In-Sight Publishing

2022-04-15

Interview with a Member of the Humanist Alliance Philippines International

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/20

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did you come to find the humanist movement in the Philippines?

Alain Sayson Presillas: I only found out about humanism online. By joining atheist groups and eventually leading me to the humanist movement.

Jacobsen: What have been some of the major obstacles in personal and professional life as a humanist in the Philippines?

Presillas: For me, I cannot just go around telling everyone that I am an atheist but somewhat comfortable telling people of being a humanist. My job as a teacher somewhat keeps me at bay because most of my colleagues are very religious and closed to the idea of being an atheist or humanist. Even our department of education has a motto of “maka diyos” which means for god. Our values and decisions in the department are fashioned of being that of the biblical principles. And anything that is bible based is considered not good.

Jacobsen: What have noticed in terms of the law that discriminates against humanists there?

Presillas: Not really discrimination, but from documents and everything else, being religious and religion plays a role or a requirement, which in I find it unfair and self serving only those who are religious.

One thing to be considered is, I cannot write humanist in my birth certificate because it is not a religion.

Jacobsen: What about discrimination in culture and social life as general rules of thumb?

Presillas: Individuals who are not religious are considered evil or has no morals for the most part. If your family ties and culture are engrained in religious principles it is difficult to make a decision that is not religious based, the parents has a say, religion has a say and community has a say to decisions that you make in your own personal life.

Traditional and religious people tend to discriminate on you because you are viewed as somewhat free spirited and cannot be controlled by those who are older than you are.

Most good and quality schools are run by religious order, which is the curriculum is driven by religious dogma, even though you have an option not to take such subjects.

In every social event, that I attend, prayer is always a starting point before anything else

Jacobsen: How does religion have social privileges in society, especially Christianity?

Presillas: Majority of Filipinos are Christian, holidays, documents, etc. favors only one religion. It makes only the rest of the religion as a second choice and those that belong to that religion they’re not considered part of bigger privileges. It widens more the gap of Christians and not Christians.

Jacobsen: How can Christians be prejudiced against non-believers?

Presillas: My experience is mostly in treating non-Christians, I am referring to Muslims and other religions. For the atheists, they are considered evil and wayward individuals because they lack the morals and the Christian values.

Jacobsen: What is the relationship between religion and the state there?

Presillas: Very closely related, the constitution says it and part of it. Leaders are somewhat guided by the fact that their religion plays a role in important political decisions.

Jacobsen: How did you find HAPI? How does it provide a refuge for you from the mainstream religion and life?

Presillas: I found out about HAPI thru online. I was able to prove to myself and to others that we can help each other without religion, that we don’t need religion to be good and of service to humanity.

Jacobsen: What are your activist hopes for humanism in the coming few years?

Presillas: I am hopeful that humanism will flourish in the Philippines for the coming years as more of the Filipinos do have access to information and more advocacies in HAPI that others will actually value what do and somehow do get influenced by us.

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

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

2022-04-15

Developed Nations, Healthcare, and Pharmacare with Professor Gordon Guyatt

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/13

Professor Gordon Guyatt, MD, MSc, FRCP, OC is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact and Medicine at McMaster University. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

The British Medical Journal or BMJ had a list of 117 nominees in 2010 for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Guyatt was short-listed and came in second-place in the end. He earned the title of an Officer of the Order of Canada based on contributions from evidence-based medicine and its teaching.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2012 and a Member of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2015. He lectured on public vs. private healthcare funding in March of 2017, which seemed like a valuable conversation to publish in order to have this in the internet’s digital repository with one of Canada’s foremost academics.

For those with an interest in standardized metrics or academic rankings, he is the 14th most cited academic in the world in terms of H-Index at 222 and has a total citation count of more than 200,000. That is, he has the highest H-Index, likely, of any Canadian academic living or dead.

We conducted an extensive interview before: here, here, here, here, here, and here. We have other interviews in Canadian Atheist, Humanist Voices, andThe Good Men Project. This interview in Canadian Atheist does mean pro- or anti-religion/pro- or anti-non-religion. It amounts to a specific topical interview. Here we talk about national pharmacare.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Developed countries that have a national healthcare program will have a national “pharmacare” program as well. Canada does not. Why?

Professor Gordon Guyatt: Historical accident. When what we call Medicare was brought in, it was limited to hospital and physician services. The plan of the people who got started was that eventually it would be expanded.

It never got around to being expanded. So, it was a particular accident of the way Medicare came about in Canada. Whereas, in other countries, they considered all the issues together to a greater extent.

Jacobsen: With regards to the discussion happening now, I do recall an article with the finance minister, Bill Morneau, discussing building a committee and looking into the development of a national pharmacare program for Canada.

What is the status of that as far as you know?

Guyatt: The status of that is, at the moment, unfortunate. So, Eric Hoskins resigned as health minister in Ontario to go and work on this. We thought – it is hard to know – that he was quite progressive. That he would be doing this because it is very exciting to have a real national pharmacare.

However, Bill Morneau has gone up in public and said, ‘You know, it doesn’t really need to be a national pharmacare. It can be a mixed public-private system,’ closer to what Mr. Obama engineered in the United States.

If it happens that way, it will be extremely unfortunate. Whereas, people who are interested in national pharmacare got very excited about the apparent initiative. The way Morneau has talked about it, subsequently, has considerably dampened the enthusiasm and gotten people much more worried.

Jacobsen: This is of a concern, probably, for lower SES Canadians. People with part-time jobs. People with jobs that don’t pay that well. Jobs that are low-skill. As well, as you know better than I do, there is the health gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.

Not only in health span, but also in lifespan, 10-15 years in lifespan; this is a concern for poor Canadians and some Indigenous Canadians as well.

Guyatt: You can check this (More information here). But I was with a colleague yesterday who told me that the Indigenous have drug coverage. That is one group that has drug coverage. If you look at it, I believe that is the case. The Indigenous are spared the problem.

But the other folks, low-income individuals, particularly, if they are not in a job with drug benefits, do not have it. The job I am in has drug benefits. Those poorer people have a real problem.

Jacobsen: Do you know the number of people?

Guyatt: I have seen different statistics. I think it would be of the order of 15% or 20% who, when asked, would say, “I haven’t filled a prescription because of the financial issues.”

Jacobsen: What are some progressive steps Canadians can take, e.g. call their local representatives and so on, essentially, to move things forward that may help them have the national pharmacare program?

Guyatt: Letters to the federal MPs. The federal MPS are the people putting group signature type stuff for pharmacare. I think the politicians are more impressed at individual letters, individually written. Anyone who cares about pharmacare and who would like to write an, even brief, individual letter.

Those things make a difference.

Jacobsen: In terms of the representatives in Ontario, what ones would be most appealing to those of the population who are lower income in the population?

Guyatt: Kathleen Wynne did something quite progressive. She said, ‘We are covering all the drugs for everyone under 25.’ So, people on social assistance over 65 get coverage. Now, she has extended it to everyone under 25. Here is pharmacare for everyone under 25.

Now, it is a relatively easy population because people under 25 don’t usually need many drugs. So, it is good. It is nice. But a relatively inexpensive group to extend to. In terms of what is required to gain both the equity and the efficiency goals, it is a program that would simply give universal coverage.

The way we have for physicians in hospitals.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Guyatt.

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2022-04-15

In Conversation with Professor Tom McLeish, B.A., Ph.D.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/13

Professor Tom McLeish, B.A., Ph.D., is a Professsor Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics, and works in the Center for Medieval Studies and the Humanities Research Centre at The University of York. Here we talk abotu science and faith.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have a book, Faith and Wisdom in Science. What inspired it?

Professor Tom McLeish, B.A., Ph.D.: I think Western society seems to be losing faith in science. The title has multiple valence. It is a multiple pun. I am anguished as a scientist – that science is not in the basket of things that make us human.

If I say, “Science belongs with books, with literature, with plays, with great music, with art, with all of the things that make us feel deepest human,” people look at me with a weird expression. The fact that we have lost that is serious.

I say, “Science has lost its cultural narrative. Science has lost its story. It has pulled up its roots.” There are horrendous political consequences of this. Look at what has happened, science has become optionalized.

It is okay if it agrees with you. But if it disagrees with you on, say, climate change, then you can ignore and optionalize it. As a scientist, I do theoretical physics and physics, but I have been fascinated in looking at some social science and working with social scientists who look at public narratives around science. Some of them have said some very powerful things about how the discourses around nuclear energy, genetic medicine, climate change have developed – those tough science questions.

They have picked up very negative narratives, like “don’t open Pandora’s Box,” “science is the priesthood today, so we will all be marginalized.” Those sorts of things. I have been looking for a new narrative, or perhaps a very old narrative, a healthier narrative for science itself – culturally.

Jacobsen: What is that narrative?

McLeish: I think its source is to be found in the genre of ancient wisdom. So, it may sound very wacky and weird, but I do not think it is. After all, only 200 years ago, physicists or scientists would be called natural philosophers. That is why I am so thrilled that York University – my new employer – has agreed to not call me a professor of physics but a professor of natural philosophy. I love it.

It is the old word for science – natural philosophy. Unpack it, it has to do with the love of wisdom to do with nature. If you do not like science – I have said this to people for whom science is not their thing, I say “Forget science. What if you were invited to ‘love wisdom to do with natural things?’ Would you perhaps like that better?”

But that is all science ever was. In some of the ancient wisdom literature, some of it is preserved in the Old Testament of the Bible. For example, there is a book, which is far less read and thought about than it should be.

But every philosopher who has ever had something to say about philosophy has commented on it. That is the Book of Job. The story of the Book of Job. The Book of Job contains – in fact not just contains but is – a deep, inviting, participatory narrative into human connectivity with nature, with the physical world with its chaos as much as with its order, with its humanness as well as its strangeness.

So, at the heart of Faith and Wisdom in Science, there is a scientists’ commentary on the Book of Job, because it stands equally with Plato and Aristotle as a foundation to modern philosophy. The Book of Job is, I think, a tributary of modern philosophy and modern science.

Jacobsen: Something I have noticed in UK culture is the split between moral philosophy and natural philosophy. These become separate branches of philosophy. In that context, scientists as natural philosophers become applied philosophers.

It clarifies the context and landscape so much in terms of what scientists are doing. Also, it provides bounds on what is and is not within its purview. So, someone like Professor Sean Caroll at Cal Tech will talk about a “conclusion” – his word – that derives from the findings of science with naturalism.

But it seems lacking in historical context. I noticed Professor Lawrence Krauss has the same notion. It is that, but only in its long-term historical context. It was natural philosophy. So, of course, you are going to derive naturalism if you have forgotten your history.

McLeish: I absolutely agree, 100%, with that. I tell people about Faith and Wisdom in Science, that there is something not to like for everyone in this book. There is science. There is history. There is philosophy. There is theology. So, no one will like all of this book.

But I am trying to pull those three together, as you so beautifully put it. In the UK particularly, moral and analytical philosophy have been divided off from natural philosophy What I want to say is that when we do science, we are doing something intrinsically ethical and moral.

Now, we should not get confused, I am not saying every consequence of every technological application of science will be moral. We have to think there as well. But we will risk severe wrong turns unless we realize science itself is a moral act.

It is also, by the way, a theological act. So, here is a thing, as part of this cultural insouciance with science, I have noticed the conflict narrative.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

McLeish: More particularly in America, it is the distancing of, perhaps, rather modern versions of what they think to be orthodox Christianity, but which really aren’t, with science. Whereas, historically, within Judeo-Christian faith the nurturing of science has been a no-brainer.

It has been the seed-bed, the nursery, of science, for good reason as well. It goes something like this: the Christian analysis of the human condition is that there really is something wrong. We are in a nest of broken relationships.

We are in a broken relationship with each other. We have go broken relations with God. And, in some sense, we have a broken relationship with the world around us. We are ignorant of it. We are afraid of it. We can exploit it.

It is a deeply broken relationship. And, if in a nutshell, I can, with some St. Paul, summarize Christianity in one breath, as he does, I derive a clue of where science stands theologically. He writes to the Corinthians, “We have the ministry of reconciliation.” I love that.

Because, in perhaps more modern language, St. Paul is saying that Christianity is in the business of healing broken relationships. That could be applied all the way around. The reason we can do this is because the fundamental source of healing broken relationships between God and people has been the resurrection and crucifixion story.

The big healing Christian story, that enables us to go about the work – hence, the garden trowel analogy (science is to nature what garden tools are to a garden) – of healing our relationship with nature. This is, by the way, the genre of people like Nick Walterstorff in the context of art, or Jeremy Begby has done with music in his wonderful musical Theology, Music, and Time.

These are people asking questions like “How do we think theologically about…?” or “What is the theology of art, of music, of politics?” I think it is creative. Whether one is a believer or not, actually, asking the “What is the theology of something?” is helpful for one’s purpose, one’s teleology, one’s ethics.

I asked, “What is the theology of science?” The reason I asked it goes back to my first analysis. That we do not have a healthy cultural narrative for science. I think that the source of a healthy, productive, fruitful cultural narrative for science will be a theological one.

That is my belief. I think it’s source is to be found in the Book of Job and in the wisdom literature in the theological tradition itself. So “What is science for, theologically?” is the question; not, “Can you reconcile science with your faith?” That is a silly question.

“What is science for?” is the real question. “How should we go about it, morally and ethically?” “How should we bring our branches of science and the multiple branches of philosophy together?” I think it is this.

I have come to the conclusion that it is the engaging of the tools we have been given with this healing of this rather damaged or broken relationship of mankind with nature.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor McLeish.

McLeish: [Laughing] Okay! I really enjoyed that. Thanks, Scott.

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2022-04-15

Interview with Will Lane on Personal Background, Brexit, and the UK

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/09

Will Lane is a Contributor to Conatus News. Here we talk about Brexit, the UK, progressive politics, and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your own background in religion, or not, and progressive politics? How did you get your start in it?

Will Lane: I am an atheist, and apart from a brief period in my early teens have been for my entire life. However my personal experiences with religion have not on the whole been negative, being British means that the most common forms of Christianity in my country tend towards the moderate and community focused rather than moralistic or dogmatic.

As to progressive politics I’m not really sure whether I do have a background in it, the word progressive isn’t really a term that applies to British politics, we would call progressives either liberals or socialists depending on their political viewpoints. I would consider myself a liberal, since my focus in on individual rights and freedoms, and as such would probably agree with most progressives on issues like LGBT rights and universal healthcare.

Jacobsen: You have done some commentary on Brexit and the UK. What was the summary of your analysis in 2016 and 2017?

Lane: My argument had two essential parts, the first was that the classically liberal political ideals that lead people to vote Leave, the ideals of nationalism and especially national sovereignty, had been ignored by analysts in favour of narratives based on economic and social factors such as poverty or immigration.

I wasn’t arguing that those economic and social factors were unimportant, indeed they might have been more important to Leave voters overall than the political ideals. However, the political beliefs still mattered, and they were being overlooked because they didn’t jive with the political narratives being set out by either the right or the left, both of which were dealing heavily in immigration being the main factor in the Brexit vote.

My second argument was that in order to survive in a post-Brexit world, liberals needed to re-examine the ideals of liberal nationalists such as Giuseppe Mazzini and John Stewart Mill. Liberalism as an ideology has moved away from nationalism since the Second World War, and this has meant that it struggles to deal with the resurgent nationalism that has sprung up in the last decade. In it’s place conservatism has become the main bulwark against the far right, a state of affairs that is hardly encouraging for anyone who wants to see more open and accepting European societies.

I argued (and still argue) that liberals need to re-discover liberal nationalism in order to mount an effective counter to both far-right xenophobic nationalism, and the insular, navel gazing nationalism of traditional conservatism. The Leave campaign paradoxically proved that liberal nationalist ideals resonate with a large portion of the British population, the campaign’s slogan ‘take back control’ and the general idea of freeing the UK from the chains of an oppressive empire was ripped straight from the playbook of the original liberal nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini and would have been familiar to any 19^th century classical liberal.

In order for liberalism to matter in the midst of this nationalist upsurge we need to compromise with the prevailing cultural mood, not by giving in to the worst instincts of xenophobia, racism and bigotry as the far right do, nor by pulling up the drawbridge and shutting out the rest of the world as conservatives would have us do, but by re-imagining potent classically liberal ideals of freedom, national identity, tolerance and civic duty for the 21^st century.

Jacobsen: What is your updated view on Brexit and the UK with more time to read, digest, and see new developments of it?

Lane: My view of Brexit overall has always been fairly bleak, and the last two years haven’t changed that. It looks likely that what will happen is a fudge on the most important issues, such as the financial industry and especially Northern Ireland, while smaller issues are left hanging for years after our date of leaving. It’s difficult for me to see Brexit as anything other than a bad thing for all concerned; the EU will be without its second biggest economy, most internationally focused voice and one of its largest militaries, causing a massive budget hole and almost certainly making it more insular and less willing to respond to outside threats.

Meanwhile Britain will be left with damage to its vitally important financial sector, without EU funding and subsidies for protected industries, and less ability to punch above its weight in international politics. This isn’t even going into the nightmarish issue of untangling EU from British law and regulations, nor the social issues and rise in hate crime dredged up by the vote itself. Brexit won’t be the collapse of the UK, nor of the EU, but it will leave both poorer and weaker than they were together, and any decision on Northern Ireland is perilous at best given the possibility for more violence if it is handled poorly.

Jacobsen: What will be the positives and negatives of Brexit in your analysis?

Lane: The negatives I’ve already gone over, regarding the positives there are potentially some in the way that Brexit has shocked the existing dynamics of British politics. Brexit has forced the different parties to actually consider what their vision for Britain is outside of the EU, and already we have different politicians and pundits arguing for extremely varied political directions. Some have argued for a return to the fixed work day and strong unions of the 1970’s, some for Britain re-inventing itself as a low tax, low regulation Singapore of the west, and yet others for Britain to rely on the commonwealth and try to create a cohesive trade bloc from its former empire.

I’m not saying I agree with any or all of these ideas, but the very fact that there are such wildly different views on where we should be going next does show that the Brexit vote has forced those in power to actually consider what direction the country should be heading in, rather than simply assuming everyone agrees with its present course. If nothing else, Brexit has shown the people of Britain that their votes do matter, and that they can use their democratic vote to change the direction of the country if they do not like where it is going.

Jacobsen: What will be the next step in your writing projects? Where can folks get to know you?

Lane: I’m currently conducting an interview with video game analyst, feminist critic and former Canadian television personality Liana K on her new YouTube show Lady Bits, which should hopefully be appearing on Conatus News in the next few weeks. Aside from that I’ve considered doing an article on the EU’s current problems, as I feel this has been badly neglected in the English language press especially given the recent Italian elections.

Brexit was not the Anglo-Saxon disease some on the continent hoped it would be, and while I very much doubt any other country will leave the union any time soon, the underlying factors behind Brexit are clearly expressing themselves in other forms in other European countries. While I am considering trying to branch out to other platforms, for now you can find me on Conatus News, where all of my articles thus far have been published.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts or feelings in conclusion?

Lane: Liberalism has been the dominant ideology in the west for so long that I feel Liberals have almost forgotten that it needs to be defended. While Brexit, the election of Trump in the U.S. and the growing disenchantment with liberal democracy in Eastern Europe all have their individual causes, when taken together it is hard not to see them as part of a wider global move against the liberal ideas of freedom, tolerance and openness.

How long this illiberal cloud will last nobody can say, but we must be prepared for it to stick around for a good long while. This being said, I don’t think Liberals need despair too greatly, as there are obvious counter examples to this movement towards illiberalism. The elections of Emmanuel Macron in France and of Justin Trudeau in your native Canada are good examples of how Liberalism can win elections when it has a strong sense of purpose, combined with policies that can appeal to the majority of people.

Liberalism is in dire need of renewal for the realities of the 21^st century, both social and economic, but if enough people still believe in individualism, freedom, tolerance, reason and openness then I believe it will still be around for a long time to come.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Will.

References

Lane, W. (2016, September 17). What We Shouldn’t Forget About Cameron’s Resignation. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/forget-cameron-resignation/.

Lane, W. (2016, October 4). Brexit and a Tale of Two Liberalisms Part 1. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/brexit-and-a-tale-of-two-liberalisms/.

Lane, W. (2016, October 12). Brexit and a Tale of Two Liberalisms Part 2. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/brexit-and-a-tale-of-two-liberalisms-part-2/.

Lane, W. (2016, November 24). Brexit and a Tale of Two Liberalisms Part 3. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/brexit-and-a-tale-of-two-liberalisms-part-3/.

Lane, W. (2016, October 4). What Now? A Recap of the 2017 UK Election Results (Part 1). Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/recap-2017-uk-election-results-part-one/.

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2022-04-15

In Conversation with Amardeo Sarma – Former Chair, European Council of Skeptical Organisations

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/09

Amardeo Sarma is the Former Chair of the European Council of Skeptical Organizations. He is a prominent and respected individual in the skeptical movement, who has a host of other associations and qualifications. Here we cover a wide range of topics in an exclusive interview.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Was there a family background in humanism or rationalism for you in the family?

Amardeo Sarma: No, because both my parents were moderately religious. So, the answer is no. In fact, to give you an example, when I grew up, my father was a Hindu, I am half Indian, my mother is Christian, German. When I was growing up, my dad was liberal in that sense.

He said you can become whatever you like. If you want to be a Hindu or a Christian, fine. Even if you want to be a Muslim, that’s fine because we lived in India where there were a lot of Muslims. But then I do not think he reckoned with me deciding to be nothing.

In a way, I became a skeptic before I became an atheist or humanist. That’s because of my reading. I used to read a lot of books when I was a kid. When I was 16, 17, I came across a number of books such as Charles Berlitz: The Bermuda Triangle or other of his books.

I found them quite fascinating. One of the books that got me thinking was a book by Larry Kusche who wrote the Bermuda Triangle Solved and I found it fantastic for somebody to take pains to go into everything and find out that a lot of the claims are wrong.

That got me into skepticism and at some stage, I stopped buying into the diffused beliefs that I had done before. So, the quick answer to your question is no, there is no family background of it.

Jacobsen: Your parents did not reconcile with you having non-belief?

Sarma: Well, they did in the sense that they accepted it. I do not think they were particularly happy, but they did not make a fuss about it.

Jacobsen: For other friends growing up around where you lived, was it different?

Sarma: Yeah it was different because most of them stayed religious. My brother had a similar path even though he’s not so engaged in the skeptical movement as I am. He was one of the founders with me together, but he hasn’t been active. He’s been a skeptic even before me and he’s also a non-believer or none or whatever you would call that.

Jacobsen: There are plenty of names, irreligious, nones, non-believers, etc.

Sarma: I am not an atheist in the sense that I do not go around preaching non-belief, I am an atheist in the sense that I do not believe in God or any superior being, which is not the same as positively stating that there is no God. It is up to the believers to prove their case that there is a God, not mine to prove that there isn’t. Also, atheism not my motivation. Being a skeptic is, and that means promoting science and critical thinking, which is what I have been doing the last, over, 30 years.

Jacobsen: And as the leader of the German Skeptics Group, what are some of your tasks and responsibilities that you take on board?

Sarma: I have been responsible for the overall strategy and direction we are going and what topics we choose and so on. Also making sure that the organization grows. There is a lot of administration as well.

So, we are quite happy that the last 30 years the organization has had steady growth. We now have more than 1600 members. Additionally, about two and a half thousand subscribers to the magazine Skeptiker. It is been growing steadily. So, I try to make sure that the skeptics’ organization is on the right path and keeps growing.

Specifically, I have been involved in some topics as well. In the past, it is been homeopathy and also the methods of science: how to do investigations, how to do tests. In the earlier stages of the organization, in the 90s, I organized and designed tests together with James Randi, so that was quite an experience at the time.

So at the moment, I have been looking more into things like climate change and global warming as well, so that’s been one of the new topics. We hope to be taking up broader science issues that are part of the public discussion.

Jacobsen: How is German culture in regards to skepticism? What is its attitude towards it? What is the level of critical thinking too?

Sarma: On face value, everybody says, “Yes, science is good and critical thinking is good,” but when it comes to topics like homeopathy and other forms of alternative medicine, people claim to be in favor of science but they are not into critical thinking in that sense.

If you look at it this way, compared to the US and Canada as well, there is not as much of a pro-science sentiment in general in the public. It is more difficult to get across the point of view even though people on face value are in favor of science and critical thinking. Of course, everybody thinks critical thinking is a good thing.

But they seem to look at it not in the point of scientifically investigating these claims but being critical about things. being critical means denying whether something is true or not and that’s what the difference is. It is difficult to get across that we need more than that: Both claims and criticism need evidence and should not forget that they cannot ignore the rest of the body of scientific knowledge.

But we’ve been making some progress especially as far as homeopathy is concerned. We’ve been able to turn the tide here in Germany. If you look at the reports in the newspapers and some of the magazines, the tone has changed.

Whereas 10 or 20 years ago, many of the reports on homeopathy would be positive, pro-homeopathy, in the meanwhile it is not us but many journalists or other bloggers have been writing much more critically about homeopathy. Also, sales of homeopathic medicines are down for the first time and medical doctors are getting more reluctant to promote homeopathy.

This is a hard task, but this shows you can change things if you bring convincing arguments forward. We are also grateful to the rest of the global scientific and skeptical community that has been effective of late and that has been a huge asset.

And also it is important to be sympathetic in the way you bring it across. Be nice and do not attack people, attack ideas. Make sure you’re firm in your position or scientific standpoint but not trying to insult others, which there is always a tendency for some skeptics to do.

Jacobsen: Also, do you think by the nature of the beliefs that there is a hypersensitivity on the part of not necessarily practitioners but believers in the practitioners when discussing these issues?

Sarma: Yes, much so. In particular, in the case of alternative medicine and homeopathy for example, it seems to be almost easier to discuss with a believer in God or Christian and be critical about the Bible and things like that than to discuss with somebody who is a believer in homeopathy [Laughing].

Apparently the people, I do not know about them in the US and in the Americas in general but in Europe, theologians and believers have got used to being criticized and they still get along with you. Even atheists get invited to church or events organized by the Church to get the other point of view.

They are much more open in a way to critical thinking even from the point of view of atheists than many believers in homeopathy are. At least they mostly do not begin to yell at you. On the other hand, I have had cases where even friends get up and leave when you start discussing homeopathy critically.

Again the short answer is yes; people are sensitive. Belief in things like homeopathy can be as strong or even much stronger than belief in God. They are held much more strongly, with much more resistance to criticism.

Jacobsen: You mentioned Skeptiker.

Sarma: Skeptiker, yes.

Jacobsen: The name answers itself.

Sarma: That’s a magazine. We started publishing that in 1987, so it is been 30 years now since we started. In the beginning, it was a small magazine but that’s grown now. It is now comparable to any other published magazine. We publish it 4 times a year and the contents are good.

Jacobsen: Not biased on the matter at all?

Sarma: [Laughing] No, not at all. But we get good feedback from other skeptic groups in other countries when they compare it to their own magazines. They say the way it is done up and the topics we address, that it is quite good.

Jacobsen: What are some of your ongoing activities outside of the magazine and work in combatting things like homeopathy and dowsing in Germany through the skeptics’ group?

Sarma: To give you an example, at the end of every year, we evaluate the predictions of astrologers and soothsayers. We collect, at the beginning of the year, whatever has been forecast to happen. At the end of the year, we show what happened and that’s quite sobering.

At the end you see that the predictions turn out to be wrong most of the time of course. The results are as you would expect by chance. If you would do random predictions, you’d probably end up with a better score than the astrologers because some of the predictions they make are basically impossible.

For example, one of the predictions they made was there is going to be a landing on Mars next year. To make this happen, the spacecraft should have already started. So, some of the predictions they made are completely impossible and they couldn’t ever turn out to be correct unless somebody had sent out a Mars mission in secret or something like that.

But apparently, this does not affect the astrologers much. They continue to make their predictions even if they are also faced with our criticism at the end of it. Apparently, it is advertising for them. They get attention and they do not care if it turns out or wrong at the end of the year.

Jacobsen: Maybe, it is the same comfort that some American megachurch pastors feel in that they will be criticized to the ‘ends of the Earth’ ha, ha, ha. Was not the flat earth theory a Christian thing?

To the end of the Earth, but the followers will still “forgive them” and allow them to restart a whole new church even. For instance, a case of someone who is taking advantage of hyper-masculine preaching by the name of Mark Driscoll in the United States.

He was one of the fastest growing churches. He got caught up in a scandal. He got shut down. It was called Mars Hill Church. He is now opening up another one. He was in Seattle and is now opening one up in Arizona, something called Trinity or something like that church. He’s starting up all new and that’s a common phenomenon.

Sarma: It is incredible that can happen, but it does. James Randi had a good term for it: the Rubber Duck Phenomenon. If you put it underwater, it pops up again.

Jacobsen: He’s right about that. Europe was historically a “Christian” continent?

Sarma: Yes.

Jacobsen: However, things happened. The critical thought began to seep in. However, the two biggest sects of Christianity are Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. So, how are they in Germany? What is their stance on a lot of issues that would be relevant to a more modern, secular state? Are there issues or concerns?

Sarma: Yes. For example, marriage was so far constricted to heterosexuals and it opened up completely again to homosexuals as well. So, the marriage for all is one of the things that passed German parliament a few days ago. That’s the thing that the Catholic Church would be against.

As far as issues such as same-sex marriage is concerned or abortion and any assisted suicide, they are completely against them. Those are the issues that they are against. Those are the not issues we deal with as skeptics but the humanists do so, and many skeptics, though not all, are also humanists.

The Eastern Orthodox Church isn’t strong here in Germany. We are about half and half Catholic and Lutheran, Protestant Lutheran, and there have been some interesting investigations because we have a completely different system here. People are part of the church and they pay taxes, church taxes.

That is something that is different and there are a lot of people in the Church who do not believe in God or any superior being. So, that is the strange thing that came out of one of the investigations by a group called FOWID and they found out that about 20 percent of Protestants do not believe in God and 10 percent of Catholics do not.

So, apparently, they seem to reconcile their religion in some way with being a Catholic or Protestant and at the same time not believing in God. They are probably in the Church because of completely different reasons. They want to be there because it gives them some community.

I do not know if it is the same in the Americas, but here it is quite an interesting phenomenon. Not everybody who is a Protestant or a Catholic necessarily believes in God.

Jacobsen: James Randi is American-Canadian. He’s one of the two. He may have had to give up his citizenship with Canada, but I still consider him Canadian. There is a minister in the United Church of Canada named minister Gretta Vosper.

To give you a bit of history, the UCC, they were the first Church in Canada to allow women ministers. So, they are the progressive Christian group. I look at them almost like a benchmark or litmus test for how far progressive values will be allowed within Christianity in the country.

LGBTQs are a thing there too. Vosper went from a theist to an atheist over a significant period of time and her congregation stayed for the most part and late 2016 she was under review for “suitability” to be a minister in the UCC by the higher-ups.

I assume most of the higher-ups are still men. So, it is an issue here with regards to non-belief and being a leader in the church. However, I do not know about being part of the congregation and not believing in some form of higher power. But I do know there are things put out by IHEU.

For instance, by Bob Churchill who puts out this enormous amount of work with the Freedom of Thought Report every year; and in Canada’s one, we are doing okay but bad in some respects. One of them would be not taking God out of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms or something like that.

The “one nation under God” is something like this. There are some ways we are doing good in the culture. If we could talk about it, people can be openly atheist. At the same time, there are issues about leaders in some churches being atheists as well as within the constitution, small things.

Or in the anthem, that was recently an issue. But things are changing. My sense from what you’re saying with Germany is it is further ahead. The freedom is further ahead.

Sarma: I do not know if anybody who is one of the leaders of any of the churches who openly confesses to not believing in God or in a higher power but this is definitely the case for a number of people in the congregation, in the general congregation of course.

That’s where the poll was done. They asked for belief and non-belief and so on. But in the German constitution, there is still a reference to God for example and it does not exist in the some of the state constitutions and every now and then there is an attempt to either remove God or add God to the constitutions of some of the state constitutions.

That’s been an ongoing issue and even though most of the German population would be, I mean this is a guess, they aren’t so strongly in favour of having God as part of the constitution, with reference to God or in God we trust or whatever.

This is difficult to get through to parliament because the Churches and the state in Germany are close. I do not know exactly what the situation is in Canada but there is a mutual influence that goes both ways.

This makes it difficult to change. Anything that relates to the privileges of the church. To come back to something that you mentioned before, there is a lady here who has become the first Imam and has started her own thing.

Jacobsen: I read about this. I thought that was cool.

Sarma: But she was getting death threats and things like that. So, there are some interesting developments going on.

Jacobsen: So that leads to the things that are harder to get a metric on or get proof of, socio-cultural stuff. If there is prejudice in a constitution, it is a privilege of one faith or set of faiths over another faith or non-faith.

Sarma: Yes, exactly.

Jacobsen: You can mark it in the constitution. If it is socio-cultural, that’s a lot harder to touch on. The history of our country, our first prime minister was Sir John A. Macdonald. Repeatedly, we have quotes of him calling the indigenous population “savages.”

‘We have to bring Christian civilization to them’ and the Pope at the time put out a papal bull saying, ‘Yeah, go on over and convert or kill.’ They did some maneuvering with the language in later bulls, but some of the earlier ones were bad.

So there is a string of, Christian supremacism is a little too strong, but something like that in a modern form where there can be bullying of those who have a non-belief or humanists, skeptics, rationalists, atheists, agnostics, the non-religious in general by historically and presently the dominant faith.

So, being a leader of the skeptics’ group there as well as being the treasurer in ECSO, what are the stories that you have heard or read of not quite second-class citizenship treatment in socio-cultural life but an as if?

Sarma: That, yes, some people do not like the way we approach the claims that are made by many proponents of these pseudosciences and so on. We do not generally get involved in belief issues directly, belief in God issues unless there are specific claims.

For example, in the case of the Shroud of Turin, or some of the other miracles that have been claimed again. We keep strictly to claims that can be tested, that can be investigated by the scientific methods. In fact, if you look at our organization we do have, there is a minority who are members of the church and they still do a good job as far as science is concerned.

As far as the skeptic’s organization is concerned, our main target relates to promoting science and exposing pseudoscience and antiscience. We want to be pro-science, pro-critical thinking. Sometimes, I do find it must be hard for religious believers to reconcile their beliefs with their work in science. But that is their problem.

If you look at Martin Gardner, he was not an atheist either, but he was an extremely good skeptic. Some of these contradictions we have to live with.

Jacobsen: Perennial issues around acceptance of modern scientific ideas. Whether Darwin’s theory of evolution, the Big Bang, or the standard scientific ideas, how is it in Germany?

Sarma: The basic ideas of evolution, for example, and the Big Bang theory as far as people know about them, some people do not know what that’s about, but there is no strong opposition to either. The evolution of the Earth, the evolution of life and the humans, that’s not seen as a problem. They are accepted by the official Protestant and Catholic Churches.

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2022-04-14

Human Rights Watch – Peaceful Dissidents Imprisoned in Saudi Arabia

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

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

Human Rights Watch reported on Fahad al-Fahad, a Saudi human rights activist, who has been in prison since April of 2016. All charges are related to peaceful activism.

There are over 20 prominent Saudi activists in long-term prison sentences due to similar peaceful activities, related to protest. Some include “breaking allegiance with the ruler” and “inciting hostility against the state.”

The Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman, was asked some questions in February of 2018, which was reported on by The Washington Post. One was about the consideration for the release of those imprisoned activists in Saudi Arabia.

Salman said, “If it works, don’t fix it,” while he would consider reforms. Freedom of speech is limited in Saudi Arabi on the topics of Islam and national security and the critiquing of people via mention of name, e.g. critiquing the crown prince and the national security of Saudi Arabia, Islam in doctrine and facticity, and then mentioning Salman by name all in one, or individually for that matter, would be a criminal act, or set thereof not covered as a protection for free speech.

The Middle East Director of Human Rights Watch, Sarah Leah Whitson, stated:

As Mohammad bin Salman parades himself across the world spending millions to bill himself as a reformist, many Saudis are thrown in jail and forgotten for the ‘crime’ of calling for badly needed reforms…If the Saudi Crown Prince wants to do something that would warrant the reformist label, a good start would be the immediate release of imprisoned activists and dissidents who never should have been arrested in the first place.

al-Fahad is a former labor ministry consultant who was arrest on April 6, 2016. A terrorist court, known as the Specialized Criminal Court, is the court for peaceful dissidents.

Pause: a terrorist court is for peaceful dissidents, since 2014.

On June 2017, al-Fahad was sentenced to five years in prison plus a 10-year travel ban tied to a ban on media and writing work.

One Saudi activist with knowledge of the case told Human Rights Watch that the Saudi judge made the ban on writing for life. Now, al-Fahad is in al-Dhahban, a prison

What were the charges?

He was charged with violation of Saudi cybercrime law with critiques of the Saudi criminal justice system and government corruption. He also helped the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association. He ‘sympathized’ with the members of the association. More activists are in prison circa 2018.

“On January 25, the court sentenced Mohammad al-Oteibi and Abdullah al-Attawi to 14 and 17 years respectively on charges of “forming an unlicensed organization” and other vague charges relating to a short-lived human rights organization they set up in 2013,” Human Rights Watch reported.

The purported crimes do not look like standard crime lists. Essam Koshak was sentenced to four years in prison and a four-year travel ban circa February 27 based on tweets.

The tweets called for an end to the discrimination against women. Issa al-Nukheifi was also sentenced to six years in prison for other critical tweets. They are in al-Malaz prison.

Other imprisoned activists include “Waleed Abu al-Khair, Abdulaziz al-Shubaily, Mohammed al-Qahtani, Abdullah al-Hamid, Fadhil al-Manasif, Sulaiman al-Rashoodi, Abdulkareem al-Khodr, Fowzan al-Harbi, Raif Badawi, Saleh al-Ashwan, Abdulrahman al-Hamid, Zuhair Kutbi, Alaa Brinji, and Nadhir al-Majed.”

For those members of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, most have been prosecuted and jailed because they are activists. The organization was one of the first of its kind, a civic organization, and was calling for reforms to Islamic law.

The group was banned and dissolved in March of 2013. Human Rights Watch said, “The members faced similar vague charges, including disparaging and insulting judicial authorities, inciting public opinion, insulting religious leaders, participating in setting up an unlicensed organization, and violating the cybercrime law.”

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2022-04-14

Can You Be a Humanist Without Being a Feminist?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Anya Overmann

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/03

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 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 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’s 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 an egalitarian, and if you are an 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 no. If you are a humanist, then you must be a feminist. However, by our definitions, you can be a feminist without being a humanist.

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2022-04-14

Vic Wang, Former President of the Humanists of Houston

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/02

*Note: Vic Wang was the president.*

What is your family and personal story — culture, education, and geography?

My parents are Chinese immigrants from Taiwan who came to the U.S. for college in the 70’s. I was born and raised in Texas where I’ve lived my whole life, in Austin and in Houston. All of our family attended and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, where I got my degree in Management Information Systems.

What informs personal humanist beliefs, as a worldview and ethic, respectively?

I was raised without any religion (which I’ve come to learn is pretty rare here in Texas), so secular humanist principles have always appealed to me even before I knew what it means to be a Humanist. And I’ve always felt strongly that ultimately, the kind of person you happen to be born as, and all of the circumstances that determine who you are as a person — your parents, your gender, your ethnicity, your nationality, really all of the circumstances that make you who you are — are ultimately completely out of your control. And to me it’s that realisation — that you could just as easily have been born as any other person on earth — which underscores the fact at there is really no rational justification to preferentially place your own well-being and desires over anyone else’s, and that the feelings and needs of others are no less valuable than your own. And it’s that emphasis on empathy and compassion for others that separates humanism from someone being “just” an atheist, and takes it from living your life free of theism all the way over to a worldview that drives everything you do.

What makes humanism seem more right or true than other worldviews to you — arguments and evidence?

One of my favourite definitions of humanism is living a life informed by evidence and driven by compassion, which means a rejection of the supernatural while striving to help others and actively trying to make the world a better place. So humanism is somewhat unique in that regard as compared to the world’s religions in the way it embraces freethought; if any of your beliefs aren’t based on sound reasoning and supported by valid evidence, why continue to hold them? Instead we should all strive to hold reality-based views on how to improve well-being, for yourself and for others. That makes humanism self-correcting in a way that traditional religions are not, as we’re always learning more and more about the world and how it operates, and improving our perspectives accordingly in light of new evidence and new understandings.

What are effective ways to advocate for humanism?

It’s no secret that the non-religious are one of the most distrusted and disliked of all demographic groups, even though the reality could not be farther from the truth. In reality, atheists are vastly under-represented in the prison population, the states in the U.S. with the least religion also have the lowest rates of crime, and the countries with the lowest levels of religion are also those with the lowest crime, the highest standards of living, and the highest levels of happiness in the world. So I think one big part of advocating for humanism is showing that “hey, we’re just like everyone else, and there’s nothing to be afraid of just because someone doesn’t believe in any gods. We believe in helping others and doing good in the world, even if our reasons for doing so may differ from those with religious motivations”.

What is the importance of humanism in America at the moment?

Just within the past few years we’ve seen a huge turning point as the non-religious are now the fastest growing religious demographic in the U.S. The latest statistics show 20% of the U.S. population no longer hold any religious affiliation (which represents a growth of almost 50% in just the past decade) and among younger Americans, a full 1/3 of millennials are now considered among these “nones”. And even more dramatic has been the grown of those who explicitly identify as atheists, with an increase of over 50% in the past decade. So clearly we’re seeing a decline in traditional religious worldviews and a corresponding rise in humanistic, secular views, both in the U.S. and worldwide. And yet despite this, atheists/humanists have typically been on the outside looking in when it comes to national discourse and political representation. Our representation among elected officials is virtually zero, and for us to even be acknowledged as a group that exists in the world of politics is absurdly rare. But thankfully, organisations like the Secular Coalition for America, American Atheists, and the American Humanist Association are changing this, with an increased emphasis on political activism and fighting for political representation that thus far has been virtually nonexistent in American politics.

What is the importance of secularism in America at the moment?

At the same time that we’re seeing a growth in secular Americans, we’re also seeing a backlash against that from the religious right (and, more recently, the alt-right). We’re seeing more and more theocrats rising to power and trying to impose religiously -motivated legislation on the rest of society, whether through draconian anti-abortion regulations, restrictions on LGBT rights, voucher programs that would fund religious schools with public funding, manipulation of public school curriculums to impose pseudoscience and revisionist history on schoolchildren, or even outright attempts to dismantle the separation of church and state, as Donald Trump has already done by publicly vowing to repeal the Johnson Amendment which prohibits religious institutions from endorsing political candidates.

I think it’s very easy to become complacent as the general population becomes more secularised, while not realising that religious fundamentalism and extremism is — by its very nature — a backlash against the perceived threat that secularism presents. And we’re seeing that phenomenon playing out around the country as we speak.

What social forces might regress the secular humanist movements in the US?

In addition to the threat of fundamentalism and the religious right, over the past few years we’ve also seen a widening rift in the secular movement between those who embrace positive humanistic values and those who don’t (and in some cases outright reject them, or even reject the “humanist” label entirely). Fortunately, it seems that the vast majority of atheists believe in actively working to make the world better, including supporting the fight for equal rights, promoting altruism, and demonstrating compassion for disadvantaged groups. But those who don’t share those values seem to be disproportionately vocal — particularly online — which I think leads to a skewed perception of what the freethought community is really about.

What tasks and responsibilities come with being the president of the Humanists of Houston?

As President I oversee all aspects of the organisation, both in “real life” and online across our social media presence (Meetup, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc), as well as our in-person monthly board meetings. I also have a blog where I write about humanism, religion, and secularism.

How is humanism, especially secular humanism, seen in the larger Houston region?

While Texas as a whole is quite conservative and religious — in some areas overwhelmingly so — Houston is a pretty unique mix of conservatism and liberalism, with an enormous diversity of religious beliefs (Houston was recently recognised as the most ethnically diverse city in the United States, which is apparent just about any time you step outside). And while there’s certainly a huge amount of religiosity in the greater Houston area (Houston is currently in the top 10 cities in churches per capita, and at one point used to be #1), Houston within the city limits is quite moderate and, I’ve found overall, fairly accepting of humanist views. With a few notable but rare exceptions we haven’t encountered much blowback from the local community as a result of our activities, and we’ve even been invited by the local Interfaith Ministries organisation to be a part of several interfaith events, where we educated the public about humanism/atheism and provided a secular voice to what would otherwise be exclusively religious discussions.

Also, I think the high degree of religiosity in the Houston area (and in Texas overall) has ironically played a large role in our growth as an organisation, as we’ve quadrupled in size in the past four years and are now the largest chapter of the American Humanist Association in the country and the largest humanist Meetup group in the world with over 3,000 members. And I think a big reason for that is we see the inescapable effects of religion intruding on our day to day lives in a way that perhaps many parts of the country don’t. In many cases we have members who don’t even know any other atheists/humanists, and have no opportunity to converse with like-minded individuals outside of our events (I’ve even had some members tell me they had never even MET a single atheist — to their knowledge, at least — before coming to an HOH event). So I think there’s certainly a greater incentive in this area for atheists and humanists to seek out organisations like ours.

What are some of the activities, even initiatives or campaigns, of the Humanists of Houston?

We average 20+ events per month with activities including guest speakers, discussion groups, book clubs, volunteering, activism, and social gatherings. We hold a monthly “Humanist Community Giveaway” of supplies to the homeless, usually serving around 40–50 people per giveaway, as well as regular outings at the Houston Food Bank and other local charities. We’ve held numerous demonstrations outside the Saudi Arabian Consulate in support of Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for advocating secular values online. We’ve participated in demonstrations for the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the incidents of police brutality around the country. We recently completed a fundraiser for Camp Quest Texas, a summer camp for children of humanist families, where we raised over $3,000 from our members to help underprivileged children attend the camp, which turned out to be the most ever raised by an organisation in a single year. And every year we have a booth at the Houston LGBT Pride festival as well as a float in the Pride Parade, as well as being active in our support for LGBT rights and equal rights legislation.

For those that want to work together or become involved, what are recommended means of contacting you?

We can always be reached via email at humanistsofhouston@yahoo.com, and the best way to keep up with our activities is through the HOH Meetup where we have our full calendar of events and photos from previous events. We also have a YouTube channel with over 90 of our previous events and guest speakers that can be watched for free. And, of course, all of our events are free to the public so anyone is welcome to come out and check us out anytime.

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2022-04-14

An Interview with Elizabeth Loethen — Executive Member, SSA at St. Louis Community College (Meramec Campus)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/01

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is family background — culture, education, geography, language, and religiosity/irreligiosity?

Elizabeth Loethen: Currently I go to school at St Louis Community College-Meramec with my brother, though before that I was primarily homeschooled. I am an Atheist, along with my parents and little brother.

Jacobsen: What is the personal background in secularism for you? What were some seminal developmental events and realizations in personal life regarding it?

Loethen: Well, I was raised secular right from the get-go. My parents were both Catholics growing up and once they got older and started dating they both “converted”, for lack of a better word, to secularism and Atheism. So, I was raised not believing in any god and knowing that science is the answer. When I was little, I really wanted to believe in a god. All of the kids at school believed and they often talked to me about the things they learned at church or Sunday school, and so the naive five-year-old in me wanted to believe and fit in. Although she wasn’t, I thought my mother was against me wanting to believe in God and so I almost did it to rebel against her. Instead, she encouraged me and helped me to learn more about it until I finally realized that I just simply didn’t believe. This, of course, made it hard to make friends since children at that age are told that anyone who isn’t their religion are bad and Atheists worship the devil, so I didn’t have many friends growing up until college where people just don’t care what your religion is, they just care if you’re nice.

Jacobsen: You are an executive member of the SSA at St. Louis Community College (Meramec Campus). What tasks and responsibilities comes with this position? Why do you pursue this line of volunteering?

Loethen: Since this group is struggling to even get off the ground, the curse of the commuter college, I spend a lot of time promoting the group and encouraging people to come to meetings. As of last semester there were five people, including myself, but when I fell ill and had to drop out of school, that number dropped. I’m unsure how successful the group was after my departure, but I’m hoping to get the group up and running again in the Fall of 2017. I pursue this because not many people on my campus are Atheists or secular in any way. I want to create a space for the secularists to converge and talk about things that matter to them.

Jacobsen: What personal fulfillment comes from it?

Loethen: There are seven Christian clubs on campus. Seven. And that’s not to mention the Catholics, Muslims, Protestants, ect… Nearly every major religion is represented on campus, and Christianity is OVER represented, in my opinion. I’m thrilled that these clubs are a place for similarly-minded people can go to meet each other, make friends, do charity work or read their holy text together in safety. My SSA group is the only one on campus, period. There is no safe place for Secularists to discuss things that matter to them without the influence of a god. Personally, I have always been alienated from other kids my age and adults since I do not believe in their god and there was no one for me to talk to about issues that meant something to me. I had my parents, but I wanted someone on my level to talk to. It would mean the world to me if I could create a place for people to speak freely without religion in the picture.

Jacobsen: What are some of the more valuable tips for campus secularist activism?

Loethen: Don’t be afraid to promote and talk about it! Due to my alienation, I have lots of anxiety when it comes to outing myself as an Atheist or Secularist in fear that people will simply stop talking to me. However, the more we talk about our group the more interest others will have. Do charity work! Our group was nowhere near organized enough to do charity work, but the more charity you do the more charitable people will take notice. Also, attend as many on-campus social events as possible. Once a semester we have something of a “club fair” where all of the clubs set up tables to recruit new members. Get to the location early and snag a table that will be right where the heaviest traffic will be.

Jacobsen: What have been some historic violations of the principles behind secularism on campus? What have been some successes to combat these violations?

Loethen: Off the top of my head, I can’t really think of any. My campus is a commuter campus so people go to class and leave. No one really has their entire focus on a club. I am guilty of the same, so I don’t know a whole lot of what goes on on campus when I am not there. Like I mentioned before, there are dozens and dozens of religious groups on campus and not a single secular one, so a major success was getting the SSA group started in the first place. At my school you have to get ten people together in order to create a club, so our president at the time was able to get ten people interested in a club like this. We have not had success since, but getting started was really hard in the first place.

Jacobsen: What are the main areas of need regarding secularists on campus?

Loethen: We need a voice. A presence. The SSA chair at the Student Governance Council is vacant with no one to fill it. I am doing everything I can to give us a voice, but it’s not as easy as one might think.

Jacobsen: What is your main concern for secularism on campus moving forward for the next few months, even years?

Loethen: That there will never be enough of us to keep a stable place for us on campus. Every semester at the club fairs we get at least a dozen names on our sign up sheet all interested in joining, but when it comes to the actual meetings we’re lucky to get anyone. I’m worried that it will always be like this and alone, I cannot come up with any solutions.

Jacobsen: What are the current biggest threats to secularism on campus?

Loethen: Surprisingly, the secularists themselves. Our club wasn’t terribly organized and, despite our best efforts, we weren’t able to bring any sort of organization to the club. There simply wasn’t enough of us to call ourselves a proper club. So, the lack of willing participants severely threatens our spot on campus.

Jacobsen: What are perennial threats to secularism on campus?

Loethen: Our club isn’t that old, a year or two at most, but there are already people who don’t want us to exist. Our posters get ripped down and thrown away and defaces and we get primarily hate mail and angry texts. There are more people who want to destroy us than there are people who want to join us or to help us.

Jacobsen: What are the main social and political activist, and educational, initiatives on campus for secularists?

Loethen: Our president has graduated this most recent semester, and his main goal was to create a safe place for likeminded people to meet each other and have civil discussions. He was also extremely focused on charity so most of his efforts went towards helping our school charity project, which was “Project Peanut Butter”, helping children in underdeveloped countries beat malnutrition. The two of us really enjoyed working on the project and doing everything we could to help. We never really got to discuss what kind of education aspect we wanted to bring to the table on campus. Personally, I wanted to educate people on secularism and Atheism to see if I could bring down the stigma about our irreligiosity. Just because we don’t believe in the same things you do and we rely on things like logic and reason to give us the answers we seek doesn’t make us any less of people.

Jacobsen: What are the main events and topics of group discussions for the alliance on campus?

Loethen: As I’ve mentioned profusely, our club was horrifically small and had very little support, so one of our primary discussions was about how to make people interested and want to join us. The other topic that we discussed was events we wanted to hold on campus, and how to make them happen. Only one of our events ever happened, but our president always put lots of emphasis on our visibility on campus, even though we had very little.

Jacobsen: How can people become involved and maintain the secular student alliance ties on campus?

Loethen: Join us! Work with us at our various charity or recruitment events even if you can’t make the meetings. Talk with us about how we can make your involvement work for you. Our community is rather small and we could use all the support we can get. You can still reach us through the information on the posters, though it’s likely you won’t reach me directly but feel free to ask whoever you DO reach if you would like to know more. Like I mentioned, we’re pretty unorganized at the moment but we’re working hard to remedy that and make sure that you have a safe, comfortable place to be.

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Loethen: Keeping this club afloat is a struggle and there have been many times when I just wanted to throw in the towel and give up. Since no one seems to want to be a part of it, then why should I keep trying? When I fell ill this last semester, I had no choice but to give up, even if temporarily. For a while, my mother was a student on campus as well and together, we worked incredibly hard to keep this club alive and for awhile, it was working. However, now that our president is gone and my mother will not be on campus any longer, it is up to me to keep our club alive. It is not going to be easy, and I am desperately going to need someone to lean on, but if I can make this work even if just for a while I will consider my time at the local community college to be beyond worthwhile.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Elizabeth.

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2022-04-14

In Conversation with Dr. Stephen Law – Philosopher and Author

Author(s): Dr. Stephen Law and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/01

Dr. Stephen Law is Reader in Philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London. He is also editor of THINK: Philosophy for Everyone, a journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy (published by Cambridge University Press). Stephen has published numerous books on philosophy, including The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking (on which an Oxford University online course has since been based) and The Philosophy Files (aimed at children 12+). Stephen is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts. He was previously a Junior Research Fellow at The Queen’s College, Oxford, and holds B.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees in Philosophy from the University of Oxford. He has a blog at www.stephenlaw.org. Stephen Law was Provost of CFI UK from July 2008-January 2017 taking on overall responsibility for the organisation, and particular responsibility for putting on talks and other educational events and programmes.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Since the audience for Canadian Atheist amount to the general public of the non-religious, this can frame some of the discussion. You spent decades in philosophical pursuits. We have been writing together on-and-off for over a year now, much more than that if I remember right (I will have to ask Professor Elizabeth Loftus about that one.).

To start, I want to converse on the nature of the non-religious and the skeptic movements – even the super-minority of self-identified zetetics – and the public representation of them. In the United Kingdom, the non-religious became a larger movement than Canada, especially America and many European countries as well.

What seems like the future of the non-religious in the laity of North America and Europe over the incoming decades?

Dr. Stephen Law: Well the ‘nones’ are on the rise across the West, certainly. In Iceland, the proportion of young people identifying as nones is now 0%. That’s a pretty dramatic figure. However, those who are ‘no religion’ (nones) are not necessarily atheist, remember. However, atheism is also on the rise.

As religiousity declines, it will be harder and harder for e.g. The Church of England in the UK, to appear relevant or significant. It’s the established Church here, of course. It runs very many schools, including a school my daughters attended (I had little choice). It has 26 bishops automatically seated in the House of Lords, where they can block legislation they don’t like. Quite how this can continue to be justified when members fall to single digits is a good question..

Jacobsen: What seems to convince the laity, the general public, of non-religious viewpoints, in part or whole?

Law: Anecdotally, reason appears important. Those who become atheist, for example, often self-report that reason – subjecting their beliefs to critical scrutiny – played a critical role.

Mind you, that’s self-reporting. US Christians self-report that they go to church regularly far more than they actually do (we know this because there are not enough pews physically to contain all those claiming to be there). So self-reporting is not always reliable. It may be that the explanation for a person’s loss of religious belief is not what that person supposes.

Of course, that the real reason for rejection of religion/theism is something other than critical thinking is often maintained by the religious, of course, who insist the real reason people reject religion and embrace atheism is they want to engage in immorality, etc.

Interestingly, there is evidence to suggest people go into religion quite fast (about 3 months on average) whereas come out much more slowly (it usually takes years). I am particularly interested in the psychology involved going in each direction. C.S.Lewis famously wrote his The Screwtape Letters which explored the psychology of Christian/atheist belief from the standpoint of devils who are trying to lead us astray. I wrote The Tapescrew Letters to explore the psychology of religious/atheist belief from the standpoint of gurus trying to seduce new recruits. You can find my Letters from a Senior to a Junior Guru here:

http://stephenlaw.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-tapescrew-letters.html

Or listen to them here:

The difficulty with trying to persuade folks their religious beliefs are wrong head one, as it were, is that they will likely have developed quite a range of immunising moves. Take Young Earth Creationism (YEC), for example. It’s a ludicrous belief system. But try persuading an intelligent YEC-ist that they are mistaken and you will find they can tie you up in knots by employing a whole raft of strategies. Being a clued-up scientist is often of little use. Indeed, the scientific experts regularly fail badly in debates with YEC-ists.

A better strategy, I think, is to get those employing such immunising strategies to recognise that these strategies are very dodgy, by getting them to look at analogous cases. That’s one the things I did with my book Believing Bullshit. It’s also exactly the approach I take with my Evil God Challenge. Christians are very well prepared for the problem of evil – they have a whole range of theodicies to employ, plus skeptical theism. Come at them head on with the problem of evil and they’ll tie you up in knots. But get them to compare an analogous belief defended (belief in an evil god) using the very same immunising tactics that they are employing, and suddenly they may get a glimpse of how ridiculous and irrational they’re being. I produced a short video on the Evil God Challenge (suitable for kids and adults) here:

The paper is here:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0034412509990369

Jacobsen: What role do theologians perform for the religious public? Why don’t the non-religious have this developed to a similar extent – in proportion to the non-religious lay public population (per capita, so to speak)?

Law: There have been attempts to provide similar roles in a secular context – e.g. The Sunday Assembly in the UK. I can see that having an opportunity to come together, engaging in some community bonding, think about bigger issues, mark the great rites of passage in the year and in life – these things are good things that religions have traditionally provided, even if along with a lot of toxic religious baggage. I can understand why some would like to see those good things offered in a secular context. Personally, I don’t really need it, though. I enjoyed my visit to Oxford’s Sunday Assembly, but feel no need to go back.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dr. Law.

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2022-04-14

Andrew Copson on the History of Humanism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/01

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I wanted to talk about humanism: the hows and whys, the theoretical and practical, and so on. You are highly qualified to comment on it. So, I asked. You agreed.

So here we are, to begin, what is humanism properly defined in its most general sense?

Andrew Copson: In English since the mid-nineteenth century, when it first appeared as a word, ‘humanism’ has had two main meanings.

One is to refer to the cultural milieu of Renaissance europe (which we now more often call ‘Renaissance humanism’); the second is to refer to a non-religious approach to questions of value, meaning, and truth which emphasises the role of humanity in these areas of life rather than the role of any deity.

This ‘humanism’ is the one which has inspired the setting up of humanist organisations and the development, by humanist thinkers and activists, of the more fully worked out approach to life or worldview that we refer to with the word today.

Jacobsen: As you are based in the U.K., and you have leadership roles within the U.K. for humanism, how do you mobilize British humanists outside of a faith-based framework? My hunch is that the inspiring action in people is different in a system not based on faith.

Copson: I don’t know if it’s that different. Humanists, like anyone else, are motivated to action by their beliefs. Certainly humanist organisations and leaders don’t have the god-backed power to instruct their fellow believers to do this or that, but then that doesn’t work out terribly well for religious leaders either.

I think that leadership in a humanist context is about being clear in public forums about our values and beliefs and the living out and modelling them in practice too. If people agree with your reasoning and warm to your manner, they will consider doing as you suggest.

Jacobsen: Who do you consider the founder of humanistic values – an individual and society?

Copson: Throughout recorded history and around the world there have been humanists and this is not surprising as humanist beliefs and values can be arrived at anywhere by anyone with reason and empathy. There have probably always been such people.

The first people who expressed at least some humanist views that we know about and who left their thoughts for us in writing are people like Mengzi in China 2,300 years ago, followers of the Charvaka school in India 2,500 years ago, and thinkers of the Greek and Roman world of 2,500 to 1800 years ago.

None of the societies in which these views were expressed could be described as humanist – they were diverse societies in which there were many schools of thought – but they were certainly more humanistic than, for example, the Christian states of medieval Europe.

It was in part the rediscovery and reception of these humanistic thinkers that kickstarted the humanistic trends that have transformed the world and made it modern.

Jacobsen: Who do you consider the founder of modern humanism as a fully fledged alternate, explicit life philosophy?

Copson: There is no doubt that the most obvious English speaking framer of humanism in the specific sense of a defined worldview rather than a general social and intellectual trend is one of my predecessors as Chief Executive of Humanists UK – Harold Blackham.

In the early twentieth century he enlisted great thinkers and reformers to give form to this ‘humanism’ both in the UK and internationally as the first Secretary General of the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

He was joined in this internationally by the Dutch thinker and activist Jaap van Praag, who I would also want to name in any humanist hall of founders.

Jacobsen: From the perspective of humanists, what are perennial threats to their free practice of belief and living out humanism?

Copson: The biggest threats to humanists have always been those of culture, tradition, and religion or ideology.

All of these forces, especially when allied to political or state power, restrict the scope for freethinking and the dynamic challenging of authority through our own reason, which is the hallmark of the humanist approach.

Racism, xenophobia, and nationalism, which all attempt to reduce the types of people entitled to our empathy and moral concern, are the second group of perennial threats to our lifestance.

Jacobsen: You represent the young and the old. If there is survey data, empirical information in other words, what are the general concerns of young humanists?

Copson: Survey data don’t seem to suggest that there are significant differences between older and younger humanists.

What they have in common is a preference for liberal and tolerant social policies. Younger people tend to be less reluctant to question and critique the beliefs of religious believers in their own cohort than older people were or are.

I think this is an extension of their greater commitment to tolerance but I also think it is something of a concern, as it is so important for every generation to be critically-minded to face the perennial threats that target human reason and empathy.

Jacobsen: Tied to the previous question, even without firm empirical data, what are, or at least seem to be, the issues for older cohorts of humanists?

Copson: Older humanists in the UK tend to be surprised that there are still issues around religion and politics in UK society. They grew up in a context where religion was fading from the public agenda and now – largely due to immigration – it is back on that agenda.

So older people tend to be very concerned that the liberal social gains that their have seen secured in their lifetime – around liberal education, the human rights of children, the secularisation of social policy – may be reversed and that the lives of their children and grandchildren will be worsened by this.

If I had to pick one policy issue that concerns them, I think it would be assisted dying. Older people have to deal with a very particular situation that few older people in the history of our species have faced.

Modern medicine has preserved their lives and health beyond imagination, but the new problem this raises is how to bring a dignified end to individual human existence when worthwhile life is over.

Older humanists don’t see why their freedom of choice and their human dignity should be compromised in the way that religious lobbies and opponents of choice have successfully kept it as being.

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2022-04-14

Fleeing Burundi and Finding Humanism with Aloys Habonimana

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/31

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You are Burundian, but have fled, recently. Why?

Aloys Habonimana: In 2015, Burundi is fallen and in a political crisis, when the president wanted to stay in power illegally; the opposition parties and civil organizations were against that.

I as a person who started to understand the importance of living free with dignity, and prosperity as human being, together with others, we went to the demonstration to protest against that bad decision of the president.

I was in the party called MSD (Movement of Solidarity and Democracy). Most of the members of my party were killed by the members of ruling party (Imbonerakure Youth of Ruling Party). Others from groups are in prison. Others were persecuted until they are living with disabilities all their life by police and the intelligence agencies.

I left my country when I was looked for by Imbonerakure. I am sure if they caught me I would be persecuted and even killed because my position was to mobilize the young people for new changes.

I was looked for by Immoderacies for two accusations:

To participate in the demonstration
To be in the opposition party (MSD)
I left my country without finishing my studies. It touches my heart.

Jacobsen: What is your own family religious background?

Habonimana: I participated in many churches. I was born when my mother was an Adventist and my father had no religion. Then at the age of 7, I was Anglican. In 2000, my father and mother decided to return to the Catholic religion.

I was baptized in the Catholic religion. In 2004, I left the Catholic religion for the Pentecostal Church. After 2 years, I left this religion because of things I did not understand. I found another religion called Jehovah’s Witnesses for 7 years.

Afterward, I entered the Unitarian Universalists. My family is in Christianity.

I have so many backgrounds in different religions.

Jacobsen: How did you lose faith?

Habonimana: I was a true Catholic, even as I thought of being a parish Catholic, but afterward I saw that there are lies behind it. I had many questions about Jesus and mother Mary, but no Parish or Pastor answered me.

In the Protestant religion, I have seen that pastors are enriching themselves to the detriment of their faithful. I have noticed that pastors and ministers are hiding many things from their faithful.

Here I can quote:

Not tell them the reality of life.
Play with emotions of their faithful.
Prohibit the use of scientific reason.
Promote the religious discrimination.
Put their faithful in exaggerated fear.
In me extend family, we lost many people because of their religion which preached them, is not allowed by God to go to the hospital when they are sick.
To prohibit their children not go to school instead of encouraging their children for the best future.

According to those things, when I was in those religions, my faith was lost; and now, I believe in human beings, which means that the human being has a power for creating a good thing and changing things.

That is why I want to work in humanitarian services for changing the lives of many people who are victims of their faith.

Jacobsen: What was the treatment by the community based on your loss of religious faith?

Habonimana: My native region is totally Christian. It is very difficult for me, even for my family. My family treated me as a bad child. I was even accused of being Satanist. None of my family and my friends understand me.

I was insulted in front of people. I remember that when I was in high school I was persecuted because I refused to go to Catholic church. I was in isolation. However, now because of my generosity, the kindness I show to the people; they start to understand me.

Jacobsen: What is your advice for those who have lost faith and who may experience mistreatment for it?

Habonimana: I advise them to be honest with themselves. It is not a fault to have different beliefs. It is in our duties. I can advise them to get in contact with other groups or associations of humanists who can help them to know their rights and their duties.

They have to be careful in their village because people can traumatize them, even kill them because of their beliefs. That is why it is better to be in an association known by the government and known by international organizations like IHEYO, for example.

Jacobsen: Any concluding thoughts or feelings in conclusion?

Habonimana: As a refugee, I am in a country where there are many people who do not understand me; it is hard to feel comfortable. Sometimes, I get discouraged. Normally, a humanist life is a good life when you are free and do not have the fear of insecurity because it gives freedom to think and do things according to the belief.

That is why we need your assistance morally and materially. It is awful to sleep when you want to work, to stay closed when you want to be free. Humanism taught me a great thing; I want to change the mind of people who believe that God will give them all things.

There are people who pray every day to seek food instead of working and to study how they can overcome their problems. I want to do that by a nonprofit organization. I have this inspiration because of the value of humanism.

I want to encourage my friends who are in the bad situation to be associated with other associations and contribute to change this world where there are so many lies.

I take this occasion to thank all associations of humanist and all movements for the work they are doing for supporting and promoting humanism in this world.

I am very hopeful together we can change the world.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Aloys.

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2022-04-14

An Interview with Karen Loethen — Previous Member, Meramec Secular Student Alliance — Part 2

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/31

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are your main concerns for the secular community off campus, in society that is, now?

Karen Loethen: Oh, Scott, so many. I’ll try to keep my capitalizations down to a minimum. Lol

I have HUGE concern for the many ways that the religious right has put institutional religion into the schools, into the minds of our children. The textbooks that offer CREATION as a true counterpoint to the Big Bang and evolution…ludicrous and criminal! Teaching this to the kids, whose minds are open and interested and listening?!

Do you know that atheists are the least trusted group in our nation? Less trusted than rapists. Seriously? In the United States of America, people actually prefer religious thought and control to reason. It truly boggles my mind.

People are willing to close their minds to the hideous abuses of the church (HIDEOUS abuses). People prefer the idea of faith over knowledge. This is not only lazy, it is also dangerous!

Oh, Scott, this list is way too long; I could go on for pages.

Jacobsen: What is the main battleground for secularism, its values and principles and their implementation in America now?

Loethen: Obviously in our politics. Our nation actually still has In God We Trust on every bit of currency that circulates through our hands every single day. Public policy is continually impacted by the religious beliefs of the masses.

The inconsistent and hateful practices of various religious institutions actually impact the laws of this country, a country founded on the essential tenet of separation of church and state.

The people in power in our country bring their religions into our governmental halls.
Every time secularism gets a toe hold anywhere the religious right rallies and starts shouting We are being attacked!

Oh gosh, I could go on and on here too, Scott.

Jacobsen: What are perennial threats to secularism on campus?

Loethen: The threats to secularism on campus are the same threats to secularism on this planet. People’s fear and ignorance keeps minds shackled to their religions. Secularism truly frightens people.

We had several instances of violence towards our club announcements as well as emails from people that were, shall we say, unsupportive of our club on campus.

Jacobsen: What are the bigger misconceptions about secularists? What truths dispel them?

Loethen: Also an easy one! Atheists are thought to be Devil worshippers. LOL…which is hilarious! Atheists are a theists. We believe in NO deities. None. And that includes the scary ones they’ve created for themselves. But I understand this one because the church really scares the heck out of people with regards to their demons and whatnot.

That atheists are a group. All the word atheist means is without a deity; there is no way to characterize a single atheist based on any other one.

That atheists have no morals. Religion didn’t invent the idea of good behavior, that is a human thing. On the contrary, many of the atheists that I know are so very THINKING. Our behavior is based on our thoughts, on the situation, on reality…there is very little black and white thinking among the secular.

That atheists are angry at a god. Again, no. We have no belief in a god of any kind, therefore anger at a non-existent thing makes no sense. But, again, I understand where this comes from. The church scares believers so much about atheists. I remember being a believer and learning how scary and slippery atheists were.

There are many more myths about atheists propagated by the church, tons of them.

Oh, another one real quick: atheist can’t experience real joy.

LOL — SO wrong! I have never experienced the truly sublime until I began to recognize the realities of our species, of our world, of our galaxy, of our universe.

Jacobsen: What were the main events — even though the group was more or less dead — and topics of group discussions for the alliance on campus?

Loethen: Activism and fundraising, talks about questions of morality, conversations about what does it mean to be secular or atheist, talks about being strong when being attacked, what we wanted to do as a group, and possibly the best thing we offered: being open to any and all questions one might have.

Jacobsen: How can people become involved and maintain the secular student alliance ties on campus? How can citizens become secular activists, and make even a minor impact?

Loethen: Good question. Some people actually can’t be open and active as a secular person because the costs to them may be too high at any given moment. But I think that being open and out as much as possible in important. If you can’t be open, still read and research and talk to trusted people.

The more THINKING people we have on each campus, on this globe, the better our chances of survival as a species and the more peaceful our world can be.

To become involved you might start by informing yourself, read and learn as much as you can, join groups with like-minded people. Start with yourself, see. There are cool and interesting hobby clubs out there, from rock collecting to nature clubs to rocketry to astronomy to debate.

These clubs encourage critical thinking and help people to recognize when logical fallacies are trying to sneak into the argument. Listen to podcasts, read books, etc.

Then, put the word out there.

Simply living and open life of integrity is a huge thing.

To make greater impact, help social movements that mean something to you, join organizations that support the secular agenda, vote or even run for office, pay it forward. We in the secular community have some excellent resources these days thanks to the connections of the internet.

Use your skills and interests in ways that grow the community. Even if you can’t or don’t wish to participate in such a way, live a life being true to yourself. That is incredibly difficult and very admirable.

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Loethen: Scott, keep doing what you are doing! You are doing what I mentioned above, taking your talents, skills, and interests and using them to improve yourself and the world around you. Good work.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Karen.

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2022-04-14

An Interview with Karen Loethen — Previous Member, Meramec Secular Student Alliance — Part 1

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/30

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is family background — geography, culture, language, religion/irreligion, and education?

Karen Loethen: Thanks, Scott. I come from a small town in Illinois, just your basic homogeneously white, lower-income Christian small town. My family didn’t really practice religion much until I was in my younger teens. My own parents come from differing religious, Mom was Methodist and Dad was Catholic.

Their two families clashed over these differences so we kids were mostly kept away from religion just for the peace of it for my parents. But I was very attracted to it so I visited churches of many differing Christian denominations over my childhood years. I truly thought that “good” girls went to church and I was a good girl!

Jacobsen: What is the personal background in secularism for you? What were some seminal developmental events and realizations in personal life regarding it?

Loethen: Luckily enough for me, I was also a reader and a researcher. After grad school I got married and had my first child. It was during this period that I was doing massive reading on the historicity of religion.

The obvious man made nature of religion allowed me, first, to reject any contact with religious institutions. This was satisfying for me for about a year.

All of the doubting and reason (not to mention the complete absence of historical support for religious claims) simply couldn’t support the religion any longer. During that time I was still thinking of myself as a deist. I was 34 years old when I realized that the existence of a deity was simply inconsistent with all observable and known reality.

I was reading the Bible, perhaps not ironically, when I got a thought out of the blue: BAM. This book is ridiculous and there is no god. It makes no sense.
It was an incredible moment for me that truly changed my life!

Without the slightest bit of exaggeration, a ton of weight slipped off of my shoulders that moment and I’ve been incredibly happy ever since.

Jacobsen: You were a member of the Meramec community for a semester. The semester was spent in the freethinkers’ club on campus and the SSA. How did you find them, eventually? Why were you drawn to them?

Loethen: I was interested in the fledgling club because I believe in the process of THINKING and in the power of COMMUNITY. The group’s founder, Kyle, was very active on campus with various campus clubs, including being president of the Student Governance Council (SGC).

SGC is the group that oversees campus clubs. He was so busy and also about to graduate to he asked me, begged me really, to help build the Freethinker’s Club that he had started on campus.

I’d seen one of his little flyers on a bulletin board one evening when I was taking a break from my class. I took a picture of the flyer on my phone and contacted the email address a few days later. I was delighted to see an atheist presence on campus! I am very drawn to people who take initiative and who are true thinkers like Kyle. I was very excited to support his efforts.

What I discovered, though, is how very new and ailing the group was. Kyle was simply too busy to put in the kind of time he longed to offer the club and the students on campus didn’t seem interested in a secular club.

Kyle and another guy worked hard, but I think they had a lot to learn about group organization and planning and such, just like any student would; that’s not a criticism. Most other clubs on campus were continuous groups that had been in place for many years, faculty support, campus presence, tons of inherited momentum.

Kyle, knowing he was about to graduate the campus, begged me for weeks to give the club a hand in getting a stronger foothold. I resisted for a long time because I felt that the clubs on campus were for the kids and I am, well, not a kid. I finally agreed to give it a single, intense semester of push.

The first thing I did was take our group over and join the national organization Student Secular Alliance, the SSA, because why reinvent the wheel? SSA offers tons of support to groups seeking to have a secular voice on campus, including a personal advocate online to help in any way they can.

Jacobsen: Now, you remain a parent, of a secular student. While a student at Meramec, you took your kid to school too. How does bonding with a child through a common ground, secularism, help build trust and friendship within the family?

Loethen: Oh, that one’s obvious, I think. With no forbidden subjects, no belief in the concept of sin, and no ridiculously male-oriented overseeing body of rule makers, our family is extremely open with and supportive of our kids’ interests and activities.

Jacobsen: What are some of the more valuable tips for secularist activism on and off campus?

Loethen: I’m not sure I can say what is a road to successful secularist activism on campus because our club wasn’t successful. Perhaps that was because of the Christian vibe on campus, or the young minds’ inability to think outside of their religion, or maybe it was simply the commuter nature of our campus.

I’m sad to think that the club doesn’t have a major presence on campus because I know of several students who would approach, then avoid, then approach, then avoid the group activities. I could see the cognitive dissonance working in them; I could see that they were thinking and I know that a secular entity being available is important to their journey.

But I’m happy to tell you things that we tried over the two semesters of my involvement with the club. We put out press releases for activities that we did on campus.

We had some very interesting speakers come to our meetings, from activists and scientists to philosophers, we did several fundraisers for Project Peanut Butter (a wonderful program that funds a nutritious peanut butter-like product that gives intensive nutrition to the most needy populations of children in Malawi and Sierra Leone), we created social events, and we held informational tables on campus for both secularism in general and for our group in particular. We also had a couple of social events for members.

As for off campus, I’m a huge atheist activist. I have several blogs, I have a podcast called The Secular Parents on a Youtube channel called Secular TV, and this month I will be speaking to the atheist community at an atheist convention in St. Louis called Gateway to Reason.

How to be an activist? Be openly atheist and live a life of integrity, peace, knowledge, and reason.

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2022-04-14

More on the Meaning of Backlash Movements with Faisal Saeed Al Mutar

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/29

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar founded the Global Secular Humanist Movement and Ideas Beyond Borders. He is an Iraqi refugee, satirist, and human rights activist. He is also a columnist for Free Inquiry. Here, we continue to talk about the meaning of backlash movements.

Jacobsen: So, before, we talked about some issues regarding backlash movements. We don’t want misunderstandings: “backlash” meaning physical violence or destruction of property in the midst of protest rather than peaceful non-violent protests regardless of the issue.

What are some other concerns you may have since the last session we had about some of these “backlash” movements?

Faisal Al Mutar: Thank you for interviewing me. The concern that I have is a continuous one regarding the fact that many movements are rising up right now.

The one we talked about last time about the rise of the Far-Right. It’s happening now that there is less belief in democracy in achieving things and moving more towards an authoritarian rule.

We can hear it in statements by multiple countries around the world with Turkey being one. With China, now, they have a leader who is a “President for life.” In Kenya, which was in a sense a promising democracy, is now sliding towards authoritarianism.

Even countries that have prided itself on being supposedly a beacon for democracy and free speech, like the state of Israel, it is also declining according to Freedom House. That their freedom of the press is declining.

So that’s very worrying. There’s a decline of democracy around the world and the decline of the belief of the values that “built Western Enlightenment.” Like the freedom of speech and right to vote and others, that’s something that really worries us quite a lot.

Jacobsen: What about some responses that one might state that the current “backlash movements,” as you have called them, are more minor issues, where the number of protests, de-platformings, and restrictions on free speech is actually minor if you take into account all 2,600 universities in the United States alone?

So in other words, it’s a matter of numbers. That it’s a fraction of a percent where these kinds of de-platformings and dis-invitations are happening. So, in other words: it’s not pervasive; therefore, it’s not a major concern. Do you have a response?

Al Mutar: Obviously, if somebody plays a numbers game, somebody can make the argument for school shootings or mass shootings compared to the US population. The US population is somewhere around 315 million people, but just because the percentage is low doesn’t mean the concept itself is illegitimate.

That just because some students or some people feel uncomfortable that a speaker is coming to campus that, therefore, this justifies a dis-invitation. Even if it’s a small number, which I’m glad to hear, it’s still a slippery slope that other groups might follow or other places might follow the same trend.

Not just dis-invited, I was nominated to speak and the group rejected that nomination on the fact that some students might feel uncomfortable with my presence. The good news is there was another group that stepped in and said, “We will invite him.”

But the concept that for a speaker to come to the campus and all the students at the campus have to be “comfortable” at the campus is worrying. Regardless if it’s happening on the large scale or small scale, the value itself is dangerous.

It can open a slippery slope for other things to follow the same direction.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your opportunity and your time, Faisal.

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2022-04-14

Clovis Munezero on Fleeing Burundi, Being a Refugee, and Being a Nonbeliever

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/29

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You are Burundian, but have fled, recently. Why?

Clovis Munezero: I am Burundian, but recently I have fled my country.

When I saw that my life was in danger, my friends were killed; my companions jailed, some of my family disappeared and others imprisoned; I have reason to flee my country. I have left my country because it was going through a political crisis and trouble that took a lot of human lives and property damage.

Everything starts on 26 April 2015 when the current president of the Republic of Burundi declares for the 3rd Term, which is unconstitutional. We revolted by demonstrating in streets to defend the Constitution. Some three weeks during demonstrations, a military group attempted a coup that eventually failed.

We had already lost several human lives during the demonstration, which lasted some two months was followed by persecution of any person who demonstrated against the will of this illegal term. Several people have left the country for fear of being killed and others have been imprisoned, others killed.

My turn came on 17 November 2015 when people without uniforms came for me at home after having kidnapped the day before my uncle with whom we lived together. That day I left home and it took me almost two weeks to cross the border of Rwanda-Burundi. I had to change from house to house of friends.

On 28 November, our family member took me in his car up to the border of Rwanda and I crossed. There I stayed with my friend for three days who fled before. Then, I took the road to Nairobi. I reached there after two days on 2 December 2015. I started all over again. A refugee’s life begins.

Jacobsen: What is your own family religious background?

Munezero:My family religious background is Christianity. I was grown up in that family but my parents did not attend the same churches and it was almost never discussed matters of faith. They taught us the 10 commandments of the bible and some verses of the bible based on the good and the bad. What makes us grow with this experience of diversity?

We’re 4 siblings and none does not share the same church with each other and never did us any harm to the family.

Jacobsen: How did you lose faith?

Munezero: How did I lose my Faith; I grew up in the scout family movement with a lot of diversity. Leaders taught us that it is a lay movement: we had nonbelievers, Muslims, and Christians. Growing up in that diversity pushed me in to do some research to find out the event that shaped the world.

I started reading some stories, especially about the Second World War, Vietnam War, Genocide in Rwanda, and what happened in the region as well as colonialism and that the people of the church were involved.

Faith is lost in this way. I replaced it by reason. The belief, I replaced it with science.

Jacobsen: What was the treatment by the community based on your loss of religious faith?

Munezero:The treatment by the community based on my loss of religious faith.

When people noticed that I was no longer part of their belief, above all the people close to the family judged me as part of Satanism, dangerous, but they saw how I was living my life with love, tolerance. I always had a position to defend. I started being tolerated as much as I can so long that I am proud of my orientation.

I to have always influenced the community, I always let my life to talk about me and be up of on my choice. I never had fear of the community for my choice because my family was not against me nor agree with my choice .and I did choose reason and science. Those are my “faith.”

Jacobsen: What is your advice for those who have lost faith and who may experience mistreatment for it?

Munezero:My advice for those who have lost their faith and can be abused.

Every person has the right to choose which way to follow and he/she has to have a reason for every choice. For those people must know well and defend this reason which pushed him/her to make such a decision of “losing faith”:

Knowing the entourage for not putting you in danger as a “suspect person.”
Knowing if there are people who understand you and who share with you the way of living.
Finding people with whom you share your especially daily information and orientation of thinking.
Seeking to build links with other people by your lifestyle and do not seek to explain everything to everyone.
When it is threatened and unable to defend yourself, leave the place.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts or feelings in conclusion?

Munezero:My thoughts or feelings is that; people that already part of the humanistic community, let us act on the responsibility of making our prosperous societies, charitable and trying to make peace on this land and make it a home to all.

Let us live peacefully through our daily lives, teach and influence the world with love and humanism. We are humans, try to be humanists. Thank you, sir, have a good time.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Clovis.

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2022-04-14

Q&A on Ex-Muslims with Waleed Al-Husseini — Session 1

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/28

Waleed Al-Husseini founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of France. He escaped from the Palestinian Authority to Jordan and then to France, after torture and imprisonment in Palestine. He is an ex-Muslim and an atheist. In this educational series, we talk about the situation of ex-Muslims in France.

Scott Jacobsen: To begin with, what inspired you to start the foundation for ex-muslims in France in the first place?

Waleed Al-Husseini: You know, if I want to speak about the inspiration, it will be from the things I have been through. I mean my story, what we explained in the last interview, because it makes me feel that there are a lot of us, and that we need to be united. We need to be united in our voice to speak about us and our problems, to make others feel not alone, and also to demonstrate to Europe and the United States that there are people who leave Islam.

All of these things were reasons and inspiration. Then the work of Maryam Namazie, who is the founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims in Britain. We chose the date of chevalier de la barre, the young French nobleman who got killed for blasphemy here in France during the Dark Ages, to show that we are all chevalier de la barre, but from a Muslim background instead of Christian. These are the things that inspired me.

Jacobsen: What are the main social, political, and educational, initiatives of the organization?

Al-Husseini: We are a group of atheists and non-believers who have faced threats and restrictions in our personal lives. Many of us have been arrested for blasphemy.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of France has the following aims:

We call for universal rights and full equality and oppose tolerance of inhuman beliefs, discrimination and ill-treatment in the name of respecting religion and culture.
Freedom to criticise religion. Prohibition of restrictions on unconditional freedom of criticism and expression using so-called religious ‘sanctities’.
Freedom of religion and atheism.
Separation of religion from the state and the educational and legal system.
Prohibition of religious customs, rules, ceremonies or activities that are incompatible with or infringe people’s rights and freedoms.
Abolition of all restrictive and repressive cultural and religious customs which hinder and contradict woman’s independence, free will and equality. Prohibition of segregation of sexes.
Prohibition of interference by any authority, family members or relatives, or official authorities in the private lives of women and men and their personal, emotional and sexual relationships and sexuality.
Protection of children from manipulation and abuse by religion and religious institutions.
Prohibition of any kind of financial, material or moral support by the state or state institutions to religion and religious activities and institutions.
Prohibition of all forms of religious intimidation and threats.

Jacobsen: More to the central discussion, for ex-Muslims — whether atheist, agnostic, another religion, secular humanist, and so on — in France, what is the general day-to-day situation for them?

Al-Husseini: They are in danger not only from governments, but more from the people. Many of us get killed simply because of the usage of some liberal words — for example — look at what happened in Pakistan a few weeks ago or what happened to the bloggers in Bangladesh last year. Or in Saudi Arabia and Mauritania for example, where people have gone to the streets asking the government to kill the apostates. So those in our situation know that we will get killed. Even here in France I am in the same situation. I’m in danger.

Jacobsen: If any, what percentage of ex-Muslims would you say undergo severe discrimination in France? And if so, what are the forms of the discrimination?

Al-Husseini: Here in France, many avoid saying anything because they will be attacked at their work, or perhaps fired if the owner of the company is Muslim. Many of them will not say anything because they are living in areas with many Muslims, who will attack them. Some of us can’t even give talks at universities, as you must have seen with what happened to Maryam Namazie last year. When they use the term “Islamophobia,” which hasn’t as a label before by the way, it is just used to shut us up. This word is used to protect Muslims. It is what I call the modern fatwa.

Jacobsen: What is the one of the biggest misconceptions that French Muslims have about French ex-Muslims?

Al-Husseini: It is the same everywhere, they think that ex-Muslims are Zionists, or that they are working with them to destroy Islam. It’s always the same. They never think that it’s a free choice.

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2022-04-14

Interview with Sikivu Hutchinson-Feminist, Humanist, Novelist, Author

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/28

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.

What is your family and personal story — culture, education, and geography?

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.

What informs personal atheist and humanist beliefs, as a worldview and ethic, respectively? What are effective ways to advocate for atheism and humanism?

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.

What makes atheism, secular humanism, and progressivism seem more right or true than other worldviews to you — arguments and evidence?

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.

What is the importance of atheism, feminism, and humanism in America at the moment?

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.

What social forces might regress the atheist, feminist, and secular humanist movements in the US?

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.

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?

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.

What is the content and purpose of the book?

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.

Thank you for your time, Sikivu.

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2022-04-14

Q&A on International Youth Humanism with Marieke Prien — Session 2

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/28

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 overall 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 won’t 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 strict 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 often times 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 overall 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 a 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, superstition 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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2022-04-14

Benjamin David on How His Abusive Childhood Motivated Him to get involved in Human Rights Activism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/27

Benjamin David is the Founder of Conatus News and a Writer, Designer, Photographer, Artist, and Marketer on various platforms. Here we talk about his life, struggles, progressive activism, and how to unify activists.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How was life for you growing up?

Benjamin David: Born into a very working class household, I grew up in several poverty-stricken areas in Bristol with my parents and two siblings. Even though my father had a very penurious job as a welder/fabricator, he was a very talented man, with a remarkably shrewd ability to repair or build anything he set his mind to.

By contrast, my mother was a housewife who, owing to longstanding mental illness, was continuously between jobs. Having parents whom I could best describe as disciplinarians, the environment my siblings and I grew up in was consistently threatening and teeming with abuse. My brother and I spent a lot of time either being smeared or maligned.

Moreover, we were physically abused, suffering horrific injuries forcing us on many occasions to run away and attempt to take our own lives. Understandably, I not only had a deeply noxious relationship with my family, but it precipitated a lengthy period of social withdrawal, with me spending considerable amounts of time in the throes of depression, anxiety and self-harm.

Losing all friends, I was forced to take recourse in school books, video games and sojourns in nature to find a sense of plenitude. In fact, the older I became the more introverted I was, which often resulted in me being vilified or spurned by my peers in high school.

Light would eventually prevail at the end of my tunnel, or so I thought, after my parents divorced after numerous warring months. I decided to move in with my recently remarried father, seeking non-belligerence, where I stayed for two years.

Given that my father’s wife was a relative of my mother and a longstanding Jehovah’s witness, before the wedding he covertly undertook lengthy bible study sessions and “got to know” Jesus and Jehovah prior to announcing the engagement to the rest of the family.

Moving in with my father soon after the announcement, I was implicated in the wrongdoings orchestrated by my father, and I was subsequently rejected and disowned by my mother, an imposition my siblings had no choice but to comply with.

Notwithstanding the desertion, I endeavoured to please my Dad, with the hope of making my first friend as an adolescent, even attending the weekly meetings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses at the Kingdom Hall.

Having found neither intellectual nor emotional fulfilment, I renounced my religiosity, meaning that I was labelled an “unrepentant wrongdoer” and shunned by everyone in the household.

I was eventually starved of food, causing me to develop a chronic health condition that would inflict me for over 11 years, and I was asked to leave the house. At the time of being homeless, living in the city of Bath at the time, I was merely 17.

Jacobsen: Did religion and politics play a large role during your childhood?

David: As I have already mentioned, religion was certainly a part of my later early life. The disclosure of superstitious beliefs, by contrast, were certainly ubiquitous during my early years, which undeniably aroused my interest in atheism during my late teens to early 20s.

My mother was a dogmatic believer in ghosts and angels, often speaking fervently on how ghosts are all around us, even in our house. Seeing psychics cleanse the house of spectres was a somewhat common phenomenon.

Having experienced first-hand the ruinous effects of being disfellowshipped by my own family for leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and still consternated by the question whether God exists or not, I embarked upon a lengthy analysis of theism, watching lots of documentaries, reading a myriad number of books and getting involved in philosophy.

Eventually, I would be prevailed upon by atheism, and I undertook a lengthy involvement with humanism with the intent of helping those who had, like me, been victimised by religion.

Concerning politics, my parents held deeply entrenched fascist and populist views, which were at odds with my own egalitarian views.

My mother was once a supporter of the Labour Party in the mid to late 90s, but mass immigration and the perceived Islamization of Britain lead her to increasingly spout far-right garble. Derogatory remarks about minority groups were commonly made, which only precipitated a feeling shared by me and my siblings that the world was a deeply perilous place.

The political opinions of my parents most certainly galvanized my own political ponderings during my later adolescence, finding a sense of harmony with many of the left-wing political positions propagated from leading thinkers in philosophy during the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Despite the repugnant nature of the positions held by my parents, I wanted to learn, critically, why they came to the political conclusions they did, and in so doing understand the flaws underpinning their convictions.

In many ways, and to my frustration, there is a sense of collective guilt that I find myself harbouring for the positions propagated by my parents, and I am sure this feeling has played a role, albeit a marginal role, in why I have been ardently involved in the world of activism.

Jacobsen: You founded Conatus News; a human-rights oriented, progressive platform for activists, writers, and social commentators. What inspired the title of the publication?

David: The title was inspired by the philosopher Spinoza, who used the term ‘conatus’ to describe the force in every animate creature toward the preservation of its existence. One of the recurring issues floating around activist circles is being heard.

The majority of those with whom I worked, such as the ex-religious, have a drive in them to be heard, to have their human rights and the rights of others preserved. It was only fitting that I picked a name symbolic of the very people the platform would eventually serve.

Jacobsen: Your involvement in Conatus News culminated in the ‘Defending Progressivism’ conference in London featuring some of the biggest names in activism either in attendance or sitting on the panel with you. Given that many of these activists disagree with each other, how did you manage to bring such figures together?

David: I firmly believe that an activist movement will always fail if it is unable to forge a unity of purpose or togetherness. At the Defending Progressivism conference in 2017, there were some big characters who fundamentally disagreed with each other on some pretty pressing issues, such as AC Grayling and Claire Fox.

However, ideals of equality, individual liberty, freethought and compassion are ideals that most people, no matter their differences on certain topical issues such as Brexit, respect and thump for. Through giving centre stage to this centre ground, people are more amenable to engaging and respecting those who they once-perceived as political adversaries.

It’s always an inspiriting sight when two people come together to work something out. Just like music, with a single note only going so far, humans are collectively far more effective in their cause, emerging as a resonance.

Jacobsen: Who have been inspirations in terms of the progressive movement in the United Kingdom, and in fact the world, for you?

David: The first would have to be Eugene Debs, who popularized ideas about civil liberties, workers’ rights, peace and justice, and government regulation of big business. The philosopher John Dewey was another, whose ideas about “experiential learning” emboldened several generations of educators.

He was also a champion of teachers’ unions and academic freedom, and he also spoke out and mobilised against efforts to rescind free speech, and he helped establish NAACP as well as being an ardent supporter of women’s suffrage.

Another is Charles Bradlaugh, a Victorian politician, who founded the UK’s National Secular Society over 150 years ago. Being the first atheist MP, Bradlaugh paved the way for the separation of religion and public life in Britain.

Jacobsen: Now, you have other professional endeavors. What are they? Why do you pursue this course?

David: Presently, I have been working with an array of smart, gifted and passionate thinkers in the development of a new project, which we hope to launch in the coming months. Whilst I cannot divulge a lot of information at this point, I can say that it really will be the first of its kind once launched, and I am confident that it will pave the way for advances in the grassroots circles to which I belong as well as educating and empowering the public.

Conatus News was a sizeable project that I had launched, and the various successes and failures along the way has been a huge learning curve. After stepping down from Conatus News back in December 2017, mainly owing to ill health and a need to take a break from activism, I thought that I could enjoy the peace, given that Conatus News had been a colossally stressful full-time project. However, a few weeks in I experienced a hankering for activism, and brainstorming ideas quickly ensued.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts or feelings in conclusion? What are your hopes looking forward for the progressive movement in 2018/19?

David: The term “progressivism” gets a bad rap, with many from the more reactionary and postmodernist side of the Left coming to be synonymous with the term. This is particularly evident in more moderate Left and centrist activist platforms very similar to Conatus News.

As a philosophy, progressivism is based on the Idea of Progress, which is the view that people can become better in terms of quality of life (social progress) through economic development (modernization), and the application of science and technology (scientific progress).

The assumption is that the process will happen once people apply their reason and skills, for it is not divinely foreordained. Why I do not call postmodernists “progressive” is that they expunge a key constituent of both modernity and progressivism – reason. Postmodernism stresses the irrational while being overly suspicious of the rational.

For those who are more laudatory of the term, there is a tendency to see progressivism as synonymous with, or certainly very similar to, the term “liberal”. This is unfortunate. There are fundamental differences between the two, such as core economic issues.

Traditional “liberals” in our current parlance are those who focus on using taxpayer money to improve society. By contrast, a progressive believes in using government power to make large institutions play by a set of progressive rules.

Furthermore, progressives are aware of social and economic problems and try to define and address the systemic rules, laws and traditions that enable and empower the problems in the first place. Importantly, progressives share a general belief in the interconnections of individuals and the view that “when you hurt, I hurt”.

One of the biggest hopes that I have for the progressive movement in 2018/19 is that ideas of progress become synonymous with the term ‘progressivism’, and the dirty connotation is extirpated from it.

Unfortunately, the loudest voices remonstrating against those who try to shut down university debates or apply different moral standards depending on the so-called “power” of a social group are either conservatives or libertarians, represented by such magazines as Sp!ked and commentators like Douglas Murray and Ben Shapiro.

Whilst there are always important partnerships to be had with our conservative and libertarian friends when working to redress specific issues we all agree on, it is important the progressive identity is not obscured by them.

Eric Hobsbawm put it stirringly when describing the unique identity of progressivism as characterised by “Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain”, which he deemed the basis of any progressive policy, and changing the chronic and bedimmed political mentality of “maximising economic growth and personal income” to maximising the human condition across the board.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Benjamin.

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2022-04-14

In Conversation with Professor Sarah Wilkins-LaFlamme on Secularism, Religion, and Atheism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/27

Scott Douglas Jacobson: Let’s start as James Lipton says, to begin at the beginning.

Sarah Wilkins LaFlamme: Oh boy.

Jacobsen: What was a family background regarding major variables such as geography, culture, language, and religion if any?

LaFlamme: So, I’m originally from the Pontiac region of Quebec, which is about 45 minutes north of Gatineau. I lived there until about my mid 20’s, so I did my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sociology at university while still living at home.

Yes, so, my mom is a Brit. She immigrated in the ‘70s, early ‘70s, here to Canada. She met my dad in Toronto who’s French Canadian and they both moved up to this old farm and, well, we children called it a commune.

They called it a cooperative. Basically, a bunch of friends bought this old farm and set up this alternative, back to the land, life style. It was tame compared to some of the other groups that are out there. But it was a much more rural experience out in the countryside than most people get these days.

In terms of religion, on my dad’s side it’s the classic French-Canadian Catholic heritage.

The grandparents were mostly practicing, went to church relatively often. Took us to church as well a bit when we were really young. We can talk about this. Something that I researched when I was looking at Catholicism in Quebec in my academic work.

This was the normal progression through the generations around the ‘60s and afterward. So, the grandparents were more or less actively religious. However, among my Boomer parents, my dad was what you can call fallen away. Still identifies as Catholic, still has some core Christian beliefs in God and the afterlife I think, but never really went to church. He did not have any real, practical contact with the institution of the Church itself. However, my mother tells it that my dad’s parents, my grandparents, put pressure on my mom and dad to get us baptized.

So my brother and I were baptized Catholic. That was about the extent of our involvement, I think. My brother threatens to get married in a Catholic church occasionally.

But then he realizes how much work it’ll be to be able to get everything in order to do it: we haven’t had our first communion or been confirmed, so we’d have to go through this whole process. So, like, “Oh God no.” [laugh]

We had little to no contact with religion in that sense, and were also influenced by my mom who was coming from a traditionally Anglican family, who was more the atheist of the family to start out with.

She oscillates, like a lot of nonbelievers, between atheism and agnosticism. Refers to some spiritual power in the sky once in a while, and at other times is adamantly non-religious. She does not like the institution of the Church at all.

My mom often negatively remembers the Church of England and its “people” as trying to control many aspects of family life.

She told stories of having the vicar come by Sunday when she was a kid and tell her mother she should be having more children, donating more money, etc. Similar stories that you get from the Quebec side about how the Catholic Church used to be pre-1960’s.

So, that was my family background. I had what you would call an irreligious or non-religious upbringing. My brother and I were put in the more non-religious classes in school, so we did not have any religious teachings in school. We did not go to any religious services. So now, I identify as having no religion.

I am a non-believer. I have figured that out over the last decade or so. From what I understand, my story is pretty typical in that sense. While doing research with people who say they have no religion in Canada, like a colleague of mine out West Joel Thiessen does, who does a lot of interviews with these individuals, or when I do lots of statistical work with survey data, I’ve come to notice that the decline of religion across generations that I describe as my own story is pretty common among many individuals. And the turning point for properly becoming a nonbeliever is often in the early adult years. There is of course variation in people’s exact biographical stories, but that decline of participating in and contact with organized religion across two or three generations seems to be a recurring theme.

I am also a trained sociologist. I have done all my university work in sociology.

What’s nice about sociology, is that it is a very broad field. You can study anything really, anything that is social behavior. Anytime individuals get together, social structures are involved.

I am first and foremost a stats person. I like quantitative methods. I also twin that with an interest in sociology of religion. So, that is my main specialty, my substantive specialty, what I am an expert in, I guess, if you want.

That came about when I was in graduate school. There was a group in Ottawa who was working on Catholicism in Quebec, led by Dr. E.-Martin Meunier. This group drew my interest, because I had been told all throughout my life that Catholicism was more or less dead. And yet, this group showed me that there are still these interesting indicators, a lot of people who say they are still Catholic in Quebec even though they do not practice. This institution that is meant to be dead still has a certain influence politically and socially.

That piqued my interest. It did not come from being religious myself, it came from being told that religion was not important anymore but yet finding out that, “Oh no, when you gather real data, systematically, you do see certain impacts of religion.”

I followed that through, followed that for the DPhil, and then when I got my job here at Waterloo. I was hired mainly for the stats side of things, so I can teach statistics. However, sociology of religion is my substantive area, what I write papers about, do conferences on.

Jacobsen: If you were to summarize the work, for instance, in the dissertation at the University of Oxford, what would you consider the main or bigger research question? What would you consider the main or bigger finding from that research question?

LaFlamme: Yes, I am especially interested in social differences between people who are religious or more actively religious and those who are not. So, that is my general interest.

I have applied that in several ways. I’ll give you a few examples. In places where organized religion has been on the decline for many decades, if not centuries—so some European countries, Canada is starting to get there—I studied how there is a larger gap in moral attitudes, what people think is right and wrong, between the remaining core of people who are actively religious and the majority who are not. The actively religious are now a minority, but they are still there.

In these societies, there is a majority of individuals completely removed from all forms of organized religions, so in terms of their belonging, and they are not part of any church or religious group in terms of their practice. They do not have any formalized religious practice.

In contexts where you find these larger secular groups, they tend to be on average more liberal and much more left in terms of their attitudes towards same-sex marriage and abortion, compared to places where they form a smaller part of society.

However, members of remaining religious groups remain relatively conservative on average. So, you have this widening gap between the two. I was looking at this, I guess, polarization of a certain kind.

Another example of my work being, in Canada, that religious affiliation and level of religiosity are still important in who we vote for, at least at the federal level.

We hear a lot about politics and religion in the USA, but we do not hear about it so much in Canada. However, it is there. People who are more actively religious are much more likely to vote for the Conservative Party of Canada.

And those who are less religious, in English speaking Canada especially, they tend to vote NDP. Sometimes they will alternate, sometimes they will vote Liberal, but they tend to stick to the left of the spectrum.

That is an effect that is becoming stronger over time. So, in the early and mid 20^th century, there used to be a big difference between Catholics and Protestants, who they would vote for. Catholics tended to vote more Liberal, Protestants more Conservative. That affiliation effect has all but disappeared since the 2000s. However, instead you’ve now got this gap between those who are more religious and those who are less religious.

So, that is what I am interested in: how who you are in terms of your religion impacts other aspects of your social life.

I also look at caregiving activities. I also have a working paper now on these moral attitudes, but with a greater focus on Canada. I could go on all day about my research and findings.

To summarize it all up, even though we live in a context that can be defined as more secular, as people who are now non-religious form a bigger part of society than they used to and religious institutions do not play the same social role that they used to; even in this context, individual’s religiosity, religion or non-religion are still important. It is important in a lot of ways.

In terms of their interactions with others, people who are non-religious tend to hang out more with non-religious people for example. That influences their worldview, how they see the world. I have got a project on that coming up. Vice versa, religious people tend to hang out more with people who are actively religious.

It does not mean that there is always this huge divide between both groups. Members on each “side” do interact with one another on occasion. And there are also lots of people in the middle of the spectrum, somewhere in between being actively religious and an adamant atheist.

Sometimes, they do share the same views and behaviour. Sometimes not. That is what I investigate, what I’m interested in.

Jacobsen: When it comes to politics and religion, the poisonous topics to talk about at the dinner table.

LaFlamme: The ones we are not supposed to talk about.

Jacobsen: That is right. How much are attitudes in politics influenced by attitudes in religion? So, I do not mean what you have already stated in terms of voting patterns.

But I do mean in terms of the policy recommendations and the social attitudes that might follow from them.

LaFlamme: There is probably a much bigger impact than people are willing to admit in Canada or even know about. Probably not as drastic as in the United States.

There are faith-based lobby groups, and faith-based groups providing services in civil society that we often assume are being provided by the State, such as immigrant settlement for example. I don’t think it’s as bad as Marci McDonald makes it out to be in her book “The Armageddon Factor,” but it is there.

At the individual level, religion and religiosity are important for some attitudes and behaviours, but not for everything either. Things like attitudes towards the economy, how the economy should be regulated, or attitudes towards the environment. Those are attitudes where religion has a bit of an impact, but does not come into play as much.

But on other things, anything to do with the social conservative movement, such as attitudes towards abortion, same-sex marriage, gender roles, there people’s religion and non-religion come into play more.

To come back to vote choice, religion is still one of the major sociodemographic factors in voting. Province of residence is still the strongest sociodemographic effect at play: what province or region you live in still has the strongest impact on who you vote for. But religion often comes second only to province of residence. It is still more important than age, still more important than social class, still more important than gender. It is there, even if we don’t hear a lot about it.

I met with a really interesting group at Cardus back in November in Ottawa, which is a more Christian-funded, faith-based think tank. We had a whole day of workshops on the perception of religion in Canada and the role faith plays in society.

And while I was there, I realized, “Oh wow, okay…These guys are here in Ottawa. They probably do not have as much impact as when the Harper government was in power, but they do have some political clout.” And they are one of many such groups in Canada.

There is also, at the grassroots level, a lot of volunteer faith-based groups, groups that are helping, providing certain social services that the government is not providing, or not fully funding.

Here in southern Ontario for example, there are a lot of faith-based immigrant settlement groups who are volunteers, who help new arrivals settle, and make sure they’ve got housing, make sure they’ve got the right language skills, and so forth. A lot of the key players are volunteers from Christian organizations and churches.

That is the reality here in Canada. It is a fascinating reality.

Jacobsen: If we take a neutral perspective from that last statement, and we take the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, then we look at the campaigning of some religious groups. Some non-religious affiliated groups.

Across the country. In other words, all territories and all provinces. What campaigns tend to be more affirming of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? What ones tend to be non-affirming of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

LaFlamme: You ask an interesting question, because pretty much no group is going to admit that they are not affirming the Charter in this day and age. It is a series of values that is so taken for granted in our society that it is hard to criticize them. Even more so in English-speaking Canada. In Quebec, linguistic rights and the rights of the linguistic community have some weight to them, when compared with the rights of the individual in the Charter, but even in Quebec Charter rights are paramount; just in Quebec there seems to be more willingness to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of a more individual-based rights system that we are currently in. That we’ve been in since especially the ‘80s.

As for no group willing to admit that they go against the Charter, let me give you an example. The right to religious freedom can be interpreted and applied in a number of ways in Canada, especially when it comes to the role of the State and the visibility of religion in public spaces.

To ensure an individual’s religious freedom, many Western states, including here in Canada and its provinces, will try and remain neutral regarding religion, and have a long history of doing so. However, different States have different definitions and approaches to this neutrality. Some, like in France, feel that this neutrality entails all forms of religion, especially visible forms, should be removed from anything that is public, including public spaces. However, others feel that this is a hindrance to religious freedom. In other contexts, like in many places in Canada, State neutrality is not defined as the State and public spaces being totally devoid of religion, but rather as giving equal footing or at least equal opportunity to all religious and non-religious groups.

Most in Canada will agree that our State should be neutral in terms of religion and non-religion, and that everyone’s religious freedom and freedoms of speech and thought should be protected. However, the ways that this is put into place, what that practically ends up looking like on the ground, and even how these rights are defined exactly can vary between groups, regions and decades.

And that is probably where you’re going to see divergences and disagreements. We had the case recently where the Liberal government said that they weren’t going to fund programs organized by groups who did not share the Liberals’ current pro-choice values on abortion. A form had to be signed or something. And a lot of faith-based groups and individuals who are providing services came out as uncomfortable about this; felt it infringed on some of their Charter freedoms.

On top of that, our system is one in which all freedoms in the Charter are more or less given equal weight. So even when you agree on how we should go about defining and protecting these rights, then there can be disagreements on which ones should be given priority if needed.

Jacobsen: Every society has certain tacit or implicit values, which for want of better terms, can be called sacred or non-negotiable. What ones are the sacred and nonnegotiable values in Canada? That both the secular and the religious can agree on together.

LaFlamme: That is interesting. I’ll say a few things on that. The field of studying non-religion and secularity, the cutting edge of it now, at least in academia, is looking into what we are calling substantive secularity.

So, for the longest time when we were studying non-religion, we would study it by showing what it was not. So, it would be like, “Okay, so these people do not go to church, they do not belong to a religion.”

At some point, we said, “Well, that’s great, but what are they? What do these people share in terms of values, in terms of worldviews? There is something interesting there.” Often, people who are religious, for whom religion has played a big role in their lives, do not fully understand that it is possible to live a meaningful life without having any traditional religious beliefs or practices. They tend to see the non-religious as vessels devoid of anything substantial, wandering the desert aimlessly, simply waiting to be filled.

Jacobsen: Seekers.

LaFlamme: Yes, seekers basically, right? And many who study religion, in the past and even today, are guilty of holding that fundamental assumption about non-religious people. An assumption that faith is fulfilling an essential human need, that it is an essential part of what humans are, and so non-religious individuals should be defined principally by what they are missing.

There are seekers out there, non-religious individuals looking for or to return to a faith group and beliefs. I do not want to say that that is completely wrong. However, a lot of people are non-religious, and are perfectly happy with that, have other things in life; find meaning in other ways. Religion does not even come into their brain. They lead their lives in different ways. Scholars and researchers are finally beginning to properly pick up on that, and are gaining more interest in it. Are there values shared by everyone, religious and non-religious alike, and what are these values? What are the values that differ between the religious and non-religious, and why?

More secular individuals and States are not simply devoid of moral attitudes and values traditionally associated with religious groups; they have their own alternative values and approaches to life, shared by many or most of them and that they think are superior. It’s often easier to pinpoint those values that differ between the religious and non-religious, because they’re often the ones we hear about, that cause flare ups. That example I gave earlier on of the Liberal government threatening to not fund programs run by groups that do not share pro-choice values is one such case.

Because when a way of thinking or a value is shared by almost everyone, we do not think about it a whole lot. It does not cause a problem; it does not cause debate. It’s just taken for granted as that’s the way the world is. In that sense, shared views and values are almost harder to observe and study from a social scientific standpoint.

We all live in a consumerist society that is more based around the individual now than when my grandparents were growing up for example. The Charter of human rights and freedoms is not contested by most groups now. It is accepted, celebrated, seen as right and just and taken for granted at times. That was not always the case. You see that among a lot of Canadians regardless of whether they are religious or not, there are some core fundamental things that I think most people share in our societies.

Like this, this striving for happiness, this importance of family and of certain responsibilities. Those are things that everyone shares. Ok, maybe not everyone, but most people share, across that religious/non-religious spectrum.

And then there are other things that cause tension, like certain attitudes towards certain moral behaviours. What is considered leading a good life? That can differ between people who are more actively religious and less religious.

Also their general worldview and understanding of how the world works and what led to the world we now live in. That can cause real tensions sometimes. But other times, people seem to be able to live peacefully with those differences just fine.

Canada is an interesting example because there are tensions. There are differences, but overall things are going well in Canada. There have been no civil wars nor mass genocides surrounding these issues in recent memory.

I am glad you asked that question because sometimes we are more interested in the differences, what drives us apart, but there are a lot of things that we share, and we seem to be able to do it relatively well in Canada.

There are issues, but nothing has caused a fundamental rift in society yet – and looking forward, probably won’t, at least for the foreseeable future.

Jacobsen: Why do the non-religious lean politically and socially left? Why do the traditionally religious lean right?

LaFlamme: I do not have all the answers for you, but one factor I focus on has to do with contact with the religious institution early on in life, during childhood.

People who are actively religious as adults tend to have been actively religious as children: socialized religiously. That is a strong effect. I can show that with statistics. Again, I am talking in trends: there are some exceptions to the rule, but it’s pretty rare for someone who attends religious services as an adult to have come from an irreligious background.

And during their formative childhood years, individuals who are in contact with religious groups and institutions are learning about issues, making up their minds about things and developing the way they see the world at least in part based on the teachings of these groups. Not all religious groups in Canada have more conservative doctrine, the United Church of Canada being a prominent counterexample to this, but most religious groups are going to be teaching more what we consider conservative attitudes towards things like same-sex marriage, abortion, gender roles, sexuality, etc. The more traditional family values, about what a normal family and what a normal individual within that is meant to look like. They are teaching those values at a young age. Then later on, as people grow up, those values tend to be reinforced when they stay connected to a religious group. By people within that congregation or group, their family, more often in that congregation or group as well; their network of friends is usually at least in part of that group; Their congregation is in touch with like-minded individuals, and so forth.

The opposite is true for non-religious people. They tend to grow up in settings where the more conservative views of religious groups are not taught at all or as much; they go to more secular schools and universities where views that we consider more left of the spectrum are taught more and reinforced more, they surround themselves with like-minded friends who reinforce their views even more, and so forth.

As a sociologist, I consider that socialization process, especially during someone’s formative years of childhood and early adulthood, as crucial in shaping what they think and how they act. I am not of the Dawkins school, for example, that seems to put all the weight on biological factors, to consider non-believers and their views as more “evolved” in terms of brain development and our species in general.

When you’re a kid, you learn things from your environment, including your social environment. And those things are hard to unlearn and often remain with you. Current-day religious individuals often come from social environments where right-wing/conservative views are more the norm; non-religious individuals, often from social environments where left-wing/progressive views are more prevalent. You still have free will and are not completely determined by your social environment, but it does play a role, it does influence you.

It is not biological. It is not innate. It is something you learn. It is the social context that builds it. We happen to be living in an era when, for a lot of people, the social environment is not being influenced and constructed by leaders and members of religious groups as much as it once was. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t social milieus where this is still the case, Trinity Western University and other Canadian Christian universities being examples here. Those in these milieus share certain views of the world that at times are quite different from our own, to put it mildly. But overall, we’re in a more secular social environment than was once the case.

Jacobsen: When it comes to those moral values stated at the earlier part of that response, examples of traditional family values, opposition to gay marriage, opposition to women’s reproductive health, abortion rights, assisted dying, and so on, what, based on the research, do these groups or individuals report as their reasons for the opposition to those things or the affirmations of those values? In other words, what is the source of them, e.g. the community, the text, and so on?

LaFlamme: Good question. I work a lot with survey data where we ask what you think, but not why you think it. So, survey data classically asks what are your attitudes, not why do you have these attitudes? We don’t manage to get into the “why” so much. That’s where qualitative methods come into play in the social sciences.

One form of qualitative research is where you sit down with someone and then go into the depth of their reasoning and why it is that they hold these attitudes. I do not do this kind of research myself, but I do have colleagues and read from others who do.

You usually get a series of factors that individuals themselves identify. So, they will often identify these attitudes, such as being against abortion, being against assisted dying, and so forth as part of their core, fundamental belief of what they think is right, their value of life.

They define life as beginning at conception and that should go until the end of your days without you intervening, or a doctor intervening, in that process.

Some will link that to their beliefs in the transcendent. “God created this, and so it should be this way.” Others will not necessarily be able to think it through that well. Maybe, they haven’t thought about it as much and so will answer, “Well, because that is how it has always been”, or “That is what I believe.”

These are some of the reasons individuals identify themselves. Those are interesting. They are important. However, what I am interested in, especially as a quantitative sociologist who can look at people’s answers to different questions, is to see if there are links between their answers without them actually knowing about it.

Individuals might not associate their high levels of religiosity with their anti-abortion attitudes. But I can see that when I look at association patterns with statistical data. So, I can see that, “Hey, even though you’re giving different reasons for this, and those might still be valid and interesting, I can also see this other link that you tended to go to church a lot as a kid.”

And it is within many religious groups where they tend to teach these sorts of attitudes. So, yes, there are a variety of reasons. And yes, I am especially interested in the reasons we cannot see as much and what impact they then have on social interaction with others.

Jacobsen: Now, given the specialization in the sociology of religion, do any personality or individual differences of psychology with regards to personality play into any of the research for you? This is a quick primer question, yes or no.

LaFlamme: Yes.

Jacobsen: In other words, the big five and intelligence. Do these factor into it?

LaFlamme: The psychology of religion approach is more to look at these personal characteristics. Personality traits, to see how they link with religion. I am not big on that. I am not a huge fan of psychology in general to be honest.

Although there are some interesting findings, I do not want to put them down. However, as a sociologist, I am much more interested in the impact of what’s around you in terms of the social reality and environment around you. And how that has an influence on who you are and what you do; on your personality and your attitudes and social behaviour.

I do not know the literature so much specifically on the links between the big five personality types and religion, although I do know there is literature out there on it for anyone who’s interested.

I am a little bit more familiar with the psychology literature on the links between higher levels of intelligence and non-religion. I have seen some of it and have had some discussions with colleagues on it. I hear a lot about it from the New Atheist side of things. However, I’ll use it as an example to show you its differences from the sociological approach.

The first question that comes to mind when I hear about these findings is: what are you considering as intelligent? How do you define intelligence? How are you measuring it? Because some intelligence tests are more American or Western centric. They measure some interesting things about you, but especially measure how hooked into that culture you are.

Or are you talking about someone like me who is a university professor, considered more intelligent than someone who is not, even though my knowledge is specialized to a very specific subdiscipline and series of topics?

I do not like that. In the sense that I have trained, yes, I can think at a university level. I do science. But, I am hopeless when it comes to fixing something around the house. Whereas someone, some of my friends for example, who did not go to university are nevertheless manual “thinkers” and very smart about how things practically work. The manual side of things. What do you mean when you talk about intelligence? It puts the correlation between intelligence level and non-religion into perspective a bit.

Another example related to this: universities in Canada are quite secular on average. We do have some Christian universities, but for the most part, when you go to university, you usually do not talk about or even practice your religion so much. Even if you have a religion, university does not usually reinforce religion in any way. Some religious individuals even get told off or shunned by a lot of their peers.

I saw this a lot when I was in Oxford. One of my American friends was open about the fact that he believed in God. When he stated this, there would often be, like, 20 people who would exclaim “What do you mean?!” They’d try to debate him and convert him to atheism, which I thought was a bit drastic. But intelligence is often thought of in our society as linked to higher education, as coming from university training. And universities also happen to be more secular social environments on average. So what is really at play? Intelligence, or the characteristics of the social environment? It’s often hard to distinguish the two with survey or experimental data.

You find more non-religious people in universities in Canada. However, if you go and look at examples of Christian universities, in Canada and the US, you also find intelligent people who are religious as well.

I am not saying psychologists are wrong. I just don’t use their approach. I do not look at the personality traits of the individual, but I am especially interested in everything else that constructs that around them. Other people, interactions with other people. Interactions with social institutions and society. So, that is what I focus on.

Jacobsen: When it comes to religion and politics, you noted the top sociocultural predictive variables, in terms of what they will be. What are the two most predictive variables, or factors, that the whole field widely accepts as nonnegotiable. The data is so good.

Where the two variables predict if someone will be non-religious or religious?

LaFlamme: Great question, I’ve got an answer for you. I’ll provide a little bit of context first though. This is something that is taken for granted in social sciences, but I want to make sure we are on the same page.

So, when we work with human behaviour, we are talking in terms of probabilities, not determinism. What’s amazing about humans, is that they have free will. You’ll find patterns, but any individual can deviate from those, an exception to the rule. Once they are aware of those patterns, they can also adjust their behavior accordingly.

For me, that’s what‘s fascinating about studying humans and social behaviour; what you don’t get when studying atoms or things, what you don’t get so much of in the natural sciences.

That was the context. Now for my actual answers. First, if you are a man, you are much more likely to be non-religious in Canada and in most Western nations. Second, if you are younger, you are much more likely to be non-religious in Canada and in most Western nations.

There is a strong generational effect. That one you probably saw coming. That thing from earlier on about, we are in a context where religious socialization does not happen for a lot of people nowadays.

There is a weaker presence of religion in the social environment and that is having an impact on people of all ages. However, it is especially influential for people who are born and raised in this more recent context.

So, us Millennials versus say my grandparents or my great-grandparents. That is probably one of the strongest effects on non-religion in Canada.

You also see a gender effect across pretty much all Western nations regarding non-religion. That is one we are currently having more trouble explaining. Again, there are lots of women, I am an example, who are nonbelievers. However, on average, proportionally, there are a lot more men who are nonbelievers.

Men seem to like the label of atheist more as well. They will use it to describe themselves more often, compared with female nonbelievers. A lot of women may not believe in God, but they won’t call themselves atheists. They might call themselves nonbelievers like I do, or use some other term, or just answer “meh.” [laugh]

I rarely call myself an atheist; occasionally when I’m trying to make a point to an Evangelical colleague or something, but it’s pretty rare. Whereas not all men, but a lot of men, who are nonbelievers will adopt that atheist label more often on average.

And in general men tend to be less involved in organized religion than women. You see that especially in contexts where religion is not as socially acceptable or celebrated as it used to be. Back in the day when it was prestigious to be in church and to be involved in a church, men tended to do it more, you didn’t see the gender effect so much.

However, in a context where we’re indifferent, or its less prestigious to be involved with a religious group, men tend to fall away quicker than women. The explanations for that are still being developed or trying to be figured out.

Again, I am not a fan of innate biological explanations. I do not think it is because women have this somehow biological difference that makes them more prone to religion. I think that is crap. However, I do think it is something about the way they are raised, or the roles expected of them that make them see religious involvement as more worthwhile and worth keeping a hold of, possibly creating stronger links to their family heritage for example.

The fact that women are still expected to be more involved in child rearing in North America and other Western societies may have something to do with it: is it something about what and how they want to pass something on to their children?

Do they see the network, the community, the ties in the congregation as something worthwhile, more than men do? Women tend to be more willing to invest more in these types of relationships. Researchers are in the process now of trying to figure it out.

Any good-quality survey data you take, if you ask a thousand people how religious they are for example, you’ll always find that gender effect. In Canada, in the USA, in most European nations, and so that is an interesting one. That is an effect not everyone on the ground is aware of.

You probably might have noticed it though. Probably at a lot of your gatherings and activities with atheist groups and organizations, there might often be proportionally more men than women.

Jacobsen: I talked to some of the people that are in the leadership. They’ve noted there are more men than women.

LaFlamme: Yes, there is this anecdotal evidence, and then when you look at it systematically, with the systematic collection of good-quality data as we are meant to do in science, you also see it.

Whether or not that is going to last, as we move away from organized religion more and more, we’ll see. Again, religion is not going to disappear altogether, but you do have a large group of people who are less religious now than was once the case. If that group continues to be composed of disproportionately more men than women, we’ll have to see.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Wilkins-LaFlamme.

LaFlamme: Cool! Well, thanks, Scott. We are always happy as academics to talk to you, because yay(!), someone’s interested in what we are doing!

Jacobsen: [Laughing] That is funny.

For more information, please see below:

Peer-reviewed journal articles

Thiessen, Joel and Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme. 2017. “Becoming a Religious None: Irreligious Socialization and Disaffiliation.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 56(1): 64-82.

Wilkins-Laflamme, Sarah. 2017. “Religious-Secular Polarization Compared: The Cases of Quebec and British Columbia.” In a special issue of Studies in Religion, co-edited with Micheline Milot, 48(2): 166-185.

Wilkins-Laflamme, Sarah. 2016. “Secularization and the Wider Gap in Values and Personal Religiosity between the Religious and Non-Religious.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 55(4): 717-736.

Wilkins-Laflamme, Sarah. 2016. “The Remaining Core: A Fresh Look at Religiosity Trends in Great Britain.” British Journal of Sociology 67(4): 632-654.

Wilkins-Laflamme, Sarah. 2016. “The Changing Religious Cleavage in Canadians’ Voting Behaviour.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 49(3): 499-518.

Wilkins-Laflamme, Sarah. 2016. “Protestant and Catholic Distinctions in Secularization.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 31(2): 165-180.

Wilkins-Laflamme, Sarah. 2015. “How Unreligious are the Religious ‘Nones’? Religious Dynamics of the Unaffiliated in Canada.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 40(4): 477-500.

Wilkins-Laflamme, Sarah. 2014. “Towards Religious Polarization? Time Effects on Religious Commitment in US, UK and Canadian Regions.” Sociology of Religion 75(2): 284-308.

Other articles and blogs

2017. “The Religious Nones of North America and the Beginnings of a Book Project.” Peer-reviewed blog post for the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network’s Blog. July 2017. http://blog.nsrn.net/

2017. “The Canadian Religious Landscape.” Peer-reviewed blog post for EUREL – Sociological and Legal Data on Religions in Europe and Beyond. June 2017. http://www.eurel.info/spip.php?rubrique1021

2017. “The Religious Nones in Canada.” Podcast for the New Leaf Network: https://soundcloud.com/user-681564940/ep-39-the-religious-nones-in-canada-professor-sarah-wilkins-laflamme.

2016. “The New Religious Context: A Greater Divide between the Religious and Non-Religious in Attitudes Towards Public Religion.” Post for the LSE Religion and the Public Sphere Blog.

December 2016. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionpublicsphere/2016/12/the-new-religious-context-a-greater-divide-between-the-religious-and-non-religious-in-attitudes-towards-public-religion/

2016. “The Remaining Core: A Fresh Look at Religiosity Trends in Great Britain.” Post for the LSE British Politics and Policy Blog. November 2016. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/

2016. “The Religious Nones of British Columbia.” Authored article for the 2016-2017 CSRS newsletter. September 2016. http://www.uvic.ca/research/centres/csrs/assets/docs/newsletters_annual-reports/2016-csrs-newsletter.pd

2014. “Religious ‘Nones’ generally have more Liberal Family Values in Areas of Greater Disaffiliation.” Peer-reviewed blog post for the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network’s Blog. November 2014. http://blog.nsrn.net/

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2022-04-14

In Conversation with Professor Robert Jensen on Patriarchy, Pornography, and Radical Feminism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/26

Dr. Robert Jensen is a Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He specializes in media, law, and politics. Here we talk about his background and views, especially around patriarchy, pornography, and radical feminism.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was family background regarding geography, culture, language, and religion or lack thereof?

Robert Jensen: I grew up in North Dakota, born in a small town in North Dakota, spent most of my childhood in Fargo, North Dakota, which is the big city. All of 60,000 people when I was a kid. Both parents are white. I attended and was confirmed in a middle of the road Presbyterian church.

Although, religion was not a big part of my household. It was more of a social obligation than a theological enterprise. As soon as my parents stopped compelling me to go to church, I pretty much stopped going.

Jacobsen: Without being compelled to go to church, within that community, 60,000 people, was that a common reason for going, the parental push to attend whatever particular service was being held at the time? Is that a common experience?

Jensen: I think it was common in the church I attended. I am sure it was not necessarily the norm everywhere. Fargo was a fairly small city in the West. We are talking about the early ‘60s and 1970s. There were more Evangelical churches.

There were traditional Roman Catholic churches. It was much a Christian enterprise. It was a small Jewish community, at least one, maybe two synagogues. I do not remember. But in the world I grew up in, there was little religious fervor.

On the part of young people that were part of my social set, there were other social sets. There is an Evangelical tradition in high school/college age kids, Campus Crusade for Christ things.

I am sure they existed, but they weren’t part of my direct, immediate circle.

Jacobsen: Once you left the church community and entered undergraduate training, what became the main interest in things like ethics and politics and law?

Jensen: I graduated from college in 1981. I spent my 20s working in mainstream newspaper journalism. So, I was a working journalist and the way mainstream journalism in the US works is you do not have much time or space to develop a political philosophy.

You’re chasing the story of the day. You’re engaged in coverage of social issues, politics, economics, all the time. But at least for me, and I think it is not an unusual experience for younger journalists, there is no overall political philosophy that you tend to think about.

In that sense, you accept the existing range of political ideologies that are in the mainstream, which is basically, hard, right-wing reactionary conservatism to a mushy liberalism, in the mainstream in the US.

In other words, the politics defined by the two major parties. I did not start thinking about these things in a deeper way until I went back to graduate school when I was 30-years-old. I was exposed to different ways of thinking, including more radical critiques of mainstream society.

Through feminism critiques of white supremacy, critiques of capitalism, critiques of US imperialism, and a deep ecological critique, I started developing all of that, those ideas, halfway through my life at the age of 30. I am about to turn 60.

The last 30 years, I have been engaged in that. None of that ever came up when I was growing up. None of it came up in some sense in undergraduate education. I do not think that the existing school system in the United States challenges people to think deeply about these things.

Jacobsen: You published a book in 2017 entitled The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men. What best defines radical feminism? What makes the emphasis on men in that particular text important as a note in the canon, so to speak, of feminist literature?

Jensen: So 30 years ago, my first entry into political activism and philosophy, ethics, law, and political philosophy was through feminism, specifically the feminist critique of the pornography industry. That is a set of ideas often associated with what we call radical feminism in the US.

Now, any term like radical is going to be understood differently by different people. When I use the term, I am going back to what is typically called second wave feminism in the United States. The movement that grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s, coming out of the general ferment.

Of the 1960s, radical feminism looked at the foundational structure of patriarchy in contemporary societies, institutionalized male dominance rooted in men’s attempts to control or claim ownership over women’s bodies.

Which means primarily reproductive power and sexuality, radical feminism shares some ideas with other brands of feminism, but it tends to focus a lot on the way that men control women through reproductive means as well as through sexual exploitation.

So, the radical feminist perspective is most often known for its critique of what I call the sexual exploitation industries—pornography, prostitution, stripping. The way men routinely buy and sell women’s bodies for sexual pleasure in a patriarchal society.

So, radical feminism is a way of thinking about oppressive and rigid gender norms in a society rooted in patriarchy and men’s attempts to control and claim ownership over women. It tends to highlight in the contemporary era the way that plays out in the sexual exploitation industries.

Beyond that, for me, radical feminism is also a way of thinking about power more generally. What radical feminism did for me 30 years ago was pointing out, that we live in a deeply hierarchical society where there is the assumption of domination and subordination.

That is, the assumption that the world is going to be structured on some group of people being dominant and some other group being subordinate is routinely accepted. What radical feminism did for me is to help me focus on the profound immorality of hierarchies, hierarchies in human societies.

So for me, radical feminism is a way of looking at the world. It is a way of looking at gender in patriarchy and it is a way of looking at specifically contemporary practices of pornography and prostitution and providing a critique of why those patriarchal practices are inconsistent with a stable, decent, and human community.

Jacobsen: The majority of users, if I am not mistaken, of pornography are men, by a vast margin.

Jensen: Correct.

Jacobsen: What are the typical appeals, in terms of types of pornography for men? How does it differentiate from the super minority of women who use pornography?

Jensen: So first of all, pornography requires a definition from the perspective of the radical feminist critique I work from. Pornography is not an attempt to represent in language or in visual media: sexuality.

It is a particular presentation of sexuality within that domination-subordination dynamic of patriarchy. We look specifically at the contemporary pornography industry, which is the product of the last half-century.

There have been pornographic material before that, but the incredible explosion of the amount of graphic, sexually explicit material in contemporary culture is a post-World War II phenomenon.

The radical feminist critique focuses on that contemporary reality. As you pointed out, the vast majority of consumers are male and therefore the industry tailors its products for men. Specifically, for men in patriarchy, where there are other hierarchies in existence, it does it to generate profit.

As a result, the images tend to reflect the male sexual imagination in patriarchy, which is a fusion of sexuality with power, so the images are routinely of men in dominant positions over women, images of men obtaining sexual pleasure through the subordination of women.

Women routinely embracing their own subordination. Now, that’s a broad statement about a pattern. There are literally, of course, millions of pornographic images in the world, so there will be considerable variation.

But the radical feminist critique tries to look at patterns and observes that at the core of contemporary pornography is eroticizing or sexualizing that domination-subordination dynamic. The fundamental dynamic is male over female.

But pornography also sexualizes other forms of inequality. For instance, pornography is the most, without a doubt, overtly racist media genre in the world today. In pornography, you see crude, grotesque racial stereotypes employed.

It is another way of sexualizing hierarchy and inequality. Now, as I said, that’s an observation about general patterns. But there is variation. There are also women who use pornography. Some women use pornography that’s produced essentially for that male clientele.

There are smaller genres of pornography in which the producers claim to be trying to create women-centered porn. There is a lot of variation. The focus of our critique and the movement is on the overwhelming majority of those images.

Constructed for men and reflecting a male sexual imagination as its constructed in patriarchy. Now, it is important to point out. We are not arguing that is the way all men think or the only way men can think. We are talking about a way male sexuality is constructed in patriarchal societies.

The movement implicitly is arguing for a different conception of gender, sex, and power.

Jacobsen: What are some responses that those on the other side, or with one of the other countervailing positions, what are some of the responses they might present? How would you respond to those critiques?

Because I am not as familiar with the literature as much as you are.

Jensen: There are defenses and celebrations of pornography, of course. Some come from mostly liberal perspectives. But some even come from other wings of the feminist movement. I think they sort out into two or three main kinds of responses these days.

One is that there are people including feminists who will say, “The radical critique of pornography is accurate. It is consistently a form of sexualizing domination. But there can be no collective response to it out of a fear of sexual repression.”

So, that would be a traditional liberal response. That we must preserve individual choice at all cost and while much pornography is sexist, racist, and rooted in hierarchies. We have to live with it.

Another perspective would celebrate pornography as a place for sexual liberation. I do not know how to define that position because I find it quite odd that you can take a genre of pornography that is so overtly, relentlessly misogynistic and racist.

Imagine, that it is a place for positive, progressive sexual liberation, but people do make that argument. I think that’s rooted in another basic liberal perspective, which is that you cannot make judgments about sexuality.

I think it is a misguided perspective. A more recent phenomenon is a perspective that says, “Okay, a lot of the porn industry produces material that is politically and morally objectionable. That is, it undermines any hope of women’s freedom in the world.”

“But we want to keep open space for what is sometimes called Feminist Pornography. The idea that if women were put in charge, they would create different kinds of images.” In fact, as I said, there is a lot of variation in the production of pornography.

The segment of the market that one could meaningfully call feminist or progressive is tiny. The vast majority of images reflect the patriarchal nature of contemporary culture. People do try to defend or even celebrate pornography.

I have been paying attention to this issue for 30 years and I have read a whole lot of defenses of pornography, and I must say, I have never found one that’s terribly compelling. I think that reasonable people can disagree about policy perspectives.

That is, what should the law say about pornography? I think that’s a difficult question. I do not think there is any easy answer to it, and people certainly, depending on their political philosophies can disagree.

But the basic analysis of the porn industry and the patriarchal nature of it seems to me not only to continue to support the feminist radical perspective, but even more so. One of the interesting things about radical feminism is that the critique it offered in the 1970s of pornography.

Of that era, you’re not old enough to remember this.

Jacobsen: Ha, that’s true.

Jensen: But the pornography of that era was by contemporary standards quite tame. But the radical feminist critique, which saw that the domination-subordination dynamic at the heart of pornography of that era has only been proved correct by time.

Where the expansion of the porn industry and the incredible demand for it in the culture has meant that the trajectory of the industry has been, as you would, predicted from the radical feminist critique, a deepening of that domination-subordination dynamic.

An expansion not only in the amount of it, but in the intensity of the misogyny and racism of it. So, the irony is that the radical feminist critique, I think, over roughly 40 years has been developing.

It has been proved correct. Yet, the radical feminist perspective is in some sense more marginalized than ever. But I still after 30 years see no reason to abandon the radical feminist critique.

The opposite, it seems more compelling than ever.

Jacobsen: Every moment and discipline have their bright lights and their seminal works, whether papers, essays, or books. What individuals made bigger impacts than others in the 30 years you’ve been in the field?

What essays, articles, or texts have made a similar impact as those individuals?

Jensen: So, every idea in politics comes from a collective effort in some sense. But the person who is most clearly identified with the feminist critique of pornography is Andrea Dworkin.

Andrea wrote a crucial book that came out in 1979 called Pornography: Men Possessing Women. Which laid out the feminist analysis, that I have been summarizing and from which I continue to work.

She wrote another book, a collection of essays and speeches that were published in 1985, might’ve been ’84, but I am sure it is ’85: called Letters from a War Zone. That I consider in some sense her best work.

But those two books did a lot to define the radical feminist critique of pornography. The other person most associated with this, a feminist legal scholar named Catherine McKinnon, who’s also known for her early work on sexual harassment law.

Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin came together in 1983 to propose a new approach to the law around pornography, arguing that the traditional obscenity law that’s part of criminal law should be replaced by a civil rights framework.

There was a lot of political activity around that in the 1980s. So, that what’s generally called the feminist civil rights perspective on pornography is associated with those two women, Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon.

Dworkin died, gosh, more than a decade ago now. Catherine McKinnon is still living and still working. After that, I think the person in the book most important was written by a friend of mine, named Gail Dines.

That book is called Porn Land. The subtitle is something close to how pornography hijacked our sexuality, or how the pornography industry—I am not in my office so I do not have the book in front of me. That was published in 2010.

And Gail is undoubtedly the leading feminist critic of pornography today. She is British born, but lives in the United States. Porn Land was an important book that not only updated some of the trends in pornography production and content, but also looked at the shifting nature of the pornography industry.

Gail, I think, is the leading expert on that, on the pornography industry and its methods of production and distribution, which, of course, change considerably on the internet. So, I think those three women are the key thinkers in the United States around this critique.

Jacobsen: Since radical feminism discipline is also a movement, what would you evaluate as a positive trend in the next 5 years? What would you evaluate as a negative trend in the next 5 years for the movement?

Jensen: Let’s start with the positive.

So, as I said, there are other feminist perspectives on pornography and those other perspectives, which I’ll call generally liberal and post-modern, traditional liberal feminism, and this more recent development of a postmodern feminism in the last 20 years or so.

If you go into academic feminism into the typical women’s studies department, you will find that liberal and postmodern feminists dominate and radical feminism is either absent or largely on the margins.

I think the positive is that the trajectory of the pornography industry producing ever more graphic, sexually explicit material that’s increasingly cruel and degrading to women, increasingly overtly racist.

This concerns ordinary people. Young people often are concerned about growing up in a world where this is the standard sexual imagery. Parents are worried about how to educate kids about healthy sexuality when they are exposed to this material from preteen years onward.

The easy access to a computer too. So, even though the radical feminist critique I articulated is out of fashion in certain academic’s spaces, when ordinary people hear that critique, they find it compelling because it answers questions they are asking in their own lives.

So, I have seen an increase in the last 5 to 10 years of interest in the radical feminist critique. I think precisely because it is such a compelling analysis. That’s the positive. Those people are increasingly frightened by the direction the pornography industry has gone.

They are looking for answers. The negative is that we live still in an intensely patriarchal society in which feminism has made progress, for instance, reforming rape laws since the 1960s. But the #MeToo movement of the last 6 to 9 months has pointed out how ubiquitous male sexual violence is, whether it is sexual harassment or sexual violence itself.

So, we still face this overwhelmingly patriarchal society that turns out to be overwhelmingly resilient. While women’s experiences of sexual intrusion are being talked about more and we are more concerned about it as a society, at least one would hope we are, the pornography industry goes forward unchecked.

I think that the #MeToo movement both creates space to point out connections between the way we imagine ourselves and represent ourselves in media and the way people are socialized to think about themselves.

So, it seems to me that the current climate reminds us of how brutal a patriarchal society is, but one can hope this opens up space for news of talking about it.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Jensen.

Jensen: No, my pleasure.

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2022-04-14

Suzanna Mason on the Anglican Faith, Politics, and Natural Philosophy

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/26

The Anglican Faith

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the modern Anglican faith? What does it mean to you?

Suzanna Mason: The origins of Anglicanism start with a Catholic named Henry VIII, who was the King of England. He was famous for having lots and lots of wives. He managed to have lots and lots of wives because he grew furious at the Pope for not allowing him to have a divorce, so he set up his own church.

This was Catholic in origin. Galileo annoyed the Catholic Church. It did not stop him being a Catholic; same with Henry VIII. Ironically, it got started with a divorce. It is now a Protestant faith, but it is also Catholic in nature sometimes.

The Anglican Church is where we get the phrase “broad church”, e.g. “you have a broad church.” It means that we have people who are more Catholic than the Pope and people who are more Protestant than the Puritans.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mason: It is an enormously diverse church. I remember hearing that the average Anglican is a single mother in sub-Saharan Africa because there is a big Anglican community in Africa. All across the world, this church, so many different people and opinions.

I grew up in an Anglican church. Then the churches that I have been a part of while I moved around. I tipped toes in some charismatic ones. They [Anglican churches] are welcoming, friendly, lovely places, where it is pretty much written into the laws of religion that there will be tea and biscuits after every service or a pub if a late-night service.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mason: It is often a welcoming place. There is lots of music and prayer. Lots of different activities, whether helping in the local community or the local church. I have done creative groups and weekends away from a very young age.

Jacobsen: Now, sometimes, religions can become mixed up with politics. How much does Anglicanism mix up with politics in the UK?

Mason: The Anglican Church is the established church in the United Kingdom. It is Anglican services that were involved in the coronation of the Queen. We will have to see whether they will be involved in the next coronation that we get, when that happens.

But we have the House of Lords in Parliament that involves members of the church. Although, not being into politics as much myself, I am not sure if it is entirely Anglican bishops or it might be, or if it may be the representation of other faiths as well.

But the Anglican Church is the established church. When people think Christian in the UK, they will think Anglicans, Anglican robes and speech, and Anglican churches, though it is by no means the only denomination. There are still Catholic cathedrals in certain cities. I believe that in order to be called a city [in the UK] that you have to have a cathedral. That is the technicality for making a city a city. Something like that.

Most cathedrals are Anglican. There are a few Catholic ones as well. The history has been “Now, we’re Catholic. Now, we’re Anglican [Or, Protestant more broadly..] Now, we’re Catholic…” [Laughing]. There is this sort of thing.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the head of the church in the UK. You might get statements or news about scandals, or different organizations doing different things. For a while, there was a lot in the media about different groups arguing about advertising their beliefs, generally.

Everyone has gotten involved with that. In terms of politics, it is quite interesting. There is the sort of stereotype in the US. If you want to be a politician, you have to declare your faith and make it known that you are a believer.

In the UK [Laughing], if you known to be a believer, then you are seen as weird. Unless, you are Muslim. Then it is fine [Laughing]. In the UK, religion can be seen as a something that would rather be seen and not heard.

We have an interesting relationship with politics and religion. The Queen is really well liked by a lot of people and is an open Christian and is open about the role Christianity has played in her life. It [opinion on religion] seems to depend for a lot of people on what happened, who is talking, and what the situation is.

Yes, religion is still in politics, but I’m not sure how much Christianity is involved a lot of the time.

Jacobsen: When it comes to the articles of faith, what do you consider some of the more pertinent to daily life?

Mason: It is an interesting question. The Anglican tradition has 39 articles of faith, which are in a prayer book. For a long time, the 1662 prayer book was used in churches. Now, we have a more modern one. It lists out the key beliefs that hold up Christianity.

But, of course, that is a strong tradition in the Anglican faith, but we have to look to the Bible itself and go back to the key texts. For me, I think there is a lot of important things [pertinent to daily life]. I think there is a tendency of Christians and atheists alike to reduce the Bible to soundbites.

You get atheists saying, “Look at those Christians quoting the Bible, now, let me tell you about this one quote Christopher Hitchens said one time” [Laughing]. That sums it up. It is hard to sum up an entire library of knowledge.

In terms of importance for daily life, it is really important to be honest, to try and speak the truth as much as possible, but also to not speak harshly. There are a lot of things in the Bible about not letting your tongue be a sword, or that your tongue is a sword because you can speak the truth and do a lot of damage if you are not careful.

I think as well that there is a lot in the Bible about having your thoughts on the right things. There are a lot of things about not letting yourself being consumed with worry or thinking bad things about other people.

It is spending your mental energy on the wrong things, on conflicts, or remembering the old prayer “give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” You cannot waste your time worrying about things that are done and out of your control.

For daily life, there is so much. Speaking the truth, walk in the light, don’t get in fights [Laughing] if you can help it. There are lots, especially in the Proverbs. There are idioms for daily life and for how to behave.

Jacobsen: What does the Christian faith emphasize?

It is all about, basically, “If you are smart, you will listen to people who know than you. Do not go back to making the same mistakes.” It is quite interesting as well because wisdom is more than intelligence in the Christian religion.

It is something above intelligence. We sort of recognize that in the secular world. You certainly get these phrases like “intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” It is applying the knowledge cleverly.

Wisdom is a person. It is a real force in Christianity. It is not an abstract concept. Wisdom is about almost following the correct path through life, for getting yourself back on the right path. It is sort of about, in that sense, avoiding sin because sin, and this is something that has been mentioned by other people:“Sin” comes from an archery term, which I am not going to try and pronounce. It comes from an archery term, which means to fail to hit the bullseye, to fail to hit your mark – being less than you could be.

Wisdom is about knowing the path you need to take to do the things to make sure that you don’t feel regret or that you miss your mark or that you feel less. Actually, in Proverbs, it said Wisdom was there in the beginning of the creation of the world.

I like a verse, which says, “I Wisdom dwell with Prudence and seek out witty inventions” [Laughing]. It is an interesting phrase. It is interesting in terms of human behavior. We as a species like seeking out our witty inventions.

There is a thing [in that verse] about wisdom being linked with prudence and self-control. They call it “temperance” in the King James version. It is being wise with yourself and with your knowledge. As Christians, we should seek out knowledge. The Vatican has an Astronomy department, which studies space.

In my church, we have a layperson who is the Chair of the Education Committee of the Royal Society, who is becoming the Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of York. Natural Philosophy is the original term for “science.”

The wisdom or love of nature, finding more out about nature. I come from a family of academic Christians [Laughing]. It is all perfectly natural to me.

Jacobsen: What do you think about the original distinction between natural philosophy and moral philosophy, as you noted the original term “science” came from “natural philosopher” or “natural philosophers” or “scientists,” in other words, the people of science are natural philosophers, so become applied philosophers.

Some have argued that science is not philosophy or that science does not need philosophy, which is not, by definition, or its historical use correct. It is a branch of philosophy, which is applied philosophy. Its functional utility comes from the great wonders we get from it, but I think that obscures that fact that it is a branch of philosophy.

In particular, the functional descriptions of the natural world. What do you make of this heavy emphasis on science or natural philosophy now? How do you square that with metaphysical understandings of the world through traditional Abrahamic religions such as Christianity and its theology?

Mason: I think there is quite a lot to unpack with that question [Laughing].

On Science and Philosophy

You can go down the rabbit hole of applicability. All science is applied maths. That sort of thing. You have to be careful with that. Science and philosophy talk to one another.

But, in general, there is interdisciplinary work because it is important to get different views on things. In terms of the education side, it is important science does not lie inside an ivory tower or a bubble and just talks to itself.

If you want to change the world, you have to tell people about your results and disseminate your findings. If you only talk to scientists and only talk like a scientist, then, frankly, it is very dull for everyone who is not a scientist and is not a good way of going about things.

There is a man named Randy Olson who was a biologist of some sort. He left science and went into Hollywood. He wrote many books and gave Ted talks about the problem of scientists not even knowing how to talk to scientists.

During my undergraduate or bachelor’s degree, I did a course that was about the philosophy of the environment and learned about things like the Tragedy of the Commons and the ethics of food aid. For example, people do not starve anywhere in the world because there is not enough food.

They starve because there is not enough access to food. The government could not buy it. Or with the Potato Famine, the food was being grown in Ireland but being sent to the British. That was the single most important course that I did.

It is something that I want to learn more about. So, I that think part of the trick in talking science, in my own country at least, you learn a subject and get trained in a subject, but in places like America you do courses in different things.

You have to do all sorts of credits and do all sorts of different things. You get quite a broad education at their universities. I did Biology and learned about Biology. That was all that I learned. When you don’t have an interdisciplinary approach to things, one discipline does not know the methodologies and quirks of another discipline.

I have no idea how a philosophy paper is written. I imagine it is different than a science paper. What we now call science started as Natural Philosophy, but we have science also diverging from philosophy; it is applied philosophy, but very applied philosophy in such the way that it has drifted quite far from the original.

It does not mean there are no similarities or history. Chemistry started with Alchemy. It is important to know how they thought and how we took things from there and to know what history there is. You cannot do Chemistry with Alchemy anymore.

There is an interesting thing there. It is very important. I work in Ecology. Of course, it has a lot of work on conservation. When you are trying to conserve species, there are so many ethical and moral and political and historical and cultural aspects that matter to that process.

It is very important for it to be a communication between the sciences and humanity, and philosophy. There are lots of places where science and philosophy rub up against one another. We have these now famous arguments: people like Sam Harris who argue that science can tell us what moral values should be.

In those kinds of cases, science and philosophy are actually treading on each other’s toes. Those sorts of case studies will be interesting.

On Science and Religion

If you believe the world was created, and you also certainly in the Christian tradition where Creation or the world is a gift from God for humanity by and large, why wouldn’t you want to learn more about it? It is pretty amazing. It is there to found more out about.

There is a huge Christian tradition about the wonder of nature. It comes down to natural human curiosity as well. I find it confusing and also very sad when people are not curious about the world and the universe and everything in it.

Part of science studies is because I was exposed to that sort of question and curiosity at a young age like nature documentaries – simple things like this. I would be watching bird migration. My mum would say, “How do they know? How do they know where to go?”

It is that sort of questioning. You hang around young children to teach them things. They are full of those questions. There is a lot of that going. In the Christian tradition, it is a part of it. There is this big sort of celebration of nature and the wonder.

Lots of Christian poets have used nature as a topic to talk about. I would like to see a survey of all Christian scientists and see what disciplines they ended up in. I have seen many in Biology and Ecology, but there are many Christians in Physics as well.

It does seem to attract a lot of people, not only the universe and the cosmology, but also the other aspects of Biology and Physics as well. I think certainly history-wise it is always hard to unpack religion and culture because in many cases the religion was the culture.

In my country, there was a strong culture of being interested in nature and naturalism. We had Charles Darwin, but lots and lots and lots of people. There is a famous children’s author named Beatrix Potter. There is a film coming out about Peter Rabbit – her character.

She was an amateur naturalist. She had a paper submitted to the Linnean Society, by a male friend because as a woman, she couldn’t attend proceedings: ‘On the Germination of the Spores of the Agaricineae’. It was common for people to collect fossils and paint birds, and paint animals. If you look at her books, all of the artwork was hers because she would paint everything she saw in nature in watercolors.

It was very common for your small village English vicar to be preaching one day and bird watching the next day. It was in the culture. In terms of putting the two together, especially in Anglicanism, I think it was like 60 years or something.

It was not long for the Anglican Church to accept evolution as a fact. The idea of being a Christian and a scientist has never been an issue in Britain. It is never an issue. I meet lots of scientists who are atheists. But in England, we have such an attitude of do whatever you want and do not bother me with it.

Personal beliefs are not a big issue. Then having grown up in a family of Christians, especially in my parents’ case with social science as their area and dealing with medical and scientific data. It has never been an issue. Now, I am in a situation, where I am in a family where three people have PhDs. One person started and quit. One person might do a PhD by publication.

Another is getting a PhD. Everyone has dipped their toes in PhD waters [Laughing]. That might make me quite unusual [Laughing]. I can appreciate. People talk about compartmentalizing and the Non-Overlapping Magisteria. All of these sorts of things.

I was probably about in my early 20s when I first heard the concept of a conflict between science and religion. I just thought, “What conflict?” That isn’t to say there isn’t any conflict. Obviously, there are people who believe in literal truths of some of the events in the Bible.

The thing is there are contradictory events in the Bible, so they do not select those. So, they are selectively literal. They do not want to believe [certain scientific results] and want to restrict the teaching of science because it is in favour of what they believe.

It is not the beliefs, but the actions those lead to that are the problem. I think it is “How does anyone juggle anything in their life?” You’ve got your job, your family, your friends, your activities, your things. For me, science is not my life.

It is my job. It is a job that I think is very important and I am very passionate about it. Religion is my life. People sort of say, “How do you bash these two things together?” It is that science is something that I bring into my religion because my religion is my life.

I enjoy teaching people. Science is very important, but it is an activity. I hate the word ‘enterprise’ (which is used to define science). Science has the scientific method. Then there is the ‘enterprise’ of people doing all sorts of activities to drive this engine of science forward.

Science is a very nice catch-all term. But there are a lot of things going on in science. The same thing goes for religion sometimes [Laughing] as well. I do not think it is as clear cut as “I have object A, which is science, and object B, which religion, and I have to fit them together.”

In a way, it is more complex, but it also more simple at the same time. It is different things. People do different things that other people think are conflicting all of the time.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Suzie.

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2022-04-14

Werner Price, Ethical Fashion, Fair trade, and Farming

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/20

I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team.

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What is the importance of ethical fashion?

Unfortunately when most people buy items for consumption, we usually tend to look for the immediate benefit. Whether it is that it tastes good, it looks good on us, it will make us thinner or prettier. This is where most people stop but there is more to what we buy, there is an ethical dimension. This ethical dimension is much more important than any immediate gratification.

With every product we buy there are people, or animals or the environment, or all of the above involved. When people are offered beautiful packages and attractive images of the products they are going to purchase they do not think about the ramifications of their actions. Our world is being shaped by our shopping trends! It is very clear. The moment in which most people become aware of the consequences of their purchases we will see a deep change. People will be treated fairly and respected, and the environment and animals will not be abused. So ethical fashion, and ethical buying could change the world.

What is the importance of sustainable fashion?

Just by taking a look at the oceans, and at the world as a whole we can come to realize that the current agricultural practices, and the fibers we use for clothing are creating havoc. Oceans are becoming polluted, fish are dying and we are eating the fish that survive but that are still polluted. Micro-fibers are one of the biggest problems our oceans face. They come from every washing cycle of synthetic fabrics. Has anyone heard of polyester?

Also on land, non-organic cotton is taking huge amounts of herbicides and pesticides that remain on the land and affect the people who are farming those crops. People are dying and are being maimed because of our infatuation with non-organic t-shirts. There should be massive national advertisement campaigns informing consumers about this. If people bought mostly sustainable fashion we would have a different world, a better world.

What is the importance of fair trade?

Fair trade sends a message that we care. We care about people regardless of where they are, where they come from or what their race is. By buying fair trade you can unite families, make sure kids go to school, and raise people above their poverty levels. Fair trade in a way is buying happiness for others, and in the end for you. There is no better pleasure than to give.

What about organic farming?

As I mentioned before, organic farming can make an enormous difference for farmers and the land. Entire families would not be subjected to a dim future or early death because of all the chemicals they are in contact with over their lives.

Sadly, organic crops are not easy to get in many places. This is because there are non-organic seeds that are more profitable for certain companies. Big companies look for profit, not fairness; I believe there could be a happy medium.

What are some of the main lessons you can pass on to new teachers and entrepreneurs?

Have a dream, make it real, never give up and always look at the implication of your dream. Starting a business is tough; it requires time and a solid state of mind. Keep at it, do not give up, tough can be fun!

What about in terms of bringing together the foundation of a company ethic in alignment with sustainability, ethical fashion, and fair trade?

As a company, from day one, you have to have a type of “constitution” where all these values are weaved into every action, though or conversation. Your company has to breath, eat and feel these values. Profits and ethics should not fight each other. Sometimes it might be tempting to turn the blind eye and go for more profit but if you have your “constitution” present from day one you will always be reminded to return to the right path. And you will be happy about it!

What other work are you involved in at this point in time?

I am also the foreign language department chair at a public school. For me it is great to be in touch with kids, it keeps me young and helps me keep my dreams alive.

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

My work at school is very rewarding, when I see kids having fun and learning I end up feeling like them, energized. When I walk among my students and I realize they can say things in another language because I taught them is a great feeling, I feel like I am doing something good for their future. Regarding my work at our company (It belongs to my wife Maribel, her brother Pedro and me) I cannot be happier! My wife loves to design, I love to work on the website, talking to people, clients and suppliers. I love learning and that is what I do every day!

With regard to ethical and sustainable fashion companies, what’s the importance of them to you?

In the nineties I came across a factory were girls worked long ours everyday. This factory was in Burma, I will always remember their happy faces; these girls felt blessed because they could contribute to their family welfare. They did not know that they could go to school if we change our buying patterns. I thought of them years later when we started Jolly Dragons. For me ethical and sustainable companies, in general, not only those regarding fashion are key to a better and happier world.

Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

I would like to remind people that might not have the purchase power to buy everything ethical and sustainable that there are ways to contribute. Always recycle by sharing clothes that can be still worn but you have no more use for. Buy fewer clothes! Create a list of combinations and you will realize that you will need less, which will mean that you can spent that money in ethical and sustainable fashion. These are little changes that can have a great impact.

Thank you for your time, Werner.

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2022-04-14

Daniela Degrassi, Annaborgia’s Uniqueness, and Ethical Luxury Brands

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/20

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What makes Annaborgia unique?

Annaborgia is unique in its simplicity. Our minimalist lines and classic palette transition easily from day to evening, spring to fall, wedding day to resort.

Annaborgia is an ethical luxury brand – with an emphasis on cruelty-free and toxic-dyes-free fashion – for conscious fashionistas. What defines ethical luxury brands and conscious fashionistas?

For a business, use of the term “Ethical Fashion” includes many different ethical standards, including those affecting the environment, labor rights, and the avoidance of animal sufferings. At Annaborgia, we make our best efforts to follow all these ethical standards, while creating a long-standing luxury garment. The “Conscious Fashionista” is our ideal buyer; someone who loves style, but with the same intensity cares for the environment, respects animals, and is concerned about labor rights and therefore, considers all these aspects when shopping.

One part of ethical fashion comes from luxe minimalist designs for each season. You have all women on staff. How does this inform the minimalist styles for each season?

We’re actually trying to veer away from the seasonal concept of fashion collections. Our concept is to build a capsule wardrobe collection (and keep adding to it) of essentials that will never go out of style, making Annaborgia the go-to brand for women that are not interested in following short lived trends. This is also a way to empower women to focus on more important issues within the fashion industry. Women are naturally nurturing and sensible, and so far they have been the main force of the “Slow Fashion” movement.

You have hopes to influence the wedding fashion industry as well – to make it sustainable. How might this extended plan of action work out in the next few years?

It’s hard to break rules in the wedding industry. It’s a well-oiled machine and the mainstream bride dreams of a princess like wedding day. It’s only natural. We’re here to support a small (but growing) portion of the public that wants to integrate sustainability into their important day, and all the unconventional brides that are not in tune with the “classic wedding attire” concept. I think we need valuable alternatives for this minority, and by offering styles that can be easy to transition into everyday life, we’re actually adding more value to their investment. In a few years, I want to look back and see Annaborgia among the pioneers of the Wedding Fashion Revolution.

The creativity begins in Italy with you. It is developed in the San Francisco Bay Area. Why Italy and San Francisco? What are the operational steps in this developmental process?

When I am in Italy caring for my sister, I find some time to design, and with the help of a pattern maker I study with, I make the first prototypes. Then I let my skilled Californian team develop the final patterns and samples. Our in-house team is equipped for small production runs and we rely on local manufacturers for larger orders. We love to support local businesses! Being close to our manufacturers also allows us to have better control on quality standards.

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

Besides the excitement of seeing my ideas brought to life, I think the ethical aspect of offering a cruelty-free product is a major drive. As a Vegan, I have a way to show the world we can dress with style without having to harm animals for our own frivolous needs.

With regard to companies like Annaborgia, what is its personal and professional importance to you?

Vegan companies do not just offer cruelty-free clothes; they tend to promote an outlook on a cruelty-free lifestyle. It’s like we have a moral responsibility that goes beyond simply selling clothes.

Annaborgia has a blog, too. What is the content and purpose of the blog?

I write about Annaborgia’s designs and milestones, I share personal thoughts on ethical fashion related issues, and I feature interviews with wedding experts or vegan lifestyle influencers. At Annaborgia, we share with our readers why we are so passionate about a cruelty-free lifestyle and if we can inspire and influence them to incorporate cruelty-free choices into their lives, it’ll be a small contribution to make us feel like we’re going into the right direction. It’s important to me to make a difference in this world, especially in these troubled times where humanity seems to have lost their way. With our Ethical Fashion we are simply saying “do no harm.”

Thank you for your time, Daniela.

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2022-04-14

Daniela Degrassi, Reputation, Creative Director, and Annaborgia

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/20

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To lay some groundwork, tell us about your background such as family – how your context came about, upbringing – how you came to be, education – where you gained expertise, and professional experiences – where and how you built a reputation.

I could write a book about my life, but I’ll give you the quick version! I come from a non-wealthy family living in a sea side village in Northern Italy. When I was growing up, my mom couldn’t work full time as she had to take care of my sister with special needs. My mom was very giving, but also quite submissive. As a result, growing up I developed a strong sense of independence that made me want to seek building a life away from my small-town reality. I was fascinated by big cities that to me rhymed with independence. In my twenties, I moved to Milan and felt at home right away. That’s where I met my ex-husband and together we moved to the United States after he received a dream job opportunity. We embarked on a great adventure in the country that is known to make dreams come true. Soon after, my sister followed me to the United States after both my parents died way too young. While playing mom to my sister, I explored my growing need to express my creativity and I stumbled into photography, which quickly unfolded like the perfect fit for my character and personal responsibilities. I briefly went to college to study the media and started my own freelance business focusing on lifestyle, portrait, and wedding photography. Fifteen magical years followed, filled with indelible memories and building strong friendships and relationships with many of my clients. In fact, one of my past clients is now my business partner at Annaborgia!

Due to my sister’s health, we moved back to Italy in 2011, and with more time on my hands, I was hit by another creative strike. I fell in love with fashion to the point that I started researching how to start a fashion label. That takes us to the current days, where I divide my time flying back and forth between Italy and California to make yet another dream a fulfilling reality. In California, I have connected with San Francisco Sustainable Fashion Designers and together we are raising the awareness on Ethical Fashion locally and beyond.

You are the Founder and Creative Director for Annaborgia. What was the inspiration for Annaborgia? What tasks and responsibilities come with the position of creative director?

Working as a wedding photographer for over a decade had a clear impact on why I created Annaborgia and its particular market. Designing clothes is an amazing way to express my creativity, but I also want the whole project to be more meaningful, to be socially helpful. The Annaborgia line is ceremony friendly and gives brides and bridesmaids the great convenience to repurpose their looks after the wedding. The line is designed for women that are conscious about the impact of fast fashion on the environment. When I married, in 1994, there was not much talks about sustainability, but even then, I wasn’t interested in purchasing a dress that I’d never wear again, so I opted for a cocktail dress that I was able to wear many times again. It was actually special to re-wear a dress that had so much meaning to me. I strongly feel the wedding fashion is in need of a big transformation if we want to make weddings more sustainable going into the future.

During the development stages and a year into our launch, Annaborgia was relying entirely on my decisions, from the designs (while listening carefully to the expert feedback of our sample and product development team) to business operations. I am so thrilled to have welcomed Karen Canaan as my business partner this summer. She is an experienced lawyer and a true fashion expert and it’s been way easier to share the fun and burdens of a start-up with her company.

Annaborgia is vegan couture. What is vegan couture?

Our textiles are all vegan, meaning that no animal product or sub-product is used to create our designs. Remaining truthful to my vegan lifestyle, I opted to work with synthetic fibers, which I sourced carefully so that I could still offer the quality and feel of high-end textiles like silk. Our designs are hand or partially hand sewn to give them a couture touch. We’re very proud of our signature Japanese satin poly that is used in most of our designs; it’s a high-performance, non-wrinkle textile processed without toxic dyes.

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2022-04-14

Rhea Hamlin, Brief Background, Flax and Linen, and TapRoot Fibres

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/19

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Tell us a little bit about your brief background, education-wise, personal, and how you ended up getting into this business.

I took the 2 + 2 program, which is two years of college and two years of university. This program allows you to get a degree and a diploma in a certain program. At Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC), I got my business administration diploma with a concentration in marketing. After NSCC, I transferred to Mount Saint Vincent in Halifax and completed my Bachelor of Business Administration with a major in marketing and a minor in management.

During the summer months between my studies, I started working at a historical museum called Ross Farm Museum as a museum interpreter. It was through this job where I was introduced flax and linen. I knew a little bit about flax and linen and a little bit of the history regarding it in Nova Scotia coming into my position.

After completing university, I was looking for work in my field. I came across this post on social media that someone shared. The post was for a small business in Port Williams who was looking for a marketing and communication specialist. I thought, “That’s interesting.” I did not see a closing date for the position. I decided to apply just in case they were looking for someone;

Luckily, they were, and I became part of the team in February of 2015. I find the experience fascinating. It ties my interest in natural fibers, as a knitter, into in my education background into one position. It keeps me busy and keeps me on my toes, which is good.

With respect to the flax farming itself and for organic linen, you have written some articles for Trusted Clothes. For an overview, what is the process for farming flax and how that gets made into organic linen?

I grew up in a small town called New Ross, Nova Scotia.

Growing flax is quick. It only takes about 100 days to go from seed to harvest. Last year, we had one acre. This year we are increasing our production to 5 acres of flax with a few small test plots of new varieties. Our field is in the middle of the transition from conventional to organic. We are not using any spray. We are just growing. Once in bloom, the plant will have this lovely purple-blue flower on it. Once it has the flower, it will change its focus on growing tall to developing the seed. Once this occurs, we watch it carefully because once the bottom of the plant starts to change color and the leaves start to fall off, that’s when we want to harvest it. Once it is harvest, dried, and is retted it is ready to process. Retting is a natural process that will allow the woody shieve to be removed from the fibres. You can either dew rett or water rett.

At TapRoot Fibre Lab, we dew rett which can take about 3-6 weeks. We will test the flax it to make sure it is retted. When we test it, we take a couple of stems and bend it. What we’re looking for is the ability to separate the fibres on the inside of the plant from the shive. So, when we bend it, we want to see the shive separate the fibres. So once corrected retted, we can start to process it.

The great thing about flax is that it is 100% bio-degradable. Even though we are processing for the long line linen fibres, we are developing products out of every by-product. For example, the dust can be added to compost. We are working on developing a log out of the shive. Our short line linen will be used to produce raw fibres, 80% short line linen and 20% wool blend, roving and yarn. Our long line linen will be used to generate silver, yarn, raw fibres, and eventually fabric and clothing.

To begin processing, you start with the breaker, which breaks the stem of the plant – so you can separate and keep the integrity of the fibres intact. Once broken, the fibres are scutched to remove the shive. After the scutcher, the linen fibres are taken to the hackler where any remaining shive, knots, and tow (short line linen) is removed. After that, you have hackle long line, which will go to the intersect or to produce silver for the spinner. We’re in the middle of designing of our six pieces of equipment that will take flax and turn it into organic linen. At the moment, we have the ripper, the breaker, and the sketcher, and we’re working on building the hackle.

What meaning or personal fulfillment does this bring for you?

I enjoy watching the project grow and blossom. We have come a long way in the year that I have been here, and it is interesting to see the responses that we have been getting from people.

Individuals who have been following our journey from the very beginning. We have a tiny but dedicated team, and it is nice to see that individuals in the industry have been following our journey and are looking forward to our journey. As a knitter, being able to use natural fibres that are locally produced and sold is critical to me. I love how my work at TapRoot Fibre Lab is promoting the production and use of natural fibre.

TapRoot Fibres, how did that title originate for the company?

Patricia Bishop and Josh Oulton own another business called TapRoot Farms. TapRoot Farms is Community Share Agriculture farm in Port Williams, Nova Scotia. Patricia always had a desire to not only grow food on her farm but also grow clothes. TapRoot Fibre Lab was developed out of this desired.

With regard to companies like Trusted Clothes and TapRoot Fibres, what’s the importance of them to you?

They are important to me. I believe there is an educational awareness around the importance around choosing sustainable fibres. I think these organizations are doing a great job helping build a consumer base of educated and informed consumers. These customers will make an informed decision to buy clothing using sustainable fabric.

Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

I am honored that Shannon approached me to guest blog for Trusted Clothes on behalf of TapRoot Fibre Lab and that she’s interested in what we are doing farm here. We are a small team of six here on the farm working towards growing clothes on the farm. We may be small, but we’re dedicated. I feel the honor to be included among the other guest bloggers.

Thank you for your time, Rhea.

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2022-04-14

Morgan Wienberg, Board Work, Coordination, and Cultural Sensitivity

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/19

Morgan Wienberg is the Co-Founder, Coordinator, and Head of Haiti Operations for Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization. She was kind enough to take the time for an extensive interview with me. Please find part 9 here, and 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here, 6 here, 7 here, 8 here.

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8. Jacobsen: You mentioned some board member work before. What other preparation from high school was relevant from this humanitarian pursuit?

Everything from childhood prepared me. Also, it is not something that you could have looked at and prepared yourself for, or have expectations. I had the extreme motivation and inner strength (the biggest thing) to be able to do this. In knowing the activities of the board, my work seeing the meetings help me. I can know what to present.

9. Through the coordination of Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization, you work with numerous personalities. What seems like the easiest and hardest aspects of coordination of a diverse, multi-disciplinary team?

My staff on the ground and the board of directors are different groups. They deal with different aspects of the organization. I am the on tying them together. I feed information to both of them. It’s interesting to me. It is unique to be able to connect the two different worlds. It is powerful, especially for the staff on-the-ground to be heard and considered on a team with people like Pamela Hine.

It can be difficult to communicate the reality on-the-ground to the Board of Directors at times. It is hard to give a full picture.

[Laughing]

At the same time, they are understanding and encouraging. With the local staff, there are some cultural challenges at times. I have been attempting to focus on their wellbeing. I went to a conference in India earlier this year.

One theme was about caring for the caretakers. When you think about it, they have been through trauma, work through stressful days, and the kids are not always respectful. I want to focus on the wellbeing and training of the local staff. I have seen them be more independent, motivated, and engaged because they feel value and potential for themselves.

I have worked closely with the local staff compared to the board of directors. I communicate with them more because I am in primarily Haiti. However, the staff needs the constant presence and communication more than the board of directors.

10. Jacobsen: You noted the difficulties run one way. Not from local workers in Haiti to the board members, but from the board members understanding the situation on the ground for the LFBS staff. That’s an interesting note. If you have a diverse team split in team streams, what strengths does this diverse team bring to the organization?

Definitely, there is a strength. My local staff completely understand the culture and the reality of what we are dealing with in Haiti. I have the international board. They have a level of education and contacts, and perception. That can be applied to Haiti. When you combine the two, it works really well. When you bring people on board, you are developing contacts Haitians would not think about for LFBS.

I am being fed contacts from the international side and am able to bring that to LFBS staff. I can then apply this in a culturally sensitive way. It is subtle. We can bring unique methods and contacts, but make them work for the community.

11. With respect to cultural sensitivity and differences, or a careful ‘trotting’ around or between the two, what are the main differences between Haiti and Canada? How would you be culturally sensitive?

Those are some difficult questions. To be culturally sensitive, it is about being open-minded and recognizing when going to Haiti s a different culture and system. You should not have expectations in Haiti as if it’s North America. You should be willing to learn, pick up on the culture, and see how people interact here. That can be ‘easier said than done’. People take many expectations from North America.

It is about bringing something to Haiti rather than learning and taking in Haiti. The biggest difference is communication. I find communication different. Communication has been something work with the local staff a bit. Another major difference is people in Haiti value relationships over time. For instance, if you are in a meeting, and come across someone with an issue, a Haitian would not even think twice about stopping and talking to that person to help them with the issue, and then arrive late to the meeting.

They would not think twice about it. A North American might feel stressed about being 15 minutes late. It depends on the person. (Laughs)

[Laughing]

In North America, we are time focused. In Haiti, they are relationship focused. It has its strengths. (Laughs) It has its difficult moments as well.

12. Jacobsen: With time, it makes the society more productive. With relationships, it benefits mental well-being. Downsides are the reduction of well-being and lost time, respectively.

It is something that I notice coming back to North America. It is part of the enjoyment and connectedness with Haitian society (more than North America at times). Human interactions are lacking at times in North America. We have materialistic values. That has taken the place of human contact and interaction. In Haiti, if something happens to me in the middle of the street, even if I did not know the area, I know 20 people will work to help me.

In North America, you can be part of a community in North America and not be a part of their life, and so be ignored by them – or they are stressed about meeting timelines. I can be affected by it. It works well with LFBS work. When you’re working with families attempting to build trust with these traumatized children, it is about the relationships and the interactions.

Often much more than timelines.

References

[David Truman]. (2016, March 9). Morgan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbgIF1NO5E.

[DevelopingPictures]. (2012, March 25). Sponsor a Child: Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjzncB3HsmA.

[James Pierre]. (2016, April 5). Morgan Wienberg goes one-on-one with James Pierre. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VMeKKTxkM.

[Morgan Wienberg]. (2014, June 3). Congratulations, FH Grad 2014!. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQ7PB95aYA.

[Ryan Sheetz]. (2015, February 20). Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fdPx1srGI.

Bailey, G. (2013, December 31). Catch Yukoner Morgan Wienberg tomorrow on CBC’s Gracious Gifts. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/airplay/features/2013/12/31/catch-yukoner-morgan-wienberg-tomorrow-on-cbcs-gracious-gifts/.

Baker, R. (2016, March 4). PHOTOS Governor General recognizes exceptional Canadians in Vancouver. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/governor-general-recognizes-exceptional-canadians-in-vancouver-1.3476960.

Broadley, L. (2014, August 1). Meet the Yukoner reuniting Haitian ‘orphans’ with their families. Retrieved from http://globalnews.ca/news/1482839/one-yukoners-work-reuniting-haitian-orphans-with-their-families/.

Bruemmer, R. (2011, April 8). Haiti: Little Paul gets it done. Retrieved from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/haiti+little+paul+gets+done/5214066/story.html.

CBC News. (2015, November 29). Morgan Wienberg awarded Meritorious Service Cross for work in Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/morgan-wienberg-awarded-meritorious-service-cross-for-work-in-haiti-1.3340295.

ca. (n.d.). 23-year-old receives Meritorious Service Cross Medal. Retrieved from http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=804018&playlistId=1.2769055&binId=1.815911&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1.

ca Staff. (2016, February 8). 23-year-old awarded Meritorious Service Cross for work in Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/23-year-old-awarded-meritorious-service-cross-for-work-in-haiti-1.2769013.

Dolphin, M. (2015, December 4). Yukoner’s work in Haiti draws governor general’s attention. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/life/yukoners-work-in-haiti-draws-governor-generals-attention/.

Gillmore, M. (2012, July 18). Helping to reunite families in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-to-reunite-families-in-haiti.

Gillmore, W. (2013, August 16). Wienberg gives New York a glimpse of Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/wienberg-gives-new-york-a-glimpse-of-haiti/.

Gjerstad, S. (2014, April 8). Morgan (22) vier livet sitt til å gjenforene barn med foreldrene sine på Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.tv2.no/a/5852686/.

Joannou, A. (2016, March 7). Governor general gives nod to Yukon’s champion of Haitian children. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/governor-general-gives-nod-to-yukons-champion-of-haitian-children/.

Langham, M. (2012, October 10). Just Like Us: An Interview with Morgan Wienberg of Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from http://aconspiracyofhope.blogspot.ca/2012/10/just-like-us-interview-with-morgan.html.

Little Footprints, Big Steps. (2016). Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.

Neel, T. (2013, May 16). Reaching the Hearts of Children in Need. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/reaching-the-hearts-of-children-in-need/#sthash.YCSvg1aM.oVLAQE3j.dpbs.

Peacock, A. (2016, February 27). Haiti has her heart. http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/news/local_news/article_beb828d0-ddcf-11e5-851b-8b09487f61ce.html?mode=story.

(2014, July 8). Joven canadiense decide gastar sus ahorros en rescatar niños de Haití. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/joven-canadiense-reune-huerfanos-haitianos.html.

Rodgers, E. (2015, January 12). Meet the 22-Year-Old Who Skipped Out on College—to Offer a Helping Hand in Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/01/12/meet-morgan-wienberg-little-foot-big-step.

Schott, B.Y. (2012, September 13). Making a Difference One Child at a Time. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/making-a-difference-one-child-at-a-time/#sthash.CeS656Xm.2r1eJsAW.dpbs.

Shiel, A. (2011, November 17). McGill students host third annual TEDxMcGill even. Retrieved from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/mcgill-students-host-third-annual-tedxmcgill-event/.

Thompson, J. (2011, December 23). Helping Haiti for the holidays. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-haiti-for-the-holidays.

Thompson, J. (August 12). Hope and hard lessons in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/hope-and-hard-lessons-in-haiti.

Thomson Reuters. (2014, July 27). 22-year-old Yukoner reunites Haitian ‘orphans’ with parents. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/22-year-old-yukoner-reunites-haitian-orphans-with-parents-1.2719559.

Waddell, S. (2015, November 27). For decorated Yukoner, home is now Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/for-decorated-yukoner-home-is-now-haiti.

Whitehorse Star. (2016, March 2). Yukoners to receive honours from Governor General. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/yukoners-to-receive-honours-from-governor-general.

Wienberg, M. (2013, November 22). Age Is Not an Obstacle in Changing the World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-wienberg/age-is-not-an-obstacle_b_4324563.html.

Wienberg, M. (2014, January 23). Courage of a Mother. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/courage-of-a-mother/#sthash.hy1QzF0S.ZA1StSZz.dpbs.

Woodcock, R. (2013, September 26). Back to School in Haiti. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/back-to-school-in-haiti/#sthash.TMqQNkLX.dpbs.

Yukon News. (2013, February 6). Incredible acts of kindness in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/incredible-acts-of-kindness-in-haiti.

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2022-04-14

Morgan Wienberg, Partnerships, Responsibilities, and Emotional Taxation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/11

Morgan Wienberg is the Co-Founder, Coordinator, and Head of Haiti Operations for Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization. She was kind enough to take the time for an extensive interview with me. Please find part 8 here, and 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here, 6 here, and 7 here.

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4. Jacobsen: You mentioned partnerships. What organizations?

We partner with the local child protection authorities. In particular, IBESR (Institut du Bien-Etre Social et de Recherches), which is the equivalent of Haitian social services. So, they are the child protection authority. Other government departments include the Ministry for Women’s Rights, Ministry for Handicapped People’s Rights, and Social Affairs.

All of those institutions are part of a network, which is the Groupe du Travail pour la Protection des Enfants (GTPE-Sud) in Haiti. It is a regional network that covers the entire Southern department of Haiti, but it’s based on Les Cayes. This group was originally formed in 2010 following the earthquake as the cluster group for child protection. Now, it has a different name. LFBS is part of the group. Same with the governmental departments.[5]

We have meetings with IBESR once a month, even every two weeks. We work with IBESR about once-a-week. Also, with the Child Protection Brigade of the Police, we help each other out. In particular, where a child has been sexually assaulted, we will be working with the police and the Ministry for Women’s Rights. Other organizations focus on children in conflict with the law.

We work with them, for years now. We help them work with specific case studies. They offered us psychologists to see some children, which we have in the program. They have a social worker doing weekly training with my staff. They let us use their space for different activities. Similar to Haitian social services. Before we had a truck, they let us use their vehicle.

Now, we let them use our vehicle. They help us with children. They place children in the state houses. For example, last week, IBESR had a lost girl. We took her into our girls’ home until they could reunite her with her family. We have good, close working partnerships with the organizations. We have collaborative initiatives too. One main initiative is community training for prevention of sexual assault.

We will go into rural communities and train people about sexual abuse, how they can protect children, and how to react if you’re a victim or someone that you know is a victim. We create committees in those communities. So, community members can keep with the initiative and in contact with us. We are doing this as a group.

5. Jacobsen: You remain the Co-Founder, Coordinator, and Head of Haiti Operations for Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization. What tasks and responsibilities come with this station?

When I started the organization, it was one outreach worker and me. Literally, I would walk with the child to their family, sitting down, having meetings with the family, doing mediation, and helping the child purchase school supplies and go to the hospital. Now, we work to make the support more sustainable, able to expand, and less dependent on me.

Now, I coordinate staff schedules. My staff does those things. They work on their tasks. I do the follow-up afterward. Also, I coordinate with partners. If there is a particularly vulnerable family, I will ask a social worker from social services to accompany my staff to work with that child. Now, I focus on coordinating staff activities in following up with the kid and working on longer-term development or expansion of the programs.

However, I see first-hand things with the kids. My personal connection with the children motivates me. If I was the only one rather than my staff doing the work, I would be limiting the number of people potentially impacted.

6. Jacobsen: What seem the best aspects of this position on a personal level?

I am able to see the growth and empowerment of people. When working intimately with them, you see them every day. I see growth and empowerment with the kids. I look at staff at times. It motivates me. I see them grow. I see them passionate about child protection issues, too. Also, it is exciting to get involved in the big picture in everything we can accomplish.

We gain momentum in working with others. The biggest thing that I love most about this position is dreaming big and making those dreams a reality.

7. Jacobsen: Big dreams are big risks. What seems like the most emotionally ‘taxing’ part for you?

It is extremely, extremely stressful. I struggle with choosing. You have to choose. It is a huge privilege to be able to choose to help someone. However, there are many, many people asking and needing help. You have to choose the person. It is a constant battle within me. You can not anticipate who will advance the most with the support given to them by you. It is difficult.

Sometimes, there are kids who abuse the support in the beginning. Believing in the child, when they do not believe in themselves, it is part of what will result in change. At the same time, in choosing to help the child, you are telling others “no.” Constantly, I wonder if these are the right decisions among competing ones. Also, who am I to choose over people’s lives?

The task is immense. I have to make the decision. It is hard. Also, the trauma for the kids. It might be over. However, it’s hard, emotionally. It is a slow process for the kids to heal from trauma.

References

[David Truman]. (2016, March 9). Morgan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbgIF1NO5E.

[DevelopingPictures]. (2012, March 25). Sponsor a Child: Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjzncB3HsmA.

[James Pierre]. (2016, April 5). Morgan Wienberg goes one-on-one with James Pierre. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VMeKKTxkM.

[Morgan Wienberg]. (2014, June 3). Congratulations, FH Grad 2014!. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQ7PB95aYA.

[Ryan Sheetz]. (2015, February 20). Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fdPx1srGI.

Bruemmer, R. (2011, April 8). Haiti: Little Paul gets it done. Retrieved from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/haiti+little+paul+gets+done/5214066/story.html.

ca. (n.d.). 23-year-old receives Meritorious Service Cross Medal. Retrieved from http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=804018&playlistId=1.2769055&binId=1.815911&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1.

Gillmore, M. (2012, July 18). Helping to reunite families in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-to-reunite-families-in-haiti.

Gillmore, W. (2013, August 16). Wienberg gives New York a glimpse of Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/wienberg-gives-new-york-a-glimpse-of-haiti/.

Gjerstad, S. (2014, April 8). Morgan (22) vier livet sitt til å gjenforene barn med foreldrene sine på Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.tv2.no/a/5852686/.

Little Footprints, Big Steps. (2016). Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.

Peacock, A. (2016, February 27). Haiti has her heart. http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/news/local_news/article_beb828d0-ddcf-11e5-851b-8b09487f61ce.html?mode=story.

(2014, July 8). Joven canadiense decide gastar sus ahorros en rescatar niños de Haití. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/joven-canadiense-reune-huerfanos-haitianos.html.

Shiel, A. (2011, November 17). McGill students host third annual TEDxMcGill even. Retrieved from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/mcgill-students-host-third-annual-tedxmcgill-event/.

Thompson, J. (2011, December 23). Helping Haiti for the holidays. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-haiti-for-the-holidays.

Thompson, J. (August 12). Hope and hard lessons in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/hope-and-hard-lessons-in-haiti.

Waddell, S. (2015, November 27). For decorated Yukoner, home is now Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/for-decorated-yukoner-home-is-now-haiti.

Whitehorse Star. (2016, March 2). Yukoners to receive honours from Governor General. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/yukoners-to-receive-honours-from-governor-general.

Wienberg, M. (2013, November 22). Age Is Not an Obstacle in Changing the World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-wienberg/age-is-not-an-obstacle_b_4324563.html.

Wienberg, M. (2014, January 23). Courage of a Mother. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/courage-of-a-mother/#sthash.hy1QzF0S.ZA1StSZz.dpbs.

Woodcock, R. (2013, September 26). Back to School in Haiti. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/back-to-school-in-haiti/#sthash.TMqQNkLX.dpbs.

Yukon News. (2013, February 6). Incredible acts of kindness in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/incredible-acts-of-kindness-in-haiti.

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2022-04-14

Morgan Wienberg, Ethic, English and Creole, and Trust and Camaraderie

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/19

Morgan Wienberg is the Co-Founder, Coordinator, and Head of Haiti Operations for Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization. She was kind enough to take the time for an extensive interview with me. Please find part 7 here, and 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here, and 6 here.

—

1. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the ethic that drives this for you?

Morgan Wienberg: [Laughing] I see all people as having the same rights. The fact that these children can be so stripped of their rights. I do not feel I can accept it. I need to do something about it. I am reminded of the conditions of the kids in the beginning. It is upsetting that children who are supposed to be protected by society can be badly hurt and abused by the adults.

Adults who are supposed to be protecting them. That many people can see it and accept it. Part of the issue is people go to Haiti and, because it is Haiti, will accept that this child is emaciated or too weak to stand up. Or that the adult is whipping the child with a metal cord. Child rights are universal. There’s the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

If a country is not developed or has some cultural undertones, that does not change the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We should not accept the ill-treatment of the young. They need more support to be implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Some people when they go to Haiti accept and forget it because “it’s Haiti.”

2. Jacobsen: You speak English and Creole. How does this benefit interpersonal interactions with Haitians?

My speaking English and Creole influenced my abilities to better understand Haitian culture and the things happening at the moment, especially with street children in particular. I learned about street children by sitting with them in the afternoon and talking with them. I had a communication barrier, which made building relationships and trust difficult.

I dealt with a fair share of deception and corruption. My speaking the language helps me learn my lesson or be aware of risks, especially of repeats of deception and corruption. In terms of managing staff and being fully communicating expectations with them, and to understand their perspective, it plays a huge role. I cannot express it.

Even in the integration into the community, I needed to understand the culture and family dynamics. I would not know without knowing Creole. When I went to Haiti in 2010, I knew French and got by with it. When I went to the orphanage in 2011, the children didn’t speak French. I began to speak Creole by communicating with them.

My understanding of the real situation came from speaking the language and with the children. They spoke of the families back home. The kids could be coming to orphanages for years and the parents would not know the truth. I found out about the situation for the kids and their families, and the details of the abuse, is from the children talking to me.

3. Jacobsen: Did learning Creole/Kreyol improve trust and camaraderie with Haitians?

It makes me stand out. Haitians are surprised when I speak to them. I have been able to present in a court house, in the legal system, to participate in meetings with other local authorities, and so on. I am able to fully express myself. It helps them understand my objectives and way of thinking. In the beginning, when they don’t fully understand my objectives, I met hostility from the authorities.

They were better able to understand what I am doing. We are partners now. When people in the community see me speaking Creole, they like it.

References

[David Truman]. (2016, March 9). Morgan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbgIF1NO5E.

[DevelopingPictures]. (2012, March 25). Sponsor a Child: Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjzncB3HsmA.

[James Pierre]. (2016, April 5). Morgan Wienberg goes one-on-one with James Pierre. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VMeKKTxkM.

[Morgan Wienberg]. (2014, June 3). Congratulations, FH Grad 2014!. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQ7PB95aYA.

[Ryan Sheetz]. (2015, February 20). Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fdPx1srGI.

Bruemmer, R. (2011, April 8). Haiti: Little Paul gets it done. Retrieved from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/haiti+little+paul+gets+done/5214066/story.html.

ca. (n.d.). 23-year-old receives Meritorious Service Cross Medal. Retrieved from http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=804018&playlistId=1.2769055&binId=1.815911&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1.

Gillmore, M. (2012, July 18). Helping to reunite families in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-to-reunite-families-in-haiti.

Gillmore, W. (2013, August 16). Wienberg gives New York a glimpse of Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/wienberg-gives-new-york-a-glimpse-of-haiti/.

Gjerstad, S. (2014, April 8). Morgan (22) vier livet sitt til å gjenforene barn med foreldrene sine på Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.tv2.no/a/5852686/.

Little Footprints, Big Steps. (2016). Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.

Peacock, A. (2016, February 27). Haiti has her heart. http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/news/local_news/article_beb828d0-ddcf-11e5-851b-8b09487f61ce.html?mode=story.

(2014, July 8). Joven canadiense decide gastar sus ahorros en rescatar niños de Haití. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/joven-canadiense-reune-huerfanos-haitianos.html.

Shiel, A. (2011, November 17). McGill students host third annual TEDxMcGill even. Retrieved from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/mcgill-students-host-third-annual-tedxmcgill-event/.

Thompson, J. (2011, December 23). Helping Haiti for the holidays. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-haiti-for-the-holidays.

Thompson, J. (August 12). Hope and hard lessons in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/hope-and-hard-lessons-in-haiti.

Waddell, S. (2015, November 27). For decorated Yukoner, home is now Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/for-decorated-yukoner-home-is-now-haiti.

Whitehorse Star. (2016, March 2). Yukoners to receive honours from Governor General. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/yukoners-to-receive-honours-from-governor-general.

Wienberg, M. (2013, November 22). Age Is Not an Obstacle in Changing the World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-wienberg/age-is-not-an-obstacle_b_4324563.html.

Wienberg, M. (2014, January 23). Courage of a Mother. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/courage-of-a-mother/#sthash.hy1QzF0S.ZA1StSZz.dpbs.

Woodcock, R. (2013, September 26). Back to School in Haiti. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/back-to-school-in-haiti/#sthash.TMqQNkLX.dpbs.

Yukon News. (2013, February 6). Incredible acts of kindness in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/incredible-acts-of-kindness-in-haiti.

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2022-04-14

Morgan Wienberg, Exposure, Aid, and Corrupt Organizations

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/18

Morgan Wienberg is the Co-Founder, Coordinator, and Head of Haiti Operations for Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization. She was kind enough to take the time for an extensive interview with me. Please find part 6 here, and 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, and 4 here, and 5 here.

—

9. Jacobsen: What does this exposure mean to you?

Wienberg: I am excited to have their stories heard by others because many children have been taught that they need to be silent to protect themselves. I have been trying to teach them their power to influence others and to help others, especially with them in a better situation now. It is an example of the negative things happening to them that hurt them can be used to tell the stories, raise awareness, and help other people.

These children and families telling the stories have the opportunity for exposure and influence others. It makes me incredibly proud and excited about them. Also, I am hoping this will continue the shift. There is a shift in Haiti on the institutionalization at the moment. It is moving away from orphanages and back to family-based care, e.g., foster homes. I want the rest of the global community to be aware and support of it.

There is a lot of work to be done on raising awareness that the children face exploitation and abuse in orphanages, which is supported by foreigners. I hope this will accomplish raising awareness.

10. Jacobsen: What about well-meaning, but misguided, foreigners giving aid, volunteer time, support, and exposure in the media to these corrupt organizations?

Wienberg: That allows them to thrive. It is common – so incredibly common. This orphanage was identified by the local authorities as ‘Code Red’ and needing to be shut down. Children died inside. Children were being trafficked. The owner offered five kids to me for $800 each. There are children whose parents refuse to give them up. The orphanages took them, kidnapped them.

There were at least 6 different foreign Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) supporting the orphanage with money, donations, and time. It was perpetuating the problem. This woman was able to run her ‘business’, the orphanage, for over 20 years. I advocated to shut it down. Hundreds of thousands of people, foreigners, visited the orphanage before me.

They cried over kids’ conditions, but did not do anything to change or question it. It is like you said before. They are “well-intentioned.” It is a vicious cycle. If the kids are more sick, then the more urgently foreigners will want to help them. This has the orphanage owner neglecting the kids, keeping them as sick as possible, keeping them barefoot and with as little clothing as possible, and so on.

That will get more support. If you are at an orphanage with well-fed, well-dressed kids, and not emotionally damaged and lacking attachment, if you walk into an orphanage and the kids seem healthy and are not crying, you will not feel as pushed, urgently, to give support or aid to the orphanage. However, that orphanage is taking better care of the children.

It is counterintuitive. Those orphanages that treat children worse will get more aid. That makes orphanages good business to have there. Also, it is undermining the efforts of local authorities, which is another issue. Foreign aid coming into Haiti does not approach the government or the local authorities because there is a level of mistrust and the perception of the Haitian government as corrupt.

I have dealt with corruption. I have developed a strong relationship with local government institutions and have worked together with the police. There is corruption, but it is not all of them. The social services have social workers who have not been paid for 3 months or do not have a contract. They go to work, even on Saturdays.

You would not find that in North America. So, the government workers are genuinely committed. They are committed to the children. If the local government is looking to shut down the orphanage and international NGOs come in without approaching the authorities and support the orphanage, then they are undermining the efforts of the local authorities.

There is a huge need for increased communication between NGOs coming into the country and the local authorities, which requires a level of open-mindedness and trust for international entities to work with the local authorities. The only way to address the issues is on a long-term scale. If it is all NGOs coming in here, and if we do not work to increase the capacity of the local authorities, then we’re working on a short-term solution.

We need to work on a long-term solution.

References

[David Truman]. (2016, March 9). Morgan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbgIF1NO5E.

[DevelopingPictures]. (2012, March 25). Sponsor a Child: Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjzncB3HsmA.

[James Pierre]. (2016, April 5). Morgan Wienberg goes one-on-one with James Pierre. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VMeKKTxkM.

[Morgan Wienberg]. (2014, June 3). Congratulations, FH Grad 2014!. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQ7PB95aYA.

[Ryan Sheetz]. (2015, February 20). Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fdPx1srGI.

Bruemmer, R. (2011, April 8). Haiti: Little Paul gets it done. Retrieved from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/haiti+little+paul+gets+done/5214066/story.html.

ca. (n.d.). 23-year-old receives Meritorious Service Cross Medal. Retrieved from http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=804018&playlistId=1.2769055&binId=1.815911&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1.

Gillmore, M. (2012, July 18). Helping to reunite families in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-to-reunite-families-in-haiti.

Gillmore, W. (2013, August 16). Wienberg gives New York a glimpse of Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/wienberg-gives-new-york-a-glimpse-of-haiti/.

Gjerstad, S. (2014, April 8). Morgan (22) vier livet sitt til å gjenforene barn med foreldrene sine på Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.tv2.no/a/5852686/.

Little Footprints, Big Steps. (2016). Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.

Peacock, A. (2016, February 27). Haiti has her heart. http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/news/local_news/article_beb828d0-ddcf-11e5-851b-8b09487f61ce.html?mode=story.

(2014, July 8). Joven canadiense decide gastar sus ahorros en rescatar niños de Haití. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/joven-canadiense-reune-huerfanos-haitianos.html.

Shiel, A. (2011, November 17). McGill students host third annual TEDxMcGill even. Retrieved from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/mcgill-students-host-third-annual-tedxmcgill-event/.

Thompson, J. (2011, December 23). Helping Haiti for the holidays. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-haiti-for-the-holidays.

Thompson, J. (August 12). Hope and hard lessons in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/hope-and-hard-lessons-in-haiti.

Waddell, S. (2015, November 27). For decorated Yukoner, home is now Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/for-decorated-yukoner-home-is-now-haiti.

Whitehorse Star. (2016, March 2). Yukoners to receive honours from Governor General. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/yukoners-to-receive-honours-from-governor-general.

Wienberg, M. (2013, November 22). Age Is Not an Obstacle in Changing the World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-wienberg/age-is-not-an-obstacle_b_4324563.html.

Wienberg, M. (2014, January 23). Courage of a Mother. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/courage-of-a-mother/#sthash.hy1QzF0S.ZA1StSZz.dpbs.

Woodcock, R. (2013, September 26). Back to School in Haiti. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/back-to-school-in-haiti/#sthash.TMqQNkLX.dpbs.

Yukon News. (2013, February 6). Incredible acts of kindness in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/incredible-acts-of-kindness-in-haiti.

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2022-04-14

Morgan Wienberg, Jimmy Arrant and Ryan Sheetz, and ‘Morgan’s Kids’

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/18

—

6. What does that parental support mean to you?

Wienberg: It has allowed me to succeed because she is there for me if I need her. There are instances where talking to mom is a comfort. At the same time, she does not restrict me. I never knew that I would have thought that I could have accomplished what I have or influence this number of people. I never would have been able to push myself or explore capabilities if she had limited me.

It is something extremely hard as a parent. You want to protect your child. At the same time, there are physical risks, a new country, being on your own, emotional pain and struggles, and so on. Knowing that, it can be hard sometimes. At the same time, going through it, I grew a lot and achieved more than I realized is possible. As a parent, it is allowing the child to grow and learn, and become an individual and explore their capabilities.

Also, it is being there to support them. If they do need to call on you, they can call on you and are there for them. It has been hard for her. In the beginning, I didn’t communicate much with her. I didn’t have internet access. The living conditions, I didn’t let her know about it. It might or might not have changed things. After the first couple of times, I was sick coming back to Canada.

Her allowing me to pursue these things was self-less and truly supporting me rather than reacting based on her own feelings, which would have limited me.

7. Jacobsen: You have profiles and representation in numerous outlets including text publications and video interviews. What responsibilities come with this public recognition?

Wienberg: It’s not only being in the media, internationally. For example, in the community in Haiti (Les Cayes), I am well-known to them. I represent an organization. It is a situation where every single thing I do is being watched as a representation of an organization. I have to make decisions, conscientiously. On an international level, when I go back to Whitehorse, it can be hard to relax or have ‘down time’.

It is about responding, community events, and so on. Everyone recognizes you. It is wonderful to have the recognition. It is encouraging with the support, but it can be hard to have personal time. With decisions made by me, I have to think about the influence on the people supported by me and the organization. Oftentimes, I am making decisions on a representative-of-the-organization level. People are counting on me.

8. Jacobsen: Jimmy Arrant and Ryan Sheetz work on Morgan’s Kids. A documentary film about the work by you. What’s the content and purpose of the film?

Wienberg: The purpose of the film is to raise awareness about Little Footprints Big Steps and the kids in the program, who I work with in Haiti. Also, the larger theme of the orphanage system and family reunification. Family care is much better for vulnerable children. That is the huge issue in Haiti. Also, it is an issue in other developing countries. International aid will support orphanages and institutions.

That is in opposition to family care. It is to raise awareness about the general concept. Multiple international entities do not know. The international community is unaware. The content of the film is based in Haiti with focus on the families, children, and my staff. Jimmy and Ryan came to Haiti 3 or 4 times. They visited and spent time in the safe houses.

They visited families with the staff. Also, they came to Miami, when I travelled with one of the former children. The child was having surgery, Ysaac. I brought him to Miami twice for surgery. It was Ysaac’s first time travelling to the States. Ryan and Jimmy were there at the airport for the arrival. They captured the child’s first experiences travelling.

They were there for the first surgery. They captured that part of the story. It is a powerful example of the possible change when a child’s environment changes. He’s a great example for everything we work for here. Ryan and Jimmy came to Whitehorse, Yukon to film the community. It was to look into the influences on me, which lead to personal accomplishments. They have thorough coverage of the whole story.

For example, with some of the parents with children that were in the corrupt orphanage, the parents went to reclaim them from the orphanage because of the mistreatment. We have stories with the parents explaining the reason for giving their children to the orphanage. They talk about how things changed when the children came back.

It includes messages coming from the parents and children themselves.

References

[David Truman]. (2016, March 9). Morgan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbgIF1NO5E.

[DevelopingPictures]. (2012, March 25). Sponsor a Child: Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjzncB3HsmA.

[James Pierre]. (2016, April 5). Morgan Wienberg goes one-on-one with James Pierre. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VMeKKTxkM.

[Morgan Wienberg]. (2014, June 3). Congratulations, FH Grad 2014!. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQ7PB95aYA.

[Ryan Sheetz]. (2015, February 20). Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fdPx1srGI.

Bruemmer, R. (2011, April 8). Haiti: Little Paul gets it done. Retrieved from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/haiti+little+paul+gets+done/5214066/story.html.

ca. (n.d.). 23-year-old receives Meritorious Service Cross Medal. Retrieved from http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=804018&playlistId=1.2769055&binId=1.815911&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1.

Gillmore, M. (2012, July 18). Helping to reunite families in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-to-reunite-families-in-haiti.

Gillmore, W. (2013, August 16). Wienberg gives New York a glimpse of Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/wienberg-gives-new-york-a-glimpse-of-haiti/.

Gjerstad, S. (2014, April 8). Morgan (22) vier livet sitt til å gjenforene barn med foreldrene sine på Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.tv2.no/a/5852686/.

Little Footprints, Big Steps. (2016). Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.

Peacock, A. (2016, February 27). Haiti has her heart. http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/news/local_news/article_beb828d0-ddcf-11e5-851b-8b09487f61ce.html?mode=story.

(2014, July 8). Joven canadiense decide gastar sus ahorros en rescatar niños de Haití. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/joven-canadiense-reune-huerfanos-haitianos.html.

Shiel, A. (2011, November 17). McGill students host third annual TEDxMcGill even. Retrieved from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/mcgill-students-host-third-annual-tedxmcgill-event/.

Thompson, J. (2011, December 23). Helping Haiti for the holidays. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-haiti-for-the-holidays.

Thompson, J. (August 12). Hope and hard lessons in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/hope-and-hard-lessons-in-haiti.

Waddell, S. (2015, November 27). For decorated Yukoner, home is now Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/for-decorated-yukoner-home-is-now-haiti.

Whitehorse Star. (2016, March 2). Yukoners to receive honours from Governor General. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/yukoners-to-receive-honours-from-governor-general.

Wienberg, M. (2013, November 22). Age Is Not an Obstacle in Changing the World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-wienberg/age-is-not-an-obstacle_b_4324563.html.

Wienberg, M. (2014, January 23). Courage of a Mother. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/courage-of-a-mother/#sthash.hy1QzF0S.ZA1StSZz.dpbs.

Woodcock, R. (2013, September 26). Back to School in Haiti. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/back-to-school-in-haiti/#sthash.TMqQNkLX.dpbs.

Yukon News. (2013, February 6). Incredible acts of kindness in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/incredible-acts-of-kindness-in-haiti.

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2022-04-14

Morgan Wienberg, Little Footprints Big Steps and the Formal Charity

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/18

—

1. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization (LFBS) is a registered charity, which emerged out of this endeavour based on collaboration with a nurse, Sarah Wilson. However, you needed finance. You mentioned one job. You worked three jobs to save enough money. What two other jobs?

Morgan Wienberg: I had about $25,000 saved for university at the time. I started with personal savings. I went in 2010 for 2 ½ months. Before I left to return to Canada, I decided to come back. I deferred university. I went back to Canada, but worked 3 jobs for 6 months before going back to Haiti. I intended to go to Haiti. I went to work to save additional funds.

I worked at a bakery. It was a bakery, restaurant, and yoga studio in one. I worked there for a few years. The community gave generous tips. I worked at the local animal shelter looking after the dogs, e.g. cleaning the cages. If I worked at the bakery starting at 5 in the morning, I would work at the animal shelter in the afternoon. Also, I did a lot of babysitting. I worked in a women’s gym through exercise classes and so on. I cleaned houses for neighbours too.

2. Jacobsen: How did this relationship with the nurse originate and develop for you?

Wienberg: My first time in Haiti, in 2010, staying in a compound with Mission of Hope. There many other volunteers there. I was there for 2 ½ months. During those 2 ½ months, Sarah Wilson came for a few weeks. She was working in the medical clinic. I was going off to the orphanage. We were sleeping in the same living quarters. We met that way.

She visited the orphanage a couple of times. I tried to get medical teams to see the sick kids. She saw the orphanage at that point. Further down the road, when I returned to Haiti and was working with the orphanage, we kept in touch on social media. She followed me. When I was back in Haiti living in the orphanage with the kids, she sent an email.

She said, “I’ve been following what you’ve been doing. You need support. I did this course. Do you want create an organization to support what you’ve been doing?” Of course, I said, “Yes!” We completed the forms to become a formal charity.

3. Jacobsen: Your mother remains part of Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization as the Director/Chair of the Board. She supports this endeavour. Many mothers, and fathers, might feel hesitant to permit their gifted child to pursue this endeavour. For instance, the possible risk of sexual assault or abuse in a foreign country. What does parental support and encouragement mean to you?

Wienberg: She is a huge part of the organization. In the beginning, I had to do fundraising with donors. She took that on for us. It allows me to be in Haiti for the long-term. I can work with the local staff and develop programs while here. In the beginning, I wasn’t able to do it. I had to focus on fundraising and communicating with sponsors.

4. Jacobsen: She has graduate level training relevant to this, too.

Wienberg: Yes.

5. Jacobsen: Many parents with gifted children or a gifted child, even a child for that matter, might feel hesitant to permit their child to pursue this endeavour.

Wienberg: [Laughing].

References

[David Truman]. (2016, March 9). Morgan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbgIF1NO5E.

[DevelopingPictures]. (2012, March 25). Sponsor a Child: Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjzncB3HsmA.

[James Pierre]. (2016, April 5). Morgan Wienberg goes one-on-one with James Pierre. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VMeKKTxkM.

[Morgan Wienberg]. (2014, June 3). Congratulations, FH Grad 2014!. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQ7PB95aYA.

[Ryan Sheetz]. (2015, February 20). Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fdPx1srGI.

Bruemmer, R. (2011, April 8). Haiti: Little Paul gets it done. Retrieved from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/haiti+little+paul+gets+done/5214066/story.html.

ca. (n.d.). 23-year-old receives Meritorious Service Cross Medal. Retrieved from http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=804018&playlistId=1.2769055&binId=1.815911&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1.

Gillmore, M. (2012, July 18). Helping to reunite families in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-to-reunite-families-in-haiti.

Gillmore, W. (2013, August 16). Wienberg gives New York a glimpse of Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/wienberg-gives-new-york-a-glimpse-of-haiti/.

Gjerstad, S. (2014, April 8). Morgan (22) vier livet sitt til å gjenforene barn med foreldrene sine på Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.tv2.no/a/5852686/.

Little Footprints, Big Steps. (2016). Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.

Peacock, A. (2016, February 27). Haiti has her heart. http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/news/local_news/article_beb828d0-ddcf-11e5-851b-8b09487f61ce.html?mode=story.

(2014, July 8). Joven canadiense decide gastar sus ahorros en rescatar niños de Haití. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/joven-canadiense-reune-huerfanos-haitianos.html.

Shiel, A. (2011, November 17). McGill students host third annual TEDxMcGill even. Retrieved from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/mcgill-students-host-third-annual-tedxmcgill-event/.

Thompson, J. (2011, December 23). Helping Haiti for the holidays. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-haiti-for-the-holidays.

Thompson, J. (August 12). Hope and hard lessons in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/hope-and-hard-lessons-in-haiti.

Waddell, S. (2015, November 27). For decorated Yukoner, home is now Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/for-decorated-yukoner-home-is-now-haiti.

Whitehorse Star. (2016, March 2). Yukoners to receive honours from Governor General. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/yukoners-to-receive-honours-from-governor-general.

Wienberg, M. (2013, November 22). Age Is Not an Obstacle in Changing the World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-wienberg/age-is-not-an-obstacle_b_4324563.html.

Wienberg, M. (2014, January 23). Courage of a Mother. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/courage-of-a-mother/#sthash.hy1QzF0S.ZA1StSZz.dpbs.

Woodcock, R. (2013, September 26). Back to School in Haiti. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/back-to-school-in-haiti/#sthash.TMqQNkLX.dpbs.

Yukon News. (2013, February 6). Incredible acts of kindness in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/incredible-acts-of-kindness-in-haiti.

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2022-04-14

Morgan Wienberg, Haiti, 2010 Earthquake, and Emotional Connections

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/17

—

11. Jacobsen: When the 2010 earthquake hit Haiti, you noted the prominence in the media of the event as a salient thing for you. You said, “I wanted to help. I wanted to help in a bigger way than just sending money. I wanted to connect with the people.” From 2010, after graduation from high school, you traveled to Haiti for a trip. You interned with Mission of Hope Haiti. What seemed like the appeal of Haiti at the time?

Wienberg: At the time of the earthquake in January of 2010, I was about to graduate from high school. I planned to attend university in the Fall. I had this freedom during the Summer to travel. I always wanted to travel to Africa and work with kids. When the earthquake hit, my attention turned to Haiti. It was closer. It seemed in desperate need at the time. The timing coincided with the freedom to travel.

12. Jacobsen: The children seemed like the core connection for you. What emotional connections came out of this first trip for you?

Wienberg: I always, always, always, loved children. Since I was 12 years old, I would babysit a lot. I always loved looking after animals or children. Actually, from grade 5, my name was “mom” because I loved being maternalistic and looking after other people, even as a child. When I went to Haiti the first time in 2010, I had three roles as an intern.

I was working with patients in a prosthetic lab. When they received new prosthetic legs, they would stay for about a week in the compound. I stayed there too. I would look after them. I made sure food and hygiene items were there. I helped them with practicing their walking. Also, I was involved in teaching an English class to a group of young adults in the community.

I did not speak Creole at the time. I used French to teach the class. I was afraid at the thought of teaching a class. I did not feel qualified to do it. I graduated from high school two weeks prior to the experience. I thought, “They do not know English. I have English to offer them. They are eager to learn from me.” It helped build the confidence in the beginning.

The third role was starting interacting with this Haitian-run orphanage. I found out about the orphanage through an organization. I worked with the organization. When I visited the orphanage for the first time during the first visit, it was the worst conditions for human beings. I had never seen anything like it. I’d visited ten villages. All inhabitants were amputees. I visited other orphanages, where things were horrific. It needed more sustainable support.

Candy and holding the kids are not enough. People would cry about the horrific conditions and then leave. They did not do anything about it. I could not observe the children’s livelihood and then leave them. This specific group of children living in the orphanage became the motivation to return to Haiti. They changed my whole life. The thought, I could not forget about them and continue with life without changing the situation for them.

That’s changed my future forever.

References

[David Truman]. (2016, March 9). Morgan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbgIF1NO5E.

[DevelopingPictures]. (2012, March 25). Sponsor a Child: Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjzncB3HsmA.

[James Pierre]. (2016, April 5). Morgan Wienberg goes one-on-one with James Pierre. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VMeKKTxkM.

[Morgan Wienberg]. (2014, June 3). Congratulations, FH Grad 2014!. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQ7PB95aYA.

[Ryan Sheetz]. (2015, February 20). Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fdPx1srGI.

Bruemmer, R. (2011, April 8). Haiti: Little Paul gets it done. Retrieved from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/haiti+little+paul+gets+done/5214066/story.html.

ca. (n.d.). 23-year-old receives Meritorious Service Cross Medal. Retrieved from http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=804018&playlistId=1.2769055&binId=1.815911&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1.

Gillmore, M. (2012, July 18). Helping to reunite families in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-to-reunite-families-in-haiti.

Gillmore, W. (2013, August 16). Wienberg gives New York a glimpse of Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/wienberg-gives-new-york-a-glimpse-of-haiti/.

Gjerstad, S. (2014, April 8). Morgan (22) vier livet sitt til å gjenforene barn med foreldrene sine på Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.tv2.no/a/5852686/.

Little Footprints, Big Steps. (2016). Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.

Peacock, A. (2016, February 27). Haiti has her heart. http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/news/local_news/article_beb828d0-ddcf-11e5-851b-8b09487f61ce.html?mode=story.

(2014, July 8). Joven canadiense decide gastar sus ahorros en rescatar niños de Haití. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/joven-canadiense-reune-huerfanos-haitianos.html.

Shiel, A. (2011, November 17). McGill students host third annual TEDxMcGill even. Retrieved from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/mcgill-students-host-third-annual-tedxmcgill-event/.

Thompson, J. (2011, December 23). Helping Haiti for the holidays. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-haiti-for-the-holidays.

Thompson, J. (August 12). Hope and hard lessons in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/hope-and-hard-lessons-in-haiti.

Waddell, S. (2015, November 27). For decorated Yukoner, home is now Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/for-decorated-yukoner-home-is-now-haiti.

Whitehorse Star. (2016, March 2). Yukoners to receive honours from Governor General. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/yukoners-to-receive-honours-from-governor-general.

Wienberg, M. (2013, November 22). Age Is Not an Obstacle in Changing the World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-wienberg/age-is-not-an-obstacle_b_4324563.html.

Wienberg, M. (2014, January 23). Courage of a Mother. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/courage-of-a-mother/#sthash.hy1QzF0S.ZA1StSZz.dpbs.

Woodcock, R. (2013, September 26). Back to School in Haiti. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/back-to-school-in-haiti/#sthash.TMqQNkLX.dpbs.

Yukon News. (2013, February 6). Incredible acts of kindness in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/incredible-acts-of-kindness-in-haiti.

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2022-04-14

Morgan Wienberg, Anglophone-Francophone Split and Community

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/17

—

7. Jacobsen: You developed in a majority Anglophone home. How did this influence perspective? For those without the cultural heritage of Canadian provinces and territories, in Canada, we have the Anglophone and Francophone split.

Wienberg: Although, my family was Anglophone. My community was a heavy Francophone influence around me. Some friends were French speaking. I enjoyed learning French in school. I enjoyed using French on a personal level. I do not know if this affected me, at least not too much. In Haiti, it helped me, but I did not know Creole.

8. Jacobsen: Back to the main line of thought from the personal and parental perspective, what about the school for support?

Wienberg: I always felt the school was supportive. My teachers allowed me to advance as well. There could be an improvement with schools networking more. If students are gifted or ambitious, then they could make suggestions to connect those students with real-life situations, where the students could influence accomplishing something with the gifts as opposed to funneling things into academics.

9. Jacobsen: Tier 1 Canada Research Chair at The University of British Columbia Professor Adele Diamond researches executive function (EF). She finds the counter-intuitive educational focus is the correct thing. Her research shows the need to focus on things around education to improve educational performance and completion rates on average: play, dance, extra curricular, social life, and so on. EF is twice as predictive as IQ in educational outcomes based on the research.

Wienberg: When I was in school, I was less involved in extra curricular activities because I was pouring time into academics. Experiential knowledge helps a lot. Also, certain skills acquired through socialization and taking on responsibilities/positions like confidence, public speaking, networking, and so on. Those can allow for greater impact with the gifts that you have in life. It allows them to go further.

10. Jacobsen: What about the community?

Wienberg: I grew up in a unique community. It was a small town in Yukon. It is full of creative people. It was good for me. I had a lot of opportunities for involvement. There are many groups of people doing many things. The majority of people are open-minded. I showed up at 16 or 17 to be on the Board of Directors for the Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition

All of the older people in the group were excited about and supportive of it. I did not receive criticism. I was not told that I was too young, that it was silly, and so on. Everyone was excited about involvement from me. From the first job, it was the same thing. I was young. However, I was respected and encouraged. It was in this socially responsible bakery.

I was embraced as part of the family there. I worked there for 5 years. The same for the community. They supported me. Support from the community permitted the foundation of an organization. They knew me. They trusted me. I started the organization with tips from the community while working at the bakery.

References

[David Truman]. (2016, March 9). Morgan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbgIF1NO5E.

[DevelopingPictures]. (2012, March 25). Sponsor a Child: Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjzncB3HsmA.

[James Pierre]. (2016, April 5). Morgan Wienberg goes one-on-one with James Pierre. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VMeKKTxkM.

[Morgan Wienberg]. (2014, June 3). Congratulations, FH Grad 2014!. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQ7PB95aYA.

[Ryan Sheetz]. (2015, February 20). Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fdPx1srGI.

Bruemmer, R. (2011, April 8). Haiti: Little Paul gets it done. Retrieved from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/haiti+little+paul+gets+done/5214066/story.html.

ca. (n.d.). 23-year-old receives Meritorious Service Cross Medal. Retrieved from http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=804018&playlistId=1.2769055&binId=1.815911&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1.

Gillmore, M. (2012, July 18). Helping to reunite families in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-to-reunite-families-in-haiti.

Gillmore, W. (2013, August 16). Wienberg gives New York a glimpse of Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/wienberg-gives-new-york-a-glimpse-of-haiti/.

Gjerstad, S. (2014, April 8). Morgan (22) vier livet sitt til å gjenforene barn med foreldrene sine på Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.tv2.no/a/5852686/.

Little Footprints, Big Steps. (2016). Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.

Peacock, A. (2016, February 27). Haiti has her heart. http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/news/local_news/article_beb828d0-ddcf-11e5-851b-8b09487f61ce.html?mode=story.

(2014, July 8). Joven canadiense decide gastar sus ahorros en rescatar niños de Haití. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/joven-canadiense-reune-huerfanos-haitianos.html.

Shiel, A. (2011, November 17). McGill students host third annual TEDxMcGill even. Retrieved from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/mcgill-students-host-third-annual-tedxmcgill-event/.

Thompson, J. (2011, December 23). Helping Haiti for the holidays. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-haiti-for-the-holidays.

Thompson, J. (August 12). Hope and hard lessons in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/hope-and-hard-lessons-in-haiti.

Waddell, S. (2015, November 27). For decorated Yukoner, home is now Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/for-decorated-yukoner-home-is-now-haiti.

Whitehorse Star. (2016, March 2). Yukoners to receive honours from Governor General. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/yukoners-to-receive-honours-from-governor-general.

Wienberg, M. (2013, November 22). Age Is Not an Obstacle in Changing the World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-wienberg/age-is-not-an-obstacle_b_4324563.html.

Wienberg, M. (2014, January 23). Courage of a Mother. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/courage-of-a-mother/#sthash.hy1QzF0S.ZA1StSZz.dpbs.

Woodcock, R. (2013, September 26). Back to School in Haiti. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/back-to-school-in-haiti/#sthash.TMqQNkLX.dpbs.

Yukon News. (2013, February 6). Incredible acts of kindness in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/incredible-acts-of-kindness-in-haiti.

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2022-04-14

Morgan Wienberg, Background, Giftedness, Motivation, and Dreams

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/17

—

1. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In terms of geography, culture, and language, where does your personal and familial background reside?

Morgan Wienberg: I was born in Terrace, British Columbia. Since I was 9, I developed in Whitehorse, Yukon. My primary language Is English. During school for me, French is a second language. At home, I was speaking the English language. (Laughs) My family lineage is German. My grandparents are from Yugoslavia and Germany. They emigrated to Canada after the war and met in Vancouver.

2. Jacobsen: You were a gifted child and adolescent. Now, you are a gifted adult. Your accomplishments and personality show this, and I interviews, correspondence, and interaction here. For instances, the personal high independent moral standard of conduct and being valedictorian for high school. What seems like the source of this to you?

Wienberg: I was always very, very highly motivated, very ambitious, and a perfectionist. It was to an unhealthy point. I was hard on myself. I had the desire to surpass expectations. If there was something for me, then I wanted to do it. That came from me. There was not an outside pressure.

My mother and teachers wanted relaxation from me, to be a kid. In fifth grade, my mom put a timer on me. So, I could not do more than an hour of homework. It upset me. I was bothered by it. It was an inner desire to overachieve. I am an overachiever.

3. Jacobsen: Were there early indications of this general ability and motivation?

Wienberg: On an academic level, since primary school, I remember in 4^th and 5^th grade. If I was writing and did not like the look of the handwriting, I would rewrite it. In high school, it was extreme. I wanted to get 100%. Once, in biology, I earned more than 100% for doing bonus work. Also, I was particular about food. I was a purist.

As a child, which is bizarre, I was particular about consumption, the environment around me, and treatment of people. I wanted to be a perfect daughter from mom. In school, I wanted to be the model student. I was obedient. I had personal growth through work in Haiti. I have placed personal history in perspective. I am ambitious. However, I am healthier with the perfectionism.

I had a sensitivity to animals and the environment. In 4^th grade, I formed a group with best friends. We were advocates for the environment. We advocated against pollution and for animal rights. I was in 4^th grade! (Laughs) I would write a logo at the top of each assignment. It was about being nice to animals.

I did a lot of volunteering in high school for the community. I was the youngest in multiple volunteering activities. I was a Board Member of the Anti-Poverty Coalition. I was a Board Member of the Human Society of Yukon. I was the youngest board member for each of them. There was a campaign to raise awareness about homelessness. Participants would spend one week homeless.

They were not allowed home for the week, or to have a backpack with them. It was in October. That is a dangerous time in the Yukon. (Laughs) I participated in it. I was sleeping on the street in Yukon. I was in 10^th or 11^th grade. I went to school. I attempted to find a place to sleep. I developed empathy for the homeless.

Same thing with the street kids in Haiti. I spent the night with them. At that point, I spent the time with the homeless in the Yukon and the street kids in Haiti. People in the Whitehorse community were candidates for local government positions. Age was never an obstacle for me. I had mature interests than individuals around the same age as me.

I thought about animals. I thought about the environment. I thought about people around me. I was extremely focused on academics.

4. Jacobsen: Your giftedness, focus on academics, and sensitivity and compassion for “beings” around you were nurtured by Karen Wienberg. Your mother nurtured these gifts and talents. Although, based on the story about the timer to reduce hours spent on homework, your mother might ‘nurture’ via disincentivizing extremes. We have narratives about gifted individuals going to extremes. For other examples, what support came from her?

Wienberg: Absolutely, she nurtured me. my mom is a very strong and independent woman. She is intelligent and hardworking. She is open-minded. She is a role model for me. Later, this arose in me. It helped me. I overcame obstacles starting in Haiti. She always believed in me. It was not about her. That was one of the biggest supports from her.

If I changed my mind, she would not be persistent on the first thing. She encouraged trying new things. Even with my younger brother, she wanted him to know about other religions. She wanted him to volunteer in different things. Whether volunteering or other things, she encouraged me. She joined the Humane Society of Yukon and involved with the volunteering, too.

I would cook food for the homeless shelter. I was excited. She said, “We need food in our house as well!” (Laughs)

(Laughs)

Take, for example, age 5 or 6, she asked about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I would list a bunch of occupations. She would think, “Okay…” (Laughs) She supported any endeavor for me. She would back me up. That helped me. I didn’t see obstacles, at least easily. (Laughs)

5. Jacobsen: I want to parse two perspectives: gifted kid and parent. Any advice for gifted kids in pursuit of their dreams?

Wienberg: Do not allow other people’s perceptions to limit you. Do not allow your thoughts about what others think about you limit you. Age, gender, and happenstance of geography should not be a factor in personal success. I strongly believe this: mentality and ambition have the greatest influence on your ability to accomplish personal dreams.

However, if you question your ability to do it, or let outside influence the doubt of your ability, then that will be an obstacle for you.

6. Jacobsen: Any recommendations on parenting?

Wienberg: I am in a position of parenting. I work with many different types of parents. I am working with kids now. Some of them have developed without parental influence. I see their different development. I work with kids with irresponsible parents. They influence the children in a negative way. Things are taken for granted by me. These children lack proper parenting.

I see them develop in a different way with different support. It gives insight into my childhood and how my mother influenced me. When I say “mother,” I mean mother alone, single mother I never met my biological father in person. I have been in touch through e-mail. I knew about him. I never thought of being raised by a single mother because I never felt in need of anything. An independent woman raised me.

I never saw being an independent woman as any type of weakness. My mom was a strong role model for it. One important thing with parenting. You need to accept the mentality of supporting the child. You’re there for them, not you. You should want them to develop into an individual. You are there to offer guidance. However, the ambitions and the dreams of the child need to come from within the child.

You need to remove yourself. Whatever that child develops a liking to or an interest in, or sees as something to strive to achieve, your role is to support them in being a strong enough individual to have those dreams and attempt to approach them. Oftentimes, parents focus more on influencing their own aspirations for the child as opposed to building the child’s personal strengths. The child can take on their own ambition.

References

[David Truman]. (2016, March 9). Morgan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbgIF1NO5E.

[DevelopingPictures]. (2012, March 25). Sponsor a Child: Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjzncB3HsmA.

[James Pierre]. (2016, April 5). Morgan Wienberg goes one-on-one with James Pierre. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VMeKKTxkM.

[Morgan Wienberg]. (2014, June 3). Congratulations, FH Grad 2014!. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQ7PB95aYA.

[Ryan Sheetz]. (2015, February 20). Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fdPx1srGI.

Bruemmer, R. (2011, April 8). Haiti: Little Paul gets it done. Retrieved from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/haiti+little+paul+gets+done/5214066/story.html.

ca. (n.d.). 23-year-old receives Meritorious Service Cross Medal. Retrieved from http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=804018&playlistId=1.2769055&binId=1.815911&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1.

Gillmore, M. (2012, July 18). Helping to reunite families in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-to-reunite-families-in-haiti.

Gillmore, W. (2013, August 16). Wienberg gives New York a glimpse of Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/wienberg-gives-new-york-a-glimpse-of-haiti/.

Gjerstad, S. (2014, April 8). Morgan (22) vier livet sitt til å gjenforene barn med foreldrene sine på Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.tv2.no/a/5852686/.

Little Footprints, Big Steps. (2016). Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.

Peacock, A. (2016, February 27). Haiti has her heart. http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/news/local_news/article_beb828d0-ddcf-11e5-851b-8b09487f61ce.html?mode=story.

(2014, July 8). Joven canadiense decide gastar sus ahorros en rescatar niños de Haití. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/joven-canadiense-reune-huerfanos-haitianos.html.

Shiel, A. (2011, November 17). McGill students host third annual TEDxMcGill even. Retrieved from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/mcgill-students-host-third-annual-tedxmcgill-event/.

Thompson, J. (2011, December 23). Helping Haiti for the holidays. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-haiti-for-the-holidays.

Thompson, J. (August 12). Hope and hard lessons in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/hope-and-hard-lessons-in-haiti.

Waddell, S. (2015, November 27). For decorated Yukoner, home is now Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/for-decorated-yukoner-home-is-now-haiti.

Whitehorse Star. (2016, March 2). Yukoners to receive honours from Governor General. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/yukoners-to-receive-honours-from-governor-general.

Wienberg, M. (2013, November 22). Age Is Not an Obstacle in Changing the World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-wienberg/age-is-not-an-obstacle_b_4324563.html.

Wienberg, M. (2014, January 23). Courage of a Mother. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/courage-of-a-mother/#sthash.hy1QzF0S.ZA1StSZz.dpbs.

Woodcock, R. (2013, September 26). Back to School in Haiti. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/back-to-school-in-haiti/#sthash.TMqQNkLX.dpbs.

Yukon News. (2013, February 6). Incredible acts of kindness in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/incredible-acts-of-kindness-in-haiti.

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2022-04-14

Tamara Stenn, Fulbright Scholarly Exchange, Findings, and the Gods

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/16

—

We are all in this together – by all sharing information, educating others and having honest, open dialogues, we can collectively work to make our world a safer, just and happy place in which everyone can live.

You have been interviewed as well. People can listen to this in a podcast. You have written for Trusted Clothes, too. Let’s plumb more depths in academic work, especially the impressive Fulbright work. Your research on gender and sustainable development for the Fulbright Scholarly Exchange. It has been that since March 2015. What is this comparative study on the impact of fair trade?

Basically, it is looking at the impact of quinoa – farming and growing quinoa – on the rural people that live in the quinoa region.

What are the findings so far?

It is a 3-year study. Fulbright likes to pay you to do something that you know anything about. I went last year never having worked in quinoa. I was familiar with it. My mother grows quinoa. I know what it looks like.

We eat it here. I am near the region where it is grown, but I never specifically worked there. It was great. I got to know the people. Basically, there were a lot of different things going on. There was an educational revolution going on.

So, all of the people on the countryside became literate. That impacted their ability to negotiate contracts. Quinoa used to be a disadvantaged food. It was shunned. When the Spanish came and colonized Bolivia, they made quinoa growing illegal because they wanted to have their own crops grown – wheat.

They banished quinoa, but it still continued to exist. It was considered sacred crop was given to the Andean people by the gods. It grows in remote areas. It is a national grain. People eat it almost every single day.

It was usually marginalized as ‘peasant folk’ food. With the push towards quinoa and the great discovery of ancient grains, quinoa became trendy and very popular. The Bolivians are pretty smart.

They realized that there was demand for the product. They valued it. They set their own prices. They are used to working collectively. They have these strong cooperatives. They did this all on their own. The government didn’t get involved.

Because they are literate, they can negotiate contracts. They created a rural area called Challapata. It became the quinoa Wall St., where they did all the pricing for world markets. They were developed there because Bolivia had the quinoa market.

They were the largest producer in the world and kind of the only producer. For years, they were really able to take advantage of this competitive advantage that they had. They’d raise their prices 20% every year because they could.

What happened was reverse migration because these were the poorest areas of Bolivia, people started coming back who had migrated to Argentina, to Buenos Aires, to Santiago, to Madrid in search of other work.

They are coming back now, farming land that was left fallow, and building parts of the village that are falling apart. They ended up earning more than the middle class in Bolivia. All of the money made was reinvested into real estate or vehicles. They didn’t go into debt.

After 3 or 4 years, the rest of the world caught up with them and started to look at ways for them to join the quinoa market because it was lucrative. Peru had a chemical program. An industrialized program supported by the government and working with USAID to do a non-traditional chemical quinoa production in their lands. Their desert.

Because it grows in desert environments. That was successful enough that I knocked out the market for the Bolivian quinoa. The prices completely crashed. So, I was there during the price crash. Now, the market has stabilized.

The Bolivians refuse to sell their quinoa at low prices. That drove the prices up again. Now, there’s been a differentiation, where organic and fair trade is important. You can get a higher price for it.

Bolivia – because of the constitution, people grow it anyway because that’s, in a way, the law. They have a competitive advantage with that because the Peruvian quinoa is not organic or fair trade. There’s consumer education, too. Consumers don’t know the difference between the different quinoas.

You noted the gods. According to the traditions and mythologies, what gods?

There’s a story about some women that came down, kidnapped some boys to this paradise. They got homesick and wanted to go home. They sent them with a sack full of seeds. That was the quinoa. They have multiple gods and god-like people.

I’ve seen some psychological studies, where in the development of children the animistic and spiritualist beliefs seem innate. Children are hardwired to see spirits in the world. They are innate animists in a way. The argument that has been by some is that if you leave children alone. They will invent some polytheist pantheon. It’s some evolved framework for conceiving of the world. Anywho, Bolivia provides 45% of the world’s quinoa.

They are producing more quinoa than ever. A lot of it is traded in the common market for everyone’s use. Their export prices are much different than the in-country prices.

They produce tens of thousands of tons, according to the FAO.

They do. All by hand. (Laughs) They are really hardworking people.

When I think about the first year-and-a-half of your study for the Fulbright Exchange, with the 3 years in total, what are the specifics predicted for the last year-and-a-half?

I have no idea. That’s the nice thing about it. It evolves. I chose a model called Circles of Sustainability that was created by the United Nations as a starting point. I’ve been a fellow on that project.

I’m having help guide me. It is a survey-based, participatory model. One of the nice things is I have all the cell phone numbers of all of the people that participated. I can go back and contact the people that took part in the study.

I am going to have them and redo the study. I am going to do it two ways. I am going to have them think about how it was back then a year-and-a-half ago. I will compare to how they think about the past and the way they reported it when it was happening.

So, that’s something that one of my cohort’s ideas. I am going to work with current groups of people to see the baseline of things now. I do ethnographic research. Some of it is participatory appraisals. It is being there, observation. It is seeing what comes up. I have the survey too.

Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

I want to thank people for joining in with KUSIKUY and helping to spread the word, every re-tweet, share, link, like $ donated… helps with educating people about the alternatives to the clothing industry, supporting the knitters, and growing the KUSIKUY message/example. There are good, ethical, safe, clothing options in the world.

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2022-04-14

Tamara Stenn, the World of Bolivia, KUSIKUY, and Ethical Fashion

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/16

—

Any advice for new mothers, or parents in general?

Find a way that it all works together. My kids have always been a part of my business. So, they’re right there with me in it. I have seen some parents keep their kids out of the business. I don’t think that’s good. I grew up in a long family of entrepreneurs.

We grew up talking business around the dinner table. That’s what made it so easy to be drawn into entrepreneurism myself. I think having it as part of the family culture is great. When there’s trips and trade shows, you can figure out a way to bring the kids along as well.

What are some of the things that can be done on the international stage to improve the lot of women? You noted some of the things in the Kickstarter campaign video. Some things that are concrete.

I think Bolivia has pulled ahead in that. They re-did their constitution in 2009. In the Spanish language, everything has a masculine and feminine with the adjective

What is social entrepreneurship?

I am writing a book. I finished writing that introduction. (Laughs) Basically, I am defining it as a business that addresses a social need rather than a monetary one – keeping it really simple. The social need can be expressed in many different ways. It could be environmental. It could be human rights. It could be giving to a particular charity. It could be making goods accessible to a population that might not have access. It could be having worker ownership.

There’s many different ways worker ownership can be realized. The main thing is there is a piece of intentionality where the person isn’t out there to make a profit. They are out there first to do some social good.

How can sustainability be built into the Social Entrepreneurship model?

That’s what I’m working on right now. I’ve developed it. I’m trying to make it comprehensible. It is the Sustainability Lens. It takes the work that I’ve done over the last 20 years. I’ve done a lot of work with Indigenous models through studying down in Latin American, where the United Nations is working on Indigenous models of governance and sustainability.

Also, looking at Circles of Sustainability, I am a fellow with that project with the United Nations. A lot of the people working with these models are political economists. They are not business people. The difference is I am a businessperson as well.

I am taking this model and seeing how this working different models. These common tools that everyone uses realize their companies. I find that once you put that lens on top. Everything pops into place for sustainability. Because you’re a social enterprise doesn’t mean you are a sustainable company.

Sustainability deals with growth, which is a huge issue right now in the area of social entrepreneurship. How do you deal with growth? What does that mean? Because, right now, the assumption is growth means success. That’s not always the case. Our trees don’t grow to the moon.

That’s the same with business. Not every business needs to be gigantic, how do you know the right size for your business? That’s a part of sustainability. Looking at energy and resources, how is that being used? What is being made? That’s part of a sustainable enterprise and not part of social enterprise.

What are you spending your time and resources on? And why? There’s nuances that come out there. How wisdom is sourced and given back to the community? It includes a lot more collaboration. This is what happens when sustainability as it impacts all of us because you can have the most wonderful, perfect business that is the epitome of green.

Next door, you’ll have a big contaminating factory. The quality of life for the people in that region will not be good. They will not have a sustainable lifestyle. There’s a pollution. There’s the people that don’t have enough, even though your business is perfect.

So, the idea of sustainability is breaking that down and working together in systems. You have a nice model for your business. But to be a sustainable business. You need to be integrated in your community. What are we doing to help mitigate and support this community to something more balanced?

That becomes exponential. You keep getting this circles that get bigger and bigger and bigger. You’re looking at a state, then a country, and then a region. When everybody is on this sustainability mindset, you start making decisions that benefit all. That’s the difference.

What other work are you involved in at this point in time?

I teach Social Entrepreneurship at the college and am currently authoring a book (academic text) on how Sustainability can be built into a Social Entrepreneurship model.

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

It’s been a great experience having this connection and sharing it with others. We have brought scores of people to Bolivia to meet the knitters and have brought the knitters here to the US too. These exchanges remind people of how much more similar we all are then they think and helps people to want to collaborate and cooperate more. I find this very satisfying.

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2022-04-14

Scott Davies, Conatus News, Progressivism, and the Personal Narrative

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/15

Scott Davies and I are both writers at Conatus News, which is a Progressive-activist news platform meant to put those kinds of voices center stage in the discussion. The lens of the organization is known up front. Please find enclosed here one interview with a colleague from the site.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We both write for Conatus News. It is a progressive publication, politically and socially, which is oriented, often, towards the center to center-left. How did you find the publication?

Scott Davies: I initially discovered the publication via Twitter, after following various liberal and progressive Twitter users who tweeted out links to Conatus articles. From there, I began to follow and interact with some writers from Conatus News for a period of time. Recently, Conatus put out a request for writers and social media officers, which I responded to and have since begun to work for Conatus as a writer and social media officer.

Jacobsen: What is your personal narrative? How’d you get to this point?

Davies: My personal narrative, in terms of my political beliefs, is that I have generally been center-left and liberal for the majority of my life. I have always believed that the state can have a positive role in peoples’ lives, especially in terms of issues such as healthcare and the welfare state more broadly. I have also always believed in the fundamental right of freedom of speech. I believe speech should not be regulated in any way, and I am also increasingly wary of private and corporate pressures being placed on free speech. Although I still considered myself broadly left-wing, I am increasing with elements of the Left who seek to restrict speech, whether it be through government regulation, de-platforming or otherwise. These positions, ones which Conatus also hold, are a major reason why I decided to get involved with them.

Jacobsen: If you could summarize the progressive position, how would you do it? What is it?

Davies: The progressive position is fundamentally forward-thinking and egalitarian in nature. It seeks to continually enhance and improve the quality of life of people as a whole. It is reform-minded and emphasizes civil liberties.

Jacobsen: How accepted is progressive politics in Australia?

Davies: Progressive politics are becoming more and more accepted within Australia. In some measures, such as marriage equality, Australia is behind many Western nations. However, for the most part, Australia is becoming more socially progressive.

Jacobsen: In the context of the current controversies around the religious dress, especially the fundamental right to wear them, how are Australian politicians taking in the challenge, in a mature or immature way?

Davies: It is interesting that you ask this question, as this issue flared up recently in Australian politics. One Nation senator Pauline Hanson wore a burqa in the Senate chamber as a protest against the garment. The move was widely condemned as being an act of bigotry against Muslims and as being unnecessarily inflammatory and provocative. It did, however, spark an important conversation about religious garments in general, as well as the general separation of church and state in politics.

Jacobsen: What is the fastest growing faith or non-faith position in Australia?

Davies: According to the most recent Census results, released just a few months ago, for the first time, the ‘No Faith’ position is the most widely held position. A majority of Australians still identify to a religious faith, but the ‘No Faith’ option was held more than any one religion.

Jacobsen: What do you consider the pivot topic, the more important fulcrum point, for politics at the moment – upon which all or simply most else hinges?

Davies: I believe that one of the most important pivot points or trends in current politics is the change from the traditional left-right political spectrum to a divide between globalism on the one hand and nationalism on the other. Within this, the majority of economic and social issues are encompassed.

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2022-04-14

Advice for New Mothers and on Ethical Fashion from Tamara Stenn

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/15

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Any advice for new mothers, or parents in general?

What are some of the things that can be done on the international stage to improve the lot of women? You noted some of the things in the Kickstarter campaign video. Some things that are concrete.

I think Bolivia has pulled ahead in that. They re-did their constitution in 2009. In the Spanish language, everything has a masculine and feminine with the adjective forms. Instead of saying, “All People,” like in the United States with equal opportunity. In Bolivia, they spelled it out, “Men and women are equal.” Men and women, by doing that, they created a tremendous amount of recognition of the woman’s role. Now, they look at both.

In the USA, we haven’t had that happen, yet. I have been around working with mentorship groups. You probably know the criticism of Silicon Valley is the amount of men that are out there as entrepreneurs right now.

I think it’s not so intentional. Guys saying, “We are going to have a club and not invite women.” It needs to be mindful of needing women there. The mentorship group that I have been working with, Valley Mentorship. It is on their radar, where they are intentionally looking for ways to be more attractive and accessible to women.

I think that’s what Bolivia has been doing already within their constitution by being mindful of gender on both levels. I think that’s something that can be done, but it is being mindful of where are the women in the room. Or, do we have the same amount of women as men in this conversation?

What is keeping the women away? We need a space for them because they can bring things into here. We don’t know.

In America, there’s a lag time between law changes and cultural changes. One of the most prominent is the Emancipation Proclamation. It takes a century for the Civil Rights movement to follow this law in the culture. The inertia of history is a factor. Blacks, Native Americans, women, and white men without property didn’t have the right to vote for a long time. In a democratic system such as the American, that defines an individual, as a member of a collective (gender, ethnicity, and so on), as a non-citizen, or, more properly, a non-person. To your point about including men and women in the constitution of Bolivia, there seem to be lag times in America due to historical baggage in some ways. That might explain the “behind” part for America.

Yea, it is still 2-to-1 men to women with new enterprises coming forward. For every woman, there’s two men that have started that enterprise. That’s current data. There’s something that’s keeping us out of the entrepreneurship. Having that diversity, right? There’s the gender diversity, ethnic diversity.

With entrepreneurism, if you’re starting a new business, it’s easy to be thinking of yourself. I think looking for that diversity on the front sign is good at shaping a new business and bringing in creativity.

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2022-04-14

Ethical Fashionista, Tamara Stenn, on the Kickstarter Campaign

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/14

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I noticed every Bolivian was a woman in the Kickstarter video. Same with yourself. Many discussions abound on the international stage with respect to women’s rights and the relationship of sustainable and ethical fashion to the millions of workers in these countries that produce the garments for countries such as Canada (I’m by Vancouver) and the United States (You’re in Vermont). More exist on the local platforms, too. What is the importance of sustainable and ethical fashion, and fair trade, for international women’s rights?

Women are the main workers in the textile industry and also the ones taking care of the family and of reproductive age. It is important for future generations that women are safe, healthy and well cared for – so the home environment is positive for the children and the women themselves enjoy a quality of life they deserve.

With respect to the Kickstarter campaign, there are some nuances.

With the Kickstarter, we are celebrating the heritage of the women we’ve been working with for 18 years. It is celebrating the work that the herdsmen have done in preserving the fibres that they’re working with, thousands of years ago the Incas, before them the Tiahuanacos. It took a long time to develop and build the absolute best Alpaca fibres in the world. Bolivia has preserved those herds.

In Peru, there were government programs that tried to differentiate colors. Things shifted in the herds and the fibre quality has gone down. Bolivia has maintained that tradition. What we wanted to do was recognize that, to give a shout out that this is something incredibly special, over the last 18 years of working with the people in Bolivia. I have seen more and more companies switch over to Alpaca mixed with acrylic.

Products that are knit on looms and losing that heritage tradition. I value the tradition so much with the knitting needle, the ‘click, click, click,’ and that Alpaca fibre that is not adulterated with acrylic, chemicals, or modified in different ways. That’s what we’re celebrating with our Kickstarter. We’re giving people access to this amazing heritage with one of the last companies in the world with handmade gloves and knitting needles.

This lets the women pay attention to what they’re doing. We realized this is taking 12 hours a glove. While they are making the gloves, they are thinking about who is going to be wearing them. Imagining that person’s life, knowing from television that it is someone that is busy and running around in this fast-paced world of skyscrapers and subways, they are in the countryside in a timeless place. It is winds and mountains.

Tremendous skies above the tree lines, it is a different world. For them to be in that world and to be knitting those thoughts into those gloves as we move into our busy life in the Western hemisphere, it is an amazing transition. I wanted to preserve that story. What I’ve observed is as people buy KUSIKUY products, they tend to save them and use them for years. That’s why we have the 5-year guarantee on the gloves. I find most people easily save their gloves for five years. They become favorite gloves.

I wanted to build that connection with people. My doctoral research brought that up on both ends. Consumers and producers want to know who each other are, that’s what our Kickstarter is about. It is an opportunity to connect with the knitters and support them. We are hoping this will lead to us developing more connections via smart phones. We want to do sweaters next year. It is bringing that thoughtfulness and care to the public. You can’t get that anywhere else.

Any advice for young entrepreneurs?

Sure! So, I teach entrepreneurship. Constantly, I am working with young entrepreneurs. They are the most innovative and fun folks to work with. My advice to them is don’t worry that someone is going to steal your great idea because chances are someone is thinking of something you’re thinking of and that’s an ally.

That’s going to be someone you can work together with. It will be a lot of work. Also, if you already have that idea, and someone else does it, they won’t know it as well as you do. That’s something my students ask me. They say, “If someone else has it, then someone else will do it, then they’ll take it.” Even patents, nowadays people aren’t even worried about patents and trademarks. They go out and do it.

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2022-04-14

Ethical Fashion as Part and Parcel of the Life of Dr. Tamara Stenn

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/14

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Tell us about yourself – family background, personal story, education, and previous professional capacities.

I grew up in NY and come from a long line of entrepreneurs. I am a bi-lingual (Spanish/English) social entrepreneur, sustainability trainer, Fair Trade business owner, Fulbright scholar, author, and academic.

I founded the sustainable luxury brand, KUSIKUY, which has been knitting together opportunities and elegance in the Bolivian Andes since 1996. I teach sustainable, social enterprise development at both Mount Holyoke College and the SIT Graduate Institute – specializing in local-global entrepreneurship. I live in Vermont and mostly grow my own food.

What is the importance of ethical fashion?

We are a single species on a single finite planet. Being mindful of how our decisions impact others and our planet is important. The garment industry is one of the most polluting and destructive industries in the world – of both the environment and people.

Thousands die in sweatshop accidents each year, millions more are affected by poor health, disease, and contamination from textile chemicals and pesticides, farmers commit suicide over low fiber prices. More info: http://truecostmovie.com/. Ethical and sustainable fashion is an alternative to this cycle of devastation and destruction.

What is the importance of sustainable fashion?

It respects the earth’s resources and people’s talents in carefully making quality clothing that lasts.

What about fair trade?

There are good resources that define the standards through principles on this, but some include:

It creates opportunity, builds capabilities, grows relationships, connections and improves wellbeing for all.

What is KUSIKUY?

It’s a Quechua word – means “make yourself happy” and started as a post-Peace Corps project for Grad School – 19 years later, still going strong!

What makes KUSIKUY unique?

I think the handmade nature of the product with knitting needles and its Bolivian source of production. It’s 100% alpaca yarn. It has been blessed with a challah – ceremony and wishes. Finally, it is home based with independent production.

KUSIKUY products are for men and women. What is your favorite design?

Arm socks!

You took a 7-year hiatus to earn a doctorate in economics, raise two children, and write a book about the experience, and become a university professor of sustainable development. What were the main lessons from these experiences?

The importance of leadership, family, and patience – things all work out and there is time for it all. Through their export work the knitters gained tremendous leadership, time management skills and confidence in themselves.

KUSIKUY has a Kickstarter campaign as well. There’s a wonderful and informative video for those without the appropriate background on the narrative of the company and the work that it accomplishes. The campaign web page states:

Building on the heritage of Andean art and our 18 years of experience working in Bolivia, we created the world’s finest glitten, a glove/mitten, hand stitched from the king’s alpaca, that custom forms to your hand and is guaranteed for 5 years. Each glitten takes 12 hours and 2,000 stitches to make by hand with knitting needles, love and blessings.

The aim is $10,000. If you could have, say, $20,000, what would be the expanded set of initiatives for KUSIKUY?

Yes – our goal with the re-launch is to gain an audience and recognition for our next stage – the launching of our hand knit sweater for Fall 2017. Any extra earnings for the Kickstarter will be invested into the 2017 sweater development.

You’ve known the workers in Bolivia for 18 years. How does this positively impact the production cycle?

We have a long relationship with producers and are like family. This history makes it easier for us to enjoy working together and celebrate our successes together. It also makes for easy production and methods –we know how to work together.

What about providing a human sensibility to the company and its exported image to the public?

We work to build bridges between producers and users. Bother are very curious about each other and would enjoy knowing who each other were – at least to say thank you. We work on building that personal experience.

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2022-04-14

The Truth on Sustainability Bears Repetition

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/11

The truth on sustainability bears repetition.

It’s the lifeblood of culture change. Truths need legs. I wanted to express more thoughts on why sustainability is important to me. Sustainability is important to me on one level (at least).

I consider ethical fashion and sustainable fashion connected to sustainability and important as well. I like the idea of sustainability. I find the people involved in this endeavor interesting. I like their stories and narratives. It is a really interesting, rich, and committed community of intellectuals and citizens. All throughout the world invested in one goal: sustainability.

I consider sustainability a straight engineering problem. But I also consider sustainability a crucial aspect of the 21st-century in daily life. We have billions of people on the earth. We have many medical and societal reasons to thank for that fact. That means sustainability on the individual level deals with people. People like myself. People like yourself.

Sustainability as an international goal is something that brings it down to the individual level for everyone, including me. I think about fashion. I think about laundry. I think about lights. I think about cars and buses and transportation in general. I think about the consumption patterns for food. I think about supply chains. I think about the production lines and modes. All of this matters to me. All of this matters because the nature of sustainability impacts every area of human endeavor because every area of human endeavor has waste associated with it.

The question then becomes, “Do we want a sustainable future or not?” I think we do. At some level or another, even those that are most against it for monetary and economic reasons, or reasons of ease, they want the same. It’s a bit like a holdout situation, where everyone knows we need to alter at least a little bit in the end.

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2022-04-14

Emile Yusupoff, Freedom and Choice, Hikkikomori, and Virtue Signalling

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/13

Emile Yusupoff is a 24-year-old unregistered barrister in the process of applying for pupillage. Emile’s undergraduate degree from the University of Edinburgh was in Philosophy and Politics, and he maintains involvement with these fields through writing from a classically liberal perspective for publications including Conatus News. Here is part 2. Part 1 here.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: And with the desire for a space to choose, what do you consider the main barriers to provide that space for that freedom and choice?

Emile Yusupoff: I don’t know if I can use the term patriarchy because that has a bunch of connotations, but I do think a lot of what feminists complain about in terms of the way that physical gender roles are structured to have a similar impact on men in terms of saying “these are the roles and behaviors men should have.” I think the most difficult thing about being a man in Britain in the 21st century is that we are given signals to behave in the traditional male roles. For example, in dating, we’re told we must be confident, we must be forward, it’s our role to ask the girl out. But, at times, we’re told that we can’t be forceful or aggressive and that there’s something of a rape culture around that. The difficulty is navigating through that.

Jacobsen: In terms of navigating it, how do men do it now?

Yusupoff: I think most of them are very successful. I think part of the explosion of lad culture is indeed a response to that and that it’s a result of people thinking they can’t express their masculinity so they go overboard. Similarly, I think you can see the old alt-Right like that as well, with the hyper-awful version of that.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Yusupoff: And I guess I’ve noticed men disengaging. It hasn’t happened here as much as it has in somewhere like Japan. But statistically, I think we have less sex than our parent’s generation and that’s part of that disengagement. And I think generally in this country, men are not marrying or are less willing to marry. So that’s one of the ways people try to deal with it… by withdrawing and not bothering. I think that’s unfortunate, although, it’s probably not as bad as the hyper-compensating route.

Jacobsen: And to clarify on two points, you mentioned lad culture. For those not from the UK, what does lad culture ensure?

Yusupoff: I suppose it’s men acting like boys in the sense that it’s very much group-focused, it’s about male bonding. It’s about reveling in traditionally male pursuits such as drinking, sports, girls. In practice, it arguably translates to idiocy in the streets, aggression in the sheets. I have a hard time properly pinning it down but I guess it’s similar to fraternity culture in the US, in terms of attitude and reason behind its existence.

Jacobsen: You also mentioned Japan. The Hikikomori- the shut-ins or hermit men who are an extreme result of that opting out. In America, they have the opposite of that with the Guido culture or pick-up culture. And that would probably bring that range of reactions to extremes. So not at the individual level but at the cultural level in the UK as a whole, how can you navigate so that we don’t produce the extremes?

Yusupoff: I suppose it might be partially about a different approach to feminism. So, a more individualized feminism which is less combative and recognizes more that men should be pitched to as potential allies and should be included as much as possible. And we shouldn’t be afraid of saying that men can benefit from feminism and it’s okay to follow it not because of some detached or disengaged reason, but because it’s better for you to do it. It’s not a rejection of you being masculine in the sense of perhaps being outdoorsy and bloody and having male mates and going out drinking and stuff, that’s all fine, as long as you’re not imposing on women or anyone else while doing it. So it does come down in part to how we promote feminism and having male role models that are specifically meant for boys to look up to who are not cartoonishly good or pure or selfless but instead are people who are desirable to be and are better models than that hyper-masculinized figures.

Jacobsen: Do you think— and I mean this semi-facetiously and semi-seriously —that there are two sides of a coin here? On one hand you have those people who are from the “political left” that would be “allies” for the purpose of hooking up or getting a date, and on the other hand, you have people from the “political right” who are bashing those on the left in their own form of virtue signaling and trying to get a date or get laid.

Yusupoff: Yes, I think that’s part of the wider trend of virtue signaling, which is really as old as time. A lot of the way our moral understanding works is in the eye of the beholder and those who seem to be virtuous and have a character that warrants positive responses from others. I think it’s no wonder that people do that and it has always been, I guess, the two sides of physical calling. It’s like what we see with socialism where someone will signal that they’re a socialist and then someone else will ridicule them for it, and for each of their own audiences that are more desirable. Similarly, you’ll see a heated debate on TV and each side supports what their supporters were as if the aim is to perform for an audience.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time.

Yusupoff: Thank you very much.

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2022-04-14

Emile Yusupoff, Traditional Gender Roles, Political and Social Trends, and the UK

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/13

Emile Yusupoff is a 24-year-old unregistered barrister in the process of applying for pupillage. Emile’s undergraduate degree from the University of Edinburgh was in Philosophy and Politics, and he maintains involvement with these fields through writing from a classically liberal perspective for publications including Conatus News. Here is part 1.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In your experience, what are the traditional gender roles in the UK for men and women?

Emile Yusupoff: I suppose it’s very similar to the rest of the West in that the male is the breadwinner and the woman is the homemaker. I guess it depends on how traditional you want to get. I don’t think that’s been universally the case at least since the 60s, I think it has definitely shifted since then, to a subtle extent rather than just ending.

Jacobsen: Over time, you’ve noted that you’ve become more left-leaning or liberal bent?

Yusupoff: Yeah, I mean my own personal trajectory is not quite is quite idiosyncratic. I actually flirted with the far-right when I was a teenager. My parents are very liberal and I guess the only way I could rebel at the time, I thought, was by saying “oh yeah, fascism!” and that was kind of my way of being edgy as a teenager.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Yusupoff: Because just saying “oh, drugs!” wouldn’t have raised eyebrows. So I guess from there I was a mainstream conservative then became a radical right Libertarian… Ayn Rand and all that. And then from there, I mitigated that position, so now I’m somewhere between a liberal and Libertarian. So I’m to the right of liberals on a lot of economic issues, but I think the state has much more of an important role in helping the worst-off than a lot of Libertarians would allow. And then in the areas where liberals and Libertarians agree, either description would work.

Jacobsen: What are the political trends and social trends of the UK at large? What direction do they have a tendency of leaning?

Yusupoff: I think we’re overall heading towards a rejection of liberalism in this country. If liberalism can be defined as encompassing neo-liberalism, the center-left, and the Left, our trajectory is against globalization, against free markets, against migration. It’s towards the Theresa May or Blue Labour line of thinking. I don’t think the Corbyn thing represents a real shift of the population towards a hard socialism, but I do think it suggests a rejection of free markets and globalization. And I don’t know if Conservative is the right way of describing the direction of our social trends. I think Authoritarian Nationalism may be a better description. In the UK we do have a level of moderation, and as much as I don’t like the trends I’ve just described, I think the checks in our institutions and culture will mean we will never have a Trump in this country. Although we do see similar movements in that way, fortunately, we’ll be somewhat mitigated in that sense.

Jacobsen: Given the personal and political perspectives as well as the national one, and also noting the descriptions as you traditionally defined, what do you think would be a healthier sense of a male identity? What are healthier behavior and thoughts, without going into identity politics?

Yusupoff: I wouldn’t want to give a single answer to that. I think it has to be entirely idiosyncratic. So I have an issue saying that there should be roles set. I know that some people would say that perhaps we need to have a new sense of masculinity or that we need to encourage men to be more comfortable with feminine traits. This might sound trite but I think it essentially comes down to each individual and whatever they feel is a flourishing way of living. So for some men, I think a traditionally male role would work well. And I think we should be encouraging the creation of a space where men do feel free to pursue more feminine traits. But I don’t think any of these are a one-size-fits-all policy. The culture would just have to be one that encourages people to have the space to choose.

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2022-04-14

Fiona Armstrong-Gibbs, Spoken and Written Work, and Oka-B Footwear

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/13

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Fiona Armstrong-Gibbs has worked in the fashion and footwear industry for nearly 20 years. She is a fashion lecturer, writer, currently researching social enterprise in the fashion industry and is involved with Oka-B footwear as their UK distributor. Her co-authored book is Marketing Fashion Footwear: The Business of Shoes.

You have been in the fashion and footwear industry for about 20 years. What are the major lessons that can be passed on to people new to that industry?

Know what are your values and beliefs when you enter into the industry. Make sure you take full advantage of the knowledge that is offered to you in internships, university etc – this is your chance to build your ethical foundations. If you say you are anti-fur and then take a design internship at a company that uses fur in their collections then ask yourself are you really anti-fur? How much do you know and understand your values? Most people are appalled at the working conditions in factories in places such as Bangladesh but as a junior designers or PR for a fast fashion company do you really know how transparent your supply chain is. If you are too scared to ask the question for fear of being sacked – a) is this really the career you want and b) – imagine how scared a machinist in Bangladesh is? She can’t afford to ask the same uncomfortable questions and probably has much more to lose than you –so, ask the question.

You lecture and write on fashion. What is the general content of the written and spoken work?

I write about the business of fashion particularly from an educational perspective. As an academic I do try to keep my own personal bias and beliefs about ethics to one side but prompt students to think for themselves, offering facts and issues for them to explore themselves. I see huge potential in the next generation to make a change, many students know that there is so much in the fashion industry that is wrong but are overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. Hence the know your own values above.

You research social enterprise in the fashion industry. What is the specific content and purpose of this research?

The term ‘social enterprises’ is very broad and in various forms they have been around for years – such as co-ops. For the most part they are a type of business that has a dual return on investment – meaning that the time and money invested must return benefits that are both financial (i.e it should be sustainable) and social – so people must also benefit in a wider sense. My current research is based in the UK and looks specifically at a new legal structure called a Community Interest Company. There are now over 12,000 CICs registered in the UK representing a variety of sectors from music production and childcare to arts organisations and housing providers, all agreeing with the fundamental principle of asset locking any financial surpluses and using them to benefit their community rather than paying out to shareholders or personal investors. I am exploring the role that this type of business model could take in the Creative sector and hope to focus on new and existing fashion companies who want to use this structure.

You are involved with Oka-B footwear as well. What tasks and responsibilities come with this collaboration?

I really believe that you should practice what you preach and the fashion industry is changing so rapidly that sometimes the only way to do this is to continue to work in the industry as it evolves. My company imports and re sells Oka-B in the UK. We are responsible for the brands distribution and marketing here. I talk to my customers both retail and wholesale and am involved with all the day to day challenges this brings. It has been a brilliant experience – as someone who started out communicating with clients via fax and phone seeing the shift to email and then online sales and now social media – there is no better way to learn than by doing it. How customers engage with social media and the amount of quantitative data about customers is at the touch of a button now – years ago you would be lucky to see it updated and faxed on a weekly basis. It’s hard work and I have a huge empathy for any fashion start-up today, even though we are based in the UK we are subject to so many global challenges.

You co-authored Marketing Fashion Footwear: The Business of Footwear. What is the argument and evidence for the narrative and content of the text?

The footwear industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in apparel over the last 15 years or so, fuelled by fast fashion and our avaricious consumer appetite, students are now looking for specific texts about this sector and how it works. Footwear has responded to fashions cycles and trends but it is still a different industry in terms of its design, construction and manufacturing processes. How we consumer and use footwear is also different in terms of motivations and emotions. We hope that it will be a text that supports both students and new entrants to the footwear market and gives them confidence to find a fulfilling job in a very exciting industry.

What other work are you involved in at this point in time?

I love supporting and spreading the word about new ways of doing business and companies that challenge the status quo – always on the lookout for a new or better way of doing things in the fashion industry.

What meaning or personal fulfilment does all of this work bring for you?

I get huge satisfaction in seeing people connect and collaborate and prosper and if I can intervene to make that happen I will.

With regard to ethical and sustainable fashion companies, what’s the importance of them now?

There is no future for the fashion industry as it is today if there is not a paradigm shift to a better way of doing things for everyone in the supply chain. China has an aging population and will run out of cheap labour, if it hasn’t already. We can’t keep ‘racing to the bottom’ of the labour pool and squeezing profit margins. The next generation of businesses have to believe that profit can be measured in other ways such as healthy people and a healthy environment. We have to be better and we all have a huge responsibility to create the confidence to do it.

Any, feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Don’t make ethical fashion niche – it should underpin every element of the industry and become the norm. To do this we need to keep raising the profile of what the good people do, find your allies and get on with it. Every single retweet, like and blog article discussion can add together to make a very loud noise.

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2022-04-14

Fiona Armstrong, Marketing Fashion Footwear: The Business of Shoes

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/12

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Fiona Armstrong-Gibbs has worked in the fashion and footwear industry for nearly 20 years. She is a fashion lecturer, writer, currently researching social enterprise in the fashion industry and is involved with Oka-B footwear as their UK distributor. Her co-authored book is Marketing Fashion Footwear: The Business of Shoes.

Tell us about yourself – family background, personal story, education, and previous professional capacities.

Born near Liverpool in the early 1970s, not a particularly prosperous time in the north west of England but my parents were hard workers and wanted a better future for themselves and us, at the age of 4 we moved to the Middle East where my dad worked in computers in the oil industry – a new and innovative sector which paid well for expats at the time. Returned to the UK at 11 years old. While prospects in the North West weren’t much better, the UK, in general, had a better economic outlook, particularly in the south. Our family stayed in the NW but dad worked down south during the week for several years, after which worked in Spain and recently retired from a job in Switzerland.

I always wanted to work in the fashion industry, made dolls clothes, my own clothes and reworked and styled clothes for school friends. Was never a question that I was going to do anything else. I made the assumption I was going to be a fashion designer because I didn’t know there were any other jobs that you could do in fashion. I never knew anyone that had worked in it. Through school I did ok but although it was a good school it did not nurture my type of creativity or entrepreneurialism, it was a traditional academic girl grammar school and I was quite unique in my ambitions, even setting up a bespoke accessories company that recycled classmates jeans into drawstring backpacks – from what I remember they were quite popular!

I went on to a general arts pre degree foundation course but soon realized that I was better at talking about fashion than I was actually creating it. My undergraduate degree is in History of Art and Design with Fashion history and theory and my masters, of which I was one of the first to study in the late 1990s is in fashion marketing and promotion. Although marketing was not necessarily a new role in the industry it was being recognized as a growing area to study. I completed that course in 1998 and moved to London. London in the late 1990s was booming in the fashion industry. It was an incredibly exciting time in terms of the industry’s creative and commercial growth. Commercially many trends were quite minimalist but it was the era of the mega brand, Gucci revival, Prada Sport and real innovators like Alexander McQueen and John Galliano was being globally recognized in couture and high-end fashion.

Fashion was a cool industry and wasn’t something that stayed out on the edge for quirky misfits. This growth coincided with the real democratization of fashion. First Zara who managed to appropriate key trends from the catwalk and produce them quicker than the brands themselves could – it was literally magic in front of our eyes and not only that, we could afford to buy these things too. There was also much more access to counterfeit goods. The internet was not widely used to buy fashion so there were a certain exoticness and desirability about being able to get a knock off LV monogrammed bag from a friend of a friend who had managed a quick dash to Canal Street NYC during a business trip to the US.

So for the first time, a regular consumer could dress like a well off designer fashionista and I don’t think anyone really cared where the goods came from – or thought that people were being harmed – so long as we could emulate a look from the growing legion of celebrities…

One of my first jobs was assisting the wholesale manager at the newly established ready to wear company Jimmy Choo. This was a typical example of the democratization of fashion. Jimmy Choo was and still is a bespoke craftsman with a small team who would make bespoke personal orders for royalty, celebrities and very special occasions – weddings etc. A way to bring this to the masses if you like was to mass produce it. Which is what they did – albeit to the highest quality and made in Italy it was still RTW, meaning that anyone with a couple of 100 pounds could buy shoes that were also worn by Princess Diana.

We were all pretty consumed by this desire for fashion and some now say that it is the marketers that have ruined true creativity in fashion, in the quest to have lifestyle brands and so everyone can have everything we’ve taken the soul out of true craftsmanship and are forcing people to make and buy things that they don’t need. There is no real value in it anymore.

What is the importance of ethical fashion?

Ethical fashion style or ethical fashion business?

On a basic level, I guess you mean clothes etc made in a fair way with materials that do not harm the environment? I think one of the problems with the term ethical is that it means different things to different people and ultimately it boils down to personal ethics and there is nothing more personal than our individual view on what is fashion – so you have a double anomaly which will be as unique as it is individual – what is ethical fashion style for me may be very different for you.

We’ll never pin this down because it’s too big.

I worry that it is still being seen as a niche or subsection of fashion for a certain person that puts personal values ahead of personal style

For me I’m interested in businesses that are run in an ethical way, fashionability and style will follow. But this is at the core of a business and what is its purpose. The vast majority of businesses exist to make money for the people that have taken the risk in setting it up. They will look for a return on their investment of time and money so unless the person who has set it up or is in charge prioritizes ethical behavior and can convince shareholders and customers to measure that as a success I think we are a while off.

What is the importance of sustainable fashion?

For me ‘sustainable fashion’ is about a product or service that can make enough money to fulfill its objectives in a fair way over the long term without harming people or planet in the process. This should be the way that every new product and business in the fashion industry approaches innovation, development, and change – and if not we are not going to have an industry that lasts much longer.

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2022-04-14

Adrien Taylor, Company, Logo, Advertising, and Bamtino

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/12

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I love hearing these individual stories. It’s not only the company, the logo, and the advertising. There tends to be a narrative for each company.

Yeah, that’s right. I think we’re trying to create a strong story. Obviously, we are trying not to take ourselves too seriously. We take what we do seriously, but we don’t take ourselves seriously. We are not planning to change the world with caps. It’s just caps, but Offcut could be an example of what a company can be in the 21^st century.

We are building a financially viable business from other peoples’ waste. The hope is that we can serve as an example for people much smarter than myself that can make real differences in renewable energy or electric cars. Other sustainable initiatives. We think that’s fantastic. That’s the whole point and the Offcut business model.

That’s why the CEO is the dog.

Let’s get to the denouement, with respect to other projects, what other work are you involved in at this point in time?

I do freelance journalism work. I co-directed a film, a climate documentary, last year. It was called 30 Million. We filmed in Bangladesh. It was four of us. We were funded by the UN. I’m still involved in environmental and climate change communications as part of my passion, raising awareness around climate change.

I run another company that I founded as well last year called Bamtino.com, which is a custom furniture procurement platform. That’s about it. I’m busy with three or four different things at the same time.

With regard to ethical and sustainable fashion companies, what’s the importance of them to you?

I can only speak for Offcut. What’s important for me with Offcut? It is to be a genuine brand. I think, unfortunately, there’s a lot of greenwashing these days. People can see right through it, especially if you don’t practice what you preach. People can tear you apart.

You have to be a genuine brand that stands by what you say you stand by. It is something that I really conscious of with Offcut. With Offcut, I don’t want it to be known as an environmentally sustainable brand. I don’t want people to buy our caps because they like the sustainability side of it.

I don’t think that stands up on its own two feet. I want people to buy our caps because they are the best caps on the scene or the coolest. The rarest and most limited edition five-panel caps that people have ever seen because they are contributing something positive to the environment. At least, they are not contributing to garments that are costing the planet or people a lot.

So, that’s how I’d summarize it, as to what’s important to me.

Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

We covered everything, to be honest. Again, I suppose it is what I was saying before. We are not claiming to change the world with caps, but hopefully, people can get inspired by the business model and realize that in every single industry there are resources that we need to be seeing as classified as waste because we’re incredibly inefficient. Most industries can maximize using resources to their full potential.

I do hope to pay myself a salary from this, but, also, to have people look at everything they do in their industry and take steps by saying, “Wait, is there anything that we can do in our industry?” We can, ultimately, maximize our revenues streams. To maximize resources, it doesn’t only make environmental sense. It makes economic sense as well. I think there’s an incredible scope for businesses to flourish if they can appreciate that and maximize resources.

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2022-04-14

Adrien Taylor, Offcut Caps, Sustainable Fashion, and a Dog

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/12

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Tell us about yourself – family background, personal story, education, and previous professional capacities.

I’ll keep it brief. (Laughs) Because I’m not that interesting! I’m from New Zealand. I’m 26. I studied here all through high school and university. I’m half-French. I have lived in France for a few years growing up. Basically, my background is in journalism. I was in TV journalism for 4 years, until I decided to quit about a year ago. I pursued my passion for business, sustainable business in particular.

I decided to quit the career job in TV journalism and attempt to make my own thing, and grow it from nothing.

What is the importance of ethical fashion?

It’s extremely important to me. These days it’s unacceptable to claim ignorance on any product that you buy because we are more connected, more glued up, than ever before. We know how clothes in general are made in developing countries. We know the working conditions in general are not great. We know making clothing is incredibly resource intensive.

We know that waste is a huge issue. We know all of these things. You have to be blind to not see it shared on Facebook. The knowledge is out there and claiming ignorance is not cool anymore. Having said all of that, the next logical step is to make the moral decision to consume better. I think we’re seeing more and more people who are demanding that.

So, that’s fantastic. It is something that I am very passionate about, and not just for clothing, but for coffee – anything. Any resource or product, it is incredibly important to think about where it comes from, how it’s made, and what is the social and environmental impact of that product, of you buying that product.

So, that’s, basically, what ethical fashion means to me. It’s another part of wanting to be a better consumer and wanting better products in a more just, environmentally friendly way than products have been up to now.

What is the importance of sustainable fashion?

Sustainability is crucial in the 21^st century. Absolutely everything that I do, and everything that we should all be demanding from businesses, because we’ve only got one planet. We aren’t taking good care of it. We can’t afford to not take car

e of it. As far as we know, it is the only planet we can live in at the moment.

So, all businesses in the 21^st century need to be economically sustainable and environmentally sustainable. The two need to go hand-in-hand these days. So, the garment industry is incredibly resource intensive, e.g. producing cotton. We are in an age where there’s throw away fashion. People want tomorrow’s fashion yesterday.

People only holding onto clothes for a very short amount of time. It is not acceptable, not cool. It is an incredibly unsustainable way to consume. We need to consume less. That applies to our clothes.

What we’re trying to do with Offcut is consume more efficiently. So, basically, taking something that would otherwise end up in the landfill and not generating any new fabric, it’s using the bits that are leftover to create a valuable product.

It’s a very small step, a very small part, of a larger issue, but I think it is something that we should be demanding from all clothing manufacturers that we buy from.

What is Offcut for those that don’t know? What makes it unique?

Offcut is a cap company at the moment. I could extend into other things. Basically, it started from a very simple premise. My father, who is retired now, used to be in the curtain industry. I went to his warehouse last year here in New Zealand.

I asked dad, “What do you do if these bits of perfectly brand new fabric are too small to be made into curtains?” He said, “We pay someone to come pick them up a couple of times a year and bring them out to the landfill.” Then it really started from there.

I thought it was a ridiculous thing to be doing in the 21^st century to be throwing out a perfectly brand new resource. I looked at a lot of curtain fabrics that weren’t really my cup of tea as curtains, but thought they’d make really good caps.

And the good thing about caps is that the panels, the individual panels, are very, very small, and so we could use bits of Offcut fabrics from a variety of different suppliers in the garment industry, curtain industry, upholsters, and a whole bunch of industries.

That’s where the idea started 7 or 8 months ago. Basically, it has grown from there. We make 5 panel caps from Offcut and discarded fabrics destined for the landfill. We plant a tree with every cap sold in partnership with Trees for the Future.

What is Trees for the Future?

Trees for the future is a great American-based non-profit, which works with farmers in sub-Saharan African countries to grow and plant trees with them, for them. Fruit trees, it’s the awesome benefits of offsetting carbon dioxide, sequestering carbon dioxide, but they also provide fruit and income for families in developing countries in Africa

It’s a fantastic partnership. It’s a fantastic charity. We’re very proud and pleased to be working with them to make the small step of sponsoring a tree for every cap sold.

Now, you have a co-founder and a dog. What’s their relation to the theme of Offcut Caps?

Yea! We’ve got a co-founder who’s a dog. He’s the CEO. He’s Pedro the dog. We believe he is the world’s first dog CEO. We’re very proud of him. We’re an equal opportunities employer. The three of us founded Offcut last year.

Matt is my best mate. He lives in Dubai. Pedro is another good mate of ours. The three of us got together and thought it was a good idea. We decided Pedro would be the best, not person, but dog to lead us. He became CEO.

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2022-04-14

Karen Warner, Gardening, Other Work, and Sustainable Fashion Companies

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/12

I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Here is part 2. Part 1 here.

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You spend a great deal of time gardening. What is the personal salience of gardening to you?

I find it calming and meditative to be outside, not speaking to anyone, just digging or weeding. I’m an all-weather gardener now I have my own boilersuit and oilskins.

As a teacher, I know how important it is to include gardening, sustainability and the environment in every curriculum. I’ve read worrying reports this year on the vast numbers of young people in the UK who have never experienced being in nature. Studies from Scandinavia are now backing up what seems like an obvious connection between time spent in nature and better communities and lower crime. I never regret a moment spent outside in my garden.

What is your favourite part of gardening?

I love the harvest…going out with a big bowl and scissors and snipping off leaves, herbs and flowers for a gorgeous salad. I’ve also just made my second batch of rhubarb wine and my neighbour Eddie, who is my go-to expert, has just given me his grapevine prunings to turn into Folly wine. Home-grown food and wine with friends, in the garden. Nothing nicer!

What about favourite kind of gardening?

Here in Shetland I love trying to beat the wild weather, like the regular hurricane-force winds that liven up the long, dark, winter, so we can really enjoy the garden during the almost constant summer daylight (we’re above 61 degrees north here…in line with Anchorage and St Petersburg). When we lived in Berlin, my gardening was confined to a balcony, although I did manage to squeeze a few pots onto the street below. Berlin was where I first encountered guerrilla gardening and I like to think, were I to live in a city again, I’d be out there, secretly creating little oases among the urban sprawl.

What other work are you involved in at this point in time?

Alongside developing Susurrus, my organic silk pillowcase business, I continue to teach. I’ve just finished a contract in a two-teacher rural primary school, where I taught primary 1, 2 and 3. After the summer holidays I start a new job teaching communication skills to young adults in a local college.

With regard to ethical and sustainable fashion companies, what’s the importance of them to you?

I have a lot of respect for the many ethical and sustainable companies who are now working within the fashion industry, especially those who started out long before the current trend, like People Tree. These companies are creating monitoring systems, standards, markets and expectations that ease the way for the rest of us.

When I set up Susurrus it took me many months to find a source of certified-organic silk in China. That was crucial for me…I wasn’t going to set up this company using silk from just any Chinese producer, even though that would have been simple and a lot cheaper. Part of my idea was to show that good, ethical, sustainable materials and products can come from China.

Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

If only shopping and manufacturing habits could change as quickly as catwalk trends, all fashion would soon be ethical and sustainable. Imagine that…this season’s must-have accessory … a clear conscience.

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2022-04-14

Karen Warner, Background, Sustainable Fashion, and Married with Children

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/11

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Tell us about yourself – family background, personal story, education, and previous professional capacities.

I was born in Edinburgh, in 1969, but grew up in the Scottish Highlands, one of the most rugged and beautiful parts of the UK.

I studied journalism in Edinburgh, then moved to the Shetland Islands, in the far north of the country, for my first job. I intended to stay about a year, thinking I’d move back to the city, but somehow I’ve never really left. I worked at a local newspaper then was one of the founding members of a news agency, writing daily articles for the UK press. A lot of our stories were about the North Sea oil industry, and following the Braer Oilspill, which hit the islands in 1993, I co-wrote a book, Innocent Passage, The wreck of the tanker Braer, with my work partner Jonathan Wills.

In my early 20s I left for three months backpacking in China after booking a flight on a whim one wet, dark January. It was my first time out of Europe and I remember arriving in Beijing with no plan, being bundled into a rickshaw and being cycled down the backstreets of the city for about an hour, with no clue where I was being taken. The light, the smells, the different sounds were all so new to me, it was utterly thrilling and I have continued to love travelling on my own.

Within a year of that first visit I had taken a year’s job at China daily, as a “polisher”, editing the stories written by Chinese journalists. I worked there again a few years later, but that time with my husband Pete and son Leo along with me. Living in Beijing in the late 1990s was an amazing time for us; we explored as much as we could, walking and cycling for hours around the old hutongs, the courtyard houses; taking trains, buses and horses and carts to remote towns and villages, often chosen based on a random recommendation or by sticking a pin in a map.

When I was pregnant with my second son Cosmo we returned home to Shetland via a few months in New Zealand. When the kids were small, I decided to retrain as a teacher, which is a job I still do today.

We headed East again as a family in 2008, backpacking across China, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and India for several months. Friends thought we were a bit mad taking our kids (aged 7 and 11 at the time) out of school for so long, but they were up for it and I was pretty sure we’d have some life-changing adventures together. (We did…from being trapped in a car by a swollen river in a deadly flood, to our youngest son dislocating his neck playing football… but mostly our experiences and the people we met were fantastic.)

When the money for travelling ran out, we took jobs in an international school in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. It was set in a botanical garden, but close to China’s massive factory belt, producer of a vast percentage of the world’s manufactured goods. In contrast to these huge factory complexes driven by Western desires for cheaper, quicker goods, we often took trips to small towns and villages where traditional skills were still used to create beautiful fabrics, art, furniture…even simple kitchen utensils, carved from bamboo or a twisted root. Around this time the seed of an idea to find an organic source of exquisite Chinese silk was forming.

We returned to Europe, spending three years teaching in Berlin, where I was again involved in curriculum development within an International Baccalaureate (IB) school, before finally making it back home to our tiny 400-year-old croft house by the Atlantic Ocean last August. Leo has now left to go to university in Glasgow, but Pete, Cosmo and I live here with our rescue cat and two ducks.

What is the importance of ethical fashion?

When I was growing up, ethics and fashion weren’t really ever connected. We bought stuff in Oxfam and other charity shops, but that was more to do with having no money, rather than concerns about the fashion industry. Now, having seen and met so many people on my travels without the advantages we’ve grown up with, and who daily face more challenges than most of us encounter in a lifetime, I have no excuses not to be as ethical as I can as a consumer and producer. Watching an old lady sitting on the street, struggling to sew zips on a pile of jeans, you can’t help but wonder, ‘what if that was my granny?’ We have to try to do the right thing by people, wherever they happen to have been born.

What is the importance of sustainable fashion?

I really applaud the whole “30 wears” idea put forward by Livia Firth here in the UK to encourage people to buy smarter and hold onto clothes for longer. In reality I suspect most people outwith the fashion industry and unfazed by trends have many pieces they’ve worn on and off for decades. If something is made well, to last, then it has sustainability built in. If it passes through a secondhand shop at least once in its life, then that’s sustainable. Fast fashion never makes it that far.

For me, sustainable fashion is about two or three things. It is about using natural resources carefully, avoiding the use of damaging products and practices as far as possible and it is about having a sustainable workforce of skilled, fairly paid people, who can feel proud of their day’s work. It is up to industry leaders to make sure this happens and consumers to keep the pressure on.

You are married and have sons. How does being married and having sons change perspectives over time?

I have no idea! But they’re all great people, and I’m sure that rubs off on me!

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2022-04-14

Dara Ambriz, Trusted Clothes, Production Mode, and Continuing the Conversation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/11

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You have a background in psychology and communications. There are aspects of having a designer’s eye from the story told by you. If someone has a designer’s eye, and if they’re dealing with people a lot of the time, what is the intersection between those two? Between knowing what will look good with a particular individual and for the individual to understand that.

I think you have to understand your client’s comfort zone and what they are willing to try. I then push them out, just a bit. I had a customer visit me who I did a stylist session with. She told me she loved black and wasn’t a fan of too much color. Listening to her I pulled a couple of black options. However, looking at her skin and hair coloring I also pulled some earthy tone colors and asked her to try them on just for fun. She did and she was amazed at how good they looked on her. She and I have become good friends and always teases me, saying to herself on the days we get together, “I’m seeing Dara today. I better step up my look today.”

I had another customer send me a wonderful thank you note. It stated, “Thank you again for the beautiful dress. I felt like a movie star and received so many compliments on the dress!!” You can bring your personality through in whatever you wear and it doesn’t have to be drastic. The way that you can carry yourself because of your armor, because of what you’re wearing, has a profound effect on the way you arrive on the scene for an event or a job interview. I am happy that I can provide that kind of service.

Those are important points. When individuals go into an interview and don’t feel comfortable in their own skin, by which I mean the clothes they’re wearing at the moment, it can detract from the full focus of the interview at the moment. If it is some important job interview, it matters.

Yes! I’ve been blessed with countless stories of men and women who have told me how I helped them their look. One woman, in particular, came back and said, “I got the job. I wouldn’t have done it if you wouldn’t have spent the time with me.”

With regard to organizations/companies, and so on, like Trusted Clothes and Production Mode, what’s the importance of them to you?

These types of companies are helping the general public better understand where clothing is coming from and who’s making it. There’s such a movement around sourcing organic and local foods (the importance of what we put in our bodies). I love that I’m starting to see that happen in what we put on our bodies. Companies like Trusted Clothes, helps create and highlight transparency. I am continuing to learn and comprehend all of it. From fast fashion, like Zara, H&M, and Forever21. If that shirt costs $5. How much is the person who is making that shirt being paid? Looking at the supply chain.

I’m also looking at the other side. I love high-end designers, but if you are charging $300 for a shirt that uses man-made materials and is manufactured in Bangladesh or China. I always wonder, “how much are you making off the garment?” I have a hard time with that. Through Hopeless + Cause Atelier, I hope to create price points that people who believe in the slow fashion movement can afford: livable wages, sustainable practices and investing back into the community.

One of the big things is to your earlier point about transparency. Many people don’t know the supply chain, the production line, and the working conditions for the people that make their garments, especially when it comes to decent pay for them to have a decent life. It comes down to varying considerations. What do you consider valuable? How much do you put on each variable in the eventual calculation? To close, what places would you like to take your company?

I would love to be to manufactur in New Mexico. I would like to slowly grow the line into more customizable, ready-to-wear pieces. There are a couple of manufacturing options and one I found a non-profit organization working with women to transition them out of homelessness. I want to be thoughtful in the growth of the company to make sure it is sustainable. A company that can meet the demands and continues with the tenets of the company set out by me. I am hoping by showing in LA later this year that I can grow in nearby markets like LA, Denver, and Phoenix who appreciate the slow fashion movement.

Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

I think by continuing the conversation with writers like you, Scott, Sara Corry and the entire team at Trusted Clothes, slow fashion won’t be a niche market, but instead the norm.

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2022-04-14

Ask A Genius 301 – Edenbargain (3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: We are about to deconstruct ourselves and completely understand how we are made, how we work, and we are about to have dominion over ourselves and our drives. So, we are acquiring knowledge and we are getting kicked out of natural paradise.

We are going to be on our own because we will be for the first time in charge of what we think, how we think, what we feel, we will determine our drives. And we have to, living as a human, what we do as humans, to being a choice, that we will be able to live in a whole bunch of other ways that are more self-determined.

And along with that goes all sorts of social disruption, disenchantment, both with our human forms and the forms that are to come as we work through the various kinks in those forms. We will know a lot, and in knowing a lot about ourselves we will, we have talked about this before, we will see how rinky-dink and little we really are. Even though we have the gift of consciousness.

On the other hand, along with this knowledge will be conscious is the best you can do, it is the king shit of information processing. And all of the rinky-dink we have as conscious beings, are shared with, we can assume, trillions of other conscious species or sets of entities across the universe.

The consciousness is in all its magical glory and sad limitations is how information is best processed. And maybe we will be able to punch through the consciousness as we understand it to higher levels of information processing. And more desolated forms of existence. But I can’t kind of doubt it. I think that even the fanciest future forms of information processing will still be forms of consciousness. The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-14

Ask A Genius 300 – Edenbargain (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/24

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You mean this as a metaphor, just to clarify?

Rick Rosner: Yeah. And to put it in you know less religious terms, you could say instead of God setting a place at his table, you could say that evolution has set a place for us at its table that we are very adapted, very competent, you know we have dominion over the world. Which we shouldn’t have, you could argue that we shouldn’t have as much dominion as we do, because we are messing up a lot of stuff. But we, you know, we are the king shits of the planet right now. Thanks to our evolved skills. Also thanks to our evolved skills we are about to descramble or completely understand how the brain works, how consciousness works, and incidentally how the body works. Which will eventually lead to types of immortality. But it also means that we will be kicked out of our evolved natural emperorship of the world. You know we have things pretty nice, we can do what we want in the world, we have lives full of pleasures, entertainment, and good food and good sex, if we are lucky enough to live in a rich country and not a horrible situation. Where we enjoy the fruits of dominion. We like what we like. We have definite likes that we have evolved as evolved creatures, that evolution wants us or driven us to certain types of food helped us survive during that period of which we evolved. We like sex because sex carries on the species. There is a lot of stuff that we have evolved to like, and we live in a world that has a lot of that stuff and we have the skill to make more of that stuff. But we are about to lay ourselves bare.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-14

Ask A Genius 299 – Edenbargain (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/23

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We talked about the Edenbargain, what do you mean by that?

Rick Rosner: I don’t know if anybody else has ever used the term. I kind of made it up, because I think our current situation has parallels with the Garden of Eden. Where, you know, God set a place for humans at his table. And said all you have to do is to have paradise is not to acquire knowledge. And you know, things were nice there. There was, I think even, I don’t think you know, I think according to the Bible, people in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve hadn’t succumbed to the snake’s knowledge, they might have had immortality you know. They had no shame, they could walk around naked and nobody was freaked out. They had all of the fruits of paradise except for apples I guess. But anyway, they had it nice, and all they had to do to keep was to stay dumb, but they didn’t. So, they got kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-14

Ask A Genius 298 – Universal Basic Income (8)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What’s the source of this?

Rosner: You mean what makes me say that? Well, you go on social media, particularly Twitter and it’s a festival of rancor and bullying and ridicule and non-conciliatory speech. Then you go out in your car; just in LA or in a lot of cities and everybody is driving like a selfish dick wad often because they can’t bring themselves to get off…driving is people who just stop several car lengths short of where they should stop it at stop signs or when encountering a line of traffic because they just kind of are approximately barely paying attention to what’s going on in their driving environment.

So, they just kind of stop kind of over roughly, they know something’s coming up and don’t stop well behind where they should and just start looking at their phone and just sit there even when traffic starts moving again. It’s particularly annoying at traffic signals that are triggered by pulling up on the soft bar or the magnetic trigger is that says, “Oh, there’s somebody here who wants to trip left, who wants the light to change and the car that is waiting for light to change is 20 feet beyond the point where they could get the light to change and so it just doesn’t you’re stuck with them.” That’s just one flavor of dickishness but the level of driving dickishness is it steadily increases, you hear about countries where almost all drivers are dicks; being a total dick is necessary for driving in that country like Italy is known for that. But that’s from the ‘60s and ‘70s where and it’s based on super aggressive driving in your tiny little four feet by eight feet Fiat, but now in America dickishness, while driving takes the form of not driving on roads.

And then you look at politicians where like Mitch McConnell, one of the most dick-ish politicians currently in power decides that you can get away with the Supreme Court, particularly since Supreme Court justices may not have to die very much anymore because medicine is going to get better and better. I don’t know how sophisticated his thinking is about that but people appointed the Supreme Court now could still be serving in 2016 or 2017, said she is in her 50s could as medicine improves he could keep working to age a 100 if the advances in medicine that are supposed to be coming actually come and you can bet if Kennedy who’s rumored to be retiring retires that the appointee Trump’s next nominee will be no older than in his early 50s after Trump can find a reliably conservative nominee who’s in his or her late 40s or mid-40s, he’ll nominate the hell out of that person and get somebody who’s still going to be on the court in 2050s and 60s at the very least.

So McConnel says we can’t let position on the court go to the person who under normal conditions would be nominated for it by Obama and we have to come up with some bullshit to deny that nomination and that’s just craven and it’s anti-democratic and I think it’s anti-American and that dickishness just pervades government at state national levels right now.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-14

Ask A Genius 297 – Universal Basic Income (7)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/27

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Let me sum up, just let me say this. Guaranteed minimum wage is one tool on the Swiss army knife of addressing automation based economic dislocation.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay.

Rosner: It’s something that should always be kept in mind but is a small way of addressing and for me in America, I don’t have to worry about the politicians leaning on that solution too hard because the Conservatives won’t let that happen.

Jacobsen: Because that’s socialism in the same way climate change is the liberal hope.

Rosner: Not a liberal hope, it’s Chinese hopes.

Jacobsen: [laughing] well, liberal and Chinese hopes.

Rosner: Okay, you’re saying it’s the end of the Roman Empire and that’s extreme assistance, it’s always been the end of America, it’s always the apocalypse for someone. I do think when you look at American behavior there are enough people in America right now who to some extent are behaving like dicks to the point where you could argue that we are no longer as good a country as we like to think we are. Proud Americans and I still am a proud American; like to think that we are a force for good in the world, but when you look at the level of dickishness that affects our culture and our daily lives and our politics there’s argument to be made that we’re just not as good as people as we used to be.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-14

Ask A Genius 296 – Universal Basic Income (6)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/20

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: There have been arguments for some of these things. Or another thing could happen is if you don’t get people the guaranteed minimum income, then they get poor and then it’s a business opportunity for companies to figure out how to make things extra cheap for extra poor people.

It becomes an exploitable niche and its part of capitalism, like you go to the 99-cent store; I don’t know if you have one in Canada, but the dollar store where everything is a dollar or less; they have everything you could buy a hammer, a mop, flashlight, DVDs, I don’t know…

I haven’t seen a baby carriage there, fuck… but not out of the realm of possibility. You can get just about everything you need for everyday life at the dollar store because somebody figured out a way to make a really crappy version of something and they charge a dollar for it even if it’s some things normally ten bucks or 12 bucks or 30 bucks, here’s the crappy version and you’ll get the dollars to super sucky but it’ll do what it’s supposed to do maybe not long but there you go.

And it’ll become even more possible to do that with further automation, so I think the future will offer at least in America some combination of them. Some places have to set up systems that provide some kind of welfare, people who have a hard time finding employment, conservatives will try to limit that. People will pursue the black and the gray market, underground economies of people will find themselves able to get by buying really crappy stuff living kind of lives of the Teeter on the edge of disaster but at the same time or perhaps not as miserable as people a 100 years ago because streaming video and other freaking cheap food that tastes terrible as opposed to depression food which was in some instances made intentionally bland and barely edible to discourage people from eating too much because food was unaffordable.

So, it’ll be a combination of those things and the U.S being a semi-Yahoo country [laughing].

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Rosner: A sentence will be crueler in its approaches to automation-based job loss, economic dislocation, some fancy-pants liberal countries like Finland.

Jacobsen: You’re describing the end of the Roman Empire basically.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 295 – Universal Basic Income (5)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/19

[Beginning of recorded material]

So, it’ll be a combination of those things and the U.S being a semi-Yahoo country [laughing].

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Rosner: A sentence will be crueler in its approaches to automation-based job loss, economic dislocation, some fancy-pants liberal countries like Finland.

Jacobsen: You’re describing the end of the Roman Empire basically.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 294 – Universal Basic Income (4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/18

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So, the guaranteed minimum income is one way to do things, another way to do things is to pay people for things that perhaps people haven’t been paid for in the past like expressing consumer preferences; people get paid very little for that.

Participating in social media; businesses and the economy benefit from people’s part to a certain extent with people’s participation in social media. It tells businesses what people like and don’t like and what the life of the country is like.

It’s exploitable commercial, so it’s not unreasonable that people should perhaps get paid for that kind of stuff but that’s not only like a baby step away from this guaranteed minimum income because you’re paying people for doing stuff they do anyway and then really doesn’t directly produce anything.

There’s another way to go which is don’t pay anybody, let people just get really poor and scramble to survive and maybe that will convince people either to do choir training or figure out how to live in some kind of black or gray market economy or maybe most dire level just has few more kids but nobody on the conservative side.

And it would be conservatives it would be most likely that all guaranteed minimum income is communist socialist scheme to weaken America, to destroy America.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is it really that dumb? [Laughing]

Rosner: Oh yeah. I have a very smart friend who would argue that I’m almost positive.

Jacobsen: Does he really believe it though?

Rosner: He believes there’s a lot of things that are trying to destroy America.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 293 – Universal Basic Income (3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/17

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: I consider the Trump-Clinton election like the first AI election; first election where automation and computerization and robots really helps determine the lot of the issues. We’re behind a lot of the issues in the elections where each side is kind of promising something for the people who have lost their jobs due to the disappearance of traditional industrial jobs in America. And it comes in the Trump… we’re going to bring back coal, we’re going to bring factories back, Hillary to a certain extent as we’re going to train everybody for new modern jobs. Nobody got anything to gain by saying this thing. It would take a really crazy politician to say, “In terms of some areas of employment, we’re just fucked because robots are cheaper”.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When we look at like China has .36 robots per 100 workers, global average is .66 robots for 100 workers, United States has 1.64 robots per 100 workers, Germany has 2.92, Japan 3.4 per 100, Korea has 4.78 robots per 100 workers which is substantial.

Rosner: That’s a little deceptive, all those stats and how many workers does each of those robots replace? You’ve got robot productivity versus human productivity. There might be 20 in Korea there may be 25 workers or so for every robot, but if every robot is on average doing a job that previously required three people then the ratio goes from four robots per 100 to 12 human equivalent jobs per 100 people still working in jobs.

Jacobsen: Yes, and people’s jobs had become more casual.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 292 – Universal Basic Income (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/16

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Which country?

Rosner: Finland.

Jacobsen: 550 monthly wage to ten thousand working adults.

Rosner: Okay, so ten thousand people, not 10% of the population?

Jacobsen: No.

Rosner: So, that works out to be like 7200 bucks a year which isn’t enough to live on but certainly helpful. Anyway, this thing is popping up now I believe because of job dislocation and loss to the increasing technology.

We’ve always had since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve had job loss and obsolescence due to technology where the U.S used to be a majority agricultural country for most people who are working or working on farm. And now it’s down to like 2% due to technology; that was a 110 – 120 years ago. Those of the people who were pushed off the farms were able to find other areas to work in and but now as automation takes over more and more areas of work it becomes tougher and tougher for people to find areas of work that aren’t being automated and right now actually America has pretty close to full employment. So, job losses due to automation or not [04:34] and lot of people have the feeling that it’s super imminent. What else are you going to do when there isn’t enough work for everybody?

Jacobsen: Alright, we checked out Korea; it has the highest ratio of humans to robots in terms of workers.

Rosner: What do you mean? Highest ratio of robots to humans?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: And how messed up are they because of that?

Jacobsen: They seem like a clean running culture.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 291 – Universal Basic Income (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What’re your thoughts on a universal basic income, a basic income or a negative interest tax or something?

Rick Rosner: You’re talking about the idea that Finland is experimenting with which is just giving everybody kind of a basic really subsistence level wage even if they’re not working.

Jacobsen: Well, just one quick thing; its Kenya, Finland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

Rosner: Okay, I don’t think any of those, I don’t know. You probably know better. I don’t think any of those countries is doing it for everybody. I think they’re just experimenting with it.

Jacobsen: Four cities in the Netherlands; the Swiss government vote on a referendum that would give citizens as much as 2,623 dollars per month.

Rosner: Now, is that happening? Has it been implemented yet?

Jacobsen: On June 5^th they voted on the referendum, so it’s probably.

Rosner: So, it hasn’t started yet? You’re saying that people are basically going to get 31 grand a year in American dollars the equivalent just for being a Swiss citizen?

Jacobsen: I guess so.

Rosner: Yes, well we have systems like this in America for certain populations. You live in Alaska, you get money every year for just being an Alaskan from I believe the sale of oil. You participate in the economic life of the state, it sells a lot of oil and you get money. If you belong to certain Native American tribes, you participate in the life of the tribe, you get the cut of casino profits if your tribe runs a casino. So, this stuff happens even in America even though red-blooded conservative Americans say this is socialism. But anyway, 10% of their population, they’re trying.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 290 – Innovations in the Future

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/14

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about innovations in the future?

Rick Rosner: I have not been doing a lot of thinking about this, I’ve kind of blindly accepted that future innovation will be done by the automated people are working in combination with AI or by AI itself. The most steps forward, you know, beginning ten, twenty, thirty years from now are going to be in serious combination with AI or by AI on its own. But thinking further about it, and having…having been in the art model off and on, since I was twenty-four so more than thirty years I have been working a bunch of places including the art, you know, you get good art for the most work done from places that are art schools, like Art Centre Pasadena or Cal Art or SVA New York or the New York (inaudible) and if the art is done by none art students at none art colleges like the University of Colorado in New Mexico, you know, schools that don’t specialize in art, that’s a much lower level of skills and artistic insight so, I can imagine that, you know, what innovation isn’t done in AI for humans the concerns with AI’s will be kind of that level kind of, you know, make human innovation looks kind of crappier in relative to what the powerful technology can do so, there will be, though crappier often, it can be fun. So, you’ve got, you’ll have…innovation will have several flavours, probably many more flavours than that, but off the top of my head there will be pure AI innovations which, you know, takes a while to come. Because AI is helpless at this point without being human directed. You will have AI that real innovations being done by augmented humans, you will have innovations by defiant human craft people, people who don’t like the coming status quo of everything being mediated through AI and who have diligently determined or developed the practice their craft to be able to continue with the human arts of creation without resorting to AI. This is a kind of what my buddy Lance, a Sculpture and Painter does, he sticks to old forms, the ancient Greek sculptural methods, renaissance painting methods and I tell Lance…at least he paints paternal themes, you know, deep metaphysical themes and, you know, like Lance, he just paints like modern people (inaudible) modern way, like people talking on their cell phones in cars or they are texting while driving, and he refuses to give in to modernity and so, you will have some innovation, some creativity coming from defiant defenders of human craft and art, and then you will have the casual, you know, creators of ridiculousness of t-shirt themes and memes done by, you know, regular people joking around, so that’s it.

The most steps forward, you know, beginning ten, twenty, thirty years from now are going to be in serious combination with AI or by AI on its own. But thinking further about it, and having…having been in the art model off and on, since I was twenty-four so more than thirty years I have been working a bunch of places including the art, you know, you get good art for the most work done from places that are art schools, like Art Centre Pasadena or Cal Art or SVA New York or the New York (inaudible) and if the art is done by none art students at none art colleges like the University of Colorado in New Mexico, you know, schools that don’t specialize in art, that’s a much lower level of skills and artistic insight so, I can imagine that , you know, what innovation isn’t done in AI for humans the concerns with AI’s will be kind of that level kind of, you know, make human innovation looks kind of crappier in relative to what the powerful technology can do so, there will be, though crappier often, it can be fun. So, you’ve got, you’ll have…innovation will have several flavors, probably many more flavors than that, but off the top of my head, there will be pure AI innovations which, you know, takes a while to come. Because AI is helpless at this point without being human-directed. You will have AI that real innovations being done by augmented humans, you will have innovations by defiant human craft people, people who don’t like the coming status quo of everything being mediated through AI and who have diligently determined or developed the practice their craft to be able to continue with the human arts of creation without resorting to AI. This is a kind of what my buddy Lance, a Sculpture and Painter does, he sticks to old forms, the ancient Greek sculptural methods, renaissance painting methods and I tell Lance…at least he paints paternal themes, you know, deep metaphysical themes and, you know, like Lance, he just paints like modern people (inaudible) modern way, like people talking on their cell phones in cars or they are texting while driving, and he refuses to give in to modernity and so, you will have some innovation, some creativity coming from defiant defenders of human craft and art, and then you will have the casual, you know, creators of ridiculousness of t-shirt themes and memes done by, you know, regular people joking around, so that’s it.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 289 – Apocalypse Now, For You (4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/13

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: But most people won’t be ready and are not and will not be willing to be ready for rapid change.

Rick Rosner: What people can do, faced with the future people can do what they’ve always done, which is die, everybody has died up to now. Now that the future offers some people the chance not to go longer and longer without dying but when faced with disruption, people who have done what else can you do? You could feel confused, you can get older and older or get killed by the disruption. If you don’t get killed by the disruption, you still just get older and older until you die. And so I mean and then things will proceed you know generations pass away and new generations have a different set of living conditions that they get used to, but it seems reasonable to fight confusion, to fight, to get ready for disruption, to get ready to embrace opportunities not to die, by anticipating the future. That’s it.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 288 – Apocalypse Now, For You (3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/12

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: And you know we in America didn’t expect our political system to get through to have the to be undergoing the insults it’s currently undergoing. And similarly, we don’t expect for the future to kick our asses, but it is, but there is the disruption, the disruptions that will be going on over the next three centuries or five centuries. Are going to be more severe than anything in previous years in human history, if it’s the end of the world not in a terrible way that will leave just the smoking dead landscape, but in a way that your human life as we’ve noted as humans have lived it for tens of thousands of years, will be ridiculously transformed.

And the disruption index you could apply to the past and to the future to kind of get a handle on what we’re facing. And it’s something we should be looking at because instead of, because no matter what we do we’re gonna be surprised by the changes. But we could if we start thinking about them now we could be a little less surprised. And we can take advantage of people who have a better feel for the future obviously we’ll do better in the future.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 287 – Apocalypse Now, For You (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/11

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: And six million of them just slaughtered and the rest just scattered just kind of forced out of their countries. Got right, you know any place you have genocide you to go cross, you know all the genocidal wars across Africa you know people who were established and felt at home in their countries and in other countries who have killed and expelled them. Lebanon was a beautiful paradise on earth until the 70s and then it fell apart. Syria was probably not the most pleasant country but it was a functioning country and now it’s deep in civil wars hell on earth. There was scary there was well I don’t know; I mean there was Iraq was I don’t know if you can call it stable they have had a bunch of wars against Iran. It was under you know a cruel dictator who’ve killed possibly tens of thousands of his own people on average per year but still kind of had a stable structure until we came in and just turn Iraq into a close to a failed state.

So nobody in the words of Monty Python nobody expects or suspects the Spanish Inquisition, nobody in these countries expected to have their other you know within America we’re chauvinistic, we tend to think of other countries especially in certain parts of the world like Africa and Mideast, as just being chaotic hell. But really if you look at the country’s most of them are stable for long periods of time and then the chaos pops up here and there and takes out entire nations that has been functioning if not well at least with some degree of stability for periods of years and decades before everything falls apart.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 286 – Apocalypse Now, For You (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/10

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: There could be a disruption index which is a framework for looking at the lives of generations of people. And kind of gauging how much disruption they have in their actual physical lives, their physical conditions and also in their world views and you know it’s always the apocalypse for someone.

Somebody’s some pose somewhere on earth some group of people is always I mean not every single minute but from year to year a decade to decade, some group of people is always getting loop shit kicked out for the you know getting all their unsocial underpinnings kicked out from under German Jews, European Jews, in the 1920s. Well assimilated feeling that they were part of the life of the country and then within a decade having everything pulled out from under them.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 285 – A-Atheist (7)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/09

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: We’re in the universe; good luck getting to the hardware that contains the information that the universe consists of and even more good luck as it’ll be even tougher to get to the container of that information, the hardware world that contains our information world.

At some point it just all kind of becomes irrelevant to the point of not being even arguable for because it’s so remote and inaccessible from the world we live in. There’s also the possibility that the idea that it could be wrong that the universe consists of information, it seems unlikely to me because information is pretty much the simplest thing that can be.

When you define information as the choice or the specific value that exists in a system of where you have a finite number of choices, in other words in a system where something can be on or off or can have the value of zero or one.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 284 – A-Atheist (6)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What if the universe is its own container somehow?

Rick Rosner: Well, I don’t know. I mean that’s a possibility. I don’t know how that would work or it’s a possibility that you don’t need infinities and somehow the hierarchy of containers can feedback around so that you don’t need an infinity of containers.

It becomes like an Escher’s one-hand drawing the other which is two hands drawing each other and you could imagine some kind of network of container hardware world which somehow loop around, in the end, don’t require an infinite number of frames but that sounds just as goofy is that the idea of an infinity frames or you might be able to argue that the infinity is moot because it is it’s impossible to get at.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 283 – A-Atheist (5)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/07

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: There’s information within consciousness, we experience it as the feeling of consciousness but that information should be character risible physically and mathematically; you should be able to model that information as interacting with itself in some kind of information space, which when applied to the brain it means you have the brain and it switches the hard way.

You have the kind of conscious experience that we have of the processes going on in the brain and then you have the math or the information space of the information being processed in the brain and if you then make the assumption, I guess that’s a third ingredient that the universe is itself a map of the information in a vast information processing system or consciousness, then you have to argue by analogy that there has to be hardware to support that the existence of that information. You can’t have the information in our consciousness without a brain being the hardware that contains and processes that information.

So, if the universe is an information space, then that implies hardware outside the universe that supports that information. It implies the existence of something outside the universe and in fact implies a very troublesome kind of hierarchy of some kind of hardware container for every information space so anything that exists, exists because of hardware outside the existence of that world. That’s troubling because it implies like a big infinity of containers but that’s the best I can do right now but it is theistic and implies powers beyond and outside the world we live in.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 282 – A-Atheist (4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/06

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: The brain when we’re awake at least is… and even when we’re not awake, being asleep is also a best bet type of deal where our brains have biological limitations. We can’t be awake all the time, or maybe I am… even being asleep is a bet that it’s safe to be asleep for a bunch of hours. We’ve set ourselves safely when sleeping because we have houses; people don’t just sleep on the sidewalk but everything the brain does is betting, it’s trying to come up with the best course of action and that means having a simulated version of the world within our awareness and having all parts of the brain participating in that stimulation, so that we can come up with the best course of action regardless of what happens over from moment to moment.

Anyway, so consciousness is just sophisticated information. So, anyway you’re asking why I’m not a cold big bang, cold random Big Bang believer; so, there are two things that go into having more theistic beliefs. One is the consciousness is a property of information sharing, two is that the information within consciousness can be understood as forming it’s a world of information that looks like the universe that has the same physics. With those two things you get kind of a theistic result because then you can argue by analogy from the universe to the brain and back again.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 281 – A-Atheist (3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/05

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: When information is being processed in a particular way you get consciousness and a confluence information is being shared among the various process and systems of the brain in such a way is to maximize the potential helpful contribution from each analytic system in the brain and from systems in the brain that help you retrieve relevant memories that efficient use of processing is consciousness.

That widespread sharing which is an efficient way to address novelty in one’s moment to moment life feels like consciousness. This book that I keep bringing up, ‘How emotions are made’ by Lisa Barrett says that the brain is a predictor and a simulator and from moment to moment the brain sets us up to best predict what is going to happen and to take appropriate actions when simulating the outside the world and also our inside world.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 280 – A-Atheist (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/04

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: I have beliefs that don’t entirely coincide with that view; it still comes from the same place from both, in math and science, and the rules of existence from which we get the laws of physics and the rules of existence don’t preclude theistic type of things.

I believe that consciousness is not a mystical property bestowed by some nebulous, invisible, omnipotent being that we’ve been imbued or endowed with special magical fluid that animates our experience of the world. Instead, I believe that consciousness is a technical property of information being shared in the brain.

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Ask A Genius 279 – A-Atheist (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/03

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Well, we were just talking in another session about worldviews and limitations and knowledge; you’re not an atheist, why?

Rick Rosner: I’m not an atheist?

Jacobsen: Yeah, why?

Rosner: Alright, so, I’m not a full-on atheist. I would say that the full-on atheist believes the universe arises from random actions based on the principles of physics and proceeds via chance according to the laws of quantum physics and other applicable areas of physics like cosmology, general relativity, and just things that there’s no one in charge and there’s no creator, that it’s just the principles and laws of physics. That’s kind of been the default scientific point of view of the second half of the 20^th century.

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Ask A Genius 278 – The Future for Kindness (4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/02

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: According to the definition of racism, basically making judgments based on people’s appearances and what you know about them, whether or not you act on those judgments or discriminate. That’s one form of racism is making judgments.

A different definition of racism is to actually make, be mean, be bad to people based on race, and Lance was throwing out the first definition altogether, might as well disregard, because you can’t tell what people are thinking, the brain is a black box. So, even 80 years after behaviorism some people will resort to black box arguments.

And there will be different degrees of black-box-ism in the future when people try to make things easy for themselves, by saying we just can’t know what is going on inside the heads of various entities. That’s kind of in my mind a bullshit excuse. The end.

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Ask A Genius 277 – The Future for Kindness (3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: But maybe that thing would be more effective with feelings, and maybe there is an argument to be made for sophisticated piece of machinery like that, that simulates feelings to have actual feelings. I don’t know what that argument would be actually, why you would be arguing to turn an inanimate object into a thinking being with all the potential suffering and risks that might entail, and that doesn’t seem necessarily seem like a great move. On the other hand, if you have a thing that is on the verge of thinking, but it exists in like

On the other hand, if you have a thing that is on the verge of thinking, but it exists in like equivalent brain damaged world because all of half-assed-ness that went into its construction, maybe it would be a mitzvah to make it fully conscious. There are going to be all sorts of arguments around who deserves kindness, consideration, legal rights, financial resources, and it all boils back down to having good models of what’s happening in the brains or information processors of these various things.

My conservative buddy Lance, that’s the thing people are resistant to because it is really tough, my buddy Lance last night, went back to the black box argument saying he is not interested in if people have racist thoughts, he is only interested in, because I was arguing that everybody is racist to a certain extent.

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Ask A Genius 276 – The Future for Kindness (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/31

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: And under that system somebody could argue that those are the people that deserve all of our considerations because they are feeling things much more intensely with all of their added cognitive power. You want to maintain some kind of lack of proportion where the smartest beings don’t get all of the kindness.

That we don’t want to forget where we came from and where many humans will still be. The same way it is dooshy to be cruel to animals just because they are dumber than we are. Also, part of kindness will be figuring out what set ups for happiness, AI’s or humans merged with AI’s have and trying to fulfill those set-ups within reason.

And trying to figure out those set-ups themselves are reasonable. It still all boils down to being nice to thinking beings, but it will be tougher to sort out what thinking beings are, what they want, whether it’s best that they want those things, you know so you have a robotic assistant that has been programmed to appear to be conscious with feelings and drives, but is basically not it is just simulating that stuff because maybe it is an easier problem in hardware and programming.

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2022-04-14

Ask A Genius 275 – The Future for Kindness

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, this is for the future of, you wanted to talk about the future of kindness. What is our future of kindness, and what is your future of kindness?

Rick Rosner: Well, alright so, the present and past of kindness is pretty much hinges on the golden rule. But you don’t even, for every day acts of kindness, you don’t even need to apply the logic of the golden rule. We kind of know what people want, from being around people forever, so kindness is generally, not being mean to people.

With possible exceptions being mean to people who, where it would improve their lives to be mean to them, like in an intervention. Where being mean to people where stopping them will stop them from hurting other people. And then you can extend that to other creatures, within reason. And you can extend to the products made by people that you don’t want to just wreck stuff, if it would make people feel bad, unnecessarily.

Then there is more eustatic varieties of kindness, the different levels of charity. There is the saying, feed a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish then you feed for a lifetime. So, it’s kinder to do something that leads to long-term benefits. Under Judaism, it is kinder to give to a charity that you don’t take credit for, maybe the people don’t even realize they are given charity, because that can be demoralizing. But basically, everything boils down to just being nice to people.

The mid-future, will have the dilemmas of who has feelings as AI proliferates and we merge with AI. And, also problems of maintaining of sense of proportion, maybe purposefully losing a sense of proportion because say 80 years in the future there is some augmented humans who are 50 times smarter and more perceptive than natural humans.

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Ask A Genius 274 – Longer and Healthier

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/29

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We talk a lot about people living longer and healthier, sure that’s good. What does this mean concretely?

Rick Rosner: Well, what it means for a society is it takes a while for a longer life to roll out. Just because you don’t get to see if anybody’s going to be living to 110 or 120, until enough years have passed for people to reach that point. And so there’s a delay like it’s not all of a sudden, instantly everybody’s going to be living to 120 because if you’re 60 now or 70 now.

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Ask A Genius 273 – Free Will and Jurisprudence

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/28

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what about free will and the system jurisprudence especially the United States and in a culture that has metaphysical assumptions about the way the world works and people work?

Rick Rosner: Well I don’t know about the US versus other places but the more we learn about the brain, the more it becomes a reasonable idea that it really isn’t free will that you can account for everything that people do based on brain biology, based on people’s pasts, based on the structure of the brain and on our evolutionary history, but our system of punishment for crimes is based on free will. That goes on acting is as if people make choices and then choose to do bad and that’s not I mean that the window for mitigating punishment or avoiding punishment based on insanity, your background, that’s a small window that not many cases I think to get you know successfully pass through that, that eye of the needle.

Though you could make the case for at least in general terms for almost anyone’s bad acts. But that’s not necessarily a tragedy of being mean to people for things that they’re not responsible for. We hold people responsible for their decisions. Almost you know more than well over ninety percent of the time probably over 96% of the time in when they’re they done criminal things.

We treat people as if their decisions have been more or less freely made and I know that’s not a terrible thing, the whole as if the system is part of what goes into determinate decision making. Decision making that is not free, also reflects some extent one of the factors in making decisions about what to do is knowledge of our criminal system and the punishments that one might face for bad decisions.

So even though our decisions you can argue aren’t at some basic level free, we wait one thing that helps keep people on the straight and narrow in a determinant way, is our system of punishment for crimes that’s it. I mean there’s a paradox there but it’s one that we’re used to and can work with. And when people I mean in the I’ve read plenty of science fiction set in the future where instead of facing punishment, evildoers just have their brains adjusted so they don’t do evil anymore.

And that’s a frustrating thing for readers somebody gets to do bad and then they get to avoid punishment. So even though our system is paradoxical holding people responsible for actions that we know more and more they’re not you know that they’re not free not to make, the idea of not holding people responsible is weird and not approved is not approved of at some kind of visceral level. We wouldn’t like a future it will take a lot of getting used to a future in which people aren’t punished for the crime but rather are adjusted to not recommit that’s it.

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Ask A Genius 272 – Three Points of View on America

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/27

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Alright, in my lifetime there have been three points of view about thinking in America. When I was a little kid… actually I missed the first one, which was pure kind of rugged individualist culture, but that has… a thick rope running through American culture. Then you have… we have to get smarter to beat Russia deal which kicked in a couple of years before I was born.

Then you have the nerdism triumphant… with people my age in their 30’s becoming billionaires by creating Apple and Microsoft, Cisco and just the whole internet industry, the digital information processing industry. Now you… all of these things they are not abrupt as they are in the existing culture and differ from region to region. From whatever people… among whatever people you hang out with, now another overlay on America is… belligerent ignorance that we are not going to believe anything that doesn’t back up our point of view.

We are going to believe that evolution is a tool of the Godless, who want to abort our babies, believe that climate change is a conspiracy… to keep us scared and turn us socialist. Or the Chinese might be behind it according to Trump. So you have these various overlays so… I would say in General; America might be less of an intellectual country… but because we have one of the bigger populations among the world’s countries, and because we have an excellent education system… though it is under attack.

We are still a place for a lot of stuff based on productive thinking to go on. But we like to think ourselves as cowboys and Rambo’s… driving a pickup truck with a big American flag on it. Unlike Finland we do not have… nights that last for two and half months in the winter, where we sit around and drink and think, or out doing and building. That’s it.

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Ask A Genius 271 – Watergate, Vietnam, Nixon

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/26

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why did they think this?

Rick Rosner: Well because he did some shit that didn’t work, he gave a speech about national malaise. He said that we need to you know work hard to I don’t know well I don’t know why he talked about America being bombed out. I mean we were to some extent we’ve been disillusioned by Watergate, and by the Vietnam War and we were just coming out of that, but saying that America was bombed out, did not wasn’t something that people responded well to. He gave a speech from The Oval Office wearing a sweater saying that we needed to turn down our thermostats to save energy and we needed to drive cars that weren’t so gas does when people didn’t respond well to that. He tried to free the hostages from Iran and the mission didn’t work. He boycotted the Moscow Olympics because Moscow had invaded Afghanistan. So conservatives don’t think that he made America a stronger country, but I don’t but throughout it all and throughout his previous life previous to being president, and he’s had a long, long life he quit being president beginning 1981, so that’s more than 36 years ago.

He’s had a huge run in his post presidential life and he’s always been a figure of kind of decency and he’s taught Sunday school for most of those years since he was president. He’s a decent, decent guy and

Jacobsen: If someone sees this insidious other would see it as not, opinions differ on Sunday schools.

Rosner: Well no but regardless of how what you think of Sunday school Jimmy Carter is an upstanding guy.

Jacobsen: It’s good in so far as apple pie America is good.

Rosner: Jimmy Carter is a good man all right he’s a good guy. He may not have been the best president but he is an upstanding man, a godly man and

Jacobsen: That’s a general analysis, I was looking at the particular of Sunday school.

Rosner: Yeah but I don’t want to get off on I don’t want to talk we’re not talking about that we’re talking about how we’ve never had like a charlatan and a compulsive liar as a president before.

Jacobsen: Well a Nixon character a general character you can look at the philandering of Trump.

Rosner: Well yeah but I mean I’m like yes Clinton was philandering but still was, his not trying to screw over the country. We never had a guy who’s so morally compromised as Trump. We’ve had guys with like specific areas of weakness; Clinton and his dick, Nixon and his enemies list, but anyway each side has its tactics with the conservatives having better tactics to shut down debate and in some cases shut down thought. Shut down you know skepticism about their beliefs that.

Jacobsen: Is America a thinking culture in general? on critical thinking culture?

Rosner: It depends on when you catch us. America is a rugged westward whore culture civilization of the country that boldly you know expands across the continent and builds and makes and yeah we have inventors and stuff but we are a people of action. Then in 1957, the Russians put Sputnik up everybody freaks out and we decide that we need to make America a more math science culture. And in fact we do, we from the time you know it’s less than years in the time Kennedy says we need to get a man on the moon to having men off.

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Ask A Genius 270 – Bi-directional Sensationalism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Both are right insofar as the other side is sensationalist, with or without the facts that make the difference.

Rick Rosner: Yeah I mean the deal the New START TV news started out as a non-profit making thing at the beginning of TV in the late 40s. The FCC said we are going to rent the airwaves to broadcasters for almost nothing. But you the broadcaster’s in return for this which will help you build a thriving TV industry, you were going to do us this favor or not favor you’re going to be a provide a public service of doing national news every day.

So we have an informed population and the news was not a money-making thing it was 15 minutes a night, in 1949 and 1951, I just you know nobody expected it to make money, it was just a thing that the networks did to live up to the terms of their deal with the government.

And then people found a way to make news make money the beginning of that may have been morning news chat shows, on the on the big three networks like Good Morning America, The Today Show, these ended up growing to be three-hour and in one case like I think three or four hour shows, that present the news but present a lot of other stuff and occupy a huge chunk of the day and sell a lot of ads.

And then CNN or yes CNN came along and various profit oriented news programming came along and now almost all TV news is for profit and newspapers struggle to survive news blogs news feeds like Huffington Post and Drudge Report you know, struggle to hold an audience or gain an audience. So yeah all of them engage in a lot of sensationalism and a lot of little tricks to make the news that they’re presenting seem more immediate and more important and more shocking and the whole thing. But if you would go, what’s going on with Trump is shocking where you got a guy who just lies every day. We’ve never had a president like this.

Even the worst other presidents during our lifetime were decent people. I mean you can argue that Nixon was no heart was a horrible person but Nixon still was pretty civic minded in a lot of ways. He wanted to accomplish things in the world to put American in a better position. He did a lot of you know he was psychologically complex, you know developed enemies lists and he was always trying to screw over people and brewed it a lot, but he still believed he believed strongly in America and embraced policies that he thought would make America better and it’s hard to know just what Trump thinks.

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2022-04-14

Ask A Genius 269 – Conservative and Liberal Thought

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/24

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Okay so, anyway, so I mean one part of the conservative thought level is to convince people that they don’t need to, they’ve naturally the things they believe as good patriotic Americans, which pollutes hating liberals and thinking about all this stuff doesn’t need to be examined. But they have naturally arrived at the proper way of, being American.

And the Liberals have their own thought bubble, which being liberal I think is closer to the truth that the Republicans stated agenda of Liberty and turning everybody into a success via lower taxes and fewer regulations, is really just kissing ass to rich donors who are the ones who help them get elected and help make them rich through buddy-buddy deals.

It’s clear to liberals that the Republican agenda says a bunch of things about liberty and opportunity for all and making America great. But that it’s really just funneling money to rich people and then we have statistics to back it up showing that middle-class wages are stagnant from 1974 and that 80% or 90 % of the growth in wealth in America since the early 70s, has gone to the top 10% or even less than that top two percent. But the Republicans work to make rich people win.

But you know I spend a lot of time looking at news throughout the day, and accumulating a lot of half understood or half-digested facts that tend to point to liberals who say that Trump is a terrible president who lies all the time, all this stuff the news I absorb pull all points in that direction it’s backed up via transcripts and like there’s a thing going on with a set rich deal which he’s a DNC worker who was murdered and there’s a whole possible conspiracy between the White House and Fox News to push the idea that Rich was murdered, because he leaked stuff to WikiLeaks, but there’s no evidence of that but and it’s pretty nonsensical and the Private Eye who was working on it is suing Fox News, saying that they’ve misquoted him about the case.

So anyway like as a liberal I see a lot of actual news and that news includes news about conservatives fabricating news to excuse their excesses. And I could you could say that it’s symmetrical on the other side the Conservatives see a lot of news about how liberals are full of shit and to that extent it is symmetrical except that it’s not really because the news that liberals are seeing is largely true and a lot of the news that conservatives are seeing is spin and bullshit and cherry-picking facts.

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Ask A Genius 268 – Sociobiological Perspective

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/23

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Alright, one more possibility is the sociobiological perspective which basically boils down to eggs expensive, sperm cheap. Women’s part of the reproductive process is being pregnant for 39 what, 40 weeks and then having to raise the kids for years and years and years. Guys can get away with just like jazzing into somebody and you could argue that socio biologically, women have a bigger stake in non-dumb shit behavior. That there may be a biological bias in women of being responsible. At the very least they have to stay alive for nine and a half months to birth the baby and then traditionally they nurse the baby for a year or two years, so that’s right there you’re looking at 2 -3 years of not being a wild ass hole. Yet you know there are plenty of guys who are successful at making somebody pregnant and then making themselves dead by being an idiot and you know the species goes on. So I don’t know is that I don’t feel like that’s too horribly sexist an idea, but you know there are plenty of species worth of the males do the child-rearing and the hanging around

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is that historically our species?

Rosner: Not historically though I learned in women’s studies that their prehistorically it may be the case. That pre historically, we humans may have lived in matriarch ease. It were, had a lot less asshole eerie, because women were in charge. There was community, there was free love, there was there weren’t Wars, I don’t know if there’s evidence for that but you know it works pretty well on Wonder Woman’s Island where there are no guys at all. Leave that last part out cuz it’s really stupid or not I don’t care anyway that’s it.

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Ask A Genius 267 – Women’s Better Judgment

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/21

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why do you think women have better judgment? From your analysis women that are super intelligent?

Rick Rosner: This is a risky topic to go into because you know I if I were the president of Harvard I could end up losing my job.

Yeah you suggested that there were, what’d he do, that there are more very smart men and very smart women or some crap like that? I don’t know, he said something like that it was stupid and he lost his job. But out there one possible explanation is that women have a thicker corpus callosum and which is the cable that connects the two halves of your brain, so people like to say that, that means that women think more holistically. They think more than they have less of an action potential that’s not the right term for it. But women are less likely to take impulsive action which may be evidence of more global smartness, it may be lower levels of testosterone, it may be largely cultural that we expect more action from men than from women. It may be that the women have stronger family bonds than some men like the Polgar sisters. I think their dad is the one who got them started on chess though I’m not sure and it may be that you know that they just were led into this life of chess 24/7, which doesn’t leave time for you know drug fund and you know throwing stock stuff off the top of the Empire State Building I don’t know. It didn’t there is a theory that they’re just fewer outlying women in general than there are men but that’s the thing that got Larry Summers fired from Harvard. But without making it a general thing, you might be able to speculate there are fewer assholes who are women than guys. And but that’s where the speculation has to stop if I ever want to be president of Harvard.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 266 – Genius, Sex, and Judgment

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/21

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Off-tape, we were discussing things. Alright so, we left off saying that receiver to be more wild ass or weird male super geniuses than female super geniuses. And one reason may be that just women have better judgment and that part of being a really smart woman might be looking at life in general and deciding that leading a normal life just makes sense. Because I’ve certainly had crap periods of my life based on following my own weird plans. Plans that if you look at them in the aggregate, you could argue that I deserve to lose a bunch of points off my IQ for pursuing these plans, you know. I tend to think I’m not a psychopath or a sociopath or maybe only like 5 or 10% on the way to being one, but I tend to think that a really good sociopath would not do anything sociopathic because in a cold unemotional sociopathic way, the sociopath would look at the way to live a smooth life, a life without hassle and decide yeah I’ll just pretend to be a normal person. I won’t do a bunch of the horrible, antisocial stuff just because the cost of doing the antisocial stuff is just too high.

The reason I like that the same way I like the idea of a super villain in comic books or movies who takes a look at his record of going up against superheroes and is like fuck it this I get beat every time. I’m just gonna retire and offer my services to the good guys and you know I come up with great shit it just turns out to not be quite great enough I could certainly help out the Justice League. I know that the villains have something in them that that even when they try to be good for like an issue or two of a comic book something just snaps and they go back to pure badness. But really I mean it would be so much easier for to not be evil.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The entire premise is hysterical.

Rick Rosner: I like; I want to see a whole movie it would piss off people so bad. I want to see a Marvel movie where the superheroes take care of the problem in the first 10minutes of the movie, took 20 minutes. And their next you know 90 minutes of the movie is just the kind of hanging out, solving little problems you know like designing a dream house, just doing like regular people you know seeing if they can get a buzz how much you know how many how many shots of Baileys Irish cream would it take to get Superman buzz?

Probably wouldn’t want to use Bailey’s, you’ve end up he does a super throwing up before he gets drunk. But anyway, maybe you were doing do it with superheroes maybe you’d do it with a group of teens that goes to you know a spooky place like if you buy the rights to it, a shitty like you know series of movies or a series of movies that’s run its course you know the Jason movies or the Freddy movies and you know they take care of the bad guy like very thoroughly in the first ten minutes. And they just spend the rest of the movie like hanging out and wandering a little bit if he’s just going to come back in some weird way. But mostly just hanging out.

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Ask A Genius 265 – Why is Kitsch?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/20

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, can you explain to me again what the hell is Kitsch? How does it differentiate from quiche? Why are we talking about it?

Rick Rosner: Quiches is an egg pie. Kitsch is easily appreciated pandering to the easy emotions art. Like cute puppies, cherubic figurines that your grandma, your unsophisticated grandma likes. Last time we talked, we talked about how kitsch is an endorsement of order that you have to have these fragile glass figurines, though kitsch can apply to any art.

It doesn’t have to just be breakable art. But it endorses things like love and beauty and kindness and innocence and flowers and babies. Part of my thesis here is kitsch provides a touch of order for people, maybe, who have less order in their lives or less satisfaction in their lives than they’d want to.

I think the last time we talked about how Michael’s the crafting store – and it applies to Hobby Lobby too, these giant craft stores. So, you can always find people in there who have been disappointed in other areas of their lives, disdained by their families or spouse, unsuccessful in other areas.

But you can always scrapbook or make stuff. It’s pretty. So, the opposite of kitsch is sophistication and sophisticated art, which embraces hard to appreciate aesthetics and themes. It’s for people who have order to spare.

It’s like bragging. But I don’t need any extra order in my life because I’m rich, well-educated and I have control of my life. So, I have the sophistication to appreciate art that ponders less easy to comprehend sensibilities and certain sentimentalities.

You can make a case that it’s like Thorsten Veblen and his theory of the leisure class that you’re not really rich; unless, you can afford to squander money on bullshit. So, people who spend hundreds of thousands or millions on art where the aesthetic satisfaction is hard to find or where the easy appreciation is undermined by sneering irony like Jeff Koons stuff.

These are people who have enough resources in the rest of their lives that they can show that they have sophisticated taste. They don’t need to resort to cheap kitchen sentimentality. They can buy expensive, nihilistic or sophisticated stuff that explores darker themes.

Now, that’s my thesis that sophisticated art says, “I have order to spare. I don’t need to resort to cheap satisfaction and cheap sentimentality. I have power in the world.”

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 264 – Worldly Kitsch

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/19

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is kitsch?

Rick Rosner: Kitsch is easy comforting art. In a previous time, everybody would know what they are; do you know what Hummel figurines are?

Jacobsen: No.

Rosner: Everybody knew what they were in the 60s, 70s, even in the 80s. They’re cherubic little German children rendered in porcelain. Chubby, little ruddy cheeked little kids made out of porcelain. Then the modern version of Hummel figurines is Lladro.

Jacobsen: Unfortunately, I do not.

Rosner: Okay, it’s spelled L.L.A.D.R.O, it’s from Spain. This is a company that’s been in business making porcelain figurines for more than 50 years. Carole likes, and I like getting her, stuff from time to time.

It’s expensive, so I will buy them if they’re not flawless. They’re super expensive. But if it’s like a figure that has a couple of fingers missing, it knocks like two-thirds off the price, maybe more. So, I’ll buy her slightly beaten up ones and then fix them if they’re fixable.

So, we’ve got 10 slightly dinged up Lladro figurines. A girl playing with puppies, girl holding a bird on her hand, frisbee puppy, the girl arranging flowers, mother and child, tall lady with ducks. It’s what you’d call kitsch.

It’s not as kitsch is Hummel because Hummel was even more like easily approachable art, like sophisticated people sneer at it. And also lately, in the last couple of weeks, I found out that you can buy gems the size of a robin’s egg on eBay for like two bucks.

Synthetic ruby wholesales for about a penny a karat uncut. So, for two bucks, for five bucks if you’re impatient, I bought a fifty-seven karat almost flawless, faceted ruby from India for a few bucks, free postage too.

Because India’s got some deal where they spring for the postage for international shipping, which is U.S. shipped; China does the same thing. You can buy shit from China. The shipping is free because the government pays for it because, “If we can ship our stuff around the world, the world’s markets, then it’s worth it to pay for clothes,” which I think that’s the strategy.

As opposed to the US, if you want to ship something international from the US, it’s going to be eighty dollars. So, the competitive advantage to China. If you’re trying to sell the same shit as something that’s made in china, you’re fucked if you try to export it to the US because of shipping alone.

But anyway, gems are technology. You wouldn’t think of technology because when you think about technology, you think of moving parts. But modern gems that are properly faceted are little machines to reflect light. Over a hundred years ago, one hundred and twenty years ago, they didn’t know how to facet gems, so they really reflected light and fascinate the viewer in the most appealing way.

But they’ve had 100 years to figure it out. Now, a well-faceted gem is pretty freaking amazing in the way it breaks up light, into sparkles. It’s crazy because somebody figured the angles and the index of refraction. Eventually, I’ll get these gems.

So anyway, I bought a 57-karat ruby for three bucks. If it were real, and if it sold on eBay, and if it were real, it would be the rarest ruby in the world. It would be worth forty million dollars. I’m getting it for three.

So, when they say it’s a natural ruby, they’re probably lying. But still, it’s freaking pretty. Eventually, I’ll give it to Carole. But Carole is only a little bit into these fucking ridiculous gems. You can’t wear them as jewelry because they’re too ridiculous.

I will glue them to a picture frame to put something in the frame. But the upshot of all this is that I’m buying the gems for a few bucks because they’re easily appreciated as really pretty. Sparkly fucking 57-karat fake Ruby is just a really colorful, pretty thing to look at in an easy way.

It’s got easily appreciated color, red with a touch of fuchsia. So, anyway kitsch, these crazy big jewels are kitsch the way Lladro is kitsch. One element of kitsch is it’s easy to like, it’s appealing. When it’s art, it’s visually appealing.

When it’s a movie, it’s a hallmark Christmas romance. It’s narratively, easily appealing to the point where it has sickened people with any degree of sophistication. So, I’ve been thinking about kitsch. I think it’s an endorsement of order that we’ve talked under.

I see under just the universe itself that certain forms of order are persistent. Order and persistence go along with each other that we’re ordered organisms. The order is manifested in our ability to address changes in the environment to survival.

That’s a sophisticated form of order that makes it possible for individual humans to live for a century, for the species to become the dominant species on Earth. kitsch is not just order. It’s safety. It presents a safe world.

The artist, Thomas Kinkade, he’s a total kitsch. For people who don’t know, he’s dead now. But when he was alive, he called himself the painter of light. He paints rustic scenes, very comforting, warm Christmassy scenes of like a cottage in the woods on a starlit night, lots of little sparkles of light.

Look in the windows of the cottage, there are candles blowing. We had a deal whereby different degrees of his art, like he sold, I guess, lithographs. The more sparkles he himself would add, the more expensive each painting was.

But a very comforting warm cottage on a snowy night surrounded by loved ones, being warm and safe. So, I think there’s an element of order and safety. In fact, a Lladro is fucking fragile. Like I said, I buy beat up, Lladro.

If it falls over, it will break. So, they embody order in their very structure; their porcelain with tiny parts that will get knocked off if you come in contact with them. So, you need an ordered environment to even have Lladro.

In L.A. we shouldn’t have Lladro. We’ve got everything tacked down with something called museum wax, which is this wax you put on the bottom and glue it in place in case there’s an earthquake.

In the earthquake of ‘94, we lived in a condo across the hall from a guy who must’ve lost 35 pieces of Lladro, thousands of dollars. His whole curio cabinet just tumbled and everything was destroyed. So, Lladro gives you the feeling, “Well, I live in a safe environment. I might be living in a fool’s paradise because it’s L.A. An earthquake may break everything.”

But when you have the Lladro and you appreciate it, you’re thinking this is a safe place, “I live in a safe place.” A house and condo where I can have this delicate stuff; it won’t be destroyed. It’s comforting.

What makes you feel good is sentimental stuff, the triumph of the weak, baby ducks, girls walking to school. It’s a world in which bad shit has for the most part vanished. So, I’m not saying anything more. I’m repeating myself.

It’s a world of order and safety. An endorsement of the value of world that allow these pieces to exist and these imaginary things seems to exist. But if everybody just behaves themselves, then we could have chubby German kids with fat needs.

We could have ladies with ducks. It’s the idea that we know what good order is and we can imagine a world with just that order and it’s pushing away the bad things in the world. I always have this joke that it’s a joke mostly to myself. But my local craft store, they probably don’t have them in Canada.

But I bet you, do you have a Hobby Lobby? Anyway, there are these massive craft superstores, 20 thousand square feet of crafting supplies. Hobby Lobby is owned by hard core Evangelicals. The Hobby Lobby owners are multi-multimillionaires.

They spend their money; they raid Middle Eastern countries for biblical artifacts. They pay people to smuggle Bible era stuff out of Iraq. Even though, Iraq is both under international law; Iraq owns that ship.

But no, Hobby Lobby people are going to steal the Bible stuff. So, they’re super Bible thumpers. But crafting, my joke is that the people in Michael’s, in Hobby Lobby, are people who are disappointed by life. Women who are in loveless marriages or who got dumped for a trophy wife.

They take refuge, take solace in the cuteness and prettiness of craft, pushing away the bad parts of the world or the world where everything is cute and pretty and decorative and kitschy. So, that’s where I go. That’s what kitsch is, an endorsement of order.

Kitsch is precious little doodads for people who, maybe, can’t afford it for a humble figurine or a yard with different price points, different lines, depending on how much you can spend with different degrees of sophistication. Anyway there you go.

Jacobsen: How does Kitsch differ in Western Europe versus North America or other regions of the world?

Rosner: Oh, so, in America, you’d expect to see kitsch among the maggots, the conservatives, the less sophisticated, appealing to themes of Americanism, lots of American flags and country themes.

Country and Western rural cowboys, fighting men and women, mostly men, ruggedness, sunsets. In Finland, kitsch would be handicrafts or rustic handicrafts. Appealing to a simpler time, carved wooden figures, regional wild polar bear, kestrels, and seabirds.

Kestrels, foxes running through the snow. The stuff you see on greeting cards. Greeting cards are very likely to be kitsch. You can have subtle, sophisticated greeting cards, but the majority of greeting cards are going to converge on kitsch. Germany’s most famous form of kitsch or Hummel figurines, cherubic little German kids.

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Ask A Genius 263 – Endless Forms Most Beautiful (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/18

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you have like a metric for that?

Rick Rosner: Oh, I don’t know. Just where I feel like there’s—yeah we could have a metric, where I feel I’m more likely to say laughable nonsense than I am just saying something that happens to sound like it contains insight.

Jacobsen: Like it’s proportional to your functioning level?

Rosner: Probably. I don’t know, that was—part of not hitting the twaddle.

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Ask A Genius 262 – Endless Forms Most Beautiful (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/17

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: There will be just being able to go on indefinitely in one’s current form or in a number of, in a variety of alternate forms, or, you can allow yourself to be absorbed into a larger information processing entity.

Or, and that absorption can, you’ll be able to choose from a range of levels of absorption, of merging with larger entities.

And by choosing, I mean, yeah, if you’re lucky you’ll get to choose, and if you’re less lucky, the level of absorption will not be entirely up to you which in itself will be okay also in that we don’t—our brains consist of a number of information processing, not conscious entities but of some parts of our brain, and we feel no loyalty to certain parts of our processing apparatus.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 261 – Necessity of Long-Term Thinking (4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/16

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Because our evolutionary tactic, the thing that helps us occupy our niche in the world is having a big brain. But brains can only be so big before they kill the mother during childbirth by getting caught in the birth canal.

So, you know, women, when they give birth, their pelvises split apart, the baby’s head gets forced out.

The baby’s head at the point of birth has overlapping plates that can kind of get compacted as the baby passes through the birth canal to make the skull just a little bit smaller. But anyway, human brains are as big as they can possibly be and not kill moms.

But that’s not big enough. So there’s still a lot of growth and wiring that needs to go on after birth. Which means that human babies take you know, at least ten years to raise. Nobody now would let 10-year-olds out into the world on their own.

You can argue that human babies now take 18 to 20—well Donald Trump was just talking about how Don Jr. really can’t be held that much responsible for meeting with Russian.

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Ask A Genius 260 – Necessity of Long-Term Thinking (3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Unless there are great strides made in medicine, I’ve got, another 20, if I’m lucky, 25 years of competent life left. That’s just nothing. But anyway, we are, we are born and live and pass away fast. It’s understandable that our framework is short term.

We are evolved creatures and we’ve been evolved to create the next—to have sex, have babies, and send the next generation off to do the same thing.

Evolutionary forces tend not to work more than—I mean, an evolutionary victory is spitting out the next generation. Now, we’re—humans are in a slightly different position than a lot of animals in that human babies are born incomplete.

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Ask A Genius 259 – Necessity of Long-Term Thinking (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/14

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: John Maynard Keynes said that during the great depression, when somebody must’ve asked him what’s the best long term solution. And he was saying, f- long term solutions. We need to do something about now.

And the deal is, we’re perishable. We are flowers that bloom for a day and then die. We’re done in, even though our life spans are longer, now by, you know, 20 years or so than they were when Maynard Keynes said in the long term we’re all dead—in the long run we’re all dead.

We’re still all dead eventually and pretty quickly. I’ve been helping my mother in law move into her senior living community. You know, where the average age is, mid 80s. And I’m mid to late 50s now, but we do not have much time.

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Ask A Genius 258 – Necessity of Long-Term Thinking

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/13

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Long term thinking. Long term thinking is needed. Most of us only do short term thinking. Why, and why is it a problem now?

Rick Rosner: Well you just mentioned off tape, you mentioned the marshmallow test. You can tell the difference between kids with discipline, kids who don’t have discipline. You sit a kid in a room alone with a marshmallow on a plate.

This test was performed probably 30 years ago. Nowadays you’d want to give them, I don’t know, something more tempting than a freaking marshmallow. I don’t know, half a pop tart. I don’t know what kids right now for junk.

Anyway, you tell the kid you can have the marshmallow now, or if you wait till I come back in five minutes, you can have two marshmallows. And some kids pass the marshmallow test, some kids fail. Anyway, this all kind of harkens back to my favorite quote, I guess, in the long term, we’re all dead.

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Ask A Genius 257 – Communists and Hollywood

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/12

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Communists had some success in infiltrating Hollywood, getting some projects made that were very pro soviet. At the same time, there were a lot of people who got up in Hollywood communism because it looked like a good way to get laid.

The women that you’d meet at commie parties in Hollywood tended to be I guess looser than other women and so a lot of people would attend these functions just to hook up or have a shot at hooking up.

In any case, that was 80 years ago. But—Russia’s greatest success in infiltrating America is now.

They have fucked up our political system, or taken a situation that was already leaning towards the fucked up and you know, doubled the fucked upness.

And conservatives are—well, not exactly conservatives, but staunch Fox news viewing Republicans and Fox news pundits are falling all over themselves to explain how Russia’s involvement isn’t that big a deal.

But we have the worst bunch of yahoos holding national office. And well, since the gilded age, and possibly, all of American history. That’s it.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 256 – The Breakdown of Self

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/11

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: People may—will certainly give themselves over to these entities. Not everyone and not all the time but people will belong to them and the people will participate into various degrees in willing the action.

People won’t be people. People will be broken down, will be melded with other information processing entities, and the self, I mean, some people—or entities will, will hold their selves to be super important and will live existence—it will have existence that maintain the integrity of the self.

Other entities will sled it up and merge and split and bud and be part of a more fluid information processing structures where you know, the self doesn’t, isn’t at the level of you know, what we would consider the self.

The self might just be much bigger in terms of the information processing ability it has and the—where it’s getting its information input, its sensory input from. And so living as a human will still be possible and there will still be probably billions.

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Ask A Genius 255 – Blobs of Information Processing

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/10

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So you can imagine two centuries from now, it’s impossible to predict, but you can imagine large blobs, large agglomerations of information processing machinery.

Whatever comes after, you’ve got mega, then you have Giga, then you have Tera, then you have Peta and Femto, take that another three or four prefixes, or five prefixes, you know whatever stands for ten to the I don’t know, twenty seventh? Calculations per second.

Machinery that can do that many calculations per second, but in a shared way that kind of acts like consciousness. One blob squaring off against an equally powerful blob, just to hold onto their section of the world’s information processing real estate.

And you can imagine people living in those things. In cyber worlds, because it’s just cheaper to live there, because there’s preservation there. If the blobs are durable and you can store yourself, multiple copies of yourself in case of mishap or foul play.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 254 – Hacking Wars and the 2016 Election

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/09

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: 2016 election, you can argue that it was the first cyber war election. It was the first of a lot of things, but it was the first election partially determined by cyber warfare, or significantly determined—determined to a significant extent by cyber warfare.

It was also the first election where the disruption caused by AI played a significant part. And for the foreseeable future, there will be conflict among information processing technologies from the people who operate them.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 253 – Hacking Wars

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Hacking wars go on all the time where different entities, cyber structures, or whatever you want to call it, information processing machinery and the people who operate them are fighting other countries and other groups information processing machinery plus the people who operate them.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 251 – Chance and Sport

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/06

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what’s the deal with the chance and sports?

Rick Rosner: So, the deal in sport is people feel that victories, defeats, mean something. And I just came across data that quantifies how chancey each sport is. And it kinda verified my suspicion that baseball is the chanciest of the sports.

Kinda on a par with hockey, anytime you have a low amount of scoring, that allows for more chance of outcomes and games.

I guess with basketball it’s got the most instances. The sport of least chance has the probability that the less good team wins. I really wanted to know who the best team is, in a playoff or in a game, you’d play forever possibly, with a chance victory by the lousier team.

It’s ruled out. In baseball 9 innings, and in hockey, 3 periods are not enough for that to be ruled out. Baseball you might have to play 24 innings across 2 days to really squeeze out the chance, the lousier team then wins down to a less than 10%. I’m just guessing with the super bowl, where a game was that important. You’re only playing 4 quarters, so the lousier team can win.

So, if you’re really interested in the fairest outcome, it really tells you which team is the best. The super bowl should probably be at least 6 quarters or probably double.

The super bowl should be twice as long as it is played across 2 days if you have to. People don’t want that. The best team doesn’t always win. People will tend to ignore chance and instead kind of victories and defeat in the structure.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 250 – Termanites

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/05

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: I’m just saying that the idea that IQ doesn’t have a huge context of matter, especially since IQ was designed by [undecipherable], I believe in France as just a tool to see what kids needed help with in school.

He had IQ, I don’t know what he called it, he probably didn’t call it IQ, because that was probably termed coined by California.

But he came up with the idea of intelligence testing, on a five-point scale, where the ones and twos had learning difficulties, needed help, and the fours and fives had advanced learning abilities and needed perhaps different educational resources too, and the threes are your average students who might be okay in just a regular classroom.

And then Terman gets a hold of the idea and probably comes up with an index of 100 being average. You know with differences of measured on a scale of the standard deviation of 16, and he kind of Americanized it, he kind of tech-ed it up.

Going from a one through five scale to a scale that gives you two or three-digit score, which gives the illusion of much more precision.

I can brag about my IQ and use it to try to get recognition and maybe eventually a book deal or employment, or somehow monetize it the way like Marlin Savion who was known for having the highest IQ in the genus book of records in the 80’s has monetized her IQ. She has probably six or seven million dollars over her life-time.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 249 – Strongest Man Competition

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/04

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Where guys from the Viking country seem to be really into this, and do really well. But, I don’t know that you can claim that any one of those guys is absolutely the world’s strongest man, because the tasks are arbitrary.

Then you have Olympic power holders who do things of strength and whole other set of tightly judged measures of strength. Then you have weird effects like the world’s strongest teenager, for a long time was a kid out of one of the eastern bloc countries.

This kid turns out that he has like brutal scoliosis, so that when he dead lifts, he grabs the bar spine flexes, his rib cage drops a couple of inches, so his ribs are resting directly on his ileac crest of his pelvis.

And so, he only has to get the bar like two inches off the ground, because his body flexes so he doesn’t…I’ve heard that when he bench presses you can put a basketball under his back because his spine is so curved. So, that’s weird way of not cheating but of kind of leveraging one’s strength due to anatomical peculiarity. And the measurement of IQ of intelligence has always been problematic.

And also, this is similar to the world’s strongest man, what the hell, it doesn’t matter, what matters…the world strongest man matters just within the context of the show called The World’s Strongest Man. It matters within the context of like National Pride, which you could already use an important thing when it comes to power lifting.

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Ask A Genius 248 – Magnus

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/03

[Beginning of recorded material]

Jacobsen: Okay.

Rick Rosner: So, you could argue that there are a huge practice effect and a huge determination in the diligence.

So, I mean the whole thing is arbitrary again in the same way that when, if you have ever watched the world’s strongest man, see a bunch of guys who weigh anywhere from 280 to 400 pounds doing various things that take tremendous strength.

Lifting stone balls that are two feet in diameter. Pushing 800-pound truck tires that are 10 feet in diameter, end over end. Racing while towing a semi that might go for I don’t know 10,000 pounds. And there are different people win different events.

There’s no world’s strongest man whose won that thing eight years in a row, I don’t think, maybe there is. His name is probably something Scandinavian-like, the name Magnus Carlson comes to mind.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 247 – Test for Genius

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/02

[Beginning of recorded material]

Jacobsen: Okay. So, I just pulled it up. So, why don’t I point to a Test for Genius for [undecipherable] from 2010.

Rosner: Okay.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, we can take this, and you also scored four 198.1’s all by Betts from 2012. So, maybe, we can take a step back and that way you can speak more confidently.

Rick Rosner: I mean the whole thing is just arbitrary. I have practiced a lot, because I have taken so many tests, I know what it takes to do those tests, and I have to put in the work to do them.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 246 – 205 and 199, and Renorming

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: And if you take the Betts listing and the one test that they do take into account to decide your score in ranking from it, Evangelos scored 205 on SD16 on a test by the Cerebrals Society, which was a nonverbal, and therefore a culture fair test.

You scored 199 on SD16, so… but his is nonverbal. Your 199 was verbal. Was it not?

Rick Rosner: I don’t know. I would have to look up the whole deal. And some of these scores are based on, these high-end tests get re-normed a lot.

So, as the people who make the test to get more results and do more statistical work, which itself maybe – I mean most of these people aren’t psycho-metricians or statisticians.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 245 – Ultra-High IQ

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/31

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why? How?

Rick Rosner: I’ve taken more than thirty tests to measure ultra-high IQ, and have gotten the highest score ever earned on more than twenty of them. Nobody has that huge record of maxing out all of these high-end IQ tests.

The most that anybody else has done is two or three or five. Where they get the highest score ever. I don’t know if anybody would even doubt it’s high. I would think that other’s people’s claim to their IQ’s generally rest on one or two really good performances on an IQ test.

Mine rests on my performance across dozens of tests. And decades of messing around with these tests.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 244 – Highest IQ?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Jacobsen: In one interview you said you had the highest IQ in the world.

Rosner: I have worked with plenty of people who are wildly smart, who are geniuses accordingly fairly, not the loosest definition of genius but not the strictest definition of genius.

You have to put things in context where I might be the funniest person currently alive within an IQ in the 190’s. Or, I might be the IQiest person alive writing these written jokes for – like beyond the specific contexts it’s hard to judge.

Anyway, you were saying. That I am the smartest person…I have got a good argument that I have the highest IQ in the world.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 243 – Goofy Ideas

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/29

[Beginning of recorded material]

Jacobsen: Oh yeah. On the Betts listing, you would be number two, because he is number one.

Rosner: Well, everything has to start with how goofy the idea is that you can write about that way.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay. So, what is your preface to the question on competing for smarts?

Rick Rosner: I benefited from the ranking, but you have similar problems as to as when you ask, and worse problems are when you ask who is the world’s strongest man. There are lots of different indices of strength.

And, any kind of measuring tool is sort of the arbitrary in whatever tasks picks or emphasizes. I can tell you that at the highest measured IQ of anybody who has ever written jokes for TV…

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 242 – Smarter Than Who?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/28

[Beginning of recorded material]

Jacobsen: What about formally? You are on the World Genius Directory of Jason Betts.

Rosner: Hold on, hold on. I also like there’s a whole little cluster of women at Harvard at the beginning of the 20^th century who are responsible for much of our understanding of the structure of the universe. Who didn’t get the credit they deserved.

Like Henrietta Swan Leavitt and her crew. What’s that lady, the one that discovered the elemental composition of stars.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Cecelia Helena Payne?

Rick Rosner: Yeah. She’s interesting, in that she came up with this huge discovery and is almost entirely absent from our collective scientific memory.

Compared to people whose names are pretty much household names, like Hubble — who builds his work upon the work of these women. I like reading about [indecipherable], but there’s not too much more to read about him. So, anyway. Oh, you asked who is smarter than me, and…

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 241 – Heroes? I’m Not Sure Either

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/27

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about Cory Doctorow?

Rick Rosner: I like Kelly Oxford and Doctorow.

Jacobsen: Who is the segway from there?

Rosner: Just writers that I like.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Who was next?

Rick Rosner: People I like finding more about include like Elvis, I like reading about F. Scott Fitzgerald, although he was a huge mess. A provocative mess.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 240 – The Problem with Personal Heroes

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/26

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Just to take a step back, who are personal heroes for you although you have qualms with those terms?

Rick Rosner: Alright. Well, I don’t know about heroes, but people I am interested in finding more about or reading more of their stuff.

Jacobsen: Like who?

Rosner: Like George Saunders I would say is a hero. He is a guy who is trained as an engineer and then became a writer who addresses a lot of issues of modern life that other people don’t quite get.

The world is discovered. And so, he has rightfully been elevated into one of our great current writers. He’s also personally kind and available. He just seems like a good guy and he is a great writer.

Other writers I like, though their interests don’t always overlap with mine – I mean entirely overlap with mine, so they don’t always write about what I wish they would write about. Stevenson, Charles Strauss, whoever wrote, I forget his name, The Wind-Up Girl.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 239 – Paul Ryan Thang

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: We see the outcome of this Paul Ryan thing because of the short term follow-up. I don’t know which is sort of all dress code.

That was a few days ago and. It will come in. And. Done will are so many more serious issues. In trying to get women to wear sleeves. Or I guess he has a protocol right under some kind of protocol that was so.

Trump gets his tax which he probably won’t. He hasn’t been able to get anything yes. That people making twenty five thousand dollars a year will all say forty dollars a year in taxes while people making three point four million dollars a year will save nine hundred thirty-seven thousand seven hundred dollars.

So with that much policy they’re trying to get through.

Health care is tax cuts for the very wealthy. That’s insane. Oh, Ryan’s not the one to push that particular tax. But the justification for cutting taxes primarily on the rich has always been trickle down.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 238 – Metformin (4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/24

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: And then there will be a zillion psychological implications of the end of aging.

But those will all get messed-in with other social factors that are going on, because most people who may be 80 and look like they are in their 30’s will also have a lot of other technology to be plugged into other people.

You know there will be people, they will be infested with AI, so you can’t just talk about a world in which nobody looks old, because it won’t be like the Star Trek World that you see when, sometimes in the Star Trek movies they return to Earth and it is just people walking around and everybody looks young and pretty and they wearing a-symmetric clothes, and there’s big plazas with big architecture.

And that’s going to be a full picture of the year 2300, because people won’t be the highest form of life. It will be augmented people and other manifestations of AI. So, it becomes pretty hard to predict what the world will look at by 2100 or 2130.

Alright, that’s enough of that.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 237 – Metformin (3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/23

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: If you have a wrist apparatus or a stomach apparatus they just rode a belt on your stomach and prevented your blood sugar from ever spiking, that would probably add 20 percent to your life span. So, people may start doing that stuff early in life.

So, somebody who is born in 2040 and goes on a pump for youth preservation in the 2060’s may reach the year 2100 at chronological age 60 but looking as if he or she is in his or her 30’s.

And may be able by the year 2100, may be able thanks to the technology of that time continue to look as if they are in their 30’s indefinitely.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 236 – Metformin (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/22

[Beginning of recorded material]Rick Rosner: It basically helps slow down your body clock. People who are on metformin seem to age more slowly. But it’s not usually a drug, it’s not a drug that is usually prescribed before age 40. And only then if you’r

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Ask A Genius 235 – Metformin (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/21

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Alright, one more thing. Eventually, say once you get out of the 21^st century medicine and technology becomes so good that at least for the have’s – age is pretty much irradiated.

That everybody grows up with treatments that allow them to hold onto youth indefinitely if that’s what they want.

There will be some obstinate jerks who insist on aging naturally, but after 2100, you won’t necessarily be able to tell the difference between somebody born in, I don’t know, 2040 from somebody born in 2080.

Somebody born in 2100, if you are born in 2040 you may benefit, there may be, you may start engaging in youth preservation as early as your teens.

For instance, metformin is this diabetes drug that gets prescribed to about 80 million prescriptions for metformin are written every year just in America. Metformin is a drug that regulates blood sugar and helps you use insulin more efficiently.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 234 – Socialist Bouncing Pillow

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/20

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So, you may have kind of a socialist floor, a bouncing pillow that keeps the poor from being too poor thanks to a guaranteed minimum wage.

But, those people won’t be living in luxury though certain aspects of that life may look semi-luxurious from our point of view. When you have, when even the poorest people can afford TV’s that cover an entire wall.

Which is straight Ray Bradbury in the 1950’s but is slowly coming true. And you know, decent food, clothing, semi-crappy shelter but not enough work and perhaps resentment against the have’s. And the have’s may be more and more obvious, based on them looking old and weird.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. I am going to start veering into pure twaddle.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 233 – Dead and Money Heirs

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/19

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Just people die and their money goes to their heirs. But as people live longer and longer that money is locked up. And, it will have effects on society.

Though, it’s hard to predict exactly how pissed off people will be and how big the effects will be, because there is going to be a gazillion other economic things going on.

But it may be a world of resentment, of cross-generation resentment. Because at the same time you have people getting older and older and keeping their money by not dying, you are going to have a worsened job market due to AI, probably.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 232 – 2080s Old

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/18

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So, I don’t know, I guess I am guessing that in the 2080’s you are going to have a lot of people who are very old by our standards still running around and living healthfully maybe with replacement and rejuvenated in all sorts of ways. But still kind of Frankenstein-ish from all of the different treatments they’ve had.

And, there’s certainly going to be a lot of prejudice among different groups of the old versus different groups of the young.

Because if you were born in the second half of the 20^th century and you are still around in the second half 21^stcentury you will probably accumulated a bunch financial resources that younger people may be jealous of – because in the past death has been one of the greatest ways to transfer wealth.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 231 – The Lives of the Future Old (and Famous)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/17

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Or you will have people say born in 1970, still living healthily in 2080, but baring the marks of having lived 110 years.

The people who live 110 years 50 years after them won’t have the same damage. Somebody who is born in 1970 and gets to live to 2080 and beyond is going to have a lot of damage from still living in normal times.

Somebody born in 1970 is 47 now. And, that person over the next 30 years may be able to be rejuvenated but still at the end of 30 years, that person is 77 and with money and good technology that person may look like somebody in their 50’s or late 40’s but weird, because that person has had all sorts of rejuvenation treatment.

That person may be able to keep going for another 40 years after that, but they are going to be, they may be healthy in their 110’s but there will still be all sorts of signs that they didn’t have the benefit of super advanced medical care for most of their life.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 230 – The Layered Old

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/16

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: I kind of believe in a slow singularity. Where you get all of your questions answered thanks to humans working with AI, but it takes – it doesn’t all happen in the 2040’s it takes 60/80/100 years after that for everything to roll out.

The singularity is when everything happens at once. So, I guess I don’t believe in the singularity. Because I think the singularity is going to take most of a century to play out.

So, by the 2080’s you have a lot of – it may be possible for people to live indefinitely and then you are going to have the layered old.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 229 – The Boomers and Xers

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: And then what comes after boomers, gen-x or I guess. Well, anyway people born from 1965 to 1980. And, those people will really, really benefit on a wide scale from extreme life extension.

Where people born between ’65 and ’80 may be looking at 40 or 50 years or more of extended life beyond the average like 75, you are going to get a bunch of people in the 1965 to 1980 cohort living to at least 120 and possibly 140/150.

But that takes us to into the 2080’s and beyond. By the 2080’s we are well passed, if you believe in the singularity, which I think you shouldn’t entirely. The strong singularity believers believe that by 2040 that all questions will be answered thanks to AI.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 228 – Making War, Making Babies

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/14

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So, you have a generation, the main old people now, were born, well they’re depression babies, they were born in the late 20’s are really old now, and you have the people born in the 1930’s just before the boomers.

And those people will get to live on average into their, probably early 90’s. Which means a lot of them will leave into the 2020’s and some of them may make it to 2030.

And then you have the boomers. The boomers have been changing the face of aging just by demographic force. Boomers were born from ‘45 through ’64. Of course, they’re a bigger presence in the U.S.

Because the term largely applies to the U.S., but applies to the rest of the world too because the rest of world, World War II ended in ’45, and so people stopped killing each other and started making babies.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 227 – Longevity Escape Velocity, Almost

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/13

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: There are certainly people alive today who will live to 120. And, probably alive today who will live to 106, but that won’t be happening for another hundred years at least because it just takes time for people to live that long.

So, we can look a little bit at what extended life-spans will look like, because it will take time for them to roll out.

My wife and I have just been helping my mother-in-law move into a senior living community. She was born 1933 as was my mom.

And, they’ve certainly enjoyed the benefits of you know better health care and better knowing what to eat and to exercise, stuff that their parents didn’t have. So, they’re pushing their mid-80’s and likely will live into their 90’s.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 226 – Evolution of Social Maturity into Philosophical Insight

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/12

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: And there is an answer to that, but I couldn’t answer it. I can probably think of that, but the answer to why you are you and not anybody else is because all the information in your brain pertains to you, all your sensory information, all your thoughts.

You are you because you live within your own consciousness and the everyone lives within his or her own consciousness and for you to be somebody else, we would have to be that person. There is no escaping.

And everything you are comes from your perception of your own thinking and free to be, to get glimmers of somebody else, then you’ll have to be some supernatural movie phenomenon where you start getting information piping in first from somebody else. That doesn’t happen.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 225 – Evolution of Social Maturity

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/11

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: And you were the top kid at your school?

Rick Rosner: I mean when you are seven years old, nobody knows whether you were the top kid, nor should know from top kid, every kid is different, but this was the IQ era and eventually, yeah, I found out I had the top IQ scores at my junior high, but that’s a ridiculous criteria.

But I took it to heart when other stuff went wrong; in gym class or whatever, though that was probably a crutch, I should have kick out from under myself earlier and I realize that regardless of how…

I needed to make some social compromises or at least develop a more sophisticated understanding of how to get what I wanted socially at a, perhaps, earlier age, instead of defiantly being nerdy.

I wasn’t trying to be nerdy, but I wasn’t trying to change myself drastically until high school, the last year of junior high. But then it was…that was ninth grade and by then it was pretty much too late.

Or at least the way that how clueless I was, it was too late, because not only was my social taste naïve, I wanted all the things that dumb guy wanted, which was to have a really cute girlfriend from amongst the group of universally acknowledged popular cute girls.

Because I didn’t know better. That’s when you are young and socially dumb. That’s who you get crushes on. Anyway, at a young age, I don’t know, say six or eight, I remember asking myself the standard physiological question of, “Why am I not seeing as somebody else?”

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 224 – Evolution of Philosophical View

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/10

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, how has your philosophical view evolved? Because we’ve talked about growing up as Jewish and not really questioning things, but also thinking of some of the stuff as not necessarily true.

Rick Rosner: The Jewish have much to do with my philosophy about the nature of the universe. I mean I had various earlier philosophical views but they weren’t very sophisticated. They were little kid views.

Like one thing was, I was nerdy and bad on the play-ground and bad at sports and I understood that this was fitting but I didn’t like it because the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal.

I mean I was seven years old, but I took that to mean that I was good in school but there had to be a countervailing bad thing so everybody pretty much equalled out. So like, my being good in the classroom was countervailed by being terrible socially.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 223 – Underclass, Kids, and Resource Dilution

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/09

Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Technology will prompt people to have kids later or to hold on to their own resources. The economic elites holding on to their own resources because they can anticipate living indefinitely and not be diluting those resources through having kids.

The underclass; I don’t know how it’s going to work with them and kids, but I anticipate that the population will begin to level out around 12-13 billion, 14-15 billion. I don’t know, but around a century from now.

And it doesn’t have to be Idiocracy having a large number of people whose needs are taken care of and it might not even be fair to call them the underclass, you might call them the economically non-elite.

Those people with having their needs taken care of may be free to create all sorts of great things for the world. The risk is that will be economic stratification, but perhaps the more critical issue is whether access to tech will be stratified.

It is having all the tech and the have-nots not having as much access. I have a feeling that access to tech will be more democratized than wealth will.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 222 – Underclasses and Socialism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: And so you get all sorts of stupid arguments from Republicans including arguments on even things such as highways and other forms of infrastructure that they may need to be privatized and lately bringing up to the government that advocating for these things is socialistic: garbage arguments.

And the deal is when you look at 100 years from now where human structures are still largely in place but things are rapidly changing, you’re going to see a small group of economic leads competing for and owning most of the planet’s economic resources unless something radical happens.

I doubt it will and then you’ll have a vast underclass who exist who live lives that would be considered by contemporary Republicans somewhat socialist.

The elites will control all the resources and the underclass will be short of work, perhaps short of skills and maybe not. There may be the democratization of skills but even with skills, you may not be able to find adequate work.

The underclass won’t be able to find enough work to pay their ways, so there’s going to be some kind of guaranteed minimum something to allow the underclass to live; food, shelter, clothing, all of which will continue to grow cheaper over the next 100 years to the point where it won’t seem as socialistic.

It won’t be that socialistic because giving the underclass what they need to live won’t cost that much and plus the economic elites will be supplying this stuff and sucking lots of profits out of it anyhow.

So it will be a weird exploitative capitalistic socialism with lucky rich people still competing to maintain the upper hand and a large underclass; some content, some trying to struggle out of the underclass having the resources to live because the cost is negligible.

I mean 100 years from now the population may be stabilizing because there will be so many technologies coming into play, they will distract or dissuade people from spitting out kids; people who have kids later if at all because of lifespans for most people will be increasing vastly.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 221 – Underclasses of the Future

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/07

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The problems of the underclass in the future; those are the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy.

Rick Rosner: Let’s talk about the underclass in the future.

Right now in America we have a confrontation between two philosophies; the democratic and the Republican philosophies. The democrats think that we all get better by all helping each other, it takes a village philosophy.

The Republicans say that if you free America from rules and taxes then everybody will get out there and be entrepreneurial and succeed that way. That we’ll create so much in the way of riches that we’ll be able to, independent of government, share our riches with the less fortunate.

But really it’s a matter of… the Republican philosophy is a bunch of horse shit, it’s really people with the resources want to get resources and money trying to get them and hold on to them and saying ‘fuck you’ to people they consider as freeloaders. And it kind of trickle down and most of that stuff does not prove in itself through recent history.

The economy works better under Democrats. Republicans say that free America… not free America; America free of rules, regulations, and taxes will be great for everyone. But that has not proven to be so and Republicans also to say that any kind of sharing of resources a government, anything that involves taxation and then spelling the taxes on people is a form of socialism, that Obamacare is socialism and you even get people…

The Republicans are the most extreme they’ve been ever. And pretty much all the America’s dumb people… the Republicans are partially-intentionally partially-accidentally crowd a big… if they’re made being stupid into a demographic and it’s their demographic.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 220 – Genetic Terrorism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/06

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Genetic terrorism; I don’t know if it’ll happen in the real world, I think it’s a great thought point for science fiction. The genetic engineers go rogue and they start infecting humanity with genes that are intended to improve the world.

Now that thought point could be used in a whole variety of contexts. The rogue engineers start infecting people with viruses that are supposed to get people super powers and then the gene tweaks go override and you get maybe some super heroes but you also get some super mutants that.

Maybe that’s basically X-Men anyway. But the thought point would be those genetic terrorists… Those conservative politicians who rile against genetic engineers saying that we’re playing God, they don’t want to get old and die as God intended and then terrorist hit these old curmudgeons with age reversal genes and then the curmudgeons have to either fake continuing to be old or renounce their positions.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 219 – The Temptation of Now

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/05

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: It’s only through the veneer of civilization that we’d even manage to set up structures that remind us to think about other than the now. In the future in case we gain control over our thought processes, you know, we could probably tweak ourselves.

I assume that as we gain control over our thoughts and drives, that we will tweak ourselves to be better adapted to the demands of the current world. You know, we like salty stuff, we like sweet stuff because those things were rare in the world we evolved in and precious because they helped us not die.

But now, you know, since we control the world we can make endless salty and sweet things and now we like those things too much for our current circumstances and salty and sweet things can kill us fast more than if we didn’t eat all those things.

So we can tweak our foods that taste delicious but doesn’t kill us as much as delicious food tends to, but we can also tweak ourselves so we like delicious but deadly stuff a little less.

And we could also tweak ourselves so we could put constraints on aggression if we decide that’s a good thing or we can tweak ourselves for specific mindedness though I don’t know how that would be beneficial to groups.

But it wouldn’t be beneficial to individuals, if it would remain beneficial to individuals, they’d continue to be motherfuckers. So to get an entire civilization to agree that none of us should be fuckers…

that would be a tricky thing to pull off and also would be subject to all sorts of cheating. So maybe… I don’t know, some gorillas of the future, some genetic engineered… what do you want to call them? Terrorist…

I guess gorillas is the word because maybe release a virus that will make people more public spirited and create an epidemic pandemic of a public spirited wimpiness where all of a sudden we all become special snowflakes who are concerned about the future that we’re leaving our kids.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 218 – The Blob, Blobs, and National and Religious Firewalls

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/04

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Islam is still a force, powerful force, in the world that’s kept people afraid. I am skeptical of what has become of the western world 250 years from now and so that there may be like an Islam bloc. One that’s kind of firewalled off from the rest of the planets’ infrastructure, or there could be nationalistic blocs with each fire walled off philosophically.

Then you’ll have this planet-wide infrastructure with a lot of fluid communication possible among the different parts of the infrastructure. It’ll be the most complicated machine entity in history. But you may have for a variety of reasons philosophical, political, divisions or firewalls or whatever, though the year 2261 equivalent of a firewall may have protections in place.

I mean this thing or these things will function as willed entities, which will not be free from conflict. You could have easily imagine that a couple of these blocs could be squaring off.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 217 – The Blob Makes a Comeback

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/03

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: The one making the willed decisions or perhaps you’ve got an agglomeration of joined selves that in combination make the willed decisions.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: And what is this entity?

Rick Rosner: We’ve been talking about a thing called, that we call “the Blob,” but it has aspects of the cloud, it’s got aspects of social media, it’ll be big patches of the planet-wide computing structure. I don’t know.

I doubt that the entire planet will be covered by a unitary computing or information processing entity. That seems like a bad idea and also seems like it won’t happen. But there will be entities that act in more or less unitary ways as if there is a single entity consisting of many different information processing parts.

I don’t want to say nodes but the thing that can unify itself across a bunch of information processing machinery whether organic or mechanical or both and act as an entity to preserve, protect, preserve and protect itself and its components and then do for itself in the world and you might have several of these, you might have billions of these; interacting with each other, merging with each other.

There will probably be a judge if not a single worldwide information processing infrastructure. I mean you might have that but on the other hand you might have one of the world’s biggest ones that covers most of the planet then you’ll have smaller ones in places that have willfully isolated themselves.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 216 – Morality and Escape Velocity

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/02

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay, so we’re just at the beginning of kind of a cultural adjustment to the possibility of extended life.

Rick Rosner: We’ve gone from—mortality lifespan statistics are a little tricky because at the beginning of the 20th century the average lifespan was 40, that’s not a fair deal because the average was brought down by huge levels of infant-child mortality. If you could make it, you know, past ten you’d likely live into your 60s.

But over the past century we’ve added 20 years or so to the average adult life span, but people don’t treat that as if it’s like a signal to change how we live our lives. It hasn’t impacted us psychologically and only now are we beginning to adjust our expectations to the idea of extended further extensions in lifespan.

Our risk avoidance behavior has changed consistently with increased adult life spans. It’s not like the 1930s where we drive around in deathtrap, unpadded automobiles with no seatbelts, you know, people drive worse than ever but auto fatalities keep dropping because cars are packed with safety features and that aspect of life.

So we have two waves; we’ve got the wave of extended healthy lifespan, we’ve got the wave that is sort of trailing that which is preserving mental function independent of the body.

With the healthy lifespan thing playing out across the next fifty years and the separating the mental function from the body thing playing out across the next 150 years and then beyond that is…

well, first we got to talk about what we want from cognition which goes back to the question every semi smart at least little kid asks her or himself at some point which is, “Why am I me and not somebody else?” with the answer being because all your sensory information, all your memories, all your information processing pertain to you in your body; everything is… all the information you have and use comes from your body with the added senses and its brain and pertains to you and your body. And for many aspects of extended life that will be able to preserve that feeling of the self.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 215 – New Catch Phrases and Words

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: We can continue to absorb catch phrases and words. So, there is probably more flaking than ever before, or failing to live up to assumed tasks. The will-do lunch is now widely recognized to mean we’ll never do lunch.

There has been a falling off of thank you notes. it is not an unpardonable breach to not respond – somebody has to be the one to stop the text chain. It is not an unpardonable breach without giving an explanation why.

People forgive that and assume the conversation is over, or that there is some reason the person had to step away from the text chain. All of those things are examples of flaking at some level, which means that volume of the tasks implied by standard communication and etiquette has reached the point where those conventions are now routinely violated.

It would be tough to keep up with all of them. It would be weird to be somebody to not be the one to end the chain of texts. They would be thought of as a kind of pain in the ass and OCD-ish.

There are limits being created by our ways of communicating right now, but they don’t appear to be putting limits on the new garbage words we can learn and quickly use up.

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Ask A Genius 214 – Words in Circulation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/30

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Rick Rosner: We are sending more letter type things to each other than people have ever done before in history by some crazy wide margin. So, you’d expect words to get into circulation and then get used up at a faster rate than previous eras.

The 50s and 60s had their words. SNAFU, it was a big WWII word. There is situation normal all fucked up. I don’t know if people in the army went around saying it all of the time. In the 60s, they had their cliches that were or things that were allegedly said.

In the 50s, there was a big focus on advertising, and it was allegedly said. it was, for the same reasons that Mad Men was popular, it epitomized the time. For the first time, America was a thoroughly prosperous consumer culture.

One of the cliches that you could put in the mouth of an ad guy is “running up the flag pole to salute.” There was the man in the grey flannel suit, or the organization guy. The guy, for the first time, who had – you had a greater number of people working for organizations, business organizations, than at any other time.

The man in the grey flannel suit is just a cognitive business machine. A guy who wears a suit to work and is one of a zillion drones who is doing mid-management stuff. It was the same culture to show a 100 by 100 room.

It would show many different secretaries each at their own desk.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 213 – Partnership Options, or Not

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/29

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In the past, we talked about the differentiation between different partnership options, or not, in developing countries as technology causes 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 is no contact with women or society and do not get any education and completely drop out, in addition to the variations on that theme of those that become hooked to some form of electronic stimulation rather than 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 more essential and more natural than the attitudes of any other time that came before.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 212 – Arousal Addictions

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/28

[Beginning of recorded material]

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 more of the same, as with cocaine, for example, but it more of different things, 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, delay of gratification from the prefrontal cortex for executive function, get a reward, nucleus accumbens activates and you feel good, so you get real world context. You get the context. But with pornography and video games, you get reward and no context.

Rosner: All of this stuff spreads across all thee other parts of life. So, trolls feel as though they won’t get laid, but also a lot of them also feel like 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 have said this before. In the 70s, things sucked and sex was definitely one of the best things to aspire to.

There were so many other awesome things. Now, there is a lot more entertaining stuff in the world. So, sex doesn’t have to be the main thing you aspire to – so that is even more 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 and then they’ll grudgingly attempt to fit into the traditional adult world.

The way, you know—I mean, if you survey guidos, and I assume there are, they will say it is a temporary thing they are doing while they can and will settle down and get married. The people on Jersey Shore settle down and have kids.

Snooki has written 3 books so far, maybe more, including one on parenting. Fucking Snooki! Who passes out by dumpsters while pissing, has written a bunch of books. J-Wow, also a dumpster pisser.

Jacobsen: I do not have experience with dumpster pissing.

Rosner: For work, I had to watch a lot of Jersey Shore. There was a lot pissing by a dumpster because you were drunk and couldn’t be bothered to go inside. You’re drunk already. I don’t know whether trolls, or what percent of them, consider this a temporary phase and then they’ll take on some kind of adult role.

Eventually, that they’ll try to grow up.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 211 – Paradise of Porn

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/27

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You see these playout in preferences of verbal expression. [Laughing] That is a really abstract way of putting it. Men and their titles; women and their makeup. Typically, women will advantage their looks; men will advantage their status to some way.

Also, there is denigration of competitors. Then there is denigration by men against other men’s status, or women denigrating other women’s beauty.

Rick Rosner: That is pretty straightforward, then you get into ironic hipster culture. Where the criterion is authenticity, it is about living authentically. People riding antique bicycles, having ironic hair, using old non-technological techniques.

In hipness culture, you try to arrive at a state of hipness authentically, through having honest interests in these things as opposed to being a poser who is 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 choose a culture. Or 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 had 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 o being popular and getting laid. Lonely basement guys, trolls basically, troll culture is an opting out cultures.

Jacobsen: The trolls, the MGTOWs, much of the men’s movement…

Rosner: …there are a lot of guys in those cultures who have decided it is 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: That overlaps with porn culture.

Rosner: They are part of exactly the same thing, I think. Everybody is still horny. But it is easier than ever to relieve one’s horniness without social contact. Yea, it is 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 live lives that are pretty solitary except for online interactions, but they can be hostile because they don’t have to meet any societal standards to get laid.

A paradise of porn.

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Ask A Genius 210 – Time Perspective

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/26

[Beginning of recorded material]

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 – past, present, and future, do you think they’re focusing on the present?

Rick Rosner: I am not understanding entirely.

Jacobsen: If you look at rave culture, these are people focusing on 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. One of things we have to burn as a successful species is time. There is an aspect of time consciousness. Like, nobody plans on being a raver or a guido forever, but, right now, it is fine.

The cost of time is fairly low. Colleges, to some extent, are folding 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 that doesn’t—

For hundreds of years, we have seen increasing productivity, industrialization. To the point where millions of graduating, people graduating high school, do not join the workforce, to personally survive or to help the nation survive.

Instead, they can go and spend 4 years either learning further skills or partying in college, which is a sign that we have excess productivity and that colleges can be seen in some lights as productivity sponges.

It gives people a place to waste time. There are plenty of other activities in society that are time sucks that we get to engage in because we have time to spare, so you have entire lifestyles that are kind of among the things that they hinge on as time to spare.

You can go and be a guido, and go sow wild oats. Get your shit together in your late 20s, it is the same with rave culture. Rave culture is outwardly about everybody being loose and free and not having the constraints of everyday life.

But behind that, it is still demonstration of dominance and of fitness. People try to wear not much clothes. People who are in—

Rave culture is still a competition to see Coachella, which is southern California’s rave-type event. It is hot. It is in the desert. People put on outfits that are super skimpy. It is still a demonstration of sexual fitness and sexual availability.

Although, if you probably ask most people attending a rave, there number one objective of going to Coachella. It is not to hook up, but hooking up is a huge underlying theme of that whole deal.

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Ask A Genius 209 – Hope for the Unpopular

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That sounds fantastically optimistic.

Rick Rosner: It is among the things you tell the unpopular kid who plays the tuba in the band. You say, “They are jealous and don’t like you.” It is a thing to make the unpopular kid feel better. In fact, that tuba thing came from something called The Hollywood Nights. It was about nerds trying to get laid.

But the entire culture has gone nerdy, where bros try to get laid. You’ve got guido culture, which can involve hair mousse and lifting and hitting club at night, and getting with women.

Jacobsen: There’s 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, don’t wear sunscreen, ride dirt bikes and motorcycles, and this is your life trying to hit on and pick up women aggressively.

It is attempts to appear dominant in ways that appear more awkward and less functional and less cool than before.

Rosner: There is fragmentation. I think there are—I never read John Nash book, but I saw the movie called A Beautiful Mind. He says that if you’re trying to hook up or mate successfully, then one strategy is to eliminate the most desirable females from consideration and then choose from among the best remaining females.

That 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 you look for the best deals based on what standards you have among the relatively ignored females.

There is a scene in the bar with the blonde being ignored. Then there is a brunette, the stereotypically less attractive female becomes more attractive because there is less competition for her.

So, I would guess that it comes to trying to hook up, in a species where you’re not competing directly against nature, but that in a super successful species that there is going to be the potential for niche forming.

Where people will aggregate themselves to maximize reproductive potential by forming groups where their attributes can be manifest to the best advantage; so, people will form bro culture, which gives an advantage to people who are best at being bros and broettes.

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Ask A Genius 208 – Dominance Behaviour

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/24

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: In earlier sessions, we were talking about dominance behaviour in species. It started when I saw a finch or a sparrow in a park in New York. I decided that that animals’ consciousness was less worried about the individual birds’ position in bird society as much as humans are about their position in human society.

I did a little reading. I found out that that is not as true to the degree that I thought it was. There are dominance hierarchies and pecking orders in many, many species. There is always the potential for those dominance hierarchies to form.

They provide efficiencies that prevent spending too much energy fighting amongst themselves, by giving them social structure. Some fighting takes pace initially, and then everyone else decides they’re cool with where they are.

Then you don’t have members of the species 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 behavioural flexibility. Also, estrus is year-round for our species.

Rosner: Things get weird when you get a hyper-fit species, as we are. The natural world is not as much of a threat to individual species member survival, for humans as it is for almost every other species.

Most humans survive to reproductive age, and most of our displays of dominance aren’t directly related to reproductive fitness. Things are more complicated, more baroque, and so displays of fitness and dominance hierarchies in humans are just a lot weirder than they are—less straightforward than they are for other species.

Within my lifetime, I have seen displays of fitness and dominance change from what can be seen as a more basic demonstration of physical vitality to more of a demonstration of hipness. When I was growing up, things felt more straightforwardly like jocks vs, nerds with jocks being cool and nerds being uncool.

That became more explicit in 1976, when Pumping Iron came out and made Arnie a star and weight training not a niche activity, but a widely accepted activity in America and people strived for that trim and muscular V-shaped torso, men did, and clothes and shirts were tight with shirts being tucked in.

That was 40 years ago. Now, physical fitness is overall de-emphasized compared to that era. People have the bodies they have. Clothes are not tight. Demonstrations of dominance, I think more in terms of Brooklyn hipsters; it has become—the stereotype when I was growing up or the thing that people were told was that “you’re nerdy in high school and junior high, but when you grow up you’ll be in charge. Everyone who is cool and a jock will be working in a gas station.”

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 207 – Science Fiction and S Curve

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/23

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: People gradually adapt to these changes. Maybe, a better model of the future will be things look like now, and then an S curve pops in and then you have a new S curve. Instead of a gradual thing like the coming smart phones, you can have the things like that.

They took over in less than 10 years. Now, we have a stable relationship with smart phones. We’re constantly buying new crappy ones. You can buy crappy computers. You can buy new crap, but that buying new crap is kind of a stable thing now.

So, you can talk about the conditions under which you get an S curve. Technology must work well enough. People who want to use it—you get the very beginnings of these things. Where only a few are wanting to take the trouble, or are intrepid enough to deal with the technology; then it becomes useful technology, and people embrace them, it becomes hard not to embrace them.

I cannot think of any technological improvement to human life that hasn’t been embraced for some reason. If the technology is clearly convenient and helpful, and doesn’t have major problems, then people will ubiquitously use it.

Science fiction, if not impossible, eventually comes to pass. A story written in 1976 or 1980s science fiction might have a pervasive use of computers that we might not see until 2006. I have to say no to science fiction as a correction.

We will probably never have a society of flying cars because flying cars don’t make sense for a lot of people.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 206 – Not for My Kid

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/17

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: You’ve got more and better technology at 1472. Before that, the written word was a pain in the ass to circulate, and then across the next 550 years. It has become easier and easier to reproduce and disseminate words on paper or on screens.

But that whole deal of the printed word(s) has been a kind of stable point. Cars have been stable for 90 or 100 years, even though you have demographic changes. You have cars getting better with more features, but we use cars in a lot and even most of the same ways and for the same purposes.

So, you have stability, you have S curves. S curves show some things are being used by 0% of the population to almost every member of a population. The S curve measures the percent of the population doing or using something.

So, the S curve for the telephone is flat until the 1870s, 1880s. Then it starts to gradually go up. The curve of adaptation gets steep around 1910 and 1935. By the end of WWII, it is weird if a household doesn’t have a telephone.

That is an S curve for telephone, where it goes from a flat 0% of this curve to a flat 100%, and we can guess that future changes and the S curve implies punctuation. The S in the phone curve occupies 50 years. You’ve got thousands of phonelessness before the S.

You’ve got some 80 years and counting after the telephone. So, graduality, the people who live in times of change experience that gradual narrative. Things change. II experienced the changes of the computer chips invading the home. My kid didn’t.

By the time she was ready to really use computers, as close to the time that people got started; by the time she was old enough to make effective use of computers, the search was in place and the Internet was in place too.

The Internet sucked in 1995. Information search has been a super bad point of almost not being a thing. So, I experienced the S curve. My kid didn’t. So, science fiction tends to focus on S curve stuff. The going away of some old way of being and the coming of some new way of being.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 205 – Gould, S.J.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/21

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: As we’ve said a gazillion times, we have tried to pin down when it gets weird like a thousand times. We can try to pin down when the phase changes will occur. We can look at evolution, which is a gradualist theory.

Speciation takes place over huge stretches of time. Species are stable for huge stretches of time. It is the accumulation of change. 100 years after Darwin. Stephen jay Gould and his research partner came up with a modification to evolutionary gradualism with punctuated equilibrium.

The evolutionary changes still take a long time, but they don’t all take place at the same rate. If you look at the fossil record, you can find endless instances of extended periods of species stability and short periods of species change and adaptation.

The change will happen at shorter time scales than periods of species stability, but there seems to be more time for species to be stable, except for certain hallmarks of a well-adapted species. A lot of species that are good fits in their environment.

They are successful across centuries, which is the domination of jocks in a niche, basically. The well-adapted species tend to be the dominant species over time. The members of the species that are bigger and dominant drive things to be bigger and more dominant, but other things are stable.

When new species bud off, that happens relatively quickly. It is across hundreds of thousands of years, typically, but not like the hundreds of thousands and even millions of years in which species can be stable.

You can kind of look at changes in our culture from that same perspective. That things tend to be stable for a long time and then they have a stable period of technology. The era of writing and literacy extended for a long time.

Depending on what your criteria are, whether you need 20% literacy for the population to say their literate or 50%, whatever your criteria; however, you define the era of the written word. You’re going to get something that has been not too unstable for centuries.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 204 – The Future, Inconsiderate Considerations

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/20

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: It is easier for people to call bullshit on the future on Twitter. People go along and hear predictions with these weird things and things being overturned, then you look at your life and think, “Where is the future? We had cars 100 years ago and cars now.

We have phones and movies now. Some are 3D. Some have special effects, but still they’re movies. So where is the fantastic future?”

That kind of misses—when the future arrives, it arrives all the sudden and then ka-boom within a couple of years things are different. “You got airbags. Fine. You got auto-park. Fine. It doesn’t change that we’re still driving cars.”

So, you have a bunch or a couple of ways for people toc all bullshit on the future. That doesn’t disqualify the future. That those ways of calling bullshit don’t disprove that the future is going to kick everyone’s ass.

On the one hand, we have shown stability is characteristic the way things are; it doesn’t preclude rapid changes in the ways things are. You have gradual changes that by their nature of being gradual do not seem like a big deal. It is like, “So what? The auto-parking car. How does this change my life?”

So that by the time you get to the self-driving car, you find the radical change that is the frog in the water that is being brought to a boil. You get used to a thing with changing technology, so you’re not blown away as easily.

The future finally gets here. It is like a principle of reality versus science fiction, which is, in science fiction you get to see the future and it is, awesome. You get to see it all at once. But, even with S curves, stuff takes a while.

When it gets here, then you see how it got here, and when it shows up, it is a culmination of old stuff and new stuff and it is grubby and sleazy and cheap. The sense of wonder has been sucked out of it by the process that it took to get here and how grubby it is by the time it gets here.

The principle is that you never get as much enjoyment out of the real future as kind of would anticipate seeing science fiction portrayals of the future.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 203 – All Equal in Creation, Men

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/19

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: That the Constitution says, “All men are created equal…” and should include women too, not just men. The basic idea is that this is the basic idea for the fabric of American liberty. So, to make feminism unpalatable to a lot of people, you must hang a bunch of other stuff on it to make it seem not right.

That it is whiny. That women are already in a privileged position in society. That if women just knew their place, then they would be better taken care of than even men who must be the risk-takers. Then even more modern counter-arguments, that feminism is anti-beauty.

That they see it as part of a movement to being pro-abortion or is tied to pro-abortion arguments and movements; or the idea that – you see this with minority movements too, that all the important battles have been won and that we should be cool because we live in a post-sexist and post-racist society.

A lot of people have dumb ideas about what feminism is. It makes them decide that it is not for them anymore and doesn’t need to be respected when people espouse feminist ideas. So, as I said, I have a wife and daughter, I like them to live in a world.

Even if I didn’t have a wife and a daughter, I would like women to live in a society, where there is basic fairness among genders – and I look forward to the science fictioney future in which gender becomes less important as we gain more control over our identities and our biology.

And our choices about who to be and how to be. So, I have been active on twitter for a little more than 3 years. Social media and particularly Twitter is a good place, I think, to learn about feminism because some of the angriest and funniest voices on Twitter are feminist voices.

Jen Kirkman is a stand-up comedian who might be one of the most vehement pointer-outers of guy assholes on Twitter. As a guy, one thing I have learned is that there is such a thing as mansplaining. I don’t know if it came out of social media.

But the idea of it has been fleshed out of social media. Twitter is a good place to become cognizant of my own mansplaining tendencies, and to learn where sometimes I should just shut up. This is where I shut up. Is that enough of a thing?

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 202 – Legitimacy to Minorities

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/18

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: People who don’t want to grant legitimacy to minority movements try to represent those movements extreme versions of those movements, as unpleasant and unfair – more than citizens deserve. People are making trouble where there is no real trouble.

Like Rush Limbaugh and the Nazis, they describe feminism in this way. Feminism has been overtly fucked over, over the decades, with the waves of feminism. I don’t know what this wave is called now. This current wave started as an outgrowth of the discontent of the sexism and chauvinism of the Hippy movements in the 60s.

But a lot of the socially progressive and anti-war movements of the 60s, which were male dominated, treated women just as shittily as the rest of society did. The women who supported these social progress movements and these anti-war movements.

They got into the movements because they felt strongly against the war and some other stuff that was gong on, but noticed that they were being treated as shittily in the wider outside world and began taking up the reins of protest themselves regarding issues of sexism.

There were stereotypic anti-feminist reactions to this in the 70s. People were called “bra-burners.” People didn’t burn their bras, really. It was a symbol of cultural oppressions. Studies pointed out that women’s attire, more than men’s, hobbled women and constrained women more than men’s attire constrains men.

It is present as making it harder for women to run away as being chased by a guy, which was semi-facetious but not entirely facetious. There was the kneejerk reaction to feminism in the 70s, but reactions against Liberals have gotten more sophisticated beginning with Reagan.

Where how to take down Liberals has been focused on by conservatives, Fox News is a daily workshop in dissing Liberal causes. So, if you kind of look at what has happened to feminism, they have been persuaded that it is not for them, where it is like what has happened with Hillary Clinton.

Which is hanging a lot of lying bullshit on women, but it is a steady mischaracterization, the basic idea of feminism is that women should be treated equally to men; whether you believe women are equal to men in every single aspect, it doesn’t effect that idea that people should be treated equally.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 201 – White Supremacy and Feminism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/17

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: I have been supportive of feminism for about 40 years. But to talk about his as a cis white male talking about feminism now…

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: …you’re Rick Rosner talking about feminism. Your own individual identity.

Rosner: Yea, but it is like a cis white guy talking about Black Lives Matter, it is a ticket to getting in trouble, to misstep.

Jacobsen: It is only a ticket to trouble if you’re thinking in terms of groups, but you live in America where the emphasis in on the individual. So, I am thinking of you as Rick Rosner.

Rosner: I am going to get caught with my pants down, I think. I live in LA. I have a wife and daughter and even if I didn’t. First, we can talk about majority movements. That is, movements that endorse a majority versus movements that promote minorities.

Specifically, white supremacy, most white people are not active white supremacists, and recently, somebody pointed out, it is not that white supremacists are necessarily claiming to be better than the non-whites.

What they want is the privilege, that they are supporting their right to privilege in the society. White supremacy isn’t a statement of superiority necessarily. It is saying that we want power as white people, which a) is gross and b) kind of reflects the reality that most supremacists are trashy people.

A lot of white supremacists are people who, even though they have the privilege that often goes with being in the majority, haven’t been able to make a good go of it with that privilege. They are trying to claim even more privilege, say.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 200 – Overpopulation, Religion, Government (Part 4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/16

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: One is the freedom. One part of that is the control over our drives. It is to a huge extent getting control over how our sexual behaviour. So, we’re talking about coercive control. I wasn’t even talking about that. I wasn’t talking about it as we suss out become or learn more about how consciousness works and how to determine the types of consciousness we want to have.

That may me control over sex because sex is one of the great drivers of our conscious and unconscious existences.

We’ll be, in the future, able to decide if we really want to be driven by butts and tits. For an increasing percentage of the population over the next few centuries, that will come to be seen an antiquated and ridiculous.

There are some science fiction visions of the future that present a race of humans who are kind of desexualized and coldly clinically intellectual.

Sometimes, you see the humans of the future as being little spindly bodies with big throbbing brains

Their heads are three times the size of our own now and their bodies are shrunken by half. That is ridiculous.

But I can see a gradual deemphasizing of sex, but not a deemphasizing of foolishness.

That we all become coldly and clinically rational and smarter, but our entertainments. Our fun will become more developed, complicated, and ridiculous along with our abilities.

Sex will be just one of many the ways that we entertain ourselves.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That does tie back in. That broadening of the landscape of entertaining ourselves does tie back into this differentiation, into the splinterings of sexual pairings or non-pairings and the variety o stimulation that come from that, or arise out of that.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 199 – Overpopulation, Religion, Government (Part 3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about—Can I make a distinction of reproductive control?

Rick Rosner: Yes.

Jacobsen: I like Margaret Atwood, and I am Canadian. So, this is partly where this is coming from. If you control women’s reproduction, then you control legacy. The primary means of control of reproduction are women, who are lower status globally and through time.

Secondary is men who get sex with a woman and generally lower-class males who get some status and the reward is the sex with the woman and probably enshrined in things like head of the household, head of the family, and so on.

Whereas for the primary control, that class doesn’t get that. I feel as though this era that we’re seeing now, and that you’re strongly directing attention to is a – not a dissolution, but a slow erosion of that.

People have more freedom in their lives and so control over their own reproduction, which hasn’t been the historical case whether from the state or a religion.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 198 – Overpopulation, Religion, Government (Part 2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/14

[Beginning of recorded material]

Jacobsen: Well, if you take both examples, if you take the biggest religions in the world, they account for half of the population in the world; if you take the largest country in the world, you have a national secular policy for control of birth rates and who has kids, and how many.

Each have different forms of control of reproduction, which, for the most part, amounts to control of women generally. These are different manifestations of similar phenomenon, which might be similar phenomenon across primates of controlling female reproduction.

Rosner: Yes, this promotion of reproduction, which controls the push to make more – which governs all animals. All organisms. I am sure you can find some exceptions. It is probably as close to a universal as you’ll find in evolution. I am just guessing.

For humans, that will be coming not necessarily to an end, but it will fall more and more under overt human control, where we will be more and more in charge of what we want to do with the human population.

Whether we want to keep expanding it, for more than 100 years, people have or some people have been worried about increasing human population. The drive or the sex drive—now, that is something under societal consideration.

The things that drive us to make more people will more and more come under our consideration and control.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 197 – Overpopulation, Religion, Government (Part 1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/13

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do these become systems of control of populations, and so individual people?

Rosner: The US doesn’t really have a national population policy, but China does.

Jacobsen: America does, sure. I think of the Abrahamic religions.

Rosner: I mean the government doesn’t get involved, well does say to have kids and we’ll give you tax deductions with allowance of dependents allow you to take deductions from your taxes. You pay less for having kids.

We will make it economically slightly easier to have kids. It is not as overt as China policy. Policies they have had since Communist China came into existence.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 196 – Belief and Population Sizes (Part 2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/12

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: That interlopers into Western society are trying to take it over by having more babies. That includes Muslims and Hispanic people, but while I think that is wrongheaded in a lot of ways. The US is less than 1% Muslim now.

The rate at which Muslim Americans reproduce by 2040, according to one estimate, they’ll be 2.1% of the population, which is a still really a tiny fragment of the population; whereas the world AI population by at least one person I know to be about 1 trillion by 2100.

I believe there was a march against Sharia Law. That somehow enough Muslim Americans will take over enough of America to impose Sharia Law. But like I said, those people marching against Sharia should be marching against robots.

Robots are going to be made at a fantastically greater rate than compared to Muslims. In any case, these normative models; these lifestyles that people are compelled to embrace and promote, and to fight for, at the expense of alternate lifestyles are models of how to make the species more successful.

Not necessarily accurate models, but models on how to pump out more people.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 195 – Belief and Population Sizes (Part 1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/11

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If you look at the size of some of them then, ignoring the timescale of centuries and millennia and even maybe decades for some, that enshrine these values; if you look at the Catholic Church, they are 1.3 or 1.4 billion people.

If you look at the Eastern Orthodox Church, they are 225 to 300 million.

Rosner: If you look at Islam, it is over 1 billion people. My conservative buddy gets really worked up at the rate at which Muslim populations increase. He says that one way that Muslims try to take over countries is by having more kids.

It is this paranoid view of things.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 194 – Behavioural Chauvinism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/10

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: If everybody is kind of wired – regarding behavioural chauvinism – and I am not speaking clearly or sharply, if everybody feels they have a stake in their behaviour, that, maybe, is a manifestation of one more way evolution gets in the mix.

If everybody feels compelled to be or someone doesn’t act the way you do and you punish them, then that keeps that behaviour. Perhaps, competition in behaviour is another semi-evolved way to arrive at some optimal forms of behaviour.

Evolution doesn’t want anything because it is not teleological.

Jacobsen: Evolution’s natural directionality implies what…

Rosner: This might be another area where evolutionary force is taking place. The force to find the optimal way of being, even though that sounds ridiculous. If you look at the 1950s of the Make America Great Again people, it is everybody living in a 2-parent household in a suburb.

One provider and a house, and a car, you’re spitting out 2.3 kids or more, actually more if you look back at the 50s. Families were bigger. That idea is a recipe for reproductive success.

If everybody is in this nuclear family and spitting out kids, that’s one view of society’s model of success. That success includes a growing population.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 193 – Successful Alternate Lifestyles

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/09

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: To the extent that I have been successful, it has been being clever at making jokes or being smart rather than being attractive. I try to be attractive, but I am not smoking hot.

When I see people who are vapid as shit living in LA, you see people who are successful based on hotness. I am like, “Fuck you, hot person.” That is bullshit. I don’t like that because it is an avenue of success that is not open to me.

Similarly, some frickin’ rube might be like, “Fuck you, smart person, with your words and all. You’re not American. You don’t work with your hands. You don’t know how to clean a carburetor.” Fuck, I could clean one.

There’s resentment or tends to be resentment of alternative life strategies. It is just that people are just or don’t like – every like strategy involves foregoing other strategies. And yo want to believe in the choices you made.

When you see people having made other choices, even when they are other choices, you resent it, “Hey weirdos with the two guy and one relationship.” I have spent 10s of thousands of hours of my life going to the gym.

On some visceral basis, I don’t want to see three chubby people happily in a relationship with each other. It is like, “What the fuck? Why did I waste my time exercising and being monogamous? I am even struggle with contact lenses. These people that are chubby with glasses ar able to satisfy each other. It is annoying.”

To some extent, the institutions that you’re talking about can include religion, probably codify that fear and resentment. Does that make sense?

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Yes, it seems like a smaller phenomenon of the even more sincere and deeply held feelings then turned beliefs and then turned behavior of individuals opening up making-you-not-gay (and so straight) places and not hosting gay weddings or not giving cakes to gay couples.

You have a mild resentment, but this other category or series of categories feel so deeply about it. That they feel the need to impose their idealized world onto the society in which they live through legislation, and otherwise.

You don’t do that. You have feeling and keep it there, which is mild judgment. Everyone is entitled to their feelings and judgments and attitudes, especially feelings because they’re feelings. it is like anger not lying.

They want to impose on society, though. Especially in America, I see this with the Evangelicals quite strongly.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 192 – New Relationships

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: With all of these new relationship forms, those might work better now because people can always beat off.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This makes sense evolutionarily too. Apparently, statistically, almost all female humans, women, have had 1 child; whereas, men will have 0 or 2. So a larger proportion of men will be completely out of the future gene pool compared to women.

Rosner: I see.

Jacobsen: Also, there are so many taboos crystallized in comprehension worldviews, like religions, that were not really acceptable, but were more or less imposed by government.

For instance, gay marriage was a huge issue and probably not widely accepted unless enforced by provisions of equality. So it is a larger thought, where a lot of these other ones will have a hard time.

Rosner: So what you’re saying for gay marriage to work, the government needs to step in on those that would stop it on religious or other grounds.

Jacobsen: Secular or religious grounds, I could see similar or the same pushback, whether religious or various secular-minded individuals who have personal disagreements with it and so don’t want to see it in society in any way – in all its combinations.

Whether quadruplets or triplets, or whatever the title may be, or in various sexual minority orientations…

Rosner: I feel that I am a self-righteous person, not a righteous person. I am judgy. I get pissed. I think a theme or semi-universal theme among people is to be a fan of one’s orientation or lifestyle or choices, and to be resentful when alternate choices are successful in the world.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 191 – Masturbation Culture

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/07

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: As someone who grew up in the 60s and 70s, I will see sex as more of a motivating factor than other ones. I see this as less of a motivating factor than in the 80s. I see the attitudes of the 70s with sex as a big thing.

It was exaggerated, but I see it as a huge thing because this is how evolution worked, to make everyone horny.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What do you say to someone who says this isn’t true?

Rosner: I think that’s true. I think sex is less important now. Even now, in a less overtly sexual time than the 70s, sex still doesn’t color almost everybody’s behaviour in some way. If you dug into why people behave the way they do on an individual basis, you could find a sexual component in almost every behaviour.

However, if the 70s put sex at a 10, maybe now, sex is an 8 or a 7 in terms of motivating factors. The dial has been turned down a little bit. And it will probably continue to be turned down.

Right now, we’re right in the middle of masturbation culture. It is that sexual gratification is more removed from personal motivation in other areas of life than it ever has before, at least in our culture.

It gives people more flexibility to be trolls on the one hand, to not have to constantly manifest reproductive fitness on another hand. That is, you don’t have to lift weights. You don’t have to be trim and sexy. If you can jack yourself off, it doesn’t matter necessarily what you look like.

You are free because your gratification is directly dependent on the sexual attractiveness of the people you’re with. So relationships can be more inclusive both in terms of who can hook up, even 1-on-1 relationships, but even among people who hook up in these newfangled multiple person relationships.

Where two guys and one girl, two girls and one guy, these triads or whatever you want to call them.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 190 – United States, Current (Part 1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/06

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Under the current political conditions of the United States, Liberalism is majoritarianism, having attitudes more Liberal than the government, people who are running the government right now, is a majority attitude.

The people who run the government would call people who disagree with them liberals, but no we’re the majority.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I have heard Noam Chomsky say that based on studies about – repeatedly I’ve heard him say this, which seems true to me – 70% of the American population are disenfranchised from the political process.

Where any choice or decision they make has no impact on the way the policy is set for the country, I think a good metric could be considered between the average data points you have about American society, from Pew, from Gallup, etc., and then contrasting that with the way policy is set, and then you could see how democratic the society is.

Because if you look at surveys with big samples and good questions, reliable and valid data sets, and if you state x, y, and z in surveys as a citizen, but the policy is against those to a reasonable significant degree, then you could go per topic how non-democratic the state is in some ways.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 189 – Academic Political Views (Part 7)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/05

[Beginning of recorded material]

Eventually, America may have to confront dumb attitudes that are reflexively opposed to any kind of sharing because that going against their idea of us as being rugged individualists, self-sufficient – and which is contradicted by actual conditions.

Which is that the Red States, the states most likely to hate the idea of a Nanny State or a Welfare State are the ones that take the most money from the government per capita. This is the thing that everybody or people have known for decades now.

If they haven’t known, they should know that the states that bitch and moan – the Southern states like Montana and Idaho or states that consistently vote red – more consistently get more money back from the government than they contribute, in social programs than they give in taxes.

Whereas the Blue States like California and New York give more in taxes than they give back, so we have a sharing economy whether we like to admit it or not.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 188 – Academic Political Views (Part 6)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/04

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rosner: Yea. China is becoming capitalistic, but it is still dictatorial in a gazillion ways. So even if it is a weaker form of dictatorship killing 60 million people with the Cultural Revolution, it still has the power to screw over people.

It is unfortunate that there is no untainted or politically untainted way to talk about the ideas about sharing economies because as we enter an increasing automated world the nature of work may change and there may not be enough work to go around.

I can imagine – to not any great extent – a hyper-social media connected world, in which people just get stipends for contributing to social media discourse because so much other work is being done by AIs.

That would be a weird dystopia or may semi-utopia. It is as likely as Idiocracy, which is just one among a few trends in society – like most science fiction that grabs a few things to extrapolate. But the idea of a sharing economy is not going away mostly because of AI making work more scarce and making the products cheaper.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 187 – Academic Political Views (Part 5)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/03

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rosner: It is a legitimate point of view. It is characterized by people being tender snowflakes. Then when you talk about Marxism, I guess Marx was or is 140 years after he wrote his stuff still—he is certainly the most recognized writer on the idea of a sharing economy.

It is Marxism. So he is the guy. Maybe, there are some obscure ones. There is Socialism, but he is the only one with his name attached to a sharing philosophy. So he is the guy. Marxism and Socialism have been associated with a bunch of governments that brutally fucked over their own people and the world.

And to some extent, they continue to do so. The Soviet Union was a failed Socialist experiment that led to the current failed Russian state, which is some weird Plutocracy/Kleptocracy…

Jacobsen: …[Laughing] Oligarchy.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 186 – Academic Political Views (Part 4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/02

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Yes. But that suggests the problem probably doesn’t lie with people, that somehow 1/3 of all Americans are lacking in discipline. But rather, that there is a problem with how food is presented to us.

If food is being marketed at us, prepared for us, available to us, in such a way that 1/3 of adults can’t avoid being overweight, then it is not just the fault of American adults. It is also the failure of our approach to food.

It isn’t then something that can be necessarily addressed by telling people to eat less, exercise more, and make some tougher dietary choices. Also, say 55% or 65% of all college students are women, and that women on average have certain social concerns, it becomes less reasonable to talk about the concerns as being just Liberal or feminist, or as being majoritarian.

Right now, we have a president and a Congress, and probably a Supreme Court that doesn’t abide by or represent the attitudes of a majority of Americans across most issues. Some form of strong support for majoritarianism like, “Hey, fuckers in government pay attention to what most people want.”

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 185 – Academic Political Views (Part 3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s another thing. In all 70 or so developed nations, more women are going to college than men. They are getting more awards. They are getting better grades. Women tend to vote more Liberal or Left. Men, I guess, tend to vote more Right.

I suspect some of that skew has to do with reproductive health rights and things like that, but that can also be an influence on the political perspectives in campus, on campus.

Rosner: Yes. But if more women are attending campus, then more of their concerns should be considered majoritarian views. We were talking about food yesterday.

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: 1/3 of American adults are obese.

Jacobsen: Which is a staggering number.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 184 – Academic Political Views (Part 2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/31

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That influences the research questions. So if someone wants a research question or if someone wants to pitch a research question to a Bachelor’s Honor’s or thesis advisor, and if you were an instructor or tenured professor, who would you more likely want someone under you with regards to research: someone with a topic in line with your expertise or not in line with your expertise, knowing your topics will lean more Left-Liberal, even Marxist?

Rosner: Yes, the political landscape means the people who are conservative on campus as opposed to quietly conservative. There is a certain Ann Coulterishness among active conservatives that is an obnoxious torchbearer attitude among a lot of conservatives.

An anger at their underrepresentation and an eagerness to piss people off via taking aggressive stances.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 183 – Academic Political Views (Part 1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There was a survey of academicians’ political views with about 5% as Conservative and 23/24% as Neo-Marxist with the rest as other. I would see these in many gender studies and other departments, in terms of those departments being more likely Neo-Marxist. I forget the precise details.

Rick Rosner: You’re saying conservatives are wildly underrepresented in academia.

Jacobsen: Yes, they are wildly overrepresented in government at the same time, in America.

Rosner: Also, you’re saying people who are radically Liberal are overrepresented in academia.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 182 – Gender Equity and Similarity (Part 2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/29

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Nobody – I don’t think – or most feminisms are not wedded to the idea of ungendered upbringings or some natural state of ungenderedness, which is only formed via exposure to a sexist culture.

That is an old debunked thing that nobody is arguing about now. That gets brought up by anti-feminists to show that feminism is pursuing some creepy ass agenda. And nah! I don’t think so. People tried it a little bit.

Some people, they found out that people are gendered. That working to treat people as if they’re ungendered or to make them ungendered is not the agenda of feminism, but anti-feminists treat it as it is – as if everyone would walk around in the same jump suit.

Heaven forbid if you wear high heels and lipstick. That’s not feminism. That’s an unfair characterization of it, I think.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 181 – Gender Equity and Similarity (Part 1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/28

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I found a quote by Steven Pinker. It is something to talk about:

Feminism as a movement for political and social equity is important, but feminism as an academic clique committed to eccentric doctrine about human nature is not.

Eliminating discrimination against women is important, but believing that women and men are born with indistinguishable minds is not.

Freedom of choice is important, but ensuring that women make up exactly 50 percent of all professions is not. And eliminating sexual assaults is important, but advancing the theory that rapists are doing their part in a vast make conspiracy is not.

Rick Rosner: That is an interesting quote to me. In that, he brings up some valid points, but the points that I think most people – and I think would include most feminists, and I shouldn’t speak for feminists – would concede is not a part of their agenda.

I’d say the early part of Second Wave Feminism, if that’s what 70s feminism and on is, might be Third Wave Feminism. Yea, there were some people who promoted the idea that kids are genderless, except as conditioned by society.

With the largest argument being that if you give boys dolls, they will be as happy with those things instead of giving them things that are stereotypically gender appropriate, and that kind of stuff is kind of obsolete to a great extent.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 180 – Political Movements (Part 6)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/27

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Those women, who are giving relatively obvious discretionary notes, except those not obvious to a few people.

Rick Rosner: My favourite mother-in-law-splaining story is where we are at a coffee shop with the family. Coffee shop has one of those menus. It has a lot of stuff. There are a lot of items and a lot of pages.

Looking at the menu, she is looking at the menu and says this is something I wouldn’t know or wouldn’t have noticed, “They have sandwiches.” I mean come on.

Jacobsen: [Laughing] I wouldn’t be bent out of shape about it. [Laughing] I could start up a Twitter account, be uptight, and make a joke about it as a discretionary note.

Rosner: Imagine if you were married to somebody who explained at you, stuff that you knew all of the time.

Jacobsen: I would try to work on my own issues first, rather than theirs.

Rosner: I don’t know.

Jacobsen: What’s the old wisdom? You can’t change people.

Rosner: That’s true, but you can at least note it and tweet about it because it is interesting, maybe, or funny if you can take the right angle on it.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 179 – Political Movements (Part 5)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/26

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rosner: The people I follow who are doing this have specifically said, “Don’t – trolls aside – be this way when you’re communicating with me. Don’t mansplain at me. Here’s what mansplaining is. If you’re my friend, you won’t mansplain at me. Here’s what mansplaining is.”

Even though, they say, “Come on, this is what it is, stop doing it. Guys cannot stop themselves from doing it.”

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Because they’re people and people explain things to one another.

Rosner: Yea, but mansplaining is, I think, when you explain something that either doesn’t need to be explained or should be obvious to the person who is being explained at. It’s like my mother-in-law explains at me and anyone around her.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 178 – Political Movements (Part 4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That’s an indication of a problem, on another side – not the pooping one, but on the other one. It is a signalling with little risk and feeling good, and morally upright and righteous with almost no effort and no impact.

Rick Rosner: No! I don’t see that. The angry-ish women I follow. What they point out is how hard it is for guys to not be dicks…

Jacobsen: If you spend all of your time on Twitter looking for a “dick,” then you’ll find them.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 177 – Political Movements (Part 3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/24

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I don’t agree with that at all. I think they’re real problems, but I do think they’re in proportion to other real problems people are facing. I think they are problems, but ones that need to faced in proportion to their hardness.

Rick Rosner: Twitter was designed to tell people what they’re up to. I could put this on Twitter, but I haven’t, “Last night, I sharted my pants at the gym.”

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Rosner: I thought it was a fart, and it wasn’t.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Rosner: Twitter is the ideal place to disclose something like that. Or if you don’t want to be that intimate with people, say what you had for lunch, or that you’d like some particular movie; so, most people or nobody on the Twitter I follow has not experienced genital mutilation, but a lot of the people I follow have experienced guys being dickheads to them.

I think it is fine to point out incidents of dickishness and to share that with people and to make people aware of it. Now, I suspect—I have something going on with my bowels. I have too much of a bad kind of bacteria. So there could be some social value in sharing my—I think there’s an epidemic of people have bowel problems that is just below the surface.

That within the next year or so. What is going to become a major thing that people are aware of, people are aware of certain aspects of it, like people like to make fun of people who happen to be gluten free, or who are lactose intolerant.

But I suspect there’s a huge segment of the population, probably over 5%. Maybe over 10% of people, there’s this kind of—people’s digestive systems are fucked up, I suspect. If I went on Twitter and shared my ‘I sharted myself story” to help people become aware that this is a thing, and that this is something that might need to be addressed; on the other hand, I pooped myself

[Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 176 – Political Movements (Part 2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/23

[Beginning of recorded material]

Jacobsen: This is the game that is played. It seems like a very conscious setup.

Rosner: You call it a game. I would say it is partly a game. But I would also say that most of the feminist anger I see on Twitter is legitimate and justified. It comes out of a recent history of guys continuing or beginning to be dicks.

The fourchan guys, GamerGate guys, those are baby dicks. Those are guys who found their dickishness. Young guys who found their dickishness in creepy reactions to women wanting a place in the video gaming world or just online.

So a lot of pissed off feminism is a legit thing.

Jacobsen: That’s minor. At the same time, there are areas of the world where 200 million women have had a female genital mutilation done. That’s a real concern.

Rosner: That argument is the white person problem argument.

Jacobsen: I don’t mean to dismiss the concerns. I see the concerns and agree with them, in terms of trying to integrate into another aspect of society – the video gaming world, but it is a little bit self-indulgent in a Western country.

Rosner: I don’t know. My wife and I have been going to couples’ counselling for most of our marriage. Not because we’re always battling with each other. We only go once every three or four weeks, but it’s nice to work through things. It is nice to learn how to work through things and to address things before they become super big things.

And a lot of concerns that I see on social media from feminists are social justice concerns and legitimate ones. I see them on Twitter. It is not the comedy Twitter that I follow. I follow 1,400 people. And most of those people are funny.

When people bring up concerns, they are usually brought up in a way that has some humor attached to the scorn or the anger. So it is not just a world of complainy misery. It is like pointing out—a lot of the concerns are reflective of issues that are less sad making than female genital mutilation.

Or women being burned to death or stoned to death, by their own family, for trying to attempt some form of independence. At the same time, letting go of those less horrific concerns is kind of the same as excusing them.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 175 – Political Movements (Part 1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Active political movements have shifted the conversation. Where it is of utility to look at things in terms of groups, but, at the same time, it is percentages and averages.

It is as if the slave master is talking. It has the tinge of the oppressor talking about the oppressed class. It is a pretty simple trick. I do see this as a way to berate people who do have a party line.

You define a system or look at a society. You define an oppressed class. You define an oppressor class. You look for some form of justice. You self-define as the defender of the oppressed class.

So you are the good person. You are helping the little guy. You are not seeing it as an individual. You are seeing it as a representative of the group. So, you have the backing of the whole group.

Rick Rosner: What you’re saying is regardless of what I say, it will be taken a certain way because I belong to the ‘oppressor class’.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 174 – The ‘Real World’ (Part 4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/21

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s also the mapping onto the universe. Standard set theory, which underlies various fundamental fields, is static. it describes single states. So if you describe the universe with only a single state, then you don’t have the tools to accurately describe the universe. But if you were to make…

Rick Rosner: …Instead of tools, let’s try to visualize what is going on. Under IC, we claim the universe is an informational map representing or modeling something beyond the universe. Analogously to how in each of our heads, we have a mental model of the world around us.

The world around you. There is what you know and what you don’t know. What you don’t know can take a bunch of forms, your mental state can mean one thing, but it can reflect a gazillion possible realities.

Where you don’t know what is going on in China, you don’t know if your girlfriend got drunk and kissed a dude last weekend. You don’t know if your dog has kidney stones. You only know what you know.

There is this whole set of possibilities beyond the boundary of what is known. That exists as potential flavors that are embedded in the uncertainty of what you know because your model is your best attempt to reflect what is going on now and what will happen.

As time unfolds, you can imagine in a multi-worlds kind of model that your different or nebulous knowledge. You incomplete knowledge of the world will play out in a gazillion ways.

That your future reality can split into 10^1,000th different paths over time. So your model reality reflects a zillion different flavors that that reality could come to be painted based on how the information you don’t know beyond what you do know plays out or comes into your awareness.

So one mental model can represent not different futures, but actually presents, at 10^1,000th of them. Each future is a present having its information play out. Even if you were waiting for the future to see the presents play out or the splits, your present that your model represents could take 10^500th models because you have incomplete knowledge.

That incomplete knowledge encompasses a huge number of possible preferences.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 173 – The ‘Real World’ (Part 3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/20

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: These are flavors of the Empty Set. That’s one big thing. Also, the indefinitenes of elements in a set.

Rick Rosner: What it leads to is if you can even do set theory if the members of the set are each multiplicitous and can take on all of these flavors, it applies to, say, if your universe contains one atom. And that atom according to the rules, it will probably be a Hydrogen atom.

it will be one proton and one electron, but that minimal universe of one atom is itself going to have whiffs of differences. That one thing in a set. That set of smallest possible universe doesn’t just have one element because that one element is itself subject to what you’re calling having “flavors.”

It is not entirely pinned down, and neither are the rules for defining it. The object is not completely defined, and the rules of confining it to a set are not completely defined. So everything is a little fuzzy, so you have to build increasing order out of these fuzzy constructs.

But since we live in this type of universe, a quantum mechanical universe, it is doable. So there should be some type of math that embraces nebulousness in a fairly systematic way. which quantum mechanics does.

But I don’t think anybody has really tried to apply quantum mechanics to set theory in this way. You have fuzzy sets. I don’t know if this is really. – I guess if you’re going to look for how to do it. Then that would be where you’d look first.

Where you’d have sets, or a set theory, where the objects in your sets can take a variety of values according to a probability distribution. So I don’t know. Anyway.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 172 – The ‘Real World’ (Part 2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/19

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Also, in an IC universe, zero has flavors: 0.0, 0.00, 0.000, 0.0000, and so on.

Rick Rosner: Okay, there’s – what you mean is that if you’re looking at the nebulous set of all possible universes that can exist. There’s the zero information universe.

Jacobsen: Or the Empty Set.

Rosner: That’s the same as the zero information universe. It contains no space, no time, no matter. But because there are quantum fluctuations around that nothing. There are the smallest whiffs of somethingness, which you’re call “flavors.”

An IC Set Theory would be a set theory operating under quantum rules, which are a little fuzzy and more determinate the more or bigger your set is. The more information your set contains, and the entities or the sets. The optics that comprise the sets are themselves fuzzy.

So even zero is fuzzy because you can’t pin that fucker down.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 171 – The ‘Real World’ (Part 1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/18

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To describe the real universe, you need a math, a logic, and set theory, to describe the real universe, and a real universe, especially in an IC universe is composed of finites.

So a set theory incorporating that would be better than standard set theory.

Rick Rosner: Well, set theory itself has infinities in it because it asserts things with infinite precision. Either something is in a set or not in a set. But when you look at an analogous situation in the quantum world, you can say an electron is or is not in the box.

It makes sense. it is one or the other. But when you apply quantum mechanics to this, either it is in the box, somewhat in the box, or not in the box but with this probability, or with this probability even though it is a closed box it will be this percent out of the box.

Within 10^42nd seconds, the electron is functioning in some of these ways. It has a probability wave associated with it. An electron can materialize at any point in the wave. The probability density can be at any point.

That probability density cloud is not exclusively located in the box. Some of it is located out of the box. There is a non-zero chance that the electron can materialize outside of the box. Once outside of the box, it is unlikely that it is going to be back in the box.

But anyway, unlike in set theory, where something is either all in or all out, the electron is not all in or all out. Nothing is all in or all out. Everything is just – or something is just – a thing or not with super high probabilities, so you can pretty much act as if an electron is all in or all out of the box.

Because it is or is not something with super big probabilities, to the extent that you can pretty much act as if the electron is all in or all out of the box because the probability that it is not in any given second is 1/10^47th, which means that in a practical sense you will never find that electron out of the box.

So you’re using an infinity that you shouldn’t strictly use as a matter of convenience because it is unlikely that it will ever cause a problem in that situation.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 170 – Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (Part 5)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/17

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: The singularity is one of the problems that you run into. It is a problem because you have all of the matter collapsing into a black hole, into a single point, and so the math falls apart.

But if you hang quantum mechanics on it, the smallest possible point is fizzed out at the Planck radius or diameter, or scale, and there’s also a minimum Planck time. Upon which, everything is foam and fuzz.

But there are techniques for dancing around and not getting messed up. Though those techniques themselves may not be the ultimate right answer to what is going on. But it is a reasonable thing to think that infinities are almost always dangerous.

You can avoid them. There might be a healthier theory.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 169 – Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (Part 4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/16

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In an infinite universe, if something was calculated over time – in an infinite information processing universe, the digit span could run forever. So the complex digit series and complex numbers…

Rick Rosner: When you say, “Infinite universe,” you’re implying an infinite clockwork universe.

Jacobsen: What about an implied infinite of information based on association within itself? In a standard universe, it has to do with the way things are traditionally represented. Someone gives you a number or a value about the ‘real universe’ in a standard Big Bang cosmology universe.

The digit series is implied to go on forever. So there’s a self-contradiction in the presentation of a standard Big Bang universe, consistently, because there is an assumed infinite amount of information to run that digit series forever.

But in fact, there’s not. But at one point, they will say, the universe began a finite time ago. But when we say a year, or a value, or a law, or a constant…

Rosner: What you’re saying is that in a standard characterization of the Big Bang universe, there are some implied infinities. And that any time you talk about them, you’re, at least numerically, implying something using numbers, which are themselves defined to an infinite extent because you have an infinity of digits beyond the decimal point – which implies infinite precision, which implies infinite information.

Jacobsen: Exactly! it is the big problem that I think is inherent in logic, physics, and mathematics, as standardly presented.

Rosner: I agree that that has the potential…

Jacobsen: …I think provably…

Rosner: …I think it is a danger. However, in quantum mechanics, it is the tool you have to work with incomplete information. People don’t view quantum mechanics that way, but that’s what it is. It is a mathematical tool to work with stuff that is incompletely defined because it is made out of finite amounts of information. Now, there may even be traps and dangers in quantum mechanics.

In that, quantum mechanics is itself built from numbers and relationships. In quantum mechanics, you have matrices made out of numbers, and numbers are infinitely precise. But I think if you’re good about applying quantum mechanics. you can avoid a lot of the problems that you run into, like the singularities.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 168 – Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (Part 3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/03

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: However, I think you were also implying like emergent order.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The universe has limits in information. The spontaneous symmetry breaking seems to me like a factor to consider in informational limits. If the universe was a perfect sphere, it would have infinite information and time.

Rosner: Not exactly, because what looks like chaos to one observer can actually be encoded information to another observer, I think. If you don’t know the coding, if you don’t know it’s information, then

Jacobsen: An observer can take information in part from one sector of a sphere. Another observer can take information in part from another sector of a sphere.

Rosner: If you don’t know the coding, if you don’t know it’s information, then you can’t see the information. It just looks random.

Jacobsen: Technically, simple finite principles can produce an infinite product, if given infinite time.

Rosner: If you’re adding information…

Jacobsen: …what if the system produces its own information?

Rosner: You can look at the unfolding universe in a couple ways. You’ve got all of this information packed into the early universe, the first moments of the exploding universe, or the Big Bang universe. That information is encoded into the various velocity vectors that produce the kinetic energy that is built into the system that blows everything outward. Super early universe, everything has got a shitload of kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is like a set of instructions for the universe to expand like crazy. The universe contains its own seeds of space and time, and spatial aggregation, to some extent.

Where the small anti-isotropies of the early universe eventually coalesce into galaxies and stuff, on the other hand, the universe adds—the universe as an information processor—information, and that added information adds order to the universe, and helps the universe build itself as it aggregates, and as order emerges. I think it is a more reasonable point of view.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 167 – Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (Part 2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/03

[Beginning of recorded material]

RR: Another way people put it is that it is a pencil on edge. You may be able to get a pencil to stand up, but it doesn’t take much to push it over. Spontaneous symmetry breaking in the way it is used is that you need metastability, and in each of those cases those setups are symmetrical. In that, a marble on a sombrero is rotationally symmetrical, as is a pencil on edge, but then the symmetry breaks.

The pencil tips over. A marble rolls off the top of the sombrero into the lip of the sombrero. The pencil can’t move in all directions at once. The sombrero marble can’t move in all directions at once. It has to pick a direction.

It is random, but when it happens then it happens in a particular direction. Now, your deal is no longer symmetrical. Now, your marble is at 1 o’clock or 8 o’clock or sombrero o’clock. A symmetry is broken and in the breaking of symmetry a bunch of energy is released.

All of the energy of the energy that the universe needs to expand into its current form, or much of the energy. So that’s what I think spontaneous symmetry breaking is.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 166 – Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (Part 1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/02

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I had a new thought.

Rick Rosner: Okay.

SDJ: What is spontaneous symmetry breaking to you, or in a standard Big Bang universe?

RR: The analogy that everybody uses—there are two analogies that everybody uses. One is a marble on top of a sombrero, but they don’t say it that way. They say a marble on a peak, but imagine a marble on a sombrero! It may stay there for half of a second, but it is stable or semi-stable. It is very—stability, when you’re talking about the orientation of something in a gravitational field against a surface, is that object when it is in its lowest state, when it has its lowest possible gravitational energy.

It’s like a domino when it is face down on the table. Then there is meta-stability. An object is locally stable, but has potential gravitational energy that can be released. So a domino, there’s 3 ways to orient a domino: flat, lying along its long side on edge, lying along its short side on edge as you’d stand it up where a 1,000 dominoes have a chain effect when you push them over. Any time you have a domino on edge it is metastable.

Where it takes a little energy to push it over, but more energy gets produced pushing it over then when you put into it. It is metastable. There’s energy waiting to be released. So a marble on top of a sombrero is metastable. There’s potential energy waiting to be released. This is supposed to be the situation with regard to the Big Bang at the moment it is about to happen, which isn’t really a moment because there’s no time yet.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 165 – Silver Lining in Bullshit

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Plus, with Scientology, the deal where you get audited. You hold tin cans in some piece of crap technology while somebody asks you questions about your past until you’re okay with what happened in your past, which is a little bit like the talk therapy of psychiatry or other kinds of counselling. Although, Scientology hates psychiatry. It is possible for it to do good for you even though it is basically bullshit.

It is possible for new religions to arise that embrace modernity, morality, and spirituality. I believe IC has at least the teeniest bit of spirituality in its directionality because 20^th century science feels cold and random because it is not driven by anything. Nothing is in charge. Randomness is in charge. The random mutations are in charge of organisms. The random breaking of the false vacuum spits out all of the space and time and particles that form the current universe.

I think a more sophisticated viewpoint is that it is not randomness in charge, but information in charge. Information implies persistent in time and order. Time, order, and persistent implies values that are geared towards creation. It is just the tiniest bit spiritual.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 164 – Religions React the Same

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So religions are going to react the same. There’s going to be a lot of backlash. There will be some religious folk who look for the good in it. Perhaps, they will refuse to see the changes as inherently bad. There may be the coming of new religions. That don’t suck. Scientology is a new religion that mostly sucks because it is super exploitative of its people. It is super dishonest in the way that it presents itself to society.

It does a lot of creepy gangster things. At the same time, people can read. Dianetics is a big book filled with bullshit. This was written by a guy that was paid by the word, a pulp fiction. But Hubbard tried to make a half-assed attempt to put some reasonable concepts from the social sciences into Dianetics.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 163 – Pillar of Society

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/29

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If we take the perspective of marriage as traditionalists would have it be understood, this comes from, as you know, a broadly based religious, but also cultural, perspective.

So how will culture change with it? How will religious institutions change with it? Because traditional religious institutions view marriage, as you know, as a central pillar of and even the foundational part of society, civilize society.

Rick Rosner: There are three things that can happen to religions. People can consider themselves members of a religion, but they buy less and less of the doctrine and the theology.

They take what they want of it for spiritual counsel and spiritual soothing. Religion can be reactionary and get all pissed off about what’s happening, which much religion will. Religion can adapt by trying to figure out what is good about new forms of relationships.

What is good is the extent to which new relationships reinforce moral behaviour, in the future, it’ll be possible for 4 or 5 people to attempt to link with each other in some intimate way, yet still be forces for good in the world. I just finished a novel called Christodora, which is about mostly AIDs activism in the 80s, in New York. People were still trying to figure out what was going on and to get treatment.

You had a movement in ACT UP, where the activists were acting in a way that could be considered fantastically immoral from the point of view of traditional religion because a high percentage of then were or who had been banging the heck out of a zillion other dudes – having bathhouse and semi-anonymous sex. Somebody estimated that if you were in the bathhouse scene in the 70s, early 80s, you might be hooking up with 3 dudes a day per year – so over 1,000 dudes a year.

Traditional religion would tear its hair about that. At the same time, these activists were doing great good fighting for their own survival and anyone with AIDs by making sure that AIDs was acknowledged as an important thing and making sure drugs were made available, not just to people who fit the traditional definition of an AIDs sufferer, which is a gay man because gay women suffered from it too.

Women’s symptoms of AIDs were ill-understood in the 80s. They didn’t qualify because to get the therapy you had to meet a checklist of symptoms. You have guys high for gay lifestyles, but going great good.

Obviously, some traditionalists had huge trouble admitting or acknowledging the humanity of these people. Reagan took until the last 2 years of his administration before he could say, “Gay,” in public. Other religions or small fragments of religions adapted and acknowledged the righteousness of the cause, even those viewed as sinners.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 162 – Social Media Hellspawn

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/28

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: The truly disruptive effects are yet to come. They will come via the dislocation of humans and normal forms of human society as the peak creatures and the cultural arbiters on the planet. The disruptors will be humans plus AIs. Weird combinations of such, and—individual agents, augmented humans, and also powerful agglomerations of humans plus AI working in thought clouds.

The future hellspawn on social media. Where everybody is super plugged in all of the time and shooting thoughts at each other all of the time, and it is a creepy thought blob that is spreading across the face of the Earth, that will disrupt—you name a human institution and it will be disrupted. Pair-wise marriage was the norm. It used to be that long-term relationships were sanctioned via marriage.

Now, if you look at all of the cohabitating couples in the U.S., all of the couples living together in the U.S., the percent married may have dropped below 50%. When I say traditional 1-on-1 marriage, I am meaning gay and straight marriage, as long as it is between 2 people. Right now, that is still 99%+ of all long-term romantic relationships. They are between two people versus between these poly people.

They are trying to pull of 3-way and 4-way relationships. So right now, we are 99%+. 20 years from now, we will still be 98%+. 50 years from now, 96%+/95%+, I am taking wild guesses. But 80 to 100 years from now, we may be at 80% or less as people enter into all sorts of augmented relationships with a man, and a man, and their sexy AI robot friend. Or a man and a woman, and remotely in Iceland another man who is linked via telepresence 5 hours a day with a couple.

Or some experiment in communal linked thought 85 years from now, where you have 5 people in some kind of pentad relationship. Where they are both physically and intimately mentally linked via some social media app gone wild, that helps them share their thoughts in a more thorough way than just conversation does now.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 161 – High Tide Weirdness at 2100

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/27

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: We’ve talked about some disruptive effects, which are already happening. One is increased gender fluidity. There is economic disruption due to AI. The increasing pain in the ass that social media is in all of its different aspects. It is empowering, but often to the detriment of long established standards. This election was at least partially the consequence of dickheads being empowered via fake news and social media and feeling that they are justified in voting selfishly.

You have people driving and texting and walking and texting, and everything and texting. Those are already future effects. I have a rough rule of thumb that the percent weirdness in the world compared to some baseline based on the 20^th century as some kind of normal. The percent weird that the world has gotten is just the last 2 digits of the year. 2017, the world is 17% weird. In 2027, it will be 27% weird.

By the year 2100, it will be 100% weird, which – I don’t know – maybe it will only be 80% weird in the year 2100.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 160 – Sex Flex

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/26

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Lesbianism is, I would guess, is one of the more flexible designations given that it has fewer social taboos attached to it. More people like the idea of two women making out. It seems more harmless than two men making out. So who knows what percentage of women make out with a girl in college, if it becomes easier and less brutal to experiment with one’s sex, people will do it.

It may never reach more than 15% of the population embracing non-heterosexual lifestyles, but it is more than 3 times the amount of now. 15% of the population means everybody will be friends and close friends with, and in family relationships with, and in other relationships with, somebody who is not traditionally heterosexual. And society has wide swathes of it that tries to deny the presence of non-heterosexuality in their sphere.

It will be impossible. North Carolina is fighting the anti-LGBTQ legislation that has been roiling for a couple of years now. So medicine will make people more willing to experiment. Social media has been and will continue to be promoting of non-heterosexual lifestyles. If you don’t know that anybody else is like you, say you have trans feelings, nobody came out as trans in past decades at all.

There were a lot of late in life people coming out as trans. There will still. Trans people come out earlier and earlier because people now know it is a thing and can reach out via social media to get information and to find other families with the same issues. That empowers people. That will continue to be a disruptive force. You can say people should be cool with it and it shouldn’t be a disruptive force, but big chunks of the country and the world aren’t cool with it at first and then freak out about it.

It will continue to be disruptive into the near and mid future.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 159 – Longevity and Tech Disruptions

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Future technology will allow current 50-year-olds to live to 95 or 105. They will not see the effects of those extended lifespans for another 20, 30, or 40 years. It will take time for those people to get into their 70s, 80s, and 90. Although, we are seeing the beginnings of the economic effects of just the cost of great medicine. For 10 years now, the country has been tying itself in stupid knots over trying to come up with workable healthcare coverage.

It is kind of an impossibility because awesome medicine costs out the butt and will continue to cost more. So anyway, enough about medicine. There will be disruption over gender roles, which is already happening to a significant extent. Where you have 5% of the population, that is actively gay. That is just claiming gayness as their identity or as the sexuality part of their identity.

In recent years, you have people coming out as trans. It was 1/3 of 1%. Then you have gender queer and the LTBQ, LTBGQ, all of the initials. I am going to sound like a moron, but okay [Laughing]. There are some changes in society that will make people more likely to embrace and experiment with non-heterosexual gender roles. Medicine again will at some point impinge on gender roles as it makes it easier for people to be gender fluid.

That’s far down the line. Now, to switch from a male body to a female body or vice versa, or somewhere in between, it takes hormones and for the more serious re-engineering it takes surgery and brutal surgery – turning a penis into a vagina or vice versa is nasty surgery. It is nasty cutting and stitching.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It is also self-contradictory ideologically because many of these people advocating for this, taking a distanced view, will say that you can’t reduce a man or a woman to the genitalia, but then they would go through drastic surgery – that would be cutting up a penis or a vagina to make the genitalia a penis or a vagina – and then saying that then therefore makes it a man or a woman. It is means to be more extensive to be legitimate.

RR: Legitimate or not, and the politics of it or not, in 60 years, when the gene therapies come to be widely available that bring you 80% of the way from male to female and female to male, and can take you back, there will be lots of people willing to try it out. As I’ve said before, there is a stereotype of women experimenting with gayness in college.

SDJ: The number of self-identified lesbians has gone up 3-fold.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 158 – Elements of a New Set Theory (Part 3)[1]

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/24

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Fuzzy deals with things that are well-defined. They do not have exact values, but they have exact probability sets. So some of the members of the fuzzy set can take any value between 1 and 2.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Whatever that value is, it has an infinite string of digits implying an infinite amount of information.

RR: Quantum mechanics deals with finite information and, thus, fuzziness. IC takes that – I don’t know if farther than that, but it implies that – I guess it does – even the rules to some extent that the universe is operating under are not operating really well until the universe becomes well-enough defined for the rules to become definite.

I don’t believe in the deal where every universe that comes into being through Big Bang processes with spontaneous symmetry being that every universe that comes into being that way randomly picks its own rules of physics.

I feel like the rules of physics are the rules of information, and are, thus, pretty tightly constrained, but the constraints are pretty wimpy when you have small not very old and not very filled with information universes, which makes it hard to tell different universes apart.

You have to come up with a whole version of set theory if you’re going to get anything out of it. One that is better able to handle nebulous entities.

SDJ: I think you can draw an analogy to biological systems that are grown. I think the rules of a universe are akin to the growth and development of biological systems, or if you look at the growth and development of a brain over time.

It has relatively well-defined patterns of growth with certain things coming online within pretty tight ranges. So the rules will be pretty tight, but there will be a range of flexibility for them.

In a manner with information processing physics, you have development of a universe over similar timelines and stages of development, but at different scales. There will be consistency.

You noted fuzzy sets imply information, but the rules will be fuzzy themselves. But it is growing.

RR: There’s a fuzziness that I don’t admit, which is the larger amount of flexibility in picking the rules of physics and picking the physical constants.

I tend to think that all physical constants reflect the amount of information in the universe and the way that the things in the universe are arranged. There’s not a whole lot of freedom in the physical constants. They are determined by the conditions of the universe.

You don’t get the physical constants first and then the universe evolves according to those constants. The physical constants change in accordance to the changes in the universe based on the rules of information.

The proton-electron mass ratio is probably reflecting the amount of hidden or non-active or frozen information in the universe. That is, matter that is out of the electromagnetic interaction game.

You take a big star and you let it collapse into a neutron star, and beyond that into a blackish hole.

It is not doing a lot of electromagnetic interaction because everything has kind of been mushed together into stuff that neutronium and beyond, where all of the various charges that would be emitting a gazillion photons or just the star at an earlier stage with all sorts of ionized proton and electrons and other nuclei, interacting with each other.

Sending of a gazillion photons via electromagnetic interaction, but a star made of neutronium as far as I know doesn’t do a lot of electromagnetic stuff because all of it is locked into this largely zero charged thing.

It is out of the game in terms of—it can still absorb photons gravitationally, but it doesn’t absorb photons into electron shells and then emit all of the photons via the electrons dropping back down to a ground state or anything like that.

Even more so for blackish holes, my guess is that the ratio of close to 2,000-1 of protons to electrons in terms of mass and all that reflects at least the fact that there is a lot of collapsed matter than provides heft to the universe and anchors it, and keeps space open and defines space and that defining thing having kind of more impact on, I guess, protons.

Now that I say it is sounds like bullshit – and I’m still going to say it, but that increased definition going to protons more than to electrons.

Probably because protons are more subject to neutrino interactions. Now, I am getting deep into bullshit. Anyway, protons weigh 1,900 times or so more than electrons. I’m guessing that to some extent represents hidden information in the form of collapsed matter.

So anyway, it is not a free-floating constant. It is not like the universe said, “Hey, let’s make the electron-proton mass ratio this.”

No, it is a measure of something with regard to information.

[End of recorded material]

[1] These sessions and the correspondence are different expressions of the same ideas. In correspondence, we discussed this:

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I thought about sets of sets of sets and universes in universes in universes. The former do not fit the latter; the latter do not fit the former. Standard logic, math, physics, and set theory equate sets and the universe; the universe equates to a set. “The universe” describes one noun with encapsulation of everything. Sets in standard set theory describe single instantiations of the universe.

No necessary correspondence between the universe and set theory; the universe – as R. Buckminster Fuller described the dynamic, or verb form, rather than asserted static, or noun form, nature of the universe as “universe” – does not map onto set theory in whole. The static describes the dynamic in single instantiations. Sets describe single instantiations of the universe. Set theory applied to the universe describes single time slices. I will explore this later.

Set theory describes elements and sets. The Empty Set ({}), a single element, elements in subsets, subsets in sets, and sets in supersets, and {}, the elements, subsets, sets, and supersets in the Universal Set (U) – and U contains {}, the natural numbers and whole numbers with zero set (N₀), the natural numbers and whole numbers set without zero (N₁), the integers number set (Z), the rational numbers set (Q), the real numbers set (R), and the complex numbers set (C), or “U = {N₀, N₁, Z, Q, R, C}.”

{} remains contained in U, or other sets, without explicit statement. Arithmetic does the same. You write, “1 + 2 + 3 = 6,” rather than, “0 + 1 + 2 + 3 = 6.” Set theory makes one assumption: absolute definition. “Absolute definition” implies infinites. I thought about it. The assumption equates to the problem. This relates to the problems with infinities, and infinities within infinities.

Elements consist of absolute definition or definite precision. “Definite elements” can clarify the idea. The basic premise of set theory becomes explicit with the new idea. An implication of infinite information, and infinite internal and representational precision. Sets consist of elements; sets consist of definite elements. Ergo, definite elements mean definite subsets, definite sets, definite supersets, and a definite U. Definite means absolute precision or definition with infinite information.

The same with standard notions of “1 + 2 + 3 = 6,” or “Set A = {x, y, z}.” Same with 6 equivalent to A, and 1, 2, and 3 equivalent to x, y, and z, respectively. Logic meets math. For one previous example, “U = {N₀, N₁, Z, Q, R, C}” consists of an absolute definite or definite precision as the definite U.

Standard set theory assumes an infinite digit series – zeroes or complex digit series, or infinite precision, as with standard logic, math, and physics. Standard logic, math, physics, and set theory make the same big, wrong assumption: absolute definition. They work in limited or partial circumstances.

Informational Cosmology, or IC, creates the total framework. An Informational Cosmological Set Theory, or ICST, works from the simplest statements in set theory – the elements.

The elements amount to a general abstract category, which implies operational efficacy in math, logic, and physics too. IC without the assumption of the infinite digit series; IC with the empirical substantiation with the finite digit series shown in the finite universe and its finite constituents – space, time, matter, radiation, fundamental forces – weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravitational, and particles and their higher order agglomerations. This creates one strength in IC over and above, and against, standard logic, math, physics, and set theory.

By analogy, in an IC or narrative universe, all stories begin, develop, and end. All characters contain finite depth and relations, and so information. A narrative universe begins, develops, and ends with agents at various scales with finite depth and relations, and so information. An IC universe follows the evidence with one shift in one axiom: absolute or infinite definition to partial or finite definition. Logic, math, physics, and set theory shift from the bottom-up; IC re-creates the entire landscape with all scientific evidence, too.

Novel versions of {}, N₀, N₁, Z, Q, R, C emerge in this. Probabilistic flavors of {} and other sets with further specification of the information in each. For example, 0.0 differs from 0.00 differs from 0.000 differs from 0.0000, but each can represent {}. Each needs more or less information than the other based on the length of the digit series. {} comes in one flavor in standard set theory; {} comes in different flavors in ICST. Same for every element – not definite element, elements in subsets, subsets in sets, and sets in supersets. Information content implies the flavor, scent, or sound of the concepts in set theory.

Furthermore, this set theory, ICST, does not equate to standard set theory. It means ICST because of the shift in assumption. An assumption, assertion, a fundamental premise, or an axiom supported by all empirical evidence, ever: finite parts of a finite universe rather than infinite parts in an infinite universe. Infinity remains the big, wrong assumption in all logic, math, physics, and set theory.

ICST changes logic, math, physics, and set theory. Even further, ICST maps logic, math, physics, and set theory to the universe, its contents, and other universes, or the non-standard sets of information spaces, or mind spaces, to any size – theoretical or actual.

ICST, with one more axiom, can shift the landscape for set theory. Any set implies 1-dimensionality; definite elements in definite subsets, definite subsets in definite sets, definite sets in definite supersets explain single instantiations in time. For example, sets A, B, and C equate to particles A, B, and C. Each with property sub-1, sub-2, and sub-3. That is, “Set A _{{1, 2, 3}},” “B _{{1, 2, 3}},” “C _{{1, 2, 3}}” describes one event, superset D. One event, D, comprises subevents, A through C, in a single instantiation of time.

ICST makes set theory 2-dimensional. By analogy, the three dimensions of space become compression into 1-dimensionality with the descriptors in sets applied to attributes of particles. The addition of the time dimension, not compressed, creates the 2-dimensional set theory, ICST, applied to physics. Multiple instantiations over time. D _{{1, 2, 3}}over, for example, the timeline of a mind space. Each D_n as indicative of a single instantiation of sets A, B, or C, or particles 1, 2, or 3. Advanced ICST incorporates the interactions in the sets. These sets’ or particles’ values, as shown earlier, remain finite or countable, probabilistic, and indeterminate. The larger the set then the greater the countable, less probabilistic or more certain, and less indeterminate or more determinate.

IC creates ICST. ICST includes all science and its evidence, present and future, because the universe presented by science remains finite, in part or whole. So one shift in one axiom, and one add-on axiom of “2-dimensionality,” creates ICST, and correspondence with all scientific evidence. Universe, the verb form, describes the dynamic universe; ICST describes the dynamic universe. Each becomes the other at different levels of precision…

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 157 – Elements of a New Set Theory (Part 2)[1]

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/23

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: However, when you try to apply set theory to IC or to a regular quantum universe, it becomes less clear that you could use the normal assumptions and rules of set theory, which, I assume, includes the idea that members of a set are distinct. Not that every member of the set is different, but that every member of the set has a definable existence – like the set of all counting numbers. Every number is precisely defined.

No number turns into some other number. No number is some other number part of the time, but under quantum mechanics, elements of a set can be fuzzy and can change from one thing to another and could may sometimes belong to a set or not belong to a set. If you’re defining members of a set of something, according on quantum rules, the set of all things in this box. Well, under quantum theory, not everything that starts in a box, even if the box is tightly sealed, remains in the box.

Because the things in the box exist as quantum probability clouds or points within probability clouds. Those clouds don’t stop at the edge of the box. They can sometimes be pointwise particles, can pick a point in the probability cloud outside of the box. If you’re choosing members of a set if they’re part of the box or not, your elements of the set are not well-behaved, according to the traditional rules of set theory.

Well, under IC, or under quantum mechanics, sometimes you cannot assign definite states to physical systems with the most famous indefinite system being Schrödinger’s Cat. If your set is the set of all things with a live cat, well, Schrödinger’s Cat only partly belongs to your set, which makes it—why have set theory if you have elements that may or may not belong your set depending on stuff.

IC further complicates it because the delineation of the existence of things under IC, the degree to which things exist under IC, depends on the amount of matter in the universe. When you have a big universe, like the one we live in, with 10^80^th particles, especially those with a long history of interacting with the other particle, those are well-established because they have long histories. But if you have a teeny little universe with roughly 10^3^rd particles, it will have a much shorter history, much less interaction among the particles.

It will have more particles that are more nebulous and closer to being virtual particles. That haven’t left enough of a record for you to definitely say they even exist. They only potentially exist. A universe, a teeny little IC universe is so ill-defined in so many ways that it is not a definite element of a set that you can apply standard set theory to. You have to come up with some new set theory like fuzzy set theory.

[End of recorded material]

[1] These sessions and the correspondence are different expressions of the same ideas. In correspondence, we discussed this:

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Your associative landscape seems to solve it, if we take the 3-dimensional bumpy landscape with each moment as the focus to solve it. Every moment can be more or less closely leaned to based on the current one.

So if the individual moment associates more with one superset in the set of all sets of logical possibilities for actualization of the universe, then the superset sub-1, universe sub-1, of the current universe moment (one Planck moment, fraction of fraction of a second: 1 tP) will transition into superset sub-2, universe sub-2, over superset sub-3, universe sub-3, because in the set of all sets of logical possibilities for actualization of the universe superset sub-2 associates more with superset sub-1 than the superset sub-3, where superset sub-2 & superset sub-3 could be future or past possibilities. This eliminates the distinction between past and future.

Each moment actualizing into another with apparent, but not real, distinction in time. Only distinction in moment-to-moment. Furthermore, superset sub-4 could not equate to a transition from superset sub-1 because superset sub-4 does not remain in the set of all sets of logical possibilities for actualization of the universe. This creates three big classes of sets. These sets as IC Set Theory, so probabalistic and dynamic.

Standard set theory is certain, infinite, and static. Fuzzy set theory is probabilistic, infinite, and static. ICST is probabilistic, finite, and dynamic. It justifies a new set theory. Big class 1: the set of all sets of logical possibilities for actualization of the universe; big class 2: the set of all sets of logical impossibilities for non-actualization of the universe; big class 3: the set of all sets of the universe. Class 3 contains class 1 and 2. Class 3 is the superset of sets 1 and 2.

Class 1 is the answer to the question, “What can happen?” Class 2 is the answer to the question, “What can’t happen?” Class 3 is the answer to the question, “What can and can’t happen?” The 3-dimensional non-Cartesian grid provides an image for it. 3-dimensional inflations with flowing into and out of, toward and away, from one another: the stuff, the information represented as spatial shapes, content, and relationships.

We can differentiate sub-events in superset sub-1, sub-2, or sub-3. With sectioning of a select volume from them, we find more probabilistic, finite, and dynamic elements at the bottom most level with the lowest magnitude defined by the information processing capacity limits set by the information in the universe. For us, the Planck scale to the universe seems like the minima and maxima.

ICST maps onto the universe. With the example, it does so, literally. Each instantiation of the smallest units of the universe and the universe as a whole ask Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3 questions, simultaneously. We described aspect of the universe as “Agents of the Universe” from particles to people to planets to filaments. We provide the how from physics. We provide the how from set theory.

We derive the ethic from the physics and the set theory. These foundations set the stage for asking, “Why?” Why these particles? Why these interrelationships? Why these information processing constraints? Why these organisms? Why this form of creation? Why these time and space scales? So that’s that.

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 156 – Elements of a New Set Theory (Part 1)[1]

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Set theory can be applied to the universe to some degree. But what are its implications in a non-information based universe compared to an information based universe, weaknesses and strengths?

Rick Rosner: We can apply set theory to the universe as we understand it in light of Big Bang and Many Worlds Theory. Under Big Bang, you have a universe with a finite amount of matter and a finite age governed by rules of physics. Some of which we know. Some of which we haven’t discovered yet. Some of those seem conducive to a set of all possible universes. Where you can imagine, the rules of physics or a set of all the possible rules of physics or the set of all possible combinations of different rules of physics.

Then all of the universes that might exist consistent with those rules of physics plus the rules of causality. Universes that could conceivably happen over time. You could also include the sets of simulated universes that nevertheless conform to the rules of physics. If you wanted to be really inclusive, you could include simulated universes that work well enough based on sets of rules that at least a temporary universe to exist, even if you can’t get a full cosmology.

You can imagine putting people in a world with all sorts of weird rules that could not originate naturally, but could exist in a simulation. All of those things are based on rules of what can and can’t exist. It is possible to imagine a set that contains all of these possible universes. It is a crazy big set, but it is possible because it is possible to have infinite sets and you’re talking about a bunch of elements are definite things, definite universes.

And if you wanted to limit yourself, so these things become—for some reason, if you think that you like working with finite sets instead of infinite sets, then you limit the size of the universe and the variations in rules that you’ll tolerate. It can’t be a simulated universe that could not have arisen over time. It is the set of all possible universes with 10^80^th or less particles. If that is too daunting, then 10^6^th particles. That seems like something you can work with.

You can use that kind of thinking for the things that set is good at. Maybe, you come up with theorems that every universe based on these rules and every member of the set has an origin in time. Maybe, every member of the set has a finite lifespan. An origin in time seems reasonable based on the rules we know or think we know, or can apply to the Big Bang. That seems like it might be a way to define elements in the set.

Or if not to define all elements in a set, then to define a subset or subsets in a set.

[End of recorded material]

[1] These sessions and the correspondence are different expressions of the same ideas. In correspondence, we discussed this:

SDJ: With the ICST explained before (I trust), the distinctions in time seem tenuous. Even as an emergent property in the universe, the range of the emergence of time depends on velocity with the minima, v=0, and the maxima, v=c. The velocity in this range determines time. Where time in an ICST framework, time is probabilistic, finite, and dynamic. It’s an “as needed” emergence of time in an “as if” universe with a “good enough” ethic.

RR: Don’t exactly understand the question. However, assuming apparent age of universe is proportional to the amount of information in the universe (but it might be age^3), then adding a million years of added history = 1 million/13.8 billion = 1/13,800 more information has been added to universe’s total. But this isn’t your question.

SDJ: …Not the question, but an interesting thought to consider.

RR: Explain further please…

SDJ: …It seems in the right path to me. It goes to one of the more basic distinctions in an IC universe: outskirts and center. The outskirts are frozen information, relatively speaking. The data will be used later. The center is active because of time. But why time there, and nearly no time or no time in the outskirts? It seems to be, in theory, because of velocity. Something with minimal Brownian motion and velocity freezes in time, more extreme versions of the neutron-rich/burned-out galaxies.

That leads to a questions, or a few. That is, the ratio of collapsing of space and freezing of an object in time to its speed. They’re interdependent variables in IC. If you slow something down, its space shrinks, then it travels in time slower. If you speed something up, like proton-rich galaxies in full burn, the local space expands and time moves faster. So changing one dial affects the other, what is that ratio? That’s an important ratio.

From the why view, moving from the how view, in IC, the object or the information representation is speeding up, expanding space, and in turn creating some time. In that act of creation, its relevance is made. It is relevant to something being processed in the active center because it is an older galaxy flooded with new fuel, so it becomes relevant again, or a galaxy coming alive from the outskirts. That ratio is not only an expansion-contraction of space, speed up-speed down dial on time.

It can probably be considered a metric of meaning, of relevance to the universe. It can loosely put a number on a how, and more importantly a why. But taking any volume of space over a time range, the information contained in it is probabilistic, finite, and dynamic. QM is clear on the probabilistic nature of micro objects. Effective theories are clear on the probabilistic nature of macro objects. The universe is incompletely defined. Our knowledge as agents in the universe is limited, about ourselves and the universe.

Both imply finite information. All of this is dynamic because things are always works-in-progress. So that’s why I feel ICST can emphasise those three traits: probability, finitude, and dynamism.

RR: …Age of universe might = I^(4/3), where I is amount of information. Radius of universe might = I^2/3.

SDJ: With apparent age of universe proportional to the universe’s data, then one million years more history at 1/138,000 more information made. With age, we have time, t. t = I^(4/3). With volume, V, as 4/3pi(r3), and radius, r, as I^2/3, and t = I^(4/3). We have the variables for the larger reference number. (4/3pi((I^2/3)3))*(I^(4/3)) = V. I might have that wrong. Anyhow, another thought experiment. Rather than 1/1.38*10^4 more information from adding 1,000,000 years to the universe.

What about an average 1/1.38*10^4 part of the universe over 1.38*10^10 years? Same amount of information added to it. It is equal to a million years of the net data processing of the universe.

That second thought experiment is more to the ICST point. The formula can go either way, but the second imaginary situation can section off a part of the universe. Then say, “This part over this range of time.” That new set is not certain because it is emergent on chance.

It is not infinite in definition because it is not infinitely precise or defined. It is not static because it bubbles, things interact, and the apparent order has an apparent chaos too, at the same time. It is probabilistic or uncertain because it is emergent on the odds. It is finite in definition because it is not infinitely precise or defined. It is dynamic because there’s constant rejiggering as the chaotically ordered mess of information processing in the new set is ongoing, expanding-contracting, creating its own time and micro-speeding up-speeding down, and representing something real, vivid, and partial in the mind of some higher-order information processor…

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 155 – Feedback and Disruptions

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/16

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Rocks have very little feedback. Living things have all sorts of feedback systems that help maintain, help living things survive under changing conditions. Some of those feedback systems are not know yet. I know a guy working on this stuff. He’s got a theory that as evolved creatures we have lots and lots of feedback systems that may not be at the gene expression level. It may be among all sorts of systems in the body that haven’t been discovered yet.

Yet people are working to find out all of the different interactions among various systems in the body at all sorts of different levels. The molecular level on up to the organ level. Within 20 years, most of those things will have been found out and many of those mechanisms within the body will be addressable via medical therapy if things go wrong or if things wear out, which will lead to all sorts of disruptions because we can pretty much figure that—

One disruption is that at first richer people and richer countries will have better access to life extending and life improving therapies than people in poorer countries, which hasn’t been a significantly contentious issue yet because under the current conditions we all die pretty soon. The highest average lifespan is still not 90, even in the most developed countries in the world. And then in the most hellacious countries in the world, the average lifespan might be 50.

Those are so fucked up that they have other things to worry about besides getting pissed at people in countries living significantly longer than average. But the average lifespan for countries starts surpassing or approaching 100, and creeps up towards 120.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 154 – ‘When is the Future Going to Get Here?’

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/20

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: We were talking about when the future is going to get here. We talk about the future a lot without pinning down when it will happen and what it will do. I consider the election disrupted by the future. That is, disrupted by forces that have never played so large a role in an election, one thing is that actual jobs lost to AI and to robotics. I saw a statistic yesterday that for every robot in a factory, then you cost 6.2 human jobs.

People like to say that we’ve had increasing automation for 3 centuries, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and people found work after each disruption. I believe that is a harder case to make now. There are probably millions of people in this country who have lost jobs to automation. They are pissed off. People also lost jobs to economic cycles, to offshoring and outsourcing, but automation puts constant pressure on the job market.

It squeezes it down and down and down. Those pissed off people and other pissed off people have been manipulated via computer hacking of information that generate social media bots. They have been manipulated into mistrusting longstanding American institutions. Most prominently, most importantly, the media; so this is a trend that may have shown up in previous elections, but it exploded in this election.

Senate is just beginning to have hearings on exactly how much we were fucked over by Russia. We have another national election coming up in 2018, which also includes all sorts of state elections. There is no guarantee. In fact, there’s no guarantee that we will be able to fight off that same electronic manipulation of people with propaganda and bots filling social media with bullshit.

In fact, you can pretty much guarantee that that’s going to happen. There are elections coming up in France that Russia is trying to mess with. Russia is trying to mess with the alliances in Western Europe such as NATO. He influenced Brexit. Russia’s efforts to destabilize Western democracies and will continue to be fairly successful. So that’s one form of futuristic disruption that is already here.

Other forms of disruption include a bunch of effects of vastly improved medicine. That within 20 years not only will the genome be entirely figured out – that is, say 90% of the effects of manipulating the various genes in a human genome will be known – along with a lot of other potential feedback loops in the human body. Living things live and move through the environment and have flexibility to deal with various conditions of life using feedback in the body.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 153 – Ray Kurzweil and the Future

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/19

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Most of what he got true was for 2015 and later. Even over a 10-year time period, what he said would take 10 years, it took closer to 15 years, which is probably true for reasonable science fiction. Things that can be reasonably expected to come to pass will come to pass, but take twice as long as the futurist thinks. A guy named John Brunner wrote a couple of books in the later 60s called Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up.

It was the word 10 years hence from the 1960s. The fashion trend I remembered because I was a horny little kid and it made me excited that people in the future would let you wear clothing that would allow you to see their panties, “Wow, I cannot wait for the future.”

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: [Laughing].

RR: It didn’t happen in the 70s, but, by now, performer—the idea of performing in a swimsuit or a skirt that is missing anything like a leotard-type bottom is a common thing. The panties came to be, but it took 30 years. Computer displays built into eyeglasses for augmented reality are in widespread use. Not really, Google Glass didn’t work out. People thought they were assholes and it didn’t catch on.

Computers can recognize their owners face from a piece of video, pretty much. A $1,000 computer can perform a trillion calculations per second. Yup. There’s increasing interest in massively parallel neural nets and other chaotic computing. Research has been initiated on research engineering the brain based on non-invasive methods. Elon Musk mentioned the enterprise.

What he thought would take 10 years is taking 15-18 years or more, for 2019, 20 years after he writes this book, he said for $4,000 you should be able to buy a computer with the computing capacity of the human brain.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 152 – Bodice-Rippers and the Future

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/18

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Or it takes place in the 18^th century. They call historic romance novels “bodice-rippers.” A bodice is the top that a woman wore. A bodice-ripper is the rugged man who is overcome by his lust and just tears her shirt off and takes her, and only later turns out to be a good guy. You can go online. If you Google “bodice-ripper,” I’m sure you can find the cover of dozens of romance novels with the woman’s shirt semi-off and the guy’s shirt is fully off.

Let’s talk about the future. Probably the best known predictor of the future in any kind of detail is Ray Kurzweil, who is the guy who took up the banner of the Singularity. That by the 2040s we’re looking at a potential utopia because AI is going to—we’re going to build AI and AI is going to further AI until it is smarter and smarter until all solutions to human problems including aging have been figured out by the 2040s.

He’s written probably half of a dozen books. In some, he’s put out long year-by-year predictions about what will happen. His track record is not horrible. So we can look at his predictions and look how well he’s done and then look at the future predictions and see how he’ll do. For instance, he wrote a book called The Age of Spiritual Machines, which is about AI in 1999. Then he made a bunch of predictions for 10 years hence.

You, Scott, can go on Wikipedia and look up predictions made by Ray Kurzweil. He’s got a list of about 18 predictions. 2009, as predicted from 1999, majority of reading is done on displays rather than paper. He got that one. I’d say most people. Most texts would be made by speech recognition technology. He missed on that one. Intelligent roads and driverless cars will be in use. He missed that one. That’s more a 2019, 2020-something thing.

People use personal computers the size of rings, pins, credit cards, and books. Semi-got that one. Fit bits are somewhat the size of that and tablets are the size of books. Most portable computers don’t have moving parts or keyboards. He got that one. You press your screen, but it doesn’t really have a punchable keyboard. Desktop PCs are still common. Individuals still use portable devices. True.

I don’t know if it true for 2009, but 8 years later it is true. Personal computers worn provide monitoring, pretty close, but halfway. Devices provide high-speed access via wireless, got that one. Digital products such as games, books, and software typically acquired a files via wireless network and have no physical network associated with them. People can talk to their computer to give commands. Got that one.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Ask A Genius 151 – Cohabitation and Marriage

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/17

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That makes me think. That makes me think. It is an astute point. There has been data that has come in on more recent relationships. Live-ins? What do they call them?

Rick Rosner: Cohabitating?

SDJ: Yea. Cohabitating, that’s the one. So people that get straight married. They stay together longer and have more durable partnerships because they don’t get divorced as often as those that cohabitate and then get married. I don’t know the reason why, but apparently that’s a thing.

RR: It could be a bunch of different reasons. It could be that people who cohabitate fall into relationships more easily. You can divide people into two populations with regard to relationships. Hot people who find it easy to hook up, and less socially able people who find it harder to hook up and tend to hold on more. They want to hold onto the existing relationship more.

My family has that kind of divide between the easy hooker-uppers and the harder-hooker-uppers. So some people find it easy to hook up, and boom! They can break up with someone if things go badly.

SDJ: It could be social consequences too.

RR: Yea, people may be more religious or more traditional. There’s too many variables in there to pin it down. I would think that—the way marriage and romance was presented via media through – well, up until now – most of the 20^th century. There’s the soulmate and happily ever after. I would think that there is a lot of disappointment in relationships when it turned out not to be that, when you have a divorce rate of the last 80 years of 50%.

SDJ: That’s a misleading number, just intuitively. People who divorce more skew that number. It’s actually probably lower. People who have repeat divorces up that number.

RR: It’s still a good rule of thumb. That half of all marriages end in divorce.

SDJ: Yea, it is probably more like 40% because if somebody divorces 4 times or 3 times, or 2 times.

RR: But they still had a bunch of marriages that ended in divorces. You’re trying to differentiate people and marriages. What you’re saying is that there might be a lot of long-term marriages and people who have a shitload of marriages average is of divorces up. Still, overall, a good rule of thumb is 50%, and if you want to adjust for more modern numbers, it is probably 45%. You can look for more subtle trends, but half of all marriages end in divorce.

That high rate among the things that cause it might be high expectations cause by entertainment, where people expect to find their soulmate and to find relatively friction-free long-term relationships. And if the rate is dropping, one factor might be or two related factors might be the access of information via the internet about how things really are and about how entertainment reflects a lot of less romantic models of relationships.

Which show that many relationships are troubled and most relationships aren’t free of having to work on them, you always had a dark undercurrent of presentation of relationships in books and movies and such, but those weren’t mainstream entertainment. It is like Revolutionary Road by Richard Yeats, maybe, in the 50s that presents a sad disintegrating marriage. Most people went to Rock Hudson, Dorris Day comedies.

SDJ: I feel like the romantic delusions are fed to women more and social pressure is a big reason for men becoming married, which are two different things.

RR: There’s the idea of romance porn for women. Guys have porn porn and then women have romance porn, which used to be harlequin novels.

SDJ: Yea, it’s love that doesn’t end badly.

RR: The plot of a harlequin novel is a woman has a series of brief satisfying dates or just friendly relationships with just wimpy men and then she meets a manly man. He meets all of the stereotypes. He’s rugged, strong, but he’s really mean to her. It’s a little bit like you took Pride and Prejudice and dumbed it down to the ultimate degree. The guy is an asshole, but they somehow are overcome by their mutual attraction.

But then he’s even meaner. The woman doesn’t know what to do. At the end of the book, she finds out that he’s really a nice guy, who loves her deeply, and was only mean because he hated the loss of control that he felt around her because he was attracted to her.

SDJ: [Laughing].

RR: At that point, he morphs from being the complete asshole he’s been the whole book into being a loving man who want to settle and marry and have kids, almost immediately.

SDJ: [Laughing] So it’s also saving him from himself.

RR: That’s just the template. In the 70s, you could’ve gone out and bought 200 of these novels that have the same plot, except in one he works on an oil rig, and on another he’s a sheriff, and another he’s a cop. Only the settings and the occupations change.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-13

Politics News in Brief – May 19th, 2017

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/19

Brexit talks could collapse over UK divorce bill, says EU negotiator

According to The Guardian, Michel barnier, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiation, has fears of a refusal of some member states (of the EU) to soften demands over the “divorce bill” coming from Britain.

This could collapse the talks and subsequently the UK could be “crashing out of the EU without a deal”.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, in addition to other senior officials, noted the stakes remain so high with Paris’ and Berlin’s refusal to pay any more for the departure of the UK from the EU.

Brexit and the Identity Crisis for the UK

CNN, reporting on the buildup to the UK elections, focused on the town of Redcar. Although the seaside resort and town is 250 miles from Westminster, the distance between its people and the UK’s heart of government could be “a million miles.” Redcar is in the industrial northeast of England, so should be safe for the Labour party.

Anna Turley, a local member of parliament (Labour), has been knocking on doors to “keep her seat” in the next month’s general election. There is, apparently, a “palpable” disaffection with the politics in Westminster.

As the voters are working class – steel and heavy industry types, the borough of Redcar (“and Cleveland”) has been “knocked off its feet by globalisation.” In 2015, 3,000 jobs shut down due to falling steel prices. Even though Redcar should be a victory for Labour, globalisation is another important factor for the vote.

The Difficulty, If Not Impossibility, of Stopping Foreign Influence on UK Politics

The commission’s chief says it monitors closely political parties’ use of data analytics and social media to target voters. The Guardian, reporting on the foreign influence on UK politics, highlights the fact the Electioral Commission has been powerless to prevent any foreign efforts altering the perceptions, and so the statistical votes, of the British electorate, and so British election.

Social media is another influence on the election too. Claire Bassett said, “If something is happening outside of the borders of this country and is not part of any of the regime we are responsible for, it’s not something we can cover within our regulation.”

This has raised concerns about companies using advanced data analysis. The analysis of social media stuff of people. The analyses can target people with specifically targeted messages to their profiles, based on their data. Bassett there wasn’t much individuals or governments could do to prevent paid manipulation through these analyses and other means.

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2022-04-13

Philosophy News in Brief – May 19th, 2017

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/19

Some Philosophical Principles of Success

An author from Inc., speaking on his personal philosophy for success, recently said, “I have a modest and maybe even overly simple personal philosophy with which I view my life — I compartmentalise my entire existence into three basic buckets: social, business, and family. This plays out in many different ways, but today I am focused on my walls around business.”

Two philosophical principles for entrepreneurial initiatives, from the author, come in two paths. One is the pursuit of gain while the other is the avoidance of loss.

However, the reduction of risk is not really a possibility, according to the author. The best companies do not factor into their calculations the possibility of worst-case scenarios, but they know that the paths of failure are probable outcomes.

John Singleton Copley as a ‘National Treasure’ Portraits

The Harvard Gazette reported that “Five years ago, when Harvard’s Ethan Lasser began examining the history of a series of portraits by the American painter John Singleton Copley, something odd caught his eye.”

Lasser described the continual references within the records as to the prior placement of the series of portraits by John Singleton Copley. When looking further, the author found a big and “untapped archive.”

They began to look for the original materials for the possibility of recreation of the “stories of collecting and scholarship that collided inside the Philosophy Chamber.” It is the largest of three rooms in the Harvard Hall, from the late 18^th and 19^th centuries, which taught students with “a vast collection of art, scientific instruments, plant and mineral specimens, indigenous American artefacts, and ancient relics.”

Reflection on the Reasons for Extremism After Mashal Khan Murder

The Daily Times recently published an article which, through highlighting the gory incident of Mashal Khan’s lynching at Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, stressed that there is an obvious question in the minds of most thinking Pakistanis currently: what is the cause of intolerance and extremism among the educated class of Pakistani society?”

It is noted that there are myriad reasons for this, including the “abysmal” state of the education system regarding philosophy in the post-secondary institutional sector.

The “coding” for kids can impact the personalities quite profoundly in addition to the “idiosyncrasy” found in Pakistani culture for kids, to not ask questions. In reflection on Mashal Khan, it was noted that maybe this is an important point of consideration surrounding his murder.

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2022-04-12

Science News in Brief – May 20th, 2017

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/20

UK Government Accused of Silencing Scientists

The cabinet secretary and the head of the civil service, Sir Jeremy Heywood, has received a letter authored by numerous leading scientific organisations stating that “they were unaware of any election in which purdah had been “extended so far into the daily work” of researchers and academics.”

The scientists felt that they were (not) unable to make any comments on the air quality plan of the UK government for example, due to the fact that their membership to the Scientific Advisory Committee (membership) made them subject to the rules — a specification that had been reiterated by the government, in what is perceived as an attempt to intimidate. The letter further stated that some experts were also “nervous” to discuss other topics such as climate change and drought. The Cabinet Office has since responded that the “pre-election guidance” was not meant to limit commentary from independent academics.

NASA Looking for Plans to Land on Europa

The NASA scientists report that there will probably be a lander at some point during the next decade (in the 2020s some time). NASA has yet to approve the mission, however, they have stated that there is enough funding to start the search for (the) “instrument ideas.”

About 2,000 New Species Found in 2016

1,730 new plants were discovered in 2016, according to The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and are said to be new additions to the scientific biological catalogue. The discovery includes eleven new species of the Manihot shrub, which is a Brazilian starchy root, along with hundreds of others.

Another seven of the species found, best known as varieties of rooibos tea or red bush, originate from South Africa. Six of them are however threatened with extinction. “Many have potential as food crops, medicines or sources of timber,” the BBC said, “However, scientists say some of the newly-discovered plants are already at risk of extinction. They are developing new ways to speed up the discovery and classification of plants to help safeguard them for future generations.”

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2022-04-12

Q&A on Ex-Muslim Experiences – Session 1, Yasmeen

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/18

This is an educational series on the experiences of ex-Muslims. The The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) is one major organisation in the UK. The CEMB contingent will march in the gay pride parade in London on July 8, 2017. Those who want to be part of the CEMB contingent, please email Daniel at exmuslimcouncil@gmail.com. As well, the CEMB will be having an event entitled “International Conference on Freedom of Conscience and Expression in the 21st Century,” on July 22–24, 2017 in Central London. The following sessions are the stories, the personal narratives, of ex-Muslims in general. Yasmeen is the first profile. Here is her story as an ex-Muslim in America.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To begin, what was your family background in religion? How did this, in turn, influence your development within the religion?

Yasmeen: My parents were Christian by name. So I grew up pretty secular. As a teenager, I was an atheist by default. I didn’t have solid arguments for my atheism. I feel like that definitely contributed to my conversion to Islam.

Jacobsen: From within Islam, what was your first perception of women’s status within it? And how did this develop over time as a perspective?

Yasmeen: I don’t really like to use the term “internalised misogyny,” but that’s kind of what was happening with me as I was a Muslim. I believed women were inferior to men. I accepted my role as a woman in Islam. That only really started to change when really horrible things happened to me, like abuse within the community, abuse within my own family. It started to get me out of that mentality. It was almost like a fantasy, but that fantasy was shattered when it actually happened to me.

Jacobsen: Is this a common experience for women that were within your community, at the time?

Yasmeen: Definitely, there are a lot of women who will reassure that it is okay how your husband is acting. He is supposed to be jealous and have what is called a gheerah. Some women were forced to wear a niqab during a wedding because they were wearing makeup. They will defend wife-beating and other such things.

Jacobsen: Within the community, are the restrictions on women, in general, more stringent and numerous than on men? If so, are there any equivalents in the restrictions on men as on women, in the Islam you were living under?

Yasmeen: It is basically day and night. People will say that technically under Islam men and women are treated the same as far as things like fornication, and dressing, and doing drugs and alcohol. They will say it’s the same. In practice, men and women are not treated equally whatsoever. We’re talking about the smallest thing like household chores, being able to go outside the house, especially at night time, being able to go out alone, how much skin you’re allowed to show, if you’ll be forgiven for fornicating or doing drugs.

Anything like that, it is completely different for men and women in Islam. Also, virginity is different for men and women. Men are not really held to the same standard as women. Women are expected to be virgins when they are married. Unless they are divorced or widowed. I got off pretty easy because I was a convert, but I had my own issues with virginity and issues regarding sexuality.

Jacobsen: For women reading this in near future or the far future, who are Muslim, and are under duress or abusive circumstances, who can they contact for help? How can they protect themselves from an abusive situation, whether within the family, with the spouse, or in the larger community? For those that aren’t Muslims, but are concerned for women under religious dictates, what are ways to reach out and help them, or to support organisations already doing so?

Yasmeen: First off, they have to be financially independent because what holds a lot of these women back is not being financially independent, and being financially dependent on their families for everything. Women shelters are an option, but, unfortunately, I’ve seen many of these women turned away and dismissed as a cultural issue.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many organisations that have the resources to help these women right now. I know a few people are working on it. Faisal Saeed Al Mutar is working on his organisation. Also, there is Faith to Faithless. They are working to get more resources to help people who have left their religion. I would tell them to never accept that this behaviour is normal and acceptable, even within Islam.

Jacobsen: Were there any positives that you took from your time as a Muslim? And subsequently, what were the personal benefits for leaving Islam to you? As well, if I may ask, were there any benefits in family life for you?

Yasmeen: Of course, anything isn’t completely evil or completely good. I don’t think Islam is completely evil. There are some good things to be learned from it, like family values, being committed to family, respecting your parents, being grateful for food, shelter, water. Islam taught me a lot of patience. I think even the bad things I endured during my time as a Muslim really helped me to mature.

Leaving Islam, on the other hand, was a horrible experience, it cost me my marriage. We were divorced for 5 months. We finally reconciled. It cost me all of my friends and my community. But one positive that came from this, my husband did some research himself. he read some Hadiths. He saw some horrible things. he moderated himself. He is a lot more moderate as a Muslim. That has improved our family life. However, he is not aware of the full extent of what I do.

Jacobsen: Taking a step back out of personal experience, and looking more at a demographic trend and the experiences that come from this, are there more public ex-Muslims that are men or that are women? Because in conversation with the CEO of Atheist Republic, it was noted that there do seem to be, at least in the online sphere, more ex-Muslim men than women.

I can make assumptions about various premises that might build an argument as to why, but I can’t necessarily state one way or the other. So your experience and insight would assist in rounding out this perspective on the demographic trends in the ex-Muslim community.

Yasmeen: Yes, there are a lot more men. I think this is because it is more acceptable for men to leave the religion. Because they can pretend it never happened, because there aren’t as many restrictions on them. Whereas, for women, it would be very difficult to lead that double life. They are also more likely to be stuck in marriages that they don’t want to be stuck in, and also more likely to be stuck with children to take care of.

I think those factors keep them in the religion, even though they don’t want to be. I think you are also a lot more scared of the consequences as a woman. You don’t know if somebody is going to beat you, disown you, or, in some cases, kill you. Even as somebody who was a white convert, I use a fake name online because I receive death threats constantly. I think converts are more likely to leave Islam, but less likely to talk about it.

I knew two girls just in my community who alluded to me that they were going to leave Islam, but then they disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Jacobsen: In America, I talked to a woman named Marie Alena Castle in an interview. She has been around through the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 00s, and the 10s for the women’s rights movement and the human rights movement, and the atheist movement, at least in America. She described the progression of women as earning the right to vote, earning the right or privilege to a career of their choice.

Following this, she now sees the current battleground against the “religious Right” — I believe that’s the proper term for the United States. She sees the fight against them as abortion, equitable and safe access to abortion, and reproductive health and rights, especially for women. What do you see as the current battleground for women within Islam, women that have left Islam, and women in general in Britain? A big question, but I think it is an important one.

Yasmeen: Both as a Muslim and an ex-Muslim. I feel we are fighting the Left and the Right. If you’re a Muslim that deviates even slightly from what is acceptable within the community, you’re not only attacked by Muslims, but you’re attacked by the Far-Right. They’ll say, “You’re a secret Jihadist. You’re practising, Taqiyyah.” Then as an ex-Muslim, you’re fighting the Far-Right, who will say, if you are not bigoted against Muslims, “You are just covering for them. You are a Jihadist supporter.”

Then, of course, you are fighting against Muslims. Some of whom want you dead, and you’re fighting against the Far-Left, who see Islam as a brown person’s religion. If you criticize it, then, somehow, you’re bigoted. The Far-Left seems to be siding with Islamists now because they are picking the most stereotypically Muslim people to support. So Liberal Muslims, ex-Muslims, cultural Muslims, all get thrown under the bus by Far-Left.

I do think abortion rights and some aspects of women’s rights are under threat by the Far-Right, but I also think our freedom of speech is under attack by the Far-Left. I remember when I was wearing hijab. I really didn’t want to. I didn’t have much choice to take it off. There were a lot of Far-Left people supporting World Hijab Day. They refused to recognize that a lot of women are forced, even in the US, within the community are forced to wear hijab.

Jacobsen: One of the more devastating effects on women through cultural, and easily arguably religious as well, practice is female genital mutilation, clitoridectomy, and so on. How is this viewed within the community, even within developed nations?

Coming out of the Muslim community as an ex-Muslim, how does one’s perspective shift on, not only a woman’s right to wellbeing with regards to her body, especially reproductive health, as well as access, equitable and safe access to that reproductive health technology?

In Islam, people differentiate between female genital mutilation and female circumcision, which is taking a piece of the clitoral hood off. Of course, now, ashamed that I ever supported something like that, but I don’t personally support circumcision on males either. As far as birth control goes, that also depends on the person in Islam. Some people do say that birth control is allowed as long as you aren’t on it indefinitely, as long as you plan to have children in the future. Some people say it is completely haram.

Other people say it is up to your husband. Personally, my husband was against birth control. So I wasn’t given access to birth control. Abortion is also technically allowed in Islam, kind of. If it is done before 120 days, it is not considered murder, but it is still haram. It is still considered a sin. I actually have a daughter because I wasn’t given access to birth control or an abortion.

Jacobsen: Changing gears a bit, and thank you for that, to some of the beliefs in the belief system, how many people adhere to supernaturalist beliefs such as angels, and jinns, and the Devil, and the myriad assorted beings that are purported to exist, as well as to the efficacy of things such as prayer, for instance?

I say this because Britain is one of the nations that has developed quite past other countries such as the United States, even Canada, in terms of reduction in anti-scientific and supernaturalist beliefs in the general populace to more scientific and naturalist beliefs.

Yasmeen: Pretty much everybody believes in jinn, sehir — which is black magic, angels of course, and of course dua — prayer. I haven’t met a single person who doesn’t believe in these things. In fact, they believe in possession by jinn. One time, I had a friend tell me about these teenagers who were practising sehir, which is black magic. They were executed. I said, “Isn’t that a little intense? They are just teenagers. Maybe, they are a little rebellious because they are teenagers.” She said, “No, because they were practising black magic.”

Jacobsen: With your husband having the final say on contraceptive use, and the daughter you had as a result of not being able to have a definite, a final, say in your own body with regards to reproductive health, what are the emotions that come up knowing this as a truth while being a believer? What are the feelings as you are raising the child as a result of this? What are the feelings raising the child outside of Islam?

Yasmeen: Okay, so, my husband didn’t approve of birth control because he thought it was haram to prevent a family, but what we did practice was something called Al-‘Azl or coitus interruptus. He told me that if I did get pregnant that I would probably be able to get an abortion if it was early on and that it would be okay. But when I got pregnant, that went out the window. I remember begging for an abortion because I didn’t want to have a child.

He and his family basically told me, “No.” That really affected me as a believer. That was a big, big turning point. It almost drove me crazy. I remember the whole pregnancy I was begging for an abortion. After she was born, I was so crazy. Maybe, it was postpartum depression too, but I almost abandoned her. Now, I accept my role as a mother and I love her, but some days it is still hard to accept it because I didn’t want another child to begin with. I do have another child from marriage.

Jacobsen: What is the different of marriage in Islam compared to civil marriage or a secular marriage, or other religious marriages? Because your own is not a legal marriage, as you have noted to me, off tape basically.

Yasmeen: Marriage in Islam is similar to marriage in any other religion. The man is basically the head of the household, and the woman is supposed to be subservient to him. As far as the actual process of marriage, you basically write up a contract. You have what is called wali for the woman, which is a guardian who she goes through to set up her marriage and pre-approve of her marriage. It could be a parent or somebody else.

Then the rest is pretty similar, you agree to the terms and say, “I do,” and then have a dinner. The problem within the community is a lot of these marriages are not actually recognized under the law. The reason for doing this is so the men don’t have to fulfil their actual legal obligations towards these women. It is also a loop hole to have a second, or third, or a fourth wife. That’s what happened with my marriage.

My husband initially told me that he would fill out the legal paperwork. “Let’s do it Islamically, and we’ll do it later,” and it never happened. I can’t say how many marriages aren’t done legally, but it is the ease with which it is done that concerns me.

Jacobsen: This leads me to some final thoughts with next steps. You have a unique perspective with regards to the ex-Muslim community, as a minority within that “minority within a minority” — to use Maryam Namazie’s phrase. You are a woman within the ex-Muslim community, which is, as noted earlier in the interview, not the dominant demographic of ex-Muslims.

The dominant demographic are men as ex-Muslims. As well, you described your own narrative as well as issues within the community from superstition to reproductive health rights and access, abortion access, approval of those by the community, social pressure, the man having the final word, and so on.

This makes me think, “What can be done next to move the conversation forward? How can we translate that conversation into action? And who can be an ally? And who have been allies?”

Yasmeen: I think we need to get this out there into the mainstream. I think the only people that are going to be completely honest and more unbiased will be ex-Muslims. I think we do already have a lot of allies in other apostate communities, like the ex-Jehovah’s Witness, ex-Mormon, and others. I think it would be a great task, but I think we need to get the Left on our side.

I think it could be easy with enough awareness because we are a minority within a minority. Why would the Far-Left not listen to us? I think if there were enough of us. I think they would come around to listening to us, but I don’t know how realistic that is.

Jacobsen: I appreciate you taking your time today. Do you have any feelings or thoughts in conclusion about the conversation we have had today?

Yasmeen: Yes, Scott, thank you so much. I wanted to remind people that whatever us ex-Muslims and Muslim liberals say. We’re not saying this because we hate Muslims. We have Muslim family. Sometimes, we have Muslim spouses and Muslim friends. We love them. We just think that what we’re doing is not only helping them but also helping people like us. When I say we’re trying to help Muslims also, what I mean is that most of the time, ex-Muslims are one of the only people trying to bridge the gap between the Far-Right and the Far-Left, and protect not only freedom of speech, but also protect Muslims against bigotry.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time today, Yasmeen.

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2022-04-12

Interview with Hugh Taft-Morales – Leader of Philadelphia Ethical Society

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/16

Hugh Taft-Morales is the leader of the Philadelphia Ethical Society and the Baltimore Ethical Society. He is deeply rooted in the Ethical Culture and the Ethical Humanist movement as a leader and a member, and a scholar. He describes his experiences and work in this in-depth interview.

*This interview edited for clarity and readability.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Tell us your family background – geography, culture, language, and religion.

I was born in 1957 in New Haven, Connecticut. I am the son of an academic father and an artist mother. I grew up in a secular household and as part of East Coast Liberal culture. I was loosely part of the Episcopal religious culture around me in terms of general acceptance of Judeo-Christian morals, but I was not taught to believe the metaphysics of religion.

I never thought I’d go into something like Ethical Culture clergy work as a profession, but, after 25 years of teaching history and philosophy, I found myself really wanting to share some of what I learned in teaching and in school in a more inspirational setting in order to make the world a little bit better – not to be too dramatic about it! That’s what drew me into Ethical Culture work.

And what about your own educational background? How does that play into your own humanistic values, if at all, during your development?

Yea, it probably did because what I ended up focusing on in college was history; primarily, US history (20^th century). I was intrigued by post-Civil War history in terms of the ebb and flow in the United States of the power of money versus the power of populism – the tug-of-war between the robber barons and the rise of US populism. The farmer grain cooperative movement against the railroads. Teddy Roosevelt in the White House fighting the corporations. The rise of business during and after WWI and during the ’20s with power swinging back into corporate pockets, then the Depression bringing in more modern Democrats opposing corporate power, to the Welfare State in the ’60s, and so on.

I left college wanting to go into politics. I lived in New Haven on the Yale campus where my father was a professor. After graduation, I worked in Capitol Hill for one year. I enjoyed it. My humanist education focused on real mundane social justice issues, where people are both the ones responsible for the horrors of the world and responsible for making the world better. I never had the desire or the need to look beyond human beings to make this world better. My humanism is grounded there.

My first five years of teaching was at a private school in Washington, DC called St. Alban’s. Many sons of the elite went there. I began to appreciate the inspirational side of a religious school. I tried to teach the ideals of the human mind to allow kids to imagine a better world.

If you don’t imagine a better world, then you might fall into thinking of the personal acquisition of material riches as the path to a better world so you get as many toys as you can before death. However, if you believe in the possibility of a better world ethically – and somehow that was part of a meaningful life for you—I thought it would help people, myself included, to live a more ethical life. That began to draw me, initially, into Ethical Culture. I hadn’t heard of Ethical Culture until I was about 13 years into my teaching career. It came late for me.

How did you first become involved in The Ethical Society of Philadelphia, in depth?

Through the Washington Ethical Society. I lived inside the Washington beltway. I joined the Washington Ethical Society in the 1990s when we had two children and a third one on the way. My wife and I never thought of joining a religion. She calls herself a retired Catholic. She is very disgusted at the wealth and the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and the misogyny.

We wanted our kids to grow up with some religious literacy. We didn’t think about it too much until one day our eldest son said at the table, “Mom, Dad, who is Jesus, again?” He was 7-years-old. [Laughing] We realised he’d be impoverished culturally. We could have done more of that, but our friend talked about the Ethical Society. They had a Sunday school program, which taught religion from a humanist perspective.

They taught that religions are human creations. This is the history. They had very sensible approaches to sexual education. We used Our Whole Lives program, which is our Unitarian program, which is down-to-earth, non-judgemental, and holistic. We were drawn into it because of our child. After going to the Washington Ethical Society for a year, or two, I began to appreciate a moment in the week apart from the chaos. Teaching and raising children, and the rest of life is chaotic, I began to assess where I was in life.

Ethical Culture began to grow on me. I found myself teaching at the Ethical Society. I decided to run for the board. I served on the board for a number of years. I was a president for one year. However, it became clear to me that I loved the teaching and preaching aspect – the motivational aspect so I decided after a couple of years on the board to go through the leadership training, which is our version of seminary work. I ended up getting the job in Baltimore at the Ethical Society.

My training took me about four years. I did internships at 3 ethical societies. My first year was in Baltimore. The next year I got a job in Philly. I am now splitting my time between Baltimore and Philadelphia commuting from Washington. I don’t use this term often, but I did use it when I applied for leadership positions. They ask you the same question, “What draws you into Ethical Culture leadership?” I said, “I felt called.”

I don’t have a drop of superstitious thought in my head, but saying “I felt called” seemed right. It was a way to express my values and admit my limitations with integrity and wholeness. It was a profession that became more of a vocation and a way of life for me. That was a nice direction. I loved teaching. I could go back tomorrow. I think it is fantastic as a job, but I don’t regret the shift.

With respect to being the current leader of the Philadelphia Ethical Society and the Baltimore Ethical Society, what tasks and responsibilities come along with these positions because I would see the teaching background as relevant to the current work in leadership?

It is. My teaching background was relevant to my current work in Ethical Culture and Ethical Humanism (I use interchangeably.) Sometimes, I see the term “Ethical Culture” as representing a historical legacy because that’s what it was called originally. But in the mid-20^th century, more and more people started to use the term Ethical Humanism because it connected to a broader movement. There are distinctions in humanism generally, but the term Ethical Culture had this Victorian antiquated feel to it. People didn’t get it, necessarily so Ethical Humanism works better in speaking to the general public.

In my job I play the same role as a minister in a small congregation, basically, but take the God aspect out. Both Baltimore and Philadelphia are small, like 80-90 members. Unlike Washington, and New York and St. Louis which are larger (around 300+). Anybody who goes into ministry knows there’s a big difference between running a small, medium, and a large society, what your roles are. Since I am in a small group, I am more of a jack-of-all-trades.

Primarily, my duties are teaching, preaching, counselling. I do adult ed., courses and outreach, events, one-off interviews with humanists, courses on Darwinism, or moral philosophy, or animal and human studies. Last year, in Philadelphia, we had a year-long series called “Capitalism in Crisis,” which was eight evenings with guests from around the country speaking on various aspects of capitalism’s limitations and problems.

The counselling, obviously, is there. It takes a lot of time. That’s why counselling needs to have boundaries so that it doesn’t become long-term counselling. It’s more helping people get through crises and helping them secure long-term counselling or psychotherapeutic counselling to help them get what they need.

In both Ethical Societies, my work touches on many aspects of running a small organisation more than I’d like, because it is not what I’m drawn to. It can involve making sure meetings run well, and agendas are set, helping all the volunteer-run committees, helping manage our listservs. I am basically the only staff person for our programs, and we have an administrator in Philadelphia who looks after the building, finances, and other tasks. I handle our membership.

There are lots of little things that need to get done or congregational development elements. How do you make sure your newsletter is well-produced? How good are your Sunday morning programs? Sunday morning is the hub of the wheel, so to speak. Like other small liberal congregations, our weekly meetings have a liberal lean to them. But in Ethical Culture we are exclusively non-theist and that’s important as a term for me. That means we don’t take a position on whether God exists or not.

Ethical Culture has always been non-theist because we believe that what’s most important in is how you live your life. If you battle over whether God exists or not, you often miss the point. Felix Adler, who founded Ethical Culture over 140 years ago, wanted to make sure there was a home for people who wanted inspiration and community without the metaphysical baggage, Ethical Culture doesn’t turn away theists either because the core message is that it is more important how you treat each other than your reasoning behind it, theistic or not.

That said, if you’re theistic and if you’re looking for a community that meets once a week and supports people and does social justice work, and you believe in God, then you’re probably going to go to some form of church, mosque, or synagogue. Consequently, many of our members tend to be atheists, freethinkers, and sceptics. But I have to remind them that there’s a distinction between our identity as a group of people and our mission as an organisation. While many of our members are atheists, our official position is non-theism. That allows us to focus on our mission: to inspire and support people to live closer to their ethical values and ideals.

What do you see as the main threats to the practice of humanism and Ethical Culture in general within the United States and within Philadelphia, in particular?

I’d have to say, greed, money. It’s a little simplistic, I know. I studied plenty of Marxism in college but I’m not a determinist. I’m not a simplistic materialist. I am basically a naturalist and materialist in one way, but not the way Marx was a determinist. But I think he got it right in saying that one way to understand oppression is basically to “follow the money.” Often greed and money push people to violate the values of humanism which looks at human beings as having inherent worth and dignity.

Most humanists believe that human beings, including oneself, should be treated well. Reason and compassion are the best tools for us to get along and figure out public policy and so on. All of those values are shared widely in humanism. I think they’re most challenged when somebody can make a buck by violating those values. I’ll bring up an example of the prison-industrial complex, which is making money off of criminalising the poor, particularly poor people of colour. It is not just criminalising. It is dehumanising. It is humiliating people who get caught up in the system often due to a system that tries to maximise profit. Private corporations are making money due to the criminalisation of poverty.

Again, a little detail that I think crystallises this. I worked with an organisation in DC that tries to help families and inmates stay connected. They are doing things like making sure phone calls are affordable between the prison and the home. This organisation facilitated skyping between inmates and their families. But I see how hard the system works against these efforts. The system seems to try to minimise the most powerful thing that could keep an inmate feeling loved and able to love – their family. The system tends to do everything it can to take that away due to some absurd, retributive approach to criminal justice. Ethically, it’s devastating to me. My tax dollars are going to support this retributive and profit-driven system.

Money works against my faith in the inherent worth of every individual. That faith is not based on a naive idea that everyone is “nice.” No, there are going to be people who are dangerous in the world. But our default is to dehumanise and to incarcerate, and we do it not just individually, but with large systemic, racially-biased systems from the top-down. And so I think the biggest—and I see more and more humanists agreeing with this.

I have a lot of respect for Roy Speckhardt of the American Humanist Association (AHA) for focusing on social justice issues. I see the Foundation Beyond Belief focusing on how to make the world better interpersonally regarding justice and so on.

I appreciate that. Thank you. You mention the poor and minorities as the primary victims of what some call the “prison-industrial complex,” where the ability to have a phone call with loved ones or family, or even a Skype call, become difficulties. I mean, the main punishment in prison is isolation. You can be surrounded by, you know, murderers, rapists, but the main punishment is isolation.

It goes to show, as a social species, we know the main punishment you can give to people is keeping them alone away from other people in minimal sensory conditions, minimal sensory input conditions. In the industrialised world, the United States leads in fatherlessness. In minority communities, the thing you did not mention, the main thing is lack of fathers, and prisons, mostly, are men, especially poor minority men.

So there are tied in, not necessarily “systemic” because the term has lost a bunch of meaning based on overuse in and out of context, socio-cultural sets of factors that come into play to reduce the amount of time innocent people, by which I mean children, have with their primary caregivers, at least one of them in most cases. So I agree with you, and just wanted to take that one more step.

There’s a lot of truth in what you say. It’s complicated. You remind me of when Patrick Moynihan wrote his famous report about the deterioration of the black family, which I believe came from a place of compassion based on facts and research, but it got turned into a political weapon that pathologised the black community. Politicians used it to turn the victims of our system into threats to “law and order.”

The problem began to be described as the “black problem,” rooted in the pathology of the black family. That was the way it became framed. This type of framing is happening today. I am wary how race issues are being defined and who is defining the problem, and where the problem lies.

Because it is all part of this pandemic afflicting areas of poverty in our cities. This urban focus is tied to the history of Ethical Culture which took root in the eastern coast in urban centres. It was involved with empowering the urban poor from the very beginning. It’s part of my focus. But our members all focus on ethical issues that most interest them. We deal with thousands of different issues.

Many are concerned with environmental justice. One of the enemies of humanism is global climate change because if there’s anything likely to reduce people to greater desperation and greed it is environmental collapse. Look what happens when water supplies are stressed – poverty rises and wars can break out. The ability of anyone to fulfil their potential as a human being decreases if their natural environment is devastated.

Many members have put a lot of time into LGBTQ issues as well.

However, I am a generalist. I know a bit about many things. I try to support many causes, but we are not first and foremost a social justice organisation. One of things I tell our members is, “We are not an advocacy organisation. We are not experts in advocacy. We are offering people a home to nurture their own commitment through community support and through human inspiration. This inspiration can be as simple as the reading of Carl Sagan or the reading of poetry or sharing of music.” We get involved in many social justice projects, but we are not experts on the issues.

Most ethical humanists—those that take part in Ethical Culture—might not care too much about the history, about Felix Adler and how he was Jewish, wasn’t so keen on it, and invented Ethical Culture. They might be more keen on the more immediate concerns you’re pointing out—greed, climate change, and nuclear catastrophe.

I agree. I am drawn to history. Most members care about how do you live in the world now, meaningfully, in dealing with these issues.

Also in a smaller context, what are more heart-warming stories that you have had in your time in Philadelphia, as a leader there?

The testimonials people give about what the Ethical Society means to them. There are some consistent themes. There is the feeling the Society is their communal home. There are fewer opportunities to be part of organisations that speak to the deepest parts of our humanity. I don’t know if you know Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone?

Yes.

His whole theme of the flattening of culture. the fact that there are fewer deeply meaningful connections. Those that come to society say, “This is what I am looking for.” They discover deeper meaning. I know some people were burned by their religious experience. It is thinking, “I can’t believe there is a group that is trying to deepen their connection to life in a way many religions do while not requiring a litmus test of belief.”

Another area of heart-warming experiences as a leader is bringing together interfaith coalitions. That includes coalitions of reason with sceptic groups and more traditional interfaith groups in the Baltimore and Philadelphia areas. The social justice work I am involved with the most is along the more traditional community-organising model.

In Philadelphia, the Ethical Society is a member of POWER, Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild. In working with people of traditional faiths, I have worked through my own resistance to traditional religion. Often, when we start what is called our “clergy caucus,” we start with a prayer. However, POWER invited humanists into the circle. I felt welcomed by those clergy from traditional faith traditions. In addition, I am so impressed with the civil rights work of POWