger belief systems and those can take a large amount of cognitive capacity.

Rosner: I don’t think they take a large amount unless you’re a religious – you can live your life according to religious principles, but we have enough slack as a successful species that you can have this belief system that might have you acting counter to your best interest numerous times a day.

Maybe behaving less ruthlessly than you would, in sticking to religious principles when those aren’t helpful, we’ve got enough slack that people can afford doing that.

Plus, if you’re part of a religion and that religion is the dominant culture in your society, that religion can be helpful, but I find nothing about religion or non-sense beliefs to have much bearing on our brains.

That we use our brains to pretty much near their capacity if you can even define the capacity of a brain and that we’re always reasonably close to screwing up.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 56 – Angels

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/02/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s some other relevant things to the human organism. We have such – I think one of the markers of our tremendous cognitive capacity with respect to acting in the world are statistics on beliefs that are housed in the brain, brought forth by the brain of course, that are completely detached from the world. By which I mean, they are detached from –

Rick Rosner: You mean like ghosts.

Jacobsen: Not just ghosts.

Rosner: Angels.

Jacobsen: Angels, heaven and hell, a bearded man in the sky; sensory information to confirm these is pretty important thing. Yet, most people most of the time tend to believe them.

Rosner: What that tells me is that such beliefs don’t have much daily relevance, they’re compact beliefs. You don’t need much brain power relative to the human brain to not believe some non sense, but that kind of non-sense does not take much cognition, doesn’t hurt your cognition, and it doesn’t affect your daily activities. And also because of our success as a species, we do have a little slack to believe non-sense, but beliefs are often and usually separate from actions.

Dogs don’t have any beliefs, and animals as far as we know don’t have any spiritual beliefs, except maybe vague feelings of rightness and wrongness of their place in the world. That might be a stretch, but they are able to function competently without any beliefs about their place in the world.

Non-sense is non-sense. There are junk genes that are just floating around.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 55 – Evolutionary Sufficiency

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/01/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: One of the principles is evolutionary sufficiency. We can talk about the limitations on thought and perception.

Rick Rosner: For every part of the body, there’s evolutionary sufficiency, which is that everything works as well as it needs to and just a little bit better.

Just because if things didn’t work than they needed to work due to random variation then you’d have things breaking down and you’d have things not working, you’d have things falling below – with an error rate that would work against the species.

So, evolution provides a push that things should have a sufficiently low error rate that it doesn’t kill off members of the species to the point where it then hurts the species, which means that organisms don’t generally fall apart until after reproductive age and things tend to work as well as they need to work and a little bit better to allow for variation in function and all that.

So when it comes to perception and thought, we have limits. There’s a mythology that the thinking doesn’t have limits. There’s that saying that we use only 10% of our brains, which is probably 100 years old and stems from some misunderstanding that is generations old and it is generally not true, and if we can get by with using only 10% of our brains, then why do so many people go crazy.

We need all of our brains to deal with the demands of life. Also, 10% of our brains. That kind of idea contradicts the idea of evolutionary sufficiency. Our brains function as well as need them to plus maybe a little bit more, which is not to say that we have 90% unused capacity.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 54 – Calories

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/01/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How?

Rosner: To keep it simple, you’re looking for calories. If you’re going off and looking for things that are not in your regular niche or things that not your usual prey, you may fail.

Jacobsen: We evolved to like simple sugars, and fats, because they are calorie dense as opposed to fibers, protein, and slow-burning carbohydrates (complex carbohydrates).

Rosner: Yea, and we evolved to like sugars and fats because they are calorie packed foods, where for most of human history and pre-history calories were relatively scarce, and so we developed a preference for high calorie foods.

Prehistoric people were not running around looking for more and more celery because I think you burn more calories eating celery than you take in, and so we didn’t love celery, but we might love a tree full of apricots where there are a lot of easy calories available.

If you’re doing divergent behavior, it may not pay off. You’re engaging in novel behavior that is untested in the world and the world was not designed for your benefit, and so whatever you are doing might be wrong.

Another cost is misperception, which you’re taking a kind of a step before you even get to thought and strategies you do have to do some preprocessing based on and you have to understand kind of what you’re going to be thinking about.

So if you – there are different levels of understanding the world. You can understand it super analytically, but if you don’t even understand it in terms of sensory perception, then your chances of being correct in what you’re trying to do are even more limited.

You have to be able to think accurately, and think effectively, and odds are lower because standard behavior has been proven to work across hundreds of generations and thousands of years and you’re trying to come up with new stuff and you’re less likely to succeed.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 53 – 302 Neurons

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/01/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That’s C. elegans, 302 neurons. It is a roundworm that we have mapped the neurons and interconnections of the neurons as well. It is the only model we have complete understanding of, but we don’t know why they turn left instead of right or right instead of left.

Rick Rosner: So it’s got 302 neurons, not much of a brain, but still a brain. I would argue that even C. elegans with its brain that can fit about 10 of its brains on the head of a pin is capable of some kind of thought and flexibility in behaviour.

And argument number one in this is that sometimes it helps to have flexible behaviour or helping to have alterable behaviour that there is steady, not steady evolutionary pressure, in that sometimes you’re in a good niche and everything is good and you don’t need to have flexibility generation after generation, but I call it steady evolutionary pressure because from time to time across hundreds of millions of years, billions of years, species run into trouble.

Niches change, there’s competition with the species where somebody is always kind of under the gun whether it is the species as the whole or individual members of the species and I’ll probably need to substantiate this at some point, but it’s helpful to have flexible behavior when you’re precluded from using standard behavior or when standard behavior isn’t going to pay off well for you.

Is mental flexibility or is behavioral flexibility linked to mental flexibility a possibility across the spectrum of beings that have neurons, basically? All the way down to C. elegans with its 302 neurons to people. One of the biggest things is that mental flexibility is something that can evolve or has the potential to be there at all levels of cognition and without knowing the math of it.

I would argue that increasing level of mental sophistication, the increasing size of brains and increasing information processing across hundreds of millions of years for the most complex beings mentally at each point in history or pre-history argues that the potential exists at every level.

The potential is not great for C. elegans. It is not going to write any part of a Shakespeare play – no matter how many if it’s a million roundworms at a million typewriters you don’t get Hamlet. Given that you’ve got neurons that are linked and sharing information, C. elegans is probably nowhere near conscious.

It is just a little blip of neurons. I would guess that there is still the possibility that C. elegans if you put it in a number of different situations relevant to a roundworm you will get different behaviors.

Behaviors that look kind of novel if you represent it with a situation that is not a familiar situation. It is not that C. elegans is doing a lot of deep thinking, but it does have the connections between neurons that are processing inputs.

You might surprisingly flexible behavior. It might not be relevant behavior. It might curl up or freak out to the extent that aa 302 neuron thing can freak out, but you will get some kind of flexibility.

I’d argue that that flexibility is a pressure to have some measure of mental flexibility, behavioral flexibility, should consistently throughout evolutionary history – not necessarily every day or every organism, but across history, shows up a zillion times and that it’s an unavoidable part of linked neural inputs that eventually at sufficient levels of complexity function like consciousness.

Mental and behavioral flexibility is available in some kind of proportionality of the size of the brain and maybe the way it’s wired, but we can kind of guess that brains of varying sizes have some commonalities of wiring.

Brains are wired like brains and not like computers. Brains are interconnected among all parts. Computers are linear, at least the computers we have now. Flexibility is possibility, but flexibility. Divergent thought and behavior has costs.

Cost one could be foregone benefits of standard behavior. If you’re not doing weird stuff, you’re doing standard stuff that has a track record of paying off over generations and generations and maybe you’re diverging because you’ve been closed out of standard behavior niche by superior animals or more fit animals, or by a change in the environment.

Cost two is that divergent behavior might not pay off.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 52 – Cognitive Flexibility

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

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

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You gave some examples about dogs in Russia and unexpected cognitive flexibility.

Rick Rosner: That dogs have taught themselves to ride the subway to get to places where it’s easier to beg for stuff, which is kind of crazy sounding at first. But apparently, they do that. People historically and consistently underestimate animals’ abilities.

Animals can’t write bestsellers, but they can figure out how to use door knobs and latches. Animals have behavioral flexibility. Some of them. So let’s talk about whether behavioral flexibility is even possible.

I’ve just said it is, but only for dogs and people, and I assume for higher mammals like elephants. Given the game theoretic setup that we’ve been talking about where under certain conditions, it would pay to have flexibility in behaviour, which means not just flexibility in thought but thought itself. Can animals think?

We’ve pretty much decided that subway riding dogs can think. But 80 years ago, people gave up on asking whether animals could think because it was too complicated a subject, which went with behaviorism, which is the idea that animals are packets of behavior.

Let’s not look at if they can think, but how do they behave. Setting aside the problem of whether animals could think because at the time it was too difficult of a problem.

Here we are going to argue that animals are capable of flexible behavior and that animals can think in proportion to the extent that animals have brains, and you can go all the way down to aphids and even smaller than that. What’s the little freaking thing that has 352 neurons or something?

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 51 – Payoffs

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/12/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That was a two-box matrix for game theory payoffs for an organism. What about more than a two-box matrix? What’s next?

Rick Rosner: We’re talking about well-adapted species, stable niche – do the standard thing and get a steady payout, diverge from that and get less of a payout. Can things diverge? Well, yea, we know that at least some animals, ourselves included, can engage in all sorts of divergent behaviors.

I love watching stuff on Buzzfeed and other trash news feed time wasting websites about animals who diverge in various ways with, I don’t know, a pretty good example being dogs that have learned to ride the subway in Moscow.

They get on the subway in Russia and then they go to the station and they ride in the morning in the station where they get on the bus to where they get rewarded, and then at night it in addition – according to the article they have used to put the cuter dog up front to have better begging rewards. That seems like a liiiiitle bit of BS, but the article is about dogs getting on the subway as if they’re going for a job.

At least in higher mammals, we are used to flexible behavior. Let’s go to an expanded payoff matrix, imagine that instead a stable niche, there’s a niche that can vary from year to year, say, where some years the nut trees are all in bloom and other years they are all blighted and the nuts only pay off at 5% of their normal rate.

So, and let’s say every other year – in good years, standard behavior pays of huge. In bad years, standard behavior barely pays off, which means that weird behavior at least relative to standard behavior may pay off relatively better if it leads to finding other ways to get calories.

So, you got a 4 box matrix now: good years where doing the standard thing is the right thing, do the non-standard thing doesn’t pay off, and bad years where doing to the standard thing doesn’t pay off very well, and doing the weird thing might lead to a higher payoff.

Now, instead of looking at a messed up niche, look at messed up members of a species, not all members of a species are ideally fit.

So, say there’s only in the standard kind of feels like that standard survival of the fittest thing, that the niche, say, can only support 80% or some arbitrary percent of the members of the species and the more fit members of the species crowd out the less fit members.

So, if you’re a sucky, geeky, nerdy, or just incompetent, or just something is wrong – you got a bad beak for nut harvesting, so your payoff for standard behaviour instead of being 1.0 might be 1.2.

You might only get 20% of the calories from standard behaviour in the niche that a jock bird might get. He was a geek and gets shunted to the side, and so your payoff is .2 compared to 1.0 for the jock bird.

So, maybe you’re forced into weird behavior or not standard behavior and if for a jock bird who’s really good at harvesting nuts, the nut payoff is 1.0 and the weird behaviour is .15, not good a figuring out.

Maybe, the geek bird with a standard behaviour of .2, which may not be enough to survive engages in weird foraging behaviour and through practice in that behaviour it manages through that behaviors manages to raise the weird behaviour to .3 It is still a miserable living, but it is better than standard behavior.

.2 for standard behaviour, possibly .3 for divergent behaviour, though the divergent behaviour doesn’t give you a uniform payout of .3. It gives you an 80% payout of .1 and a 20% payout of like .9. Maybe, you get lucky.

I don’t know if the math works out exactly right, but it averages out to be maybe a .3, but in most instances it doesn’t pay off very well, but in some instances it pays off great.

So, that’s a matrix that you are kind of growing an extra box to the right rather than to the bottom, where you’ve got divergent-bird (80% crappy payout/20% super great payout). Divergent-bird finds a new food source or a new way of harvesting food that delivers a lot of calories.

So, that bird has a choice to make. Barely surviving through standard behaviour or going divergent and maybe not surviving at all, and maybe winning and surviving really well. And what the right thing to do is depends on the various probabilities and payouts within the bird’s choice as with anything in game theory.

If things get sucky enough for a geek bird under standard behaviour, geek bird is faced with either dying or taking a risk. Maybe, dying any way or getting really lucky in a low probability event, and for the healthy and well-adapted bird, the jock bird, things have to get really bad for the jock bird.

The math is the same, but the standard behaviour is high for the jock bird. So if things have to get really bad, then the niche has to start changing like crazy or the jock has to be forced to make the gamble.

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Cognitive Thrift 50 – Individual

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/12/15

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Game theory can be applied to the individual. Game theory can be applied to the species. We have talked more about game theory as applied to the species within the context of deep evolutionary time as well. How does game theory apply to an individual?

Rick Rosner: Well, in a couple of different ways, one is different life strategies among individuals, where due to our evolutionary history, or due to having evolved, most of animals want to reproduce, but in many species it’s only the fittest animals according to some criteria that get to reproduce. Generally, greater fitness leads to greater reproductive fitness.

I guess particularly among males, but I’m not sure.

Jacobsen: What does fitness in evolution mean to you?

Rosner: It is being well-adapted to survival in the world. The part of the world that the organism finds itself in. So, it looks like jocks versus nerds situation, where the jocks, the fittest individuals, monopolize reproduction and the nerds are shut out.

It is not just reproduction. It is in competition for anything within or among members of a species.

The fitter individuals may monopolize resources. And the less fit individuals can’t compete for resources straight-on in many instances.

So, the less fit individuals can either be content with a lower quality of life or they can die because they do not have access to as many resources and more fit individuals or they can try lower probability strategies with potential for a high payoff.

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Cognitive Thrift 49 – Cognitive Evolutionary Game Theory 2

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/12/08

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That leads into something. You noted in off-recording talks about something called cognitive evolutionary game theory. It might tie in these ideas.

Rick Rosner: Cognitive evolutionary game theory is – there is game theory over time, which is the game evolution is involved in helping us develop our brains. Then there is game theory when applied within the lives of individual organisms.

So, two different applications of game theory. One is we are the successful outcome of random bets made by evolution, which doesn’t care about the outcome that provides pressure to fill niches that increase cognitive ability. Cognitive ability would lead to a successful organism.

And then, for individual organisms, it’s the gambles we make when we think or choose not to think to extent that we can just go off of rules that are well-established. We’ll come up with a better definition for that.

Evolutionary game and then we can narrow in on how it applies to cognition, where at some point in our history. Some point in – at some point in the history of primates it became possible for big brains to exist.

I have no idea how easy that was evolutionarily, was it just a couple of genes that shifted around and brains got bigger and bigger, probably not because it was a gradual thing or millions of year – 4 or 5 million years or more if you want to go from lemur-like tree dwelling things or proto chimpanzees or whatever, but the push for bigger brains.

Bigger brains look as though it was a successful enough niche-occupying aid or benefit that there was steady pressure for bigger brains for millions of years and that we had whatever is in our genetic makeup was able to provide mutations and changes and support of that pressure.

There’s probably stuff in evolution that there is a push to occupy niches, but just that our genetics and mechanical makeups don’t make it easy for those things to evolve.

Brains can evolve, but you never – you hardly ever seen wheels evolve, people say. There’s no large animal that gets around by naturally evolved wheels.

But we were able to evolve bigger and bigger brains, which indicates that bigger brains are helpful in exploiting niches. Commonsensically, we understand how that might work. Smart animals are better at understanding and exploiting their environments.

In order to understand the world, you need to perceive the world. So along with bigger brains, we have at least held onto much of our perceptual abilities. People say that when humans and dogs got together dogs became domesticated.

Humans lost much of their ability to think and deferring to humans’ ability to think and humans lost their ability to differentiate odors, deferring to dogs’ sense of smell. I don’t know how accurate that is. We’re talking about only 10-15,000 years ago.

But if you lot at the diversification of dog breeds, a lot can happen in thousands of years. We have highly – some of our senses are highly developed. We have big eyes, decent ears, and we have a lot of mental hardware to differentiate the sensory information that we are taking in.

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Cognitive Thrift 47 & 48 – Meat

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/12/01

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Bodies, meat, and brains.

Rick Rosner: Any organic costs something. The function of running or not running, climbing, breathing. Bodily functions consume calories. So, a tiger’s body is expensive because it is big and has got a lot of muscles that use a lot of energy and so it has to find a lot of calories in the wild.

I suppose a hummingbirds body is expensive because it’s wings beat about 300 times a minute and proportioned to its body size that is a huge expenditure.

If you run short of calories, you starve and might die. Generally, whatever animals have that costs calories also helps in finding calories in their environment, but everything is expensive. Lost time is expensive.

If a tiger stalks an animal for an hour and a half and the animal gets away, the tiger has spent 90 minutes of calorie consumption and also missed the opportunity. Maybe, it could have found, maybe if it was stalking a couple of ibex, I don’t know what else tigers capture – maybe in zoos or somethin’.

A lot of animals exist on a thin edge of being able to come up with their daily requirement of calories. So, stuff that isn’t necessary; we tend to have stuff that works for us.

Sometimes, you get animals that successful enough in their niches that they can start spending developmental energy on things like the peacock’s tail, which is just an arms race for mating displays that kind of got out of hand.

But generally, we only have stuff that is worth it, and worth it in terms of survival. That kind of analysis can be applied to the brain.

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Cognitive Thrift 46 – Cognition

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/11/22

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We talked about evolution with regards to cognition. Let’s talk a bit more about it, we seem to be coming to a realization here.

Rick Rosner: Cognition is important for several reasons. one of the reasons is that the offspring takes a long time to be raised because once you get into big brained things. Well, we in particular have childhoods that last 10 or more years.

Partly because it takes a long time to teach humans everything that we know, and partly because we are only semi-formed because our brains are as big as they can be without killing the mother during childbirth. So, they have to develop outside the womb.

Brains are expensive. Let’s go back to general thinking about what’s expensive.

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Cognitive Thrift 45 – Evolved Objectives

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/11/15

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We have evolved objectives. What objectives?

Rick Rosner: After messing around, we are finally ready to talk about the motivations and objectives and, to use game theoretic terms, the payoffs of our evolutionary history. Much of it is simply to survive.

Some of it is to reproduce. Sometimes those things conflict with each other, but regardless we want things. But wanting and getting those things amounts to a payoff or a payout or a – a payoff.

There’s evolutionary sufficiency, which is we’re pretty much only as good at the things we want to do as we need to be under the – to conform with – to do what we need to do in nature and in society as long as our ability to do things in society are the result evolution.

Or our capacities to do things in society are the result of evolution. We mostly evolved to survive in nature and we got so good in nature that we were able to build a complex society and society also it is arguable about whether society has been around long enough to make much of a difference in our evolved capabilities so for the most part our abilities to survive in the city are just kind of a byproduct of our ability to survive in nature.

Any abilities above and beyond that are kind of accidental due to the persistence of characteristics. If you design a car for the last ten years, it is likely that it will last for eleven years or twelve years or 14 years, but not a 150 years. There’s some available capacity that – but all of it is the result of evolutionary pressure.

And which means that we have limited resources to do what we want to do. We can’t run a mile in two minutes, even though some animals could run that fast for short distances. There’s wasn’t sufficient pressure on us to develop that ability.

We can’t calculate three-digit numbers in our heads because there wasn’t evolutionary pressure to do that, nor is it an easy enough ability to have by accident as a result of evolutionary pressure.

Excess capacity does not give us too much excess capacity. We are limited in our abilities because we’ve evolved to only have limited abilities that are only as good as they need to be plus a little more by accident.

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Cognitive Thrift 44 – Dynamic Non-Mechanistic Machines

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/11/08

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That comprehension is based on us as dynamic non-mechanistic machines rather than some spiritual thing.

Rick Rosner: Generally, yea! The spiritual understanding has its place, but in terms of living longer it helps to have medical understanding of expertise.

As we living longer, our tolerance for risk goes down, and it’s probably better for a low-risk and tolerant society that you have fewer assholes in charge, but if you go back to WWII where you need a bunch of risk takers. A bunch of bold – you have existential threats in the form of Nazis that want to kill or enslave everyone who doesn’t fit a certain genetic profile or racial profile.

You need people who are going to blow up bridges where Nazi trains are going to cross, and you need people to join the resistance, and to contain Hitler for WWII. You reach the point where you need 1,000s of guys to storm the beach and the hell blown out of them.

And you get more guys. I’m sure more women could have done it too, but things were set up that way then to drive 100s of miles to work their way across Europe, and getting blown up along the way to eventually reach Hitler’s bunker.

So, I’m sure a lot of the guys…

I imagine an evolutionary sheriff that is kind of lazy and people come in to complain about there are gay people and trans people and it goes against nature, and if you look at the history of humanity and other animals.

Humanity seems to be doing fine reproductively. People have different sexual orientations. Historically, the Romans had boyfriends and girlfriends until the 19th century there really much of an idea of homosexuality.

People, and so I think things are fine the way they are, and he goes back to looking at a magazine. We were also talking about boldness and intrepidness and assholery. Historically versus now with lower risk tolerance.

People talk about going back in time to kill Hitler and you got to wonder. Is it better to kill Hitler or put a bomb in his neck and say that he’s a good way – he’s got a good handle on the German people in the 30s and he’s a terrible guy. Maybe, you cure his syphilis so he doesn’t go as crazy as he eventually goes.

You say that as long as you don’t go about the genocide of the Jews, or if you do and about anyone that you don’t like we will blow the bomb up in your neck. We’ll make good on some of the oppressive conditions of the Treaty of Versailles and you can lead the German people, but just not towards genocide and oblivion.

People tried to appease Hitler. Chamberlain, they believe him when he said he wouldn’t take over Europe. He lied and did it. That doesn’t mean that – the takeover of Europe required bold action that killed tens of millions of people, except if you look at superheroes and the culture is built around superheroes now.

People are just starting to notice that superheroes are by their bold action causing a lot of collateral damage. Much of what – it’s not that super, much of the time superheroes are not saving the world they are stopping other superheroes or other supervillains from messing up the world.

Heroes was a very frustrating American TV show where the heroes didn’t do any saving of the world. They only fought other heroes and stopped them from wrecking the world or killing other heroes – so bold and intrepid action has kind of a history both in reality and in pop culture of causing a lot of damage. And we may end up moving increasingly away from it as our lifespans go up and we learn more about how to work around our – some of our – evolved aggression.

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Cognitive Thrift 43 – Group Psychology

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/11/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I want to take this a little bit back into cognitive thrift, game theory, and evolutionary theory.

This brings a couple things to mind for me. One, the way in which an asshole model of cognition can lead to analysis of society and that societies relationships with other ones, and how individual psychology can be reflective of group psychology.

Rosner: We’re talking about assholes versus non-assholes. There are some times in history when it pays to have assholes running around.

Jacobsen: I’m not arguing plus or minus for either model, but I am saying this can give insights and add to the field of cognitive thrift.

Rosner: The general principles as we move forward is that lifespans are lengthening because we understand more about medicine and we have better medicine. Lifespans are extending because we have better understanding and better medicine and better technology.

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Cognitive Thrift 42 – Spartan

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/22

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Does this reflect the Spartan civilization?

Rick Rosner: I don’t anything about them other than that their name stood for self-sufficiency. I don’t think – the Spartans were pretty isolated. I think the various Greek city-states emphasized, probably, self-sufficiency.

They were less interested in economic partnership. The Romans were people who loved war. They loved a lot of stuff that wasn’t really warlike. They liked putting supposedly conquered people in charge of their own affairs. It’s kind of like the US model of imperialism versus – I kind of want to say the Society model of imperialism, but that’s not exactly it.

The US likes to come into countries and set them up the way we function and make them our friends to the extent that we can, and then hope or expect that they will run an election in American-type way.

And then we’ll sneakily go into the past. In the past, we have a history of killing the foreign leaders that don’t act in a friendly way to us. We kind of want to bring or say we want to bring democracy to the world.

We don’t want to rule the world. We want the world to be our pals because the world works the way we work, which is a bit like the way the Roman model works.

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Cognitive Thrift 41 – Caligula

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/15

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Caligula, Hannibal?

Rick Rosner: Those guys. Their whole culture. I only read one book on this. They built a whole culture that was built on – war was not a sport, but they were highly invested in conquest. There whole society was built on conquest, and it was after a while it became.

To some extent, it was always fake conquest. Rome functioned via economic partnerships that sucked wealth out of the states that they had dominion over, and that brought wealth to Rome, and at the same time the benefits flowed out from Rome to the states that they owned.

The relationship between these places was a bit warlike, but it was not war all the time, even though they saw themselves as a conquering civilization.

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Cognitive Thrift 40 – Matriarchy

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is this an argument of a matriarchy in the 21st century?

Rick Rosner: It could mean that as we move forward there’s an argument for government that contains fewer assholes, if fewer assholes are women, then there’s an argument for that.

Jacobsen: What defines an asshole to you?

Rosner: Somebody who wants to burn it all down to make a point, out of fanaticism. Ted Cruz seems to be an asshole. He shut down the government with crazy filibustering BS.

He’s super-staunch conservative, and he and a bunch of the Tea Party guys are willing to do a lot of damage to what has been a political process that functioned better before there was a Tea Party in order to have everything crashing down and tom have everything reformed in a new better way. Though good luck with the Tea Party form of government being better.

An asshole can be a fanatic. An asshole can be dogmatic. Somebody who ignores human welfare in favor of points of dogma who goes to war over points of philosophy.

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Cognitive Thrift 39 – 2x

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The difference between the high lived societies and low lived societies is about a 2x.

Rick Rosner: When you have a terrible failed state, where people are struggling to get food and there’s civil war and stuff like that, of course, there’s going to be – in a general sense, I live in LA. My car is going to last longer than if I lived in Minnesota given that I take care of the car in the same way in each place because in Minnesota the car is going to be eaten up by road salt and bad weather.

But, and then, women, for one thing, menstruate – bleeding every month means that they have lower levels of iron. Iron binds to cholesterol, which lead to a buildup of plaque in the arteries. So, that’s one factors.

Women have that whole extra chromosome. The Y chromosome is kind of crappy. It doesn’t have as much instructions. It’s all stubby. If you have two X chromosomes, you have extra genetic instructions. Women carry the offsprings. They are more necessary. Men are more disposable culturally, evolutionarily. There could be a zillion reasons.

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Cognitive Thrift 38 – UN

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/22

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If you look at the UN data, the highest lifespan and health span nations are the typical players in terms of well-being, which comes out to Eastern Asia, North America. In particular, places like Japan, Finland, the Netherlands, and Canada as well with the numbers running up into the 80s – and even in the high age ranges of societies in terms of lifespan women live longer than the men.

Rick Rosner: You can make an evolutionary argument about that. On the one hand, the countries where people live longer are the countries where people take better care of themselves whether due to diet or lifestyle.

Jacobsen: Cultural restrictions, social restriction, or even religious dietary restrictions.

Rosner: Could be, could even be circumstances of life, maybe we even survive better in colder countries, although that’s unlikely. It’s a combination of accidental things and intentional things.

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Cognitive Thrift 37 – Binary

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Well, people are not binary. People are on a spectrum, but that’s a polysyllabic statement for a trivial truth. What is the deep truth there?

Rick Rosner: The deep truth there is that under evolutionary sufficiency. Things are only as good or as ordered or as whatever as they need to be for the species to function.

And, it – apparently, our species functions fine with everybody having a mix of gender-related characteristics and with some people have more of a mix across gender than other people.

Nature is only a sheriff of characteristics and only a caretaker of characteristics to the extent that it is necessary for the species to thrive, and that leads to helpful flexibility in species, where there is no sheriff in nature that says you need to die after reproducing – so we get extra years.

There’s no sheriff saying you need to live until 120 because that doesn’t help the species, and it is whatever helps the species, doesn’t hurt the species, and whatever persists because – to some extent, we live until 70, 80, 90 because it is helpful to the species.

But we also live that long because once you build a car or something, the pieces have some excess durability just due to the nature of those things.

If you design something with evolutionary sufficiency, the sufficiency generally has some slop over that allows for extended survival and it’s increasingly debilitated survival because there is no sheriff saying – the situation is there is no sheriff saying you have to die after you are done with reproduction, and there is no sheriff saying you have keep going after you’re done reproduction, and we keep going in an increasingly debilitated form. We’re good at 40, pretty good at 50.

A little falling apart between 50 and 60. 60, 70, to 80, things get dire, and then we’re kind of a mess into our 70s and 80s, and more so – we fall apart because there’s no sheriff that says we shouldn’t. The sheriff of nature or evolution.

I drive a 16-year-old car. And I don’t maintain it that well. I get an oil change about every 7,000 miles. I don’t switch out fluids. The car will eventually fall apart, but it has been going this long.

If I was super scrupulous and it were a collector car, and I replaced everything that could/should be replaced, I could keep the car going for 100 years, but because the car was designed to last for a 10 years say, I can get more out of it because designing for 10 years generally allows for continued functioning for years beyond that.

It is that way with our bodies. It’s nit like we live for 50 years after we’re done reproducing. We live for 30, 40 years. It’s not like dog’s live to 35, even though they’ve quite having puppies at age 10. Dogs get a few extra years.

Everything gets a reasonable proportion of their lifespan extra because things don’t fall apart immediately.

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Cognitive Thrift 36 – Longevity

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/08

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about grandparents, great grandparents? Those aspects of evolved creatures that live extraordinarily long periods of time compared to other creatures that can have evolutionary benefit.

Rick Rosner: People speculate that any characteristic that we have someone will speculate that it is due to evolutionary pressure. That we live 30 years beyond reproductive age because it is helpful to the species that there are grandparents and elders that have accumulated knowledge. That up to 10% of the population is gay because gay people often function in societies as nurturers.

And to some extent, these are legitimate arguments to be made. There’s a separate set of arguments to be made that extended life, gayness, are just things that arise as part of the process because there’s no evolutionary pressure for this not to happen.

That we have evolved characteristics, gender-related characteristics, and these are generally helpful to the species. For every human, there’s a mix of gender-related characteristics with – we all have characteristics.

Some of them are strongly associated with one gender than the other, but none of us has – research shows that none of has – uniformly characteristics that is associated with one gender or another. We are kind of a mix. Some people are more of a mix than others.

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Cognitive Thrift 35 – Cognitive Economics

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We talked about cognitive economics. We talked about game theory. We talked a little bit about meta-game theory, which builds on that – via mention. More importantly, we talked about evolution and cognitive economics. What ties these together?

Rick Rosner: Hold on, due to the way we evolved, there are sometimes – we evolved to want things. Nature doesn’t car what happens to us once we’re done reproducing, as long as what happens to us doesn’t disrupt the species.

For species such as ourselves, where it takes 20 years to raise the offspring, there’s, there’s – we have some further use after reproducing. So, there is some – evolution wouldn’t favor our welfare – it would favor the welfare of our species.

The welfare of our species would be threatened by members of our species not actively participating or actively disrupting the activity or raising offspring, and so to that extent there might be some evolved conformity to the business of raising kids and providing a stable culture, say.

That’ll need to be revised, but beyond the business of raising kids and not disrupting that business. Nature doesn’t care about what happens to us. Or there’s no pressure for there to be positive outcomes or any kind of – we have kids, we raise kids, and we enjoy a few more decades of aging and then we’re gone.

There’s – because there’s no – we can talk about a thing. There’s probably an official name for it.

I’m calling it evolutionary sufficiency, which is that the pressures of evolution create individuals and individual characteristics that are only good enough to do the job they do plus a little more, just as a margin of error. And that evolution sufficiency takes various.

Evolutionary sufficiency creates beings and characteristics of varying durability depending on the life cycles of the various species. Our bodies wear out in 70-110 years because we have to live until 40 or 50 just to do the business of raising kids.

And then we have some excess durability because things keep – the evolved. Our evolved durability allows for a few extra decades of life beyond the decades necessary to get the next generation going. And that probably holds across most species depending on how long it takes those species to get the next generation going.

Dogs can live up to 20 years, possums up to 4 or 5 year, rats and mice – 3, 4, 5 years if they’re lucky, enough time to spit out another couple generations and then they’re done. There is little

evolutionary pressure to have longevity beyond reproduction except accidental longevity due to systems that need to go a certain or need us to go a certain amount of time that need us to go a little extra time.

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Cognitive Thrift 34 – Perspectives

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/22

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I don’t mean that. I’m talking about genuine individuals with those perspectives.

Rick Rosner: We all ride the arrow of time towards increasing order in lots of settings. For instance, the setting of a planet in a temperate zone orbiting a star. That’s a place that’s ripe for increasing order, and under the arrow of time increasing order is a thing we all benefit from.

And its part of what somebody like Einstein or Hawking might consider that divine beauty or divine order of the universe. That it’s a cool thing, a beautiful thing. One could almost say a godly thing without specifying an actual, like, beardy guy up in the sky that indicates order.

That feeling of evolving towards increasing order. But that being somehow at home in the world in a beautiful way isn’t a bad feeling, it’s good. You just have to – when you think about evolution and stuff, which is tough to think about because of issues like this.

You have to keep your forces kind of well-defined and avoid purpose sneaking in there. That we’re an evolving form of purpose.

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Cognitive Thrift 33 – Survival

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Cognitive game theory will imply some things to do with both an individual member and species survival with respect to cognitive evolutionary game theory.

Rick Rosner: Before we talk about game theory, we have to talk about the struggle between individual survival and species survival. We’re evolved beings. Evolution doesn’t care about anything. It’s not a willed force. There’s a thing called teleology. An idea, a bad idea, that evolution wants us to go in particular directions.

Evolution can’t want anything. It is not an entity with will.

Jacobsen: It’s a process. What are some examples of a teleological view in ancient and modern times?

Rosner: Teleological process – eyes are used by people that advocate creationism and intelligent design as something that couldn’t have evolved all by themselves. That the hand of some divine entity must’ve gotten in there because they are too complicate to just show up on their own.

Mixed in that is the idea that evolution pushed towards eyes. that evolution wants us to have eyes, but evolution can’t want anything. It’s a process, and it can exert adaptive forces, but those forces aren’t willed.

Those forces – and forces isn’t a good term, but I don’t better because I am ignorant – are helpful in surviving, eyes are helpful in surviving. Eyes get better and better where any extra betterness was being extra helpful for the organism. Economically, plus there’s the whole landscape of what

dammit (phone)

Evolution doesn’t want us to have eyes, but evolution has evolved at various times throughout evolutionary history because eyes are helpful, but there’s no divine push towards it.

In a sympathetic view, what would seem like a more generous statement to those – the majority of people with that teleological view in the world, which tends to tie into it?

There’s no generosity to be given to people that cynically exploit anti-science views to push their political agenda. It is people with their own agenda trying to sound scientific with a pseudo scientific theory, and it is just trying to sneak creationism in.

So there’s no generosity with them.

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Cognitive Thrift 31 – Individual Functionality

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/01

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We observe this with varying levels of functionality with individuals.

Rick Rosner: Once we suss this out, there will be mechanism, or clear mechanisms, by which people will think in familiar patterns or are jostled into thinking in unfamiliar ways.

Jacobsen: We can put these in common terms. Organisms evolved in particular habitats. Therefore, the organism to do or try to do is to attain a particular habitat suited for itself. For a simplified example, an artist should not be in a Symplectic geometry class. An mathematician should not be in the sculpting class.

Rosner: Yea – but there is a generalist class with a species that it’s a generalist class. There should be a species – a generalist species should be successful.

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Cognitive Thrift 30 – Cognitive Evolutionary Game Theory

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We’re going to be using this to lead into cognitive evolutionary game theory. We cannot say that these particular cognitive game theoretic aspects come from evolution because everything comes from evolution. It is a trivial truth in that sense, but we can carve out things.

Rick Rosner: I’m not saying a lot specifically about the brain, but I am making the assertion that brains and species. The one main assertion that I am making – well, I’m making many, but the one that I am making with respect to game theory is that brans can work with varying levels of functionality.

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Cognitive Thrift 29 – Game Theory

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Game theory is the theory about the mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent and rational decision-makers. It does deal with a payoff matrix between two players. We talked about cognitive game theory, which implies something different.

Rick Rosner: Let’s clarify how game theory works a little, generally, in game theory, you lay a payoff matrix. Where you have a set of different decisions that you can make, and you have a set of different outcomes of things that can happen for each of those decisions, and then each of those outcomes is weighted probabilistically, and a value is assigned to each of those outcomes, and by calculating the entire matrix you hope to come to the optimum decision.

For a simple situation, we’ll do a simple situation: cross the street. Game theory of crossing the street, you have two possible decisions, cross the street or don’t cross the street. You have two possible. you have two possible decisions and two possible situations: red light or green light. And then for red light or green light, you have two possible outcomes.

Make it across safely, get killed, so – or get badly injured, whatever you want. So, the payoff matrix or the payoff for crossing the street successfully. The payoff is say 1.

Say that’s worth 1 abstract dollar, crossing the street unsuccessfully, not getting injured, the payoff is -5,000. it is much, much worse to not make it across the street than it is to make it across the street.

And then the probabilities for making it across the street, for red light, 1% successful/99% unsuccessful and, for green light, 99.0% successful/.1% unsuccessful. And you don’t need to plug in the math because it is a commonsensical thing.

You best strategy is to not cross the street on red and to cross the street on green because the negative payoffs for unsuccessfully crossing are really, really huge.

And you can use game theory to make decisions that aren’t so clear cut like you could do a John Nash decision. Do you hit on the blond girl that everybody is hitting on or do you hit on the brunette girl that is being ignored, or do you completely blow off that situation because that’s leftover from when John Nash was thinking about hitting on girls in the 1950s?

The best strategy there is to probably to post on a blog that you don’t hit on girls and hope you get to meet on girls by appearing to be enlightened.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 28 – Meta-Game Theory

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about meta-game theory or cognitive meta-game theory? Theories about not only individuals, but many individuals, groups, and societies in interaction – or information processors or agents in interaction.

Rick Rosner: Game theory is traditionally involving people playing against each other, and trying to come up with optimal strategies that are resistant to other people’s decisions which you would expect themselves to be informed by game theory with the classic game theoretic problem being the prisoner’s dilemma, which is whether or not you rat out your partner in crime.

So, cognitive game theory to the extent that you’re thinking about your place in society and your place among other people. It includes assumptions about other people’s mental and decision making landscapes.

So, I guess you would expect over time brains to evolve to decisions that maximize mutual benefit, at least to the extent that this allows people to raise children that themselves will be able to raise children because the prize with evolution is always the succeeding generations.

But to go back to cognitive game theory for the individual, your brain is trying to follow heuristics or come up with rules that maximize its available abilities to minimize risk and maximize benefits, which to some extent means that the less conscious consideration you have to give decisions.

The better because conscious decisions use up less resources than pre- or sub-conscious decisions, so to go back to the usual example of the traffic light.

If you know hundred percent of the time that a red light means danger and a green light mans safety, you don’t have to think about your position or your decisions to do with lights. It becomes increasingly unconscious that you drive through green lights and stop at red lights.

However, real world experience shows that it is not 100% and the prudent drivers pay a certain amount of attention to the state of the light because everybody increasingly an idiot when it comes to driving.

Which itself is a consequence of cognitive economics, where due to the evolutionary nature of the brain, the brain has built-in biases, which means that we have a hard time resisting these biases and the kind of information that we get from our devices seems pertinent on a personal level – which makes it delicious, very attractive, in the same way that salt and sugar are delicious and attractive based on our evolutionary history.

So, the deliciousness of personal information received from our phones puts us in danger because at some point the brain – evolution biased us towards finding this kind of information super important by making it tasty.

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Cognitive Thrift 27 – System and Negation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We have defined some aspects of Cognitive Economics and some of aspects of its negation, its surrounding void. We talked about information theory communication theory, cybernetic theory, and American life, politics, and cultural changes. Let’s talk some more about it.

Rick Rosner: Alright, so – I dib, my preferred term for all of this stuff is cognitive economics. I don’t know if that’s a useable term because other people have used the term for things that we are not talking about because they use the term for economics and decision-making, but some areas we are going into that are related to cognitive efficiency, which your brain definitely engages in, in some ways that are obvious and other ways that are not obvious.

And cognitive game theory because thought to some extent is a game, where perceptions and decisions have a range of paths – both positive and negative – and the game you’re playing, your brain is playing, is to come to the conclusions that maximize the expected payout, maximize the benefits.

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Cognitive Thrift 26 – Isn’t

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We defined some things about the principles around cognitive thrift. What isn’t cognitive thrift?

Rick Rosner: Thinking about economics, it is not the science of how your bran makes decisions about finances and money. It’s not about the costs, the financials, neither is it about the financial costs of decisions that make or the financial costs of cognitive bias.

It is kind of deeper than that. It is about the costs and benefits to the organism of thought itself. And in in its most extreme, what are the costs and benefits? Meaning, the person who can think and react to the environment compared to a tree that can’t think.

You can make a case for being a tree and for being a human. Trees live for hundreds of years. They reproduce. At the same time, trees can’t change their situation. They can be cut down for Christmas trees.

They can be attacked by beetles. They can’t run away from a fire. People can react to their situations, but if their percipient thoughts are erroneous then they can become victims of their own thoughts.

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Cognitive Thrift 25 – Network

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What might be the benefits in light of this speculation about information theory, communication theory, cybernetic theory, and more open information processors with more feedback? What are the benefits to highly networked thought?

Rick Rosner: We kind of know that there are cognitive economic benefits to highly networked thought within individual brains with the highly networked thought being consciousness.

In a practical sense, where you have all of these sub-processors in the brain that are sharing information on an ongoing broadband basis, which we can kind of guess that consciousness is beneficial. It’s not always beneficial in every single situation, where, you know, situations where you need to make a split second move are going to tend to be sub- or pre-conscious.

But where you need to process a bunch of information and make a decision or have an understanding, there’s benefit to having every part of your brain sharing information with every other part of your brain, and we can guess that networked information sharing amongst groups of brains or groups of information processors probably has benefits, and we’re in the middle of being much more networked.

Where you can imagine a bunch of people in the 1930s and the 1910s, and most communication is face to face, verbal, you’ve got newspapers and some people have telephones, but most information carrying interaction is one person to another person right there on the spot.

And I don’t know what the proportions are now, but the proportions have changed dramatically where we are gathering information from our devices every waking hour depending on how addicted you are to your devices.

And much of our communication is via texting or via talking on the phone, less and les on the phone and more and more texting, but there’s just much more or a greater flow of information, and across greater distances and I guess of a greater factuality, perhaps.

In that, much of the information that’s carried by our devices reflects some kind of news or factual content. But given all of that, it is hard to immediately hard to say that it makes us smarter.

In America, in the middle 2016 elections, we look really stupid. People look very committed to their information bubbles. Trump voters are generally stupid. Bernie voters are a different kind of stupid, but the appeal of both of those candidates are not.

They appeal for dumb reasons. Bernie wants to give people a lot of free stuff. He wants to level out the economic playing field with no easy way to do that. So, we’re in the middle of a stupid

time in America. So, it’s hard to see how all of our information has made us smarter. So, we kind of have to look where we might be smarter, and where we might be smarter is entertainment.

Where I’ve worked for 25 years, we are supposedly going through a Golden Age of television.

TV is much, much better than it used to be, and it is, and one way that it is better is that it includes more information and it is targeted for a sophisticated audience, not a more sophisticated segment of the population, but a viewing audience that in 2016 is more sophisticated and has seen more stuff than viewers in the 1960s or 70s.

So, entertainment moves faster. Plots are more intricate. More is left unsaid; people are encouraged to draw more of their own conclusions. There’s more realism than there was in earlier TV, and that’s largely because everybody has seen everything now.

Everybody has seen 10,000 different stories and heard 50,000 different jokes over their lifetime compared to a farmer in 1908 who has heard 19 jokes and knows the plot to 30 stories.

So, increasing sophistication is one benefit, I guess the pace with which redundancy and error might be knocked out might be another possible benefit, where everybody knows. Before the telegraph, it took days for people to find out days or weeks to find out news from different parts of the world. Now, people find out within seconds.

But, again, I’m not sure what the benefit is to the overall level or functioning of society for people knowing things instantaneously.

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Cognitive Thrift 24 – Utilitarian

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you see things becoming more utilitarian?

Rick Rosner: Yea – as people live longer, people’s tolerance for risk goes down. People drive crappier than ever with our devices and everything, but our automobile fatalities are lower than they’ve been 50/60 years because we have cars with ten air bags and other safety devices, and so, yea, tolerance for risk will decrease in the future.

That includes becoming the victim of violent action. People will try to engineer some of our uncontrolled violent tendencies out of our behaviour.

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Cognitive Thrift 23 – Hate

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/02

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Some innate aspects of human hardware and wetware, as it’s sometimes called, has to do with what you pointed out before such as boobs, butts, and even rich lips.

Other aspects are more positive such as greater intelligence, which seems like a driver.

Something that I want to go into is violence. Something that has been very consistent throughout our history, whether as individuals, as groups, or as societies, and now as we’re seeing in the international community, at least in the 20th century.

Basically, war and violence towards one another in various way seem like rationalizations for hate. This seems very dysfunctional at this point in history. What are your thoughts on it?

Rick Rosner: I got to defend violence to some extent because in some instances it works.

Sometimes taking stuff by force works to the advantage of the person if they can get away with it, but in a more general sense. We’re still the primates we were 100,000 years ago with the brains from 100,000 years ago.

We are able to do more sophisticated things than 100,000 years ago because we developed a culture and we’re surrounded by technology and we have ways of communicating and we have theories and understandings of things that work well with our brain’s ability to process symbolic information.

Our ability to process symbolic information has served us well and will continue to serve us well as we begin to climb, rapidly now, climb rapidly to higher and higher levels of sophistication because if anything can be broken down into symbols we can generally understand those symbols, and so our brains are adequate.

But we still have the, as you said, hardwiring of primates, and as we understand more and more about our brains we will be able to rejigger the wiring, which is something that we’ve been able to do up to now in history.

We’ll have the increasing ability to decide that our drives are as opposed to our evolutionary heritage to some extent deciding what our drives are.

We will be able to turn down sex drive if that’s convenient for us, or re-direct drives in directions that individuals find more productive. We’ll be able to tone down violent impulses if that makes or serves a utilitarian purpose, if it makes things better for everyone in general.

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Cognitive Thrift 22 – Liberalization

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We have discussed a little bit of Dogma, not necessarily in beliefs systems alone. For instance, as after that great Kevin Smith movie, we can look at the Catholic Church and the way that it’s standard dogmatic positions of a lot of things have been in many, many ways been liberalized in many, many parts of the world. It’s a softening of the belief system.

In an analogous manner, the way people interact with the world will have to become less rigid with respect to their heuristics in terms of interacting with the world, and that seems in line with the erosion of dogmatic or static thought in general. Can you expand on that a bit?

Rick Rosner: We’re lucky to have the current Pope who seems to be less dogmatic than a lot of previous popes, but he’s still strict about some stuff, but Catholic Church has gone through periods of greater and lesser rigidity.

The doctrine of Papal infallibility is only about a 150-year-old, but what we’re looking at in our future is as we gain control over our thought processes.

As we learn more and more how our brains work and thought works mathematically, we will be able to re-direct our priorities and we will as we design artificial intelligence or adjunct intelligence must decide what our priorities and those thinking entities’ priorities are, which means will have to decide what is important about being human.

Science fiction generally comes to glib conclusions about what being human ultimately is, at the end of a lot of lazily written movies and TV show humanity is love, but that doesn’t tell you with how we will change over the next few centuries.

Many of the things that defines use: being driven by reproduction, to some extent by the amassing of wealth, preserving the physical integrity of our bodies. All those things are going to be under attack via the marketplace, via theoretical considerations.

I suspect that once we understand consciousness more thoroughly we’ll find out that our version of consciousness is a bit overrated because it’s an evolved consciousness that is a bit threadbare and is weighted in ways that we might not it to be weighted.

My example is the fascination with butts and to some extent with boobs and facial features because all those things biology wants us to be interested in because they represent reproductive fitness.

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Cognitive Thrift 21 – Data

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/31

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We talked about high level theory – communication theory, information theory, cybernetic theory, and so on. You gave examples from American life and politics, and social situations now.

Both have relationships with respect to the empirical and the theoretical. Theoretical coming from me. Pragmatic coming from you. I think some healthy middle ground can be had here. About examples, what can be said here?

Rick Rosner: In my mind, it’s always jocks vs. nerds. As a species, we’re nerdy. We’re physically weak. And with built-in mental fluidity, when a species is successful in surviving in nature in surviving in its niche, it uses its excess abilities to create extra complications to maintain reproductive hierarchy.

I’m not saying everything is because of sex, but humans triumphed over the natural world and now because we have mental fluidity. We’re constantly reshaping the human world.

When we get better and more powerful because we have more powerful tools and because we have the mental capacity once things are reduced to symbols to be able to understand those systems, and it’s not like we’re going to run out of mental power to understand symbols.

And so, we have an endless ability to reshape human society and the reshaping accelerates, which means that there’s less and less room for established rules.

Jacobsen: When I think about that, that seems like the foundation for dynamic thought, non-dogmatic thought.

Rosner: People call it a hockey stick curve or an exponential curve. It’s where things happen slowly for a long time and the various forces amplify each other and the rate of change goes nuts.

And if you look at history, if you look at the curve of human population, probably the curve of productivity, the curve of information, these curves are hockey stick curves speaking to human mastery of change. We’re nerds!

We thrive on flexibility now.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 20 – Feedback

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In terms of a general principle through cognitive thrift or cognitive economics, and bearing in mind the feedback systems and information theory and community theory basis of a lot of this, we can derive a principle about nested systems and levels of feedback within the system and in the embedded systems within that larger one.

Rick Rosner: The erosion of American stuff, which is proportional to the amount of news coverage that is available. I grew in the 60s. There was a half hour a day of national news on TV, on each of the three networks. Under – there was less pressure to crank out a lot of journalism. There was – though…

Jacobsen: I could clarify what I meant. What you’re providing are very specific societal examples from a standard American perspective, which makes sense based on the information that you do take in a lot of now, my perspective went abstract.

In terms of how these interrelated, and so I think they’re very much tied together, here’s the theoretical foundation of it in these disciplines and your provision of examples are very good and lay out a trendline of these in the, now, most powerful nation now, in history. It is a practical and theoretical overlap between the too.

Rosner: We’re right in the middle of media and politics wrecking themselves and each other. Right now, people are not resistant, sufficiently resistant, to manipulation via targeted information, where everybody has their chosen bubble.

And often these bubbles are cynically manipulated, lie the conservative bubble is partly stuff that. Both the conservative-liberal – whatever bubble you’re in is party actual events, stories about those events, and partly spin about those events, and partly manufactured events.

And the information that wins probably in each of the major political bubbles right now in America is stuff that’s been spun.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 19 – Theory

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/29

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: These things – all of them – can derive to degree of feedback and basic principles of information and communication theory with respect to how much a system is recursive in terms of its own improvement and ones that cannot keep up with the general change that happens – whether societies or aspects of the international community, they tend to erode or outright disappear.

Rick Rosner: Yea – I agree with that. And what we’ve seen over the past century or more. People love information. People will be draw to increasingly rich information source. People love secret or taboo information.

So, there’s the – many of the traditional, American, institutions that had flourished through the first half of the 20th century were undermined by people learning to much about them or by people learning about their internal contradictions or them being at odds with rapid changes in society during the second half of the 20th century.

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Cognitive Thrift 18 – Dogma

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/28

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We talked about static, dynamic, or simply dogmatic thought or patterns of people.

This is less functional in a highly dynamic, often-changing, and increasingly changing society based on technology, science, and other things. Can you give us some examples of dysfunctional dogma? And how might we change that? How might it change?

Rick Rosner: We can look at the 20th century, which saw the erosion of faith in many traditional belief systems. Even science, which got bigger and greater in terms of its successes in the 20th century also got scarier and weirder and more dysfunctional.

You had the Titanic go down in 1912, which signalled the beginning of distrust in big engineering. You had relativity and quantum mechanics dethrone classical mechanics, classical physics, and made everybody feel weird.

You had the erosion of patriotism in the second half of the 20th century, the erosion patriarchy, the erosion of things like the Boy Scouts became super unhip – where no kid or few kids were ashamed to be a Boy Scout in 1940, but there would have been a lot of kids who would have been embarrassed to have been a Boy Scout in 1980.

So, some of the erosion of traditional belief systems or traditional belief systems or things that are traditionally valued were probably due to over-reaching or too many uncomfortable revelations on the part of the institutions themselves. You could probably trace a lot of the erosion back to information. When there’s too much information that undermines an institution, it becomes harder and harder to believe in it wholeheartedly, and the second half of the 20th century saw fewer and fewer institutions being able to shield themselves from information about themselves being revealed.

JFK could screw around with a zillion woman while feeling that he wasn’t in much at risk of having any of this revealed. Gary Hart was the first, 1986, was the first huge presidential candidate brought down by an affair, and Clinton had all his dirty laundry aired.

Information probably drives the erosion of faith in traditional structures. The more you know abut sports, especially recently, the less you can wholeheartedly believe in it.

The Tour de France, apparently pro bicycling is entirely based on avoiding being caught doping and the NFL, our entertainment revolves around players whose average lifespan is something like 60. They are engaging in something that is going to cost them their rest of their lives and will cost them 20 years of their lives on average.

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Cognitive Thrift 17 – Jocks vs. Nerds

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/27

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We have talked about dynamic, static, ways of thought. You have characterized as ‘jocks’ in a larger theme of jocks vs. nerds in larger evolutionary theory.

Rick Rosner: Well-adapted organisms in stable environments: jocks.

Jacobsen: This could be tied into cybernetics with systems that have elevated levels of feedback, where systems that are static have less feedback.

Rosner: Sure – we’re talking about dogma in society.

Jacobsen: Yes, as a larger theme, yes.

Rosner: So, if you’re looking at the Middle Ages, where – and I know there are nuanced and revisionist pictures of the Middle Ages that have changes happening all the time if you happen to know a lot a history and I don’t – a lot of things stayed the same generation after generation.

The cathedral might take 120 years to put up, so when after your kid looks at a cathedral that’s 30 feet higher than you did when you were his age.

And that kid looks at a cathedral that’s another 3 stories higher. Meanwhile, you are farmer, bakers, and barrel makers and living kind of the same types of lives under the same political, religious systems in a lot of cases.

I mean, yea political boundaries change and there were doctrinary changes, but there was a lot of stability. Certainly, more stability more than there is now, and stability is amenable to stable rules.

I may have mentioned this before, but my kid and I for her 21st birthday. We went to Italy and we were looking at a bunch art from the Romans and then from the Christians, and between the Romans and the Christians. There seemed to have been a major loss in ability to realistically render the human body.

The Romans had good-looking statues, and whatever survives of their frescoes or whatever. They obviously understood the human body.

All its muscles and bones and how they worked, and then you get to the Christians and you have cartoonish figures robes, and it seems like a giving up of that area of knowledge and giving it back to God.

We worry about our spiritual fitness, and we worry about our bodies and how they work. hat kind of suggests a certain at-homeness with stability in a lot of places over the next 1,000 years, and when politics is table, when religions are stable, when societal patterns are stable, and people aren’t really trying to rock the boat. That permits or encourages stable rules.

And in a lot of instances a lack of curiosity or at least a lack of encouragement of curiosity. [End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 16 – Choice

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/26

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s also the fundamental right of choice. If you look at international declarations such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, they have the right to not only pick their heritage and culture from which they come from; they also have the right to live as they see fit within that context and some people don’t wan that, and there’s no reason that it should be force upon them.

Rick Rosner: I think in the novel Brave New World people are divided into five classes. I think it’s a society that at least on the surface works efficiently, and when you start poking at it it is all scary and horrible, which is the point of the book, and there are people that decide to opt out and live on reservations without modern amenities, and we can figure as tech goes crazy across the

next couple centuries.

There will be the technical Amish.

People who to various extents shield themselves from technical improvements. People who decide to age and die across a natural span of 80, 100, 120 years as opposed to everybody else who prefers living indefinitely.

You can imagine family struggles where you have a pair of 300-year-old parents and a rebellious kid who is getting old at 85, and refuses to take rejuvenation treatments or other forms of technical resurrection.

And how much strife there is going to be in that kind of family.

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Cognitive Thrift 15 – Smarts

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s one extension there into the life support systems. The direct Golden Rule goes to individuals with an increasing moral sphere of concern. Following from that, every entity exists in a context and requires some form of support system.

Computers require materials and electricity. Human beings require food, and air, and water, and a clean living, for instance. So, life support systems are also important in terms of proper treatment as an indirect form of that as well.

Rick Rosner: Yea – the context of existence also is a consideration – like, you cannot do a lot for salmon at the end of their life cycles. You might be able to do something for the salmon swimming upstream to do whatever they do when they get upstream to deposit then die. They evolved to be that way.

It is to some extent a bummer, and to some extent you must balance against it being – eventually we’re going to have to look at nature and see how much we want to meddle.

If – I imagine a science fiction-ey world, not one that is going to pass, 50, 80, 100 years from now with all animal being mentally actualized, everything is smarter – deers are smarter, bears are smarter, raccoons, dogs.

Everybody’s been smartened via some weird genetic plus some biotechnical tweaking, and in this world if a bear eats a deer. The bear is responsible for absorbing the deer’s life experience, and so now the deer is kind of riding piggyback inside the bear’s head as just one of the –

You can imagine a vampire story that’s like that. Vampires designed by some alien civilization to when they suck blood they are also sucking the life experience of the person whose blood they are sucking, and it is just an alien civilization’s way of gathering data on humans, which is all crazy ridiculous science fiction.

However, in a smartened-up world, there are going to be all sorts of things that are thinking and feeling that we don’t have right now. We are going to have to make decisions about how much consideration those things deserve.

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Cognitive Thrift 14 – Billions

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/24

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That does seem overly optimistic. Some of the best projections look at 9-10 billion, and even 12 billion at the extreme, by the end of the century.

Rick Rosner: Anything that slows it might not necessarily the worst thing. To circle back to what evolution might want from us in terms of spiritual thought, we might be better of psychologically with a certain amount of faith.

Jacobsen: That’s true. That does match some evidence. People within a faith community tend to be have more psychological health. The ‘jocks’ win in that sense.

Rosner: Yea – faith does not cost anything. It’s one of those things where it doesn’t hurt and it might help, unless faith is cynically exploited by jerks to fight some positive social change.

Jacobsen: What social change? What examples – two, please?

Rosner: You have a bunch of Southern states calling prejudice against trans- and gays religious liberty, which is A) bullshit and B) on the losing side of history.

The Golden Rule tends to be – history tends to be on the side of the Golden Rule, extending respect and empathy to more and more entities, deserving entities. Nobody is arguing that the Golden Rule applies to cars, though they may in 50 years when cars turn out to be with computer brains that are as smart and feeling as a kitten, but really, it’s –

The Golden Rule extends empathy to thinking, feeling entities.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 13 – Population

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/23

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That leads to a population implosion, which seems like the major concern in Japan and Singapore, for instance.

Rick Rosner: A population implosion is not the worst thing in the world if it’s uniform. What people worry about is being overwhelmed by – this whole area gets tricky, you want to avoid racist characterizations, you start getting in the Herrnstein and the other guy, those arguments are icky and fallacious, and they tend to blame victim for unfortunate economic situations.

Jacobsen: Our arguments apply across or within the species. It does not matter the nation or ‘group.’

If you are wealthier, if you are less religious, if women have more rights, and if you are more content in general, then your birth rate will be lower and this could lead to issues around population being below replacement rate.

Rosner: Yea. Though, being slightly under replacement rate wouldn’t be the worst thing if it applied to the entire world, the population gradually dropping from 7.3 billion to 7 to 6.5, or even lower, over a couple generations would buy us some leeway to deal with some of the problems we’re having with having so many people.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 12 – Rich and Poor

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I see some room for additional extension of that argument into more practical realms: statistical geographical, global perspectives.

If you look at the most prosperous nations, the least religious nations, the most well-off nations in terms of health and well-being nations, and in terms of international women’s rights nations – for instance, North America and Europe, they tend to have the lowest birth rate as an inverse correlation.

If you have high on those things – irreligiosity, education, socio-economic status, you tend to have a lower birth rate. With that in mind, that might argue for that. People are more content and, therefore, that might argue against too much contentment for the persistence of a species in normal evolutionary circumstances. Of course, we have technologies that override this.

Rick Rosner: There are at least two trends fighting each other in that. You’ve got the crappy living conditions and spit out a lot of kids in the hopes that some survive versus good living conditions with a high expectation of each offspring surviving, and then you have what you’re talking about, which is people being satisfied enough in some ways that they don’t feel compelled to steadily reproduce.

Which is probably going to be an increasing trend across the next century as people’s lifespans increase, people will feel increasingly lackadaisical about the business of spitting out the net generation because the current generation doesn’t feel the clock clicking as loudly as older generations did.

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Cognitive Thrift 11 – Neuroeconomics

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/21

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It is differentiated from neuroeconomics, which looks at decision making in general with regards to economics in addition to the brain basis of that behaviour.

For instance, one researcher, Paul Zak, isolated oxytocin as the bonding hormone and applies this to various areas, but that’s far apart from this. It does not get that technical, but does provide some thought experiments with respect to having a brain and how that might turn out with the standard perspective of an evolutionary perspective.

Rick Rosner: Yea – now, also, there’s a different set of considerations or costs, where because we evolved organisms. Our brains don’t always tell us the pure unadulterated truth. There are the issues with Plato’s Cave, just the limitations of perception and there are some built-in biases.

And when you look at matters of faith, there are a complete set of possible faith based cognitive biases, where evolution wants – we are most effective as reproducing organisms when we’re in certain emotional states.

Evolution, as evolved beings we are most effective when attentive, because inattentive beings in a dangerous, complicated world get killed due to error.

By shorthand, we can talk about what evolution wants us to be, but keeping in mind that that’s a teleological statement and evolution is not teleological.

Evolution does not really want anything, but just for shorthand we are most evolutionarily effective when we have certain attitudes and those attitudes might be optimistic and happy but not so happy.

If an entire species were just happy regardless of situation, that species would be too complacent to be effective at continuing itself. You can see that in people’s lives in the stories that we follow.

The story ends at happily ever after, which is fine but nobody is happy throughout the story. People go through periods of being miserable, and being happy for a second, and there’s just turn arounds in the plot.

You can’t be happy all the time because then you’re not motivated to take on the tasks that evolution wants us to take on.

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Cognitive Thrift 10 – OCD

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/20

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How does this apply to you outside of diagnoses of OCD?

Rick Rosner: Through our talks I’ve developed of what I believe, I believe that simple forms of order are more likely to be self-consistent and are thus more likely to pop up in the world and in abstract systems of logic and abstract systems of analyzing the world.

The self-consistency is kind of the key to existence. Things that are contradictory can’t exist for long.

And to me this feels as if this belief system is sufficiently pinned down that it will be durable and hard-edged once it’s fully developed. At the same time, my feelings about self-consistency being the key to everything or non-contradiction being the key reflect faith in order, and it doesn’t feel mystical to me.

But if you push it far enough to the area of what I know and don’t know, and if you push it far enough into what I don’t know, there’s faith that these stabs are the nature of things will eventually become logically and scientifically substantiatable, but right now there is a lot of faith there.

I have an increasing belief that there are powerful forces favoring the arrow of time at work in the universe. Specifically, energy lost by particles travelling long distances across the universe and losing energy to space, but there’s a lot of faith in that in that my mathematical training is not sufficient to let me easily translate that into quantum mechanical equations or relativistic equations.

But I have faith that what I believe about that is translatable into sharper mathematical language and that it will be substantiated, but there’s a lot of mystical faith in science and what I think. In that, I’ve studied a lot of science.

I’ve read a lot of science of various degrees of sophistication. I’ve had a couple semesters of quantum physics. At one time, I used to know how to use eigen values, but I have since forgotten all of that, and I’ve read kind of physics that is made easier for less mathematically trained people.

Via this big mass of scientific knowledge and semi-knowledge, I have faith that what I think will comport with hardcore science. Even though I am more ignorant scientifically than people who do science, there’s faith in science that everybody does, even super highly trained scientists.

Hawking has thoughts about what’s beautiful in physics. I’m sure it informs him in his judgment in how the world works.

There’s one caveat about the costs and benefits of non-empirical, spiritual and superstitious thought, which is the costs and benefits.

We’ve been talking about cognitive thrift, which is the costs and benefits of thought itself for an organism, where the costs and benefits for religious or faith-based thought are not relating to the costs and benefits of thought itself. They are to the costs and benefits to the organism and society. It is a different kind of cost-benefit thing than the cost-benefit of thinking.

It is a different economy. A more – cognitive thrift is a little bit more at the expense of having a brain; whereas, it’s a more straightforward, the costs and benefits, of faith, say, rather than lack of faith, which is more easily understood under a more well-established economic framework. It’s not as new a framework as the costs of cognition.

We’re talking about two different topics, even though we’re throwing them in the same little book.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 9 – Major Figures

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/14

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Our discussion went from scientific process in general to discussions about spiritism and the afterlife in addition to specifics about ghosts, the devil, angels, and so on, and then it went into historical aspects to do with early indications of science, if not outright science but with an anthropomorphism and a teleological view, then it went into major figures in this.

Take, for instance, Isaac Newton and most of his work being on alchemy. You did not mention his heavy work on Church Fathers, which was probably a religious duty from his own perspective in addition to the very deep religious feelings of Einstein who, I guess, developed his views from Spinoza, I believe, then you went into American politics as well with the cynical exploitation of people, but also looking at some of the more mild, general social benefits that over a society can do very great good.

For instance, the self-sacrifice that can be encouraged by belief systems that require faith. This then leads to a personal perspective. What is your own stance on this in terms of religious feelings and science, and so on, rather than observing the historical record, American, other historical figures, and so on?

Rick Rosner: Well, with me, I have a pretty healthy dose of OCD. Every day, you can catch me acting superstitiously many times without easily believing that the stupid superstitions have any validity.

Even though I don’t believe in them, I still try to step in a room with my right foot, and certain numbers make me nervous, and it’s all ridiculous, but I still find it easier to yield to the superstitions than to actively resist them and feel uneasy – which is a characteristic of OCD.

At the same time, nobody is free of unsubstantiated suspicions or beliefs about the world. You don’t get people taking forward steps in figuring out the world without those people exploring unsubstantiated beliefs.

When you hear – you could probably dig up hundreds of quotes from mathematicians and scientists talking about how they pursue the most beautiful lines of enquiry. The godliest lines, the things that – Einstein often said that God had to do things certain ways because they were too beautiful to not be done that way.

Spiritualism or science can’t be separated by certain kinds of mystical feelings. Now, you can – a lot of scientists would call themselves hardcore realists and say that they don’t believe in anything, but natural processes, but often as they explore the world they must at least partially rely on suppositions about the world that could be considered non-scientific and somewhat mystical, hoping that this would lead to further hard science.

We don’t know everything, and when trying to know more we are going to go out on a limb. Some of which are a little mystical. In talks we’ve had earlier, we’ve talked about some of the reasons why math, the beauty of mathematical regularity is reflected in the greater world.

Somebody talked about the super-weird effectiveness of math in describing the world. How that is just a crazy – why should math and number and equations of motion and all that describe the world?

Why should the world have to at all conform to mathematics that a lot of mathematicians and other people consider beautiful? It seems for a lot of math people that seems mystical and wonderful. It can reflect a faith in the beauty of creation.

Even if you’re so hardcore that you don’t believe in a creator, at the fringes of what people know is belief, and belief often can’t be entirely rational.

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Cognitive Thrift 7 & 8 – Faith and Science & Teleology

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/12 & 2017/05/13

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That sounds like an anthropomorphism and a teleological view tied together that then becomes the lens through which the taxonomical classifications are had or made and the process itself is done.

Rick Rosner: You might be able to argue that all science begins with faith and religion and mystical beliefs. Chemistry comes out of alchemy. Periodic table, you could probably draw its lineage back to alchemy.

Newton, arguably our greatest physicist, spent more time on analyzing the Bible than he did on math and physics. Einstein, deep spiritual feelings. It’s only lately and – I mean -it’s not just lately.

Religion and science and unsubstantiated beliefs don’t have to be at cross-purposes. They can inform each other.

In current times in America, when people put religion at cross-purposes to science, a lot of that is shysters exploiting faith for creepy self-serving purposes. Conservative think-tanks, corporatist think-tanks, over the last 35-40 years have spent many hundreds of millions of dollars learning how, learning which voters can be easily moved and learning how to move them.

One of the techniques they’ve learned is to exploit religious faith, which means you have – you know- religious people being used for non-religious purposes. And after decades of this, it seems to natural that fundamentalist people should be anti-science and at least some of that anti-science has been cynically drummed into them by people who are trying to exploit them.

And in an earlier time, 1950s, say, science and religion could more peaceably co-exist with each other, which isn’t a bad way for things to be. Faith offers benefits to people without necessarily impeding change.

It is only when faith is cynically exploited that – it’s not only – but it’s often when faith is cynically exploited that faith is used for obstructive and cynical, and non-humanistic purposes. Anyway, that’s what I got.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 6 – Proto-Science

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/11

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Some subtleties can be added to this. For instance, a generalized spirit world or any manner of afterlife seem different than any of ghosts, devil or Satan, spirits inhabiting animals, and so on.

Rick Rosner: If you go all the way back to the beginning of religious beliefs, they are in a way scientific. By coming up with several gods that are responsible for aspects of the world, you are dividing it into a variety of phenomena or characteristics and assigning causes to it. Even though you are doing it religiously, you are taking a stab at establishing a system of the world.

Jacobsen: That sounds different than system as a process and more akin to science as a taxonomy.

Rosner: Yea – but taxonomy is one of the first steps of science. You can’t do science without taxonomy.

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: And back when people 3, 4, 5 thousand years ago were coming with up a zillion god. There wasn’t much in the way of science and you could probably argue that the coming up with gods and investigating the world in a proto-scientific way were not too different things.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 5 – Cognitive Economics

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/10

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Rick, you have mentioned some parts, in other discussions, about low-cost, beneficial, non-empirical belief systems. For instance, about things that are non provable, some might deem them non-meaningful by that definition, or matters of faith or superstition. What would a cognitive economics state about this?

Rick Rosner: Faith-based beliefs do not have a huge influence on moment-to-moment evaluation of sensory input. A faithful person is going to jump out of that way of a recklessly driven car the same way an atheist is.

You can say that in many, if not most, instances people who have various faiths are going to react in the same way as people who are non-believers, and cost of – say you’re a non-believer that faiths are superstitious and just don’t reflect the scientific reality of the world.

You can say that, but the cost of having faith or having superstitions – believing in ghosts or other things that are hard to prove through evidence or are hard infer through any kind of scientific process. People with those beliefs don’t pay much of a price in day-to-day activity for having beliefs that some people might consider irrational, and they get a lot of benefits.

Faith gives people systems that provide eventual justice when the everyday world doesn’t. God makes things right, eventually or in the afterlife. God rewards the virtuous and punishes the evil, eventually.

And there’s a thing called Pascal’s Wager, where Pascal said at least on your deathbed you might as well go ahead and become faithful to God because even though it is a low probability thing that God exists. The benefits are great, and not becoming faithful offers zero reward in any possible afterlife.

Faith can also help bring people together in shared altruistic effort. Faith is kind of a spiritual patriotism that lets you, or might make it easier to be brave or be self-sacrificing, for the benefit of others under your belief system. The same way a soldier in a war may sacrifice him or her self for people who share his nationality.

Faith can help people do or make smaller sacrifices in their own lives and just engage in people understand shared humanity and be altruistic in smaller ways – be charitable, be tolerant. Unfortunately, in America right now, under political polarization, we see religion being used for somewhat non-Christian purposes in a lot of instances.

Or in a more general sense, we see faith being resistant to societal change, even when the society is coming down on the side increased tolerance. But – anyway, that’s what I got.

[Break in recording]

In a general sense, non-evidence-based beliefs offer benefits – emotional, sometimes societal benefits without people paying immediate and obvious costs for beliefs that are not substantiated. Few people are compelled to stand in front of a moving car by their spiritual beliefs, or if they are it’s in an altruistic way. That by letting a car crashing into them they are saving other people.

So, in a general sense, matters of faith and superstition and faith have greater benefits than costs.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 4 – Motor Ability

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/09

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s an aspect to do with motor ability. The degree to which an organism travels. How regular and localized is its general itinerary in addition its kin?

And human beings having a very large brain in proportion to their body size and in general, in addition to a deep interconnectivity amongst its parts, more than any other animal travel the farthest, I think, on average as a general principle.

You can, for instance, make a counterargument via birds migrating, but, as a rule, I think the bigger the brain the farther the travel.

Rick Rosner: Yea, but birds go from on type of environment to another type of environment. Their environments are nearly as varied as humans, and expanded to cover, or at least can survive in, 70-80% of the world’s land areas.

When you look at the pressures on humans or the things that allowed humans to develop big brains, you have size. Animals the size of a lemur cannot support a human size brain, but larger primates can support larger brains.

Standing upright, which frees the hands, which means you need more brain power to work your fingers to manipulate things with any kind of dexterity, you need expanded powers of visualization to go along with that ability to manipulate things with your fingers.

None of that explains genetically why you’re able to develop big brains, but it gives bonus drives and pressures to develop big brains, and along with dextrous hands you’ve got the ability to develop tools, which allow you to survive a greater variety of environments.

Also, we need resources. As predatory mammals, we’re physically untalented. We’re not fast. We’re not particularly strong. So, when you hunt as a hunter-gatherer, we need to communicate to hunt effectively.

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Cognitive Thrift 3 – Size

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are some of your ideas about cognitive thrift with respect to size?

Rick Rosner: One, it requires a lot of resources to run a thinking organism. It costs a lot in terms of energy. Two, independent thought as opposed to following long-established rules can be risky. Thought involves error. Three, thought can add instability.

Both to the species by being disruptive and to the individual by making it more likely to go crazy. I guess that an organism with a complex brain is more likely to suffer disorders of thought than an organism with a less complex brain.

Four, big brains are dangerous during childbirth. Five, they require more time to pass on cultural knowledge. And they require that babies be born less mature than animals with smaller brains.

When you look at the human childbirth model, the head is as big as it can be. It is just big enough to get out of the pelvis, but it is not big enough for an adult brain. So, you’ve got this 10 or 12 years of learning and continuous brain growth, and requires humans to have longer lifespans. It is a whole different model of survival. Say possums, which are dumber, and have an average lifespan of two years.

Jacobsen: What would be some of the consequences in terms of cognitive biases with an expanded cortex – which comes with expanded cognitive capacities and can be put things on the ‘radar’ of the organism’s conceptual landscape but leaves an area for cracks?

Rosner: It’s like when you’re buying the car. Is it worth the spray coat to protect from salts? Is it worth the Sirius XM radio? The thought expanding capacities can be at the expense of other capacities.

They can help the thinking organism find ore exploitable regularities to improve their situation or to avoid risk. You might be able to argue that our brains are at the optimum size for risk that we face.

In fact, you can make an overall argument that brains which are expensive are only the size that they need to be for the organism to survive long enough to raise that next generation of organism, and depending on the environment and other factors.

So, it’s jocks vs. nerds throughout evolution and amongst species, where species that are well adapted to stable environments may not need to think as much as much as species in changing environment.

Once they are set in an environment, like some kinds of molluscs or clams, their brains are there when they’re looking for a place to spend the rest of their lives, but when it’s done their brain goes away. I don’t know. I’ll have to Google it.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 2 – Error Reduction

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/07

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That recalls two things for me. On the one hand, the strength of the cognitive system. On the other hand, its weaknesses too.

What would cognitive economic state about the strengths and weaknesses of an evolved organism such as the balance between energy consumption and efficiency, and computational capacity and error reduction?

Rick Rosner: In an evolved organism such as ourselves, evolved organisms such as ourselves. We must be right in our perceptions about and our actions in the world enough to live long enough to reproduce and raise offspring to continue the species.

For humans, the standard lifetime according to the Bible is 70-80 years, more recently in developed countries it’s in the low 90s and according to the UN we’ll eventually shortly hit 100, and that’s a long time to be making the right decisions about the world so as not to be killed by accident or not to fall victim to other consequences of bad judgment.

So, an average brain needs to last a century. And as brain science finds out more and more about the brain, we find out just how physically complicated it is, not just in its physical structure, but in the processes, that then maintain it.

The processes that allow you to learn and remember. It’s much more complicated in terms of all the moving parts than any computer, though computers will before too long have the computational capacity that we do, but since the brain is an evolved system.

Everything – since the brain is an evolved system, it is messy and organic and all these overlapping and interacting chemicals and electrical signals and constantly rewiring its dendrites and extending new ones and forming new synapses, and changing the – retuning synapses, constantly rejiggering the inputs that the strengths of the various inputs reach neurons and rejiggering how a neuron decides when to fire.

All this growth and change and maintenance is expensive in terms of the bodies resources and important in terms of our individual survival.

[End of recorded material]

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Cognitive Thrift 1 – The Start

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Cognitive Thrift

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/06

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When we talk about aspects of efficiency in thought as an implication of optimal informational arrangements such as mass and gravitational forces to make aggregations of matters as representative of information efficiency, this then reflects a certain architecture, and this then reflects a certain style of thinking that is going to be generally used.

You had an idea abut cognitive economics or thrift or thought thrift. Could you please expand on that to start this little e-book off?

Rick Rosner: Sure, but first let me say you’re talking about gravitational aggregation, you’re talking about our idea of informational cosmology. That the information within consciousness can be physically represented by an information space, which is kind of a map or a kind of a world of information, but for cognitive thrift or cognitive economics.

You don’t – cognitive thrift doesn’t rest on that set of assumptions, though those assumptions are certainly relevant to it, but you can establish the idea of cognitive economics with some ideas that are fundamental to cognitive economics itself.

One is that the brain is a finite information processing structure. Two is that the brain consumes a huge proportion of the body’s resources. Three might be that it’s in the interest of a thinking organism to have accurate perceptions and come to accurate conclusions about the world it’s perceiving.

And with those three assumptions, you’d get the idea that it might be a priority for the brain to function ultra-efficiently and that there are important limits on the functional ability of the brain.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-03-20

Reflections on High School Finance

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): TeenFinance (A Mentee’s Publication)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2015

I went to high school in Canada, straight north of the US, on soil near various First Nations reserves. Marked, living remnants of enormous missteps in the Canadian historical record. I research in some psychology labs, and work and study in a university with stints here and there, among other work. The talk about finance always seems to come up.

I remember times in high school. When I look back, it’s interesting to think of the unknowing value of experiences thought of as trivial at the time, along with the experiences that turned out trivial even when originally thought about direly. That’s learning and growing. It’s a time of exploration. Which means, a time of reasonable possibilities – good and bad. That’s life. It ebbs and flows in happiness and satisfaction. As my friend Rick Rosner said, “High school’s an abridged version of real life, and its abridgement adds clarity, and that clarity is comforting.”

I now recognize some financial lessons probably best learned at an earlier time. And they’re nothing obscure, complex, or even difficult to comprehend. But then again, I simply didn’t know at the time that these were the lessons I most needed in the future. It’s easy to mistake simply not knowing something for wilful ignorance. A simple matter of lack gave sufficient grounds for not developing some life skills. I did not have much knowledge in knowing my personal funds inside and out.

My lack of funds even arose during some part-time work in construction, where I was given decent pay. Which brings to mind a truism; money helps with life’s happiness, but to a point.[1]^,[2] Especially in high school, I knew some friends who depleted a vast quantity of available resources to pursue some lavish event or purchase some extravagant “in” accessory. I don’t know.

It’s an odd phenomena. None of this appealed to me, but in reflection on high school finances, a place of better balance could have been struck between friends and myself. But as hinted, I was an odd teenager. At any rate, this brings me to the real question besides reflections. What seems like a decent approach to finances in high school – simple, everyday stuff? Or delving beneath what I can see on the surface and thinking about money in a whole new way?

When I look back at mistakes made and lessons learned from them, the core idea of money management doesn’t mean simply having a lot of money, and then if you don’t have enough then touch luck. Rather an attempt at looking realistically at the things of need, others of want, and the balance between use of personal time and earning of coin. One can earn lots of money, but lose time. You can spend your time pursuing non-monetary endeavours, but not have money to do the things you want at the end of the day.

Some basic skills – financial literacy skills, in other words, are needed. If I had at least one scintilla of advice for those with an open ear about finances in high school, it’d be to look at the opportunity costs between something of immediate want and another thing of distant need and proportioning those out dependent upon the money available to them at the time. And then tying this into one’s job, expected income from it, and the best uses of the money from that job. A rational consideration of the needs, wants, and everything in between.

[1] [PresidentialConf] (2013, June 23). Prof. Dan Gilbert — The Science of Happiness: What Your Mother Didn’t Tell You. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwQFSc9mHyA.

[2] See Quoidbach1, J., Dunn, E.W., Petrides, K.V., & Mikolajczak, M. (2009, November 17). Money Giveth, Money Taketh Away: The Dual Effect of Wealth on Happiness. Retrieved from http://dunn.psych.ubc.ca/files/2010/12/Money_giveth_money_taketh_away_-_Sept25.pdf.

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2022-03-20

United Nations Re-Emphasizes Human Trafficking Crimes

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Survivors Unleashed International (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019

According to the United Nations, through its Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), it has been noted that the vast majority of victims of human trafficking are women and girls at 72% of the total number of ongoing victims. However, one more disenchanting trend has been the increase in the number of victims being children.

Between 2004 and 2016, the number of child victims, so mostly girls, has more than doubled.

Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, stated, “Most detected victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation; victims are also trafficked for forced labour, recruitment as child soldiers and other forms of exploitation and abuse.”

The problems of the world continue to be interlinked. For example, when encountering problems of anthropogenic climate change of human induced global warming, the destruction of the infrastructure and capacities of nation-states to provide for the safety and security of its citizens becomes an issue for refugees, displaced peoples, and migrants.

In other words, and by the way the majority of refugees are women and children, the problems identified by one area of the international community impact another part of the problems facing the world’s citizens, especially those most vulnerable who have been displaced due to climactic megastorms, flooding, and other natural disasters destroying local infrastructure. Nature forces a move from their hometown, even their homeland.

Vulnerable populations can then become subject to being taken advantage of by the traffickers. These are desperate people. Similarly, we can see the same in a Canadian context.

If the individuals in the populations become vulnerable in some manner, then they can be taken into human trafficking networks and trapped. One major mechanism is financial or economic entrapment. In order to continue to live, women and girls, mostly, have to sell themselves as objects of pleasure to the buyers of what the human traffickers are selling.

Everyday news items of the United Nations have immediate applicability here.

The UN concluded, “Globally, countries are identifying and reporting more victims and convicting more traffickers, according to the latest UN Global Report on Trafficking in Persons. Despite some progress, however, ‘victims continue to face significant obstacles in accessing assistance, protection, redress and justice.’”

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2022-03-20

Vancouver Housing Crisis: Business Schools Host Panel

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Rockmount Financial Corporation

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/08

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – August 7, 2019 – PRLog – The University of California, Berkeley and The University of British Columbia hosted a panel discussion on July 28^th, 2019 at the Arbutus Club in Vancouver, British Columbia for the discussion of the housing crisis in the City of Vancouver.

Participants in the panel discussion with presentations included: Dr. Thomas Davidoff, Stanley Hamilton Professorship in Real Estate Finance & is the Director of the UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate; Patrick Wood, Director of Canadian Self Storage Valuation Services (CSSVS); and Jeanne Huangli, J.D., Executive Director of the International & Strategic Initiatives at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

The discussion’s theme was “Vancouver and The Business of Housing” with emphasis on the future of real estate in Vancouver, the financial framework of large projects, and housing in a university community. Professor Davidoff, Mr. Wood, and Huangli dealt with differ facets of the subject matter within relevant expertise the education of the participants of the event. Professor Davidoff focused on the issues of property taxes and the influence on the housing market and prices. Mr. Wood provided top-of-the-nation class expert on self storage across country as Canada’s leading expert on self-storage. Huangli spoke about the student body of the UCBerkeley community and the need for student housing with UCBerkeley having its own crisis.

Urban environments all have challenges in common with respect to housing. Yet, Vancouver, Toronto, San Francisco, and Calgary have remarkable differences. The panel will compare and contrast these cities. Vancouver is uniquely impacted by foreign investment. Toronto benefits (and suffers) from its being the financial center of Canada. San Francisco’s housing supply is inhibited by the balkanization of municipal government. Calgary is in the position of a buying opportunity in housing as a result of the economic cycle.

The event was scheduled from 2 to 5pm PDT with people coming as early as 1:15 and staying as late as 6:00pm.
CONTACT INFORMATION

Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Press Manager
Rockmount Corp
+1(403)303-2770
Info@RockmountCorp.Com
http://www.rockmountcorp.com/

Antonia Kalmacoff Jennings
Executive Vice President
Rockmount Corp
+1(647)244-3789
Antonia@RockmountCorp.Com
http://www.rockmountcorp.com/

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2022-03-20

The How and the Why of Technology as Applied Science

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): RND4Impact (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020

Any technological advance can be dangerous. Fire was dangerous from the start, and so (even more so) was speech – and both are still dangerous to this day – but human beings would not be human without them.

-Isaac Asimov

Science has made our lives enormously more comfortable with the applications in technology. Technology feeds off the discoveries of science. Our world of cell phones, supercomputers, cars, even common household appliances, come from them. Our modern world is scientific.

Science can be considered discovery. Technology can be considered application. Science is the way to know the world. Technology is the application from this knowing of the world. One gives operational truths about reality. The other applies those in the world.

Fundamentally, as Carl Sagan noted, science is more than a method. It’s an attitude. It’s a way of thinking. Its method is the empirical method. Its attitude is skeptical. In this sense, the way of thinking can be considered scientific skepticism.

Scientific skepticism amounts to a pragmatic position on the questions of epistemology. It’s about functionality, operations. Do these things work? Do these explain things in the terms of functions and operations? Do these make predictions? Do these make testable predictions?

Are these falsifiable claims? Are these claims verifiable? Are the verified claims repeatedly verified by independence observers in similar conditions? Are these accounting for human fallibility? And so on, these are some of the hallmarks of epistemological rigour.

Scientific skepticism enforces standards of evidence and a proportioning of evidence to the claims. If the conditions are met, and if the mass of evidence or the preponderance of the evidence stacks to the claims, then the claims seem worth considering within the category: “True,” or factual.

Science can be seen, in this manner, as a process. It’s engaged intelligent operators enacting particular principles of applied reasoning to comprehend and probe phenomena in the world. These become a basis for discovering trends over time.

Sometimes, these can be encapsulated into precise mathematical equations or principles. These, sometimes, seem so rock solid as to be consider laws rather than principles, Laws of Nature. These mathematical equations, principles, and laws, set the boundaries of technology.

Technology, in my opinion, looks as if applied science. In that, science can incorporate technology, but technology is downstream, at first, from science, while used to improve scientific investigation.

It’s a mutually honing process. Both become basic in advanced, modern industrial economies. Look around at the technology in most people’s homes, it is a representation of the power and ubiquity of technology and scientific thinking.

However, with technology as applied science, the operationalism of science leads to the application for functions in the world. If the functions of the universe are known, then these can become domains of mastery.

The mastery of science applied on the world to manipulate it. At base, that’s technology. Technology represents applied scientific mastery of the natural world. Scientific skepticism is a process to attain it. Technology is a manner in which to manifest it.

In this simple presentation, science seems like the basic operation of epistemology to some account of the natural world while technology becomes the technical application of the discoveries of science.

From this, science becomes a philosophy of discovery. Technology becomes a philosophy of application. Where the furtherance of applications can enhance the discoveries in science as a cycle, to me, science and technology seem inextricably linked as a fundamental engine for the modern world.

Reality is a natural system. Discoveries about its operations provides the fundamental structure answers to the “how” questions. How does this work? Many times, “why” questions boil down to “how” or function questions. Why is biological life here? It is asking, “How is biological life here?”, in some sense.

It provides a framework for comprehension of the principles of evolution leading to the world. Now, we use these principles to work on technologies to combat threats to human health with technological solutions. And so forth, this is a modern world.

It is a techno-scientific modern world. We’re better for it. Indeed, we gather real answers to the pressing operational questions around us. In turn, we can begin to ask legitimate “why” queries while sipping a delicious cup of coffee.

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2022-03-20

Western Upper Peninsula Travel Guide: The Western U.P.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): MyMichiganBeach

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020

The western part of the Western Upper Peninsula is an outdoors marvel.

It’s a paradise for outdoors people. There are national forests, waterfalls, lakes for fishing, trails for biking, and rivers for kayaking, and more.

Tracing the path of Lake Superior, there’s plenty of lake front to go around. To the east, you can find the Hiawatha National Forest. To the west, you can find the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.

Explore the Western Upper Peninsula

Each of these areas in the Western Upper Peninsula is a unique landmark to be claimed for the outdoors person. Something to be explored in all its glory.

It’s one reason many vacationers are drawn to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula annually: outdoors activities of every type. Houghton, Keweenaw, Ontonagon, Gogebic, Baraga, and Iron Counties, are places to visit here.

Visit Houghton

Houghton has been named of the best 100 small towns in America. It’s the largest city in the state of Michigan. A home in the copper country region, where Native Americans used to mine copper.

Located along the Keweenaw Peninsula, it is the site of the A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum. Tourism is a large industry here. As well, Houghton connects with the Isle Royale National Park.

Walk down the main strip of central Houghton, you can find the Pewabic Street Community Garden open to the public. It’s packed with parks and recreational spaces and activities.

There’s the famous amphibrome, Dee Stadium, which is a famous community facility in Houghton. Nara Nature Park is available as a public space too.

Things to Do in Houghton

A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum

Don’t miss the chance to visit the A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum, which was founded in 1902. It is the official Mineral Museum of Michigan. Inside, you will find the main museum, the Phyllis and John Seaman Garden, the Copper Pavilion, and the Mineral Preparation Annex. Its host to mineral collections from all over the world.

Carnegie Museum

Carnegie Museum of the Keweenaw is a cultural and natural history musuem. It is open all-year-round for culture and history buffs. For more information, you can visit the website.

Dee Stadium

An amphidrome located in downtown Houghton and a community center. It consists of a ballroom and an ice-skating/hockey rink. It’s a center of history and culture in Houghton.

Pewabic Street Community Garden

Pewabic Street Community Garden is a volunteer community project for people to come and grow together. It is a member of the American Community Gardening Association. You can rent plots for each season.

Beaches and Parks

Carnegie Museum – Carnegie Museum of the Keweenaw is a cultural and natural history musuem. It is open all-year-round for culture and history buffs.
Isle Royale National Park – Its headquarters is in the downtown of Houghton with a ferry service provided for transportation. It’s a wonderful park comprised of wolves, moose. It has plenty of space for boaters, canoeists, hikers, scuba divers, and more.

Eat in Houghton

There’s plenty of places to eat in Houghton with a broad menu. They serve each palette. Here are some great spots in Houghton for great food:

Where to Stay in Houghton

If you’re looking to stay overnight in Houghton, try these spots:

Visit Keweenaw (Peninsula & County)

Keweenaw comes from the Ojibway word meaning “land crossing between two bodies of water.” This is a reference to Portage Lake requiring crossing to gain access to the Keweenaw Peninsula.

Keweenaw, as a Peninsula, is known as Copper Cuntry, which is a formation of land before the existence of known life on Earth. The Western U.P. is known for its rich geophysical history.

It is Michigan’s least populated county. There’s plenty of outdoors activities here: Snowmobiling, Downhill Skiing, Sea Kayaking, Snowshoeing, Dog Sledding, Mountain Biking, Waterfalls, Fishing, and more.

It is home to the famous Mount Bohemia. Check it out!

Things to Do in Keweenaw

Snowmobiling

Keweenaw gets more than 270 inches of snow each and every year. it is a great place to rip across the snow or on the shoreline of Lake Superior. There’s 230-miles of snowmobile trails.

Downhill Skiing

Mount Bohemia is one of the premier ski resorts. It has the highest vertical at 900 feet and the largest backcountry glade. It’s the only triple black to run in the Midwest. It is one of the best downhill ski destinations.

Sea Kayaking

You can go out and grab a paddle for the Keweenaw Water Trail. It has been established since 1995 for canoeists and kayakers.

Dog Sledding

It is home to one of the top dog sledding races. Because it is an abundant source of snow annually for CopperDog 150.

Mountain Biking

There are a large number of trails available for mountain bikers, including the Copper Harbor IMBA Silver-Level Ride Center offering 37 miles of a singletrack.

Mountains

Mount Bohemia

It gets over 270 inches of fresh powder annually. It has some of the longest runs with the highest vertical. By USA Today, it was claimed as the 3rd Best Ski Resort in North America.

Eat in Keweenaw

You can get lots to eat in Keweenaw. Here are some great spots in Keweenaw for food:

Where to Stay in Houghton

If you’re looking to stay overnight in Houghton, try these spots:

Keweenaw Mountain Lodge
Eagle River Inn
Keweenaw Castle

Visit Ontonagon

Ontonagon is a county with a population of over 6,700 people as of the 2010 census. It is the third least populated county in Michigan. The word Nondon-organ from the Ojibwe meant “hunting river” and likely means the origin of the name for the country.

It is likely this way of naming for many counties in Michigan. It is Michigan’s least populated county. There’s plenty of outdoors activities here.

It is notable for its skiing and snowmobiling. It incorporates the Porcupine Mountains area of the Western U.P. too.

Ontonogan and Porcupine Mountains Area has plenty of vistas, rivers, lakes, old growth forests, and connects to Lake Superior to satisfy outdoors people.

Things to Do in Ontonagon

Ontonagon Historical Museum

For the history buffs, a visit to a new location isn’t much without a museum. The historical museum contains a number of artifacts and exhibits from the early history of Ontonagon.

Skiing

If you come out to the Porkies (Porcupine Mountain Area), you will find the second highest vertical drop in Wisconsin or Michigan. You can catch great views of Lake Superior, too.

Snowmobiling

Out in the landscape of Ontonagon and Porcupine Mountain Area, you can find plenty of areas for snowmobiling. Lots of lodges and resorts can cater to housing you.

Mountains and Parks

Porcupine Mountain Area – A mountainous expanse connected to Ontonagon with plenty of areas to explore while on a stay here.
Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park – A state park in the Western U.P. spanning 60,000 acres. It is one of the few large areas of wilderness left in the Midwest. 15 miles west of Ontonagon in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Eat in Ontonagon

Ontonagon has a number of restaurants fit for the skiiers and the snowmobilers. Here are some great spots:

Where to Stay in Ontonagon

If you’re looking to stay overnight in Ontonagon, try these spots:

Visit Gogebic

Gogebic is the westernmost county in the U.P. of Michigan. Its got a population of 16,427. The Lac Vieux Desert Indian Reservation is here.

Its name likely comes from the Ojibwe word for “body of water hanging on high.” Its population has been steadily declining since the 1920s.

It connects to Lake Superior and contains Lake Gogebic, Lake Gogebic State Park, and part of Ottawa National Forest.

Things to Do in Gogebic

Biking

The Michigan U.P. in general has plenty of trails, back roads, and logging roads available for biking. You could check out the Pines and Mines trail system or the Copper Peak Mountain Bike Park.

Camping

There’s great camping grounds at the Lake Gogebic State Park or the Union Bay Campground, or Curry Park. Some more can be found in the Bergland Township Park, Ontonagon County Park, and the Ontonagon County Park.

Fishing

If you like fish on a platter, you could try catching some live ones. Lake Gogebic is truly a centrepiece to explore for some great fishing, whether weed bed mid-summer fishing or winter ice fishing.

Lakes and Parks

Lake Gogebic – Lake Gogebic sits between Ontonagon County and Gogebic County in theU.P. of Michigan. There are more than 300 inland lakes because Gogebic County is the western gateway of Michigan.
Lake Gogebic State Park – Lake Gogebic State Park is 360 acres on the west short of Lake Gogebic with 127 campsites. Its only a 30-minute drive from the Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park.

Eat in Gogebic

There’s lots to eat in Gogebic. Here are some spots in Gogebic for food:

Where to Stay in Gogebic

If you’re looking to stay overnight in Gogebic, try these spots:

Visit Baraga

Baraga is on the Lake Superior’s L’Anse Bay. It was established by Rev. Frederic Baraga in 1843. It used to be known as Bristol.

It’s got plenty of places to sightsee, including Baraga State Park, Lake Superior, and the Bara County Historical Museum. The village contains approximately 2,000+ people as of the 2010 census.

Despite another small size, its own place as a village and the surrounding areas are marvels to behold.

Things to Do in Baraga

Bara County Historical Museum

A museum on the shore of Keweenaw Bay. It is operated by the Baraga County Historical Society. It preserves and presents the cultural and geological heritage of Baraga. For history buffs, this is the place for you.

Parks

Bara State Park – Baraga State Park has a great view of the Keweenaw Bay of Lake Superior. There are 116 grassy sites in the park for all sorts of outdoors activities.

Eat in Baraga

Baraga has food for everyone. Some great places to eat in Baraga here:

Where to Stay in Baraga

If you’re looking to stay overnight in Baraga, try these spots:

Visit Iron Counties

Iron County (Iron Counties) is in the Western U.P. of Michigan. Its population was almost 12,000 as of the 2010 census, which is larger than many of the others.

It was named the Iron County due to the value of the Iron ore found there.

Things to Do in Iron Counties

Amasa Museum

It is open in the summer, and then in the winter by appointment. Admission is free if this is a barrier at all. It is, in fact, the former township hall. It has a collected presentation of mining industries and logging industries, and logging and rail transportation.

Iron County Historical Museum

The museum is a historical and cultural museum founded in October of 1962. It has a European style of development in its history. Michigan is the place for history buffs!

Parks

Pentoga Park – Pentoga Park is nice, quaint park tied to the Brule River Trail. It’s another lovely short stop to get some sightseeing.

Larson Park – Established in 1919, it was founded by road engineer Herbert Larson. It is a quick stop for visitors for rest and relaxation.

Eat in Iron Counties

They’ve many delicious places to eat food. Iron Counties has som of the best spots in Houghton here:

· Amasa Sawblade

· Alice’s

The Pasty Corner

Where to Stay in Iron Counties

If you’re looking to stay overnight in Iron Counties, try these spots:

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2022-03-20

Central Upper Peninsula Travel Guide

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): MyMichiganBeach

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020

The central part of the Upper Peninsula is a place for outdoors and fun. You can explore the region’s hiking and biking, or kayaking and snowmobiling, depending on the season.

As with much of the Upper Peninsula, it’s a place for people who love the outdoors. Those times of fresh air, cold chills of Winter, cool Spring water, and the warmth of the Summer Sun.

Whether gathering ‘round the fireplace in the Winter, exploring the tributaries in the Spring, or tracing the back paths of the woods for exploration in the Summer, the Central Upper Peninsula has everything travellers need – so let’s explore!

Every trip-minded person needs a roadmap, an itinerary. That’s where we come to help you.

Explore the Central Upper Peninsula

The areas to check out in the Central Upper Peninsula are Alger, Delta, Dickinson, Marquette, Menominee, and Schoolcraft.

Each of these areas is a place with a specific history and a particular palette of provisions for the excited, or even the weary tourist.

Visit Alger

Alger is a county with a population of about 10,000 people circa 2010. It broke off the Schoolcraft County (at the bottom of the guide) in 1885 and named after a lumber baron, Russell Alexander Alger.

It is home to the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians. It has three national protected areas including Grand Island National Recreation Area, part of Hiawatha National Forest, and Picture Rocks National Lakeshore.

Things to Do in Alger

Camping

Some of the most enjoyable activities throughout the Upper Peninsula are camping. It’s a time to go out with family and/or friends and experience the great outdoors.

Hiking

Keeping in one place all the time in the forest wouldn’t be the same without some time to move around a bit, luckily, there’s plenty of places to hike including the Grand Island National Recreation Area and Hiawatha National Forest, or along the Picture Rocks National Lakeshore.

Mountain Biking

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is on the shore of Lake Superior. It has views of the shorelines of Munising and Grand Marais. There’s 47 miles to explore of waterfalls, sand dunes, and rock formations. In 2005 alone, it received nearly 500,000 visitors.

Forest and Lakeshore

Grand Island National Recreation Area – Grand Island National Recreation Area is a part of the Hiawatha National Forest, in fact. Lots of tourists come through here. Some of their biggest or more fun things to do: camping, hiking, mountain biking, even trapping. Let us know if you see any black bears!
Hiawatha National Forest – Hiawatha National Forest is named after a Mohawk chief of the same name who brought confederation to Five Iroquian nations. It is a popular place for camping tourism. As well, it has a number of lighthouses along its shores, certainly, worth checking out.
Picture Rocks National Lakeshore – Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is on the shore of Lake Superior. It has views of the shorelines of Munising and Grand Marais. There’s 47 miles to explore of waterfalls, sand dunes, and rock formations. In 2005 alone, it received nearly 500,000 visitors.

Eat in Alger

Alger’s got food for everyone. Whether for the healthy in spirit or for those with a partying self who likes spirits, it’s all there for the eating, and drinking:

Where to Stay in Alger

If you’re looking to stay overnight in Alger, check out some of the inns:

Visit Delta

Delta comes from the Greek letter meaning “delta” to indicate a triangular shape of the original count. A former county incorporative of parts of Dickinson, Iron, Marquette, and Menominee.

As of the 2020 census, there were more than 37,000 people, which is more than many of others, a bit more hustle and bustle.

It contains Hiawatha National Forest, as well as the Hannahville Indian Community and the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

There’s so much hidden in Michigan to explore. Delta is no different.

Things to Do in Delta

Camping

Delta has some of the best golf courses in the world with four of them ranking in the top fifted best in the Upper Peninsula. trails.

Car Show

It has a great car show called the Cruisin’ Klassics Classic Car Show. At the show, you can explore some of the areas best classic cars.

Golfing

Delta has some of the best golf courses in the world with four of them ranking in the top 15 best in the Upper Peninsula. trails.

Forest

Hiawatha National Forest – The Hiawatha National forest contains a number of distinct wilderness areas: Big Island Lake Wilderness, Delirium Wilderness, Horseshoe Bay Wilderness, Mackinac Wilderness, Rock River Canyon Wilderness, and Round Island Wilderness. In each of these areas, you may have the wonderful opportunity to discover timber wolves, golden eagles, moose, hawks, even wild turkeys! It’s a wonderful place for the experience and the novice outdoorsmen in its richness of presence and colorful sense of life.

Eat in Delta

Delta as some great places, including a grill and pantry to delight any palette:

Where to Stay in Delta

If you’re looking to stay overnight in Delta, try these inns and plaza:

Hilton Garden Inn Lansing West
Wild Goose Inn
Crowne Plaza Lansing West

Visit Dickinson

Dickinson Dickinson was named for U.S. Postaster General Donald M. Dickinson in 1891. It was made from some parts ofIon counties, Marquette, and Menominee.

As of 2010, its population was 26,168. One of the bigger populations of people shown compared to many of the other areas in Michigan.

It can seem as if there aren’t many parks here, because there aren’t; however, one of the charms of Dickinson is its variety of other places.

Including, for example, the WWII Glider & Military Museum. Something any history buff would enjoy. Even if you absolutely must enjoy the outdoors, there’s still plenty of rivers, inland lakes, Piers Gorge, or the Pine Mountain Ski Jump to keep those oudoors appetites satisfied.

Things to Do in Dickinson

Ski

One of the fun activities while in Michigan, of course, is the use of the immense landscape, forests, rivers, gorges, and more, to be part of the outdoors. With its mountainous regions, including the Pine Mountain Ski Jump, Dickinson has great spots for skiers.

White Water Rafting

Piers Gorge is a destination spot. As part of its attraction, many people go to hike and then white water raft. Check it out!

Gorge, Mountain, and Museum

Piers Gorge – An immaculate gorge with a drop called the Mishicot Falls about 8′ high. It has a lovely hiking trail with ledges, so be careful. At the end, you can see the Sand Portage Falls. If you’re into white water rafting, this may be a place for you.
Pine Mountain Ski Jump – Pine Mountain Ski Jump has some of the best artificial ski jumps in the world, which attracts some of the top jumpers, internationally. If you come at the right time, you can come to see the Pine Mountain Ski Jumping Tournament.
WWII Glider & Military Museum – You can see a Model A Ford Tudor, a restored WWII CG 4A Glider, a Heiserman Plane, 1930 J3 Piper Cub, footage from WWII, and much more. It’s a sort of 20th century history buffs dream come true.

Eat in Dickinson

Dickinson as a great number of places. Here are some of them:

Where to Stay in Dickinson

If you’re looking to stay overnight or a few in Dickinson, you might want to check out these places.

Americas Best Value Inn & Suites Norway
Holiday Inn Express & Suites Iron Mountain
Pine Mountain Ski and Golf Resort

Visit Marquette

Marquette is Marquette started, interestingly enough, with French missionaries from the 17th century. Its development, formally, began in 1844 with the discovery of iron deposits by William Burt and Jacob Houghton.

Its population was on the larger side in the 2010 census at more than 21,000 residents. It sits on the shore of – you guessed it! – Lake Superior.

Its a hub for the shipping of Iron ore. As well, Marquette is a gallery and museum haven.

Things to Do in Marquette

Gallery Viewing

The artistic and history community of Marquette must be fabulous and richly diverse and integrated into the community, as can be seen with the Oasis Gallery for Contemporary Art. Something any arts and culture person would love.

Museum Tours

Outside or, maybe, integral to the arts in Marquette, there’s the Marquette Maritime Museum, the Upper Peninsula Children’s Museum, the DeVos Art Museum, the Marquette County History Museum. All of these provide a sense of a rich, respected history – great for tourists – in Marquette.

Gallery and Museums

DeVos Arts Museum – The DeVos Arts Museum is part of Northern Michigan University with various exhibitions and programs. It is intended as a place for interdisciplinary thinking and a wide range of perspectives.
- The Upper Peninsula Children’s Museum – The Upper Peninsula Children’s Museum is a hands-on museum for kids. It’s a great educational resource open to children and families, even presenting as a museum by and for children.

Eat in Marquette

Marquette has a great inn, pizzeria, and more, for a tourist to try out:

Portside Inn
Aubrey’s Pizzeria and Grill
Donckers

Where to Stay in Marquette

Its inns and suites are a delight too:

Hampton Inn Marquette/Waterfront
Staybridge Suites Marquette
Landmark Inn

Visit Menominee

Menominee has more than 8,000 people as of the 2010 census. It was the traditional area of the Menominee Indian Tribe.

It was given the English name meaning “wild rice,” which came from a nickname given by Ojibwe neighbours. In short, it was named after the stable of the area.

Despite another small size, its own place as a village and the surrounding areas are marvels to behold.

Things to Do in Menominee

Walking

If you’re into walking, they have a – literal – walking tour through some of its history in the Historic District Walking Tour.

Some exploration in the downtown of Menominee. There are a number of things to explore, including with an emphasis on the waterfront: a marine, fine dining, a museum, sail-boating, a landmark library, beaches, concerts, an antique car show, and more.

Museums

Menominee Heritage Museum – The Menominee Heritage Museum was formerly the St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, which was acquired by the Menominee County Historical Society in 1976. Now, you can learn about immigrants, fur traders, Menominee Indians, and loggers in a former Catholic Church.

Menominee Indian Tribe Cultural Museum – The Menominee Indian Tribe Cultural Museum covers the history of the Menominee, which covered more than 10,000,000 acres of land in the currently named “Wisconson” and “Upper Michigan.” You can learn of the Indigenous peoples of the area with more than 10,000 years of history.

Eat in Menominee

Menominee has some of the more interesting names for restaurants available Delicious food below(!):

Where to Stay in Menominee

Lots of lodges and inns for any weary traveller to sit back, kick off their shoes, and gather some energy from the travails of the day:

AmericInn by Wyndham Menominee
Econo Lodge On The Bay
Best Western Riverfront Inn

Visit Schoolcraft

Schoolcraft has only about 8,214 people or so as of the 2010 census, so counts as a village. It was named after ethnologist Henry Schoolcraft.

It is used for a lot of farm devoted to corn and soybeans. Schoolcraft conduced a number of early surveys in the area. It’s home to many quaint places with its small size, including the Bishop’s Bog Preserve Trail.

Things to Do in Schoolcraft

Walking

As with some of the other lovely destinations in Central Upper Peninsula of Michigan, there’s some real neat places to walk around and explore in Schoolcraft.

Two of those, at least, include the Bishop’s Bog Preserve Trail and the Reach Flowerfield Creek Nature Sanctuary. Either can provide a quick exploratory trip with great scenery!

Sanctuary and Trail

Bishop’s Bog Preserve Trail – The Bishop’s Bog Preserve Trail is a beautiful place harboring the orange fringed orchid, the pink ladyslipper, northern pitcher plant, and more. It’s one of those trails you have to see to believe, quaint and majestic.

Reach Flowerfield Creek Nature Sanctuary – The Reach Flowerfield Creek Nature Sanctuary is a component of the Michigan Nature Association to protect Flowerfield Creek. It’s a lovely abundance of Beech trees, and other flora and fauna, including Purple Fringed Orchids, Rosinweed, and Cardinal Flowers. Its acces is by foot, so hope you like walking here too!

Eat in Schoolcraft

Schoolcraft has some great food. Make sure to seek them out:

· Marjo’s West

· Yogi’s

Mancino’s Pizza & Grinders

Where to Stay in Schoolcraft

If you’re looking to stay overnight in Schoolcraft, there’s a lot of places, here are a few:

Courtyard by Marriott Kalamazoo Portage
The Oaklands
Hilton Garden Inn Kalamazoo Downtown

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2022-03-20

Universalist Visions to Wellness – Human Rights Applied to Mental Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Low Entropy (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020

Mental health sits at the foundation of general human wellbeing. Human rights stand as a universalist vision of the international community of nations and citizens. If we want an equitable world, we need health global citizens with equal opportunity and stature.

Human rights and mental health are a united front for the equal treatment of all. Human rights mean every human being is provided the same privileges and responsibilities. Mental health is something for everyone to strive to attain and maintain for a better life.

On December 10, 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights created the foundation for an international human rights and rules based global order. Everyone, in theory, acquires the same rights, becomes subject to the same laws, and operates within the same boundaries.

Low Entropy Foundation defines as follows, “Low Entropy is a registered charity that is making personal development accessible to all, and in doing so, providing people with tools to change themselves and the world.”

Personal development deals with individual people who each have a mental status: healthy or unhealthy. For proper functioning in a society, in relationship, in professional life, in individual self-management and self-care, mental health reigns supreme.

In a sense, without mental health, we can’t have professional life health, relationship health, or societal health. It’s bottom up. It starts with an apparent irreducible component of the field of psychology, individual human personalities.

Therefore, ill societies are comprised of ill individuals; healthy societies are composed of healthy individuals. To make incremental change or piecemeal reform to the health status of societies, we should focus on individuals, individual needs, and personal development as these over time.

A fundamental basis of the international rights and rules based order is the idea of the rights as principles. In general, these principles, human rights as such, mean broad ethical principles with legal and social import for freedoms and entitlements.

The tacit implication behind human rights freedoms and entitlements is the consequent need for obligations and duties. If you want a right, then you purchase a responsibility as a consequence of it. It’s a two-part deal. By having rights from others, you have obligations to them.

Individual human rights follow from the ideas of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In that, the rights inhere, tie to, individual human beings. You have rights and obligations. I have rights and obligations. Same with our neighbours. We have right to exercise them, too.

One obscure idea in the United Nations is the idea of autonymity. I do not see the term used much, but I see the concept used all the time. It’s foundational to rights. If you have ethical principles, what is the point without the ability to exercise them?

Take, for example, the right to freedom of expression; it’s a fundamental human right. By writing this article in this forum with this particular formulation of ideas, I am exercising the right to freedom of expression.

Even with rare formalization with the explicit use of the term, it’s a hugely consequential idea. The concept of guarding, keeping, the right to exercise all other rights. The idea, typically, is applied to use of names, as in autonymity to names.

It means “inalienable personal rights which may be exercised in any situation.” In the domain of mental health and the cross-sect of individual fundamental human rights, the question arises, “What is the relevance of human rights and mental health?” It’s a good question.

With some more thought, it is a profound question with deep, lasting consequences for our lives and, as argued above, societies’ health. One would need to connect human rights to mental health in a direct way.

Where, a basic international human rights argument is made for the right to mental health. Following this, the “inalienable personal rights which may be exercised in any situation” become relevant to psychological wellness.

In fact, this has been argued, directly, by The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, Ontario Human Rights Commission, the World Health Organization, the American Psychological Association, and others.

It’s a significant number of local, national, regional, and international actors. The emphasis is clear. There is a deep interconnectedness of international, national, and provincial efforts to improve both the status of human rights and the mental health of citizens.

Similarly, direct efforts at improving the conditions of human rights through increased mental health are ongoing, the question, at this point, shouldn’t be, “What is the relation of human rights and mental health?”

Rather, it should be, “What is the best way in which to implement human rights to improve international mental health at an individual level?” Fundamentally, this is the question. It is not a singular solution, too. Because it’s a plural problem.

This hydra will require targeted solutions and community-based interventions to work on specific, individualized issues. There’s anxiety, depression, narcissism, psychopathy/sociopathy (antisocial personality disorder), bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and so on.

Each one has a differentiated formal solution. Every one with multiple ways to combat them in better and worse ways. The Low Entropy Foundation in its work is one such effort at improving the mental health of communities, of youth, and men and women.

Those conscious efforts at working together on personal development in community, in close-knit groups. It’s not everything, but it’s a start.

Come check us out!

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2022-03-20

Make Sustainable Fun!

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Werner Price (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/07/19

This is a reflective piece on learning about other cultures through immersion. I have not done this in depth myself. However, I do know others that have done this quite in-depth. So, I write this from a point of semi-ignorance.

If you look or if I look at the other cultures in the world, I can notice some commonalities with my own Canadian culture, which is limited in perspective. Those commonalities are part of the shared human experience with, for instance, rights of birth, adolescence, adulthood, partnership, parenting, old-age, and death.

There are various rituals around us. There are even differences in clothing that people wear for those distinct moments in life. In fact, those distinct periods in life are culturally associated to the extent that people expect other citizens of America to wear those clothes.

It’s a sense of the scare ‘common sense’ nature of the social cultural immersion. The one that you have to been born into. That includes me. Think about a business dress for an adult professional woman. Think about a suit and tie and black dress shoes for an adult professional manner.

These are expectations. These also reflect commonsense cultural messages about what equates to adulthood and what does not in terms of dress code. So there’s a sense of cultural decorum. Cultural immersion can come in other aspects to.

People cannot we just look at the clothing through photos and reading articles. Appeal Commerse himself entirely into the culture. One other trusted clothes writer of the blog is Sara Corry. She does a tremendous job writing a lot about her work in Ghana.

She lives and works with Ghanaians. She might even consider herself one, default citizen at this point with the immersion. I find her story fascinating. I find the people that are around her that she describes fascinating too because it’s an entirely different way of life in a lot of ways, but somewhere in others, and shows a window into a different perspective on life.

I appreciate that that message that she brings to the foreignness.

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2022-03-20

Sustainability with the Kids – Hikes

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Werner Price (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/07/20

Let’s say you have kids of your own, nieces, nephews, or even an entire classroom to teach sustainability to. You’re probably pretty lucky. You get to pass on the knowledge and wisdom to the next generation. Sustainability in this respect is about mindfulness about the natural world. And our waste in it.

Wrappers, containers, food waste, bottles, unused perishables, lots of stuff. Adults know better. Kids don’t. This is where sustainable lifestyle education can be a useful thing. We teach the next generation. One good way is through lessons. Lessons on sustainability. Kids are not yet at the point of learning from being told, typically.

But children might learn better by the example of guardians in their lives. So, that means we can set examples, in a fun and entertaining way. One activity that we can do with kids is going on a hike. If you go into nature, you can bring along a camera, sketchbook, and encyclopedia of plants. You can even study some of the plant life beforehand.

Knowledgeable guides are always appreciated! And when kids come across something that they have interest or find of interest, they can look it up, or you can look it up for them, even open up a conversation about the plant, its history in the area, and its possible uses. It’s building a knowledge of and respect for nature. Always a good thing!

Sustainability starts with the consideration of the natural world. Maybe, in the future, the child can develop an appreciation for the natural world in a concrete way. You can throw on some of the Jolly Dragon Collection for the kids and hit the trails. (Some suggested sizes based on age.)

You can even prepare some of the reading time as material for the hike before the trip too. You can build an imaginative aspect for the kids. Age appropriate children’s stories about wildlife can help because there’s lots of lively characters in them.

But keep in mind, they’re kids. So, make it interesting, lively, and fun, and do some prep work, but think about time limits for focus and interest on their part. Too long, they might dislike it at that point. So, it might be good to gauge their typical energy level and focus, bring some snacks, and keep checking on their interest and energy.

Other than that, look up the local trails, and head out in the wilderness (with trails)!

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2022-03-20

The Mystic Collection of Purple Impression

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Purple Impressions (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/02/10

The Mystic Collection for Purple Impression is based on three creative types from different backgrounds – a local designer, a Persian calligrapher, and women artisans (hand-embroiders) in Pakistan – coming together to benefit artisans and unify people. We’re about diverse groups coming together in an inclusive environment. A place for everyone to meditate on a message of peace.

Purple Impression’s main philosophy is inclusion. The Mystic Collection follows this philosophical tradition, especially in this recent rises in divisive words and deeds. Art and fashion can bridge the divisions and bring people together through love, peace, and unity, which is a thing of beauty as art and fashion can be as well. Globally, there remain urgent crises from the political sphere, such as extreme nationalism, to socio-cultural life, such as the open and influential xenophobia based on ethnicity and religion.

Fast fashion is another issue. It influences the rights of women and children, e.g. with the labor rights violations and inequality in pay, the environment, e.g. degradation to the fragile balance of the ecosystem, the oceans, and the atmosphere ‘purity’ relative to the needs of human beings, and unsustainable consumption, e.g. the advertising, marketing, and public relations industry connected to business promoting the lifestyles of the worst consumers and polluters. The Mystic Collection aims to speak to these concerns in a slow fashion agenda.

Moroccan architecture inspired the structural elements of the embroidery seen in the design for the Mystic Collection. The influences remain in the geometry and embellishments for the calligraphic inscriptions intended to create the sense of harmony. Messages can be seen on the pieces in the collection Hubb or “Love,” Wahdah or “Unity,” and Sallam or “Peace.” The links to the original philosophy of inclusion with messages of love and unity for the attainment of peace through the Mystic Collection.

For more information on the Mystic Collection and Purple Impression, please contact us:

info@purpleimpression.com.

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2022-03-20

Ethical and Sustainable Fashion News in Brief

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Purple Impressions (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/12/10

Stella McCartney speaks out on the fashion industry

Bazaar reported that the designer Stella McCartney is an outspoken critic of the fashion industry on the topics of “animal rights, animal cruelty and sustainable fashion.” Of the luxury brands, McCartney is the only one to not use animal skin, fur, or leather in the collections.

“Fashion really is getting away with murder. There needs to be more systems in place, more vigorous testing,” McCartney said, “and as a customer you can do that, you can challenge the people who are making your fashion.”

She noted the importance of being mindful of personal decisions in purchases. Furthermore, she emphasized the reduction in animal product through the use of faux as opposed to real fur because customers “really can’t tell the difference.”

Eileen Fisher acknowledges negative environmental impact of the fashion industry.

According to Triple Pundit, the public wants to make more sustainable fashion decisions in their personal purchases. Customers are more aware of their negative impact on the environment.

The Savers State of Reuse Report described that “more than half of North Americans report they are more likely to practice reuse after learning about the clothing industry’s environmental footprint.”

However, if the sustainable and ethical products are not on the shelves of the stores, then the general public as consumers cannot purchases those products. It becomes a problem. People know more, want to make the choices, but the options are not available.

Sustainable fashion: the whats, the hows, and the getting started

As well, HuffPost Style, states that 13 garment workers “died from a fire or the waste and pollution fast fashion is causing” and the rapid breakdown of fast fashion products for those even recently bought.

They quote the Green Strategy in definition of sustainable fashion as “clothing, shoes and accessories that are manufactured, marketed and used in the most sustainable manner possible…”

The sustainable fashion movement can include being made locally, “green & clean,” in a fair and ethical manner, being remade, reused, and even upcycled. Also, people can rent, loan, or swap clothes, even buy second hand ones to reduce overall waste. All important in sustainable consumption and fashion.

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2022-03-20

Ethical and Sustainable Fashion News in Brief

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Purple Impressions (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/12/09

Future Sustainability Students

Ecouterre reports of a batch of new students seen as the future of sustainable fashion. The students were “Irene-Marie Seelig, Iciar Bravo Tomboly, Ana Pasalic, Agraj Jain, and Elise Comrie” and attend the London College of Fashion.

Thee five earned the Kering Award for Sustainable Fashion (2016). It is an award based on “a five-year partnership between the lifestyle and luxury conglomerate and the university’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion.”

Originally, there were 400 applicants with 10 finalists selected from them. Those 10 finalists’ briefs were then selected based on fit to Kering’s subsidiary brands: Stella McCartney and Brioni.

World Ethical Apparel Roundtable

According to the NOW Magazine, the Report Toxic Threads Putting Pollution on Parade will coincide with “a series of arresting images” to some truths around the “glamour of the fashion industry.”

The images were produced on site “in the heart of China’s textile industry,” which is Xiaoshin district of Hangzhou. It highlights the toxic water pollution happening as a consequence of the global market demand for international clothing labels.

The World Ethical Apparel Roundtable (WEAR)in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre will be a gathering place for both small and large fashion brands to host four panels to discuss solutions to the problem of textile waste.

Emma Watson and Sustainable Fashion’s Power

Vogue states that Emma Watson attended the MoMA Film Benefit in honor Tom Hanks, who was a co-star with Hanks in The Circle.

She came in a “crushed velvet dress from Kitx by Kit Willow, the Australian sustainable luxury brand,” which put some more of the sustainable fashion world in the global platforms. It is breaking in.

Watson remains committed to ethical fashion. Kitx itself uses materials from organic cotton, marine little, even hemp and recycled bottles to produce it signature pieces. Those caught the ethical eye of Watson, and the MoMA Film Benefit too.

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2022-03-20

Help! What Should I Buy My Spouse?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Organic Bed Threads (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/11/30

We all know that boyfriend, that partner, that live-in, that husband or spouse. He forgets, constantly. Why? No one knows why, it’s a mystery of the universe. And is this you? Well, my friend, we have all been there. All of us. But what about the especially important times of the year where 12 months pretty much come to a close? I don’t know either. The days just roll by, and important ones fly by for me too. And don’t think of saying they’re making something out of nothing because that nothing is something…to them.

We can be more mindful, more conscientious this time around. Besides, our lives may depend on it, right? Just kidding, but it is important to be conscientious and thoughtful. To do that, you might want to consider ethical and sustainable materials, such as those from Organic Bed Threads. They have been made to the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) and International Labour Organisation Standards ethical standards. Does this matter? Of course!

It might not necessarily influence the particular stylistic decision for your spouse, but you add that as part of the sell. It is the thought that counts. Never forget that! Organic Bed Threads come with some gift vouchers as well. Also, all of the products designed by Tarsha Burns are organic bed linen. The professional designer and owner of Organic Bed Threads.

The business is built around fair trade and sustainable business practices, which means healthy products, a healthier environment because the products can biodegrade, hand-made for you (or your spouse!), and so does the planet, and your boudoir, some good. So, what can you buy your spouse with less than a month until Christmas?

First thing, you should look at our organic doona/duvet covers. Personally, I like the ‘Turkish Tulips’ queen and king size duvet set. So, I will focus on that one for this post. To me, it is especially important if your spouse is knowledgeable about and involved in the ethical and sustainable fashion world because of the treatment of workers, animals, and the impact on the environment are all involved in this.

Turkish Tulips comes with 2 pillow cases, 1 queen doona cover, and 1 king doona cover. Pillow cases don’t need description. The doona covers are washable, removable covers for the bed, which are convenient! You can even think of getting more involved for bonus points and do the laundry every once in a while. I know, I know, not you! But, statistically, women do more of the housework. Be more conscientious!

As described, these are “Turkish trailing tulips” that are “balanced with a fresh palette of green and turquoise, backdropped on a light taupe certified organic chambray cotton.” You might not know the details, but, obviously, thought was put into these products. You can reverse the cover for maximum utility from the duvet cover. It looks good. It’s ethical. It’s sustainable. It’s good for the environment. And it’s better for a good night sleep, especially your own since it is so late into the Christmas present buying season.

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2022-03-20

Born to do Math 25 – LSD for 4 Times (Part 1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Born To Do Math

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: You’re scrambling to keep your shit together. One time, I took LSD. I took it 4 times. One time was because I was dating a girl who wanted to take it. Remember, at this point, I was 20. So I was really stupid at this point. I was into speed reading. I thought, “If I took LSD and hid in the library overnight”— I’m not saying this isn’t the stupidest thing in the world.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Can I add a preface for you, for anyone reading this now or into the far future?

RR: Okay.

SDJ: There’s recent research to show young women’s brains are ready to go, fully developed, at age 22 on average. For men, it takes until age 30. That can be delayed – or never even reached – with substance use or other things. In general, age 30 is when you can expect or predict fully intelligent – socially, emotionally – integrated thoughts and behaviour from men. I am taking that into account when you’re saying, “I was 20.”

RR: Plus, I’m dumber than a lot of 20-year-olds because I was nerdy. It helps if you’re a cool guy in junior high and high school. It helps your emotional development. Say you are part of a sports team, which seems to be a way people are socially acclimated, but I was too geeky for sports. I didn’t get any of that stuff. So I was probably extra immature for 20. Anyway, I thought that if I took LSD, hid in the library overnight.

Somehow, I would blow open my ability to absorb information and be able to absorb a large chunk of the information in the library.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-03-20

The Big R

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): MomMandy (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/08/23

The big R, what is it? Reuse, remember that song as a kid? “Reduce, reuse, recycle…” that’s what I’m talkin’ about. It’s the idea of a green economy and a green infrastructure, which involves a difference in lifestyle, a green lifestyle.

We need to reuse everyday items to keep the environment and to have less pollution through our junk. Numerous items throughout the day can be reused within the household alone rather than thrown away because of their ‘junk’ status.

I think about water bottles, lids, packages, and so on. There are many things to reuse. For instance, think about when you go out to groceries, I think about it. I reuse the plastic carrier bags when I do go out for garbage bags later on. What? Yup!

That’s one way to make your lifestyle more green and efficient, and less polluting. You can lightly twist tie the plastic bags, then untie them later after groceries and use them for the garbage. You can think about envelopes. Envelopes can be used again and again for cards, kid crafts, and so on. It just takes a little creativity.

You can cut them up. You can make hanging stars. You can use them for the practice of math. Tons of little things add up. Jars and pots are part of this as well. They can be used for canning – if cleaned. What about for indoor gardening? They can be used for makeshift plant containers in household. Lots of things.

We can be more green as we make a healthier environment in the long run. And why not?

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2022-03-20

Interview with Dr. Sally Satel

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): American Enterprise Institute

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2013/09/04

1. What is your current position?

I am a Resident Scholar at American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Staff Psychiatrist in a Methadone Clinic in Washington, D.C. I am also a lecturer at Yale University School of Medicine.

2. What positions have you held in your academic career?

I was an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University from 1988 to 1993. From 1993 to 1994, I was a Robert Wood Johnson Policy Fellow with the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee.

3. What have been your major areas of research?

I have written in academic journals on topics in psychiatry and medicine, and have published articles on cultural aspects of medicine and science in numerous magazines and journals. I am author of Drug Treatment: The Case for Coercion (AEI Press, 1999) and P.C., M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine (Basic Books, 2001). I am co-author of One Nation under Therapy (St. Martin’s Press, 2005), co-author of The Health Disparity Myth (AEI Press, 2006), editor of When Altruism Isn’t Enough – The Case for Compensating Kidney Donors (AEI Press, 2009) and, most recently, co-author of Brainwashed – The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience (Basic Books, 2013)

4. What is your most recent research?

My new book has focused on the extent to which brain science, and brain imaging in particular, can explain human behavior. For example, what can a “lit” brain region tell us about an individual’s thoughts and feelings?

There is enormous practical importance for the use of fMRIs and brain science. However, non-experts are at risk of being seduced into believing that brain science, and brain imaging in particular, can unlock the secrets of human nature. Media outlets tend to purvey information about studies of the brain in uncritical ways, which foster misimpressions of brain science’s capabilities to reveal the working of the mind.

5. You published a new book called Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience with Dr. Scott O. Lilienfield. What is the core argument of your new co-authored book?

My co-author, psychologist Dr. Scott Lilienfeld, and I talk about “losing the mind in the age of brain science.” We mean that brain-based levels of explanation are regarded as the most authentic and valued way of explaining human behavior. Sometimes this is the proper way to go (when we want to uncover the workings of the brain for clinical purposes or to achieve new insight about the mechanisms of memory, learning, emotion, and so on). Understanding people in the context of their lives — their desires, intentions, attitudes, feelings, and so on — requires that we ask them, not their brains.

To clarify, all subjective experience, from a frisson of excitement to the ache of longing, corresponds to physical events in the brain. Scientists have made great strides in reducing the organizational complexity of the brain from the intact organ to its constituent neurons, the proteins they contain, genes, and so on. Just as one obtains differing perspectives on the layout of a sprawling city while ascending in a skyscraper’s glass elevator, we can gather different insights into human behavior at different levels of analysis.

With this template, we can see how human thought and action unfold at a number of explanatory levels, working upward from the most basic elements. A major point we make in Brainwashed is that problems arise when we ascribe too much importance to the brain-based explanations and not enough to psychological or social ones.

6. You have argued against politically correct medicine. How do you define this form of medicine? How is it detrimental to the discipline? In turn, how does it corrupt Public Policy decision-making?

I refer you to my book P.C., M.D.: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine.

In short, the book exposes ways in which the teaching of medicine and public health, and also its practice, is distorted by political agendas surrounding the issue of victimization – in particular, the notion that poor health of minority populations (e.g., ethnic minorities, severely mentally ill people, women) is due to social oppression. In P.C., M.D. and The Health Disparities Myth (Click for full text), for example, I show that despite insistent claims that racially biased doctors are a cause of poor minority health, there are no data to support this.

Politicized medicine (which is different than PC medicine) can come from both directions: left and the right. For example, pro-life advocates exaggerate the extent to which abortion leads to depression and misrepresent aspects of the stem cell debate.

7. Whom do you consider your biggest influences? Could you recommend any seminal or important books/articles by them?

I greatly admire James Q. Wilson and had the honor to know him through AEI, where he was the Chairman of the Academic Advisory Council. In his 1993 book, The Moral Sense, Wilson was impatient with moral relativism, especially the idea that man was primarily a product of his culture. He argued that a moral sense was part of our basic nature, rooted in evolutionary biology. However, he took issue with the over-correction to cultural determinism borne by rigid biological explanations of human behavior.

I am a fan of psychologists Steven Pinker (Blank Slate) and Timothy D. Wilson (Strangers to Ourselves).

8. What do you consider the most important point(s) in the cross-section(s) between Health Science and Public Policy?

Disability Reform and Mental Health Treatment are among the most important to me. In the case of Disability Reform, constructive ways exist to use incentives for guiding people back to the workforce or some kind of productivity. Unfortunately the system of disability entitlements, Social Security and veteran’s benefits, do not make good use of incentives to counteract the kind of learned invalidism that comes with chronic dependence upon disability payments. As for Mental Health Treatments, there are enlightened programs in use (though not widespread enough) to ensure that the most ill patients follow treatment recommendations and stay safe while living in the community. These programs entail a kind of civil commitment called ‘Assisted Outpatient Treatment’ and they require some strength of will on the part of policymakers to both enact and then enforce. For an effective example from the New York Times, click title: Program Compelling Outpatient Treatment for Mental Illness is Working

Additionally, organ shortage interests me. Today, 118,000 people await a kidney, liver, lung, or heart. Eighteen of them will die tomorrow because they could not survive the wait for a donated organ. Current law (1984 National Organ Transplant Act) demands that organs are given as “gifts,” an act of selfless generosity. A beautiful sentiment, yes; but for those without a willing loved one to donate or years to wait on an ever-growing list, altruism can be a lethal prescription. (Full disclosure: in 2006, I got a kidney from a friend. If not for her, I would have spent many miserable years on dialysis.)

The only solution is more organs. We need a regulated system in which compensation is provided by a third party (government, a charity, or insurance) to well-informed, healthy donors. Rewards such as contributions to retirement funds, tax breaks, loan repayments, tuition vouchers for children, and so on, would not attract people who might otherwise rush to donate on the promise of a large sum of instant cash in their pockets.

With private buying kept unlawful, available organs would be distributed not to the highest bidder, but to the next needy person according to a transparent algorithm. For organs that come only from deceased donors, such as hearts, or those that are less often given by loved ones, like livers and lungs, a pilot trial of government-paid or charity-financed funerals makes sense.

I went into detail here because I feel passionate about changing the law that makes it a felony for anyone to give something of value to a potential donor.

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2022-03-20

Human Sustainability and Survival

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Earth, Skin & Eden (Unpublished)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/08/21

Human sustainability is the targeted goals and strategies to improve and preserve human life and its quality. I like the 21st-century. I like the quality of life. Quality of life will continue to rise as a matter of a trend line over decades and decades.

Human sustainability is about the interaction of human beings with the environment. It is integration with human infrastructure and the environment. Environmental sustainable development is the ability to keep present standards of living without the compromise of that standard of living for future generations.

There are other concepts of “needs” and “wants.” “Needs” are the essentials, according to the standards of the world’s poor. I think of some: food, water, shelter, familial stability, and societal stability with law. In addition, the population and other things such as technology and social organization can present limitations to the ability to achieve sustainable development for cooperatives, towns, cities, regions, and countries of the world.

One of the major drivers for international, national, regional, and local movements toward sustainability is the fact of climate change/global warming. Climate change is one of the most pressing immediate and long term issue at present. We have destroyed the natural beauty of the environment. This includes pollution and introduction of high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is a delicate admixture of various gases.

The earth is heating. It is warming at a speed faster than any other in human history since the beginning of the First Industrial Revolution. In short, this presents a concern for human survival. A species-wide possible catastrophe with concomitant extinction events throughout the world.

Some experts claim this is an new epoch. It is the Anthropocene Epoch because of the mass extinction events happening. The positive note to this is the possible catastrophe as a driver for unification of human endeavors regardless of nation, race, language, or age.

It is a peril that can unite or extinct us. It is a pivotal moment in human history and unprecedented for us. We’ve been around for 100,000 to 200,000 years, which makes this unique in a long period compared to recorded human history. Sustainability is a pressing issue, which can be addressed at multiple levels.

However, that should suffice for instruction to the reason for concern about climate change and sustainability in addition to the possible positive impacts for the future based on human decisions and consequences.

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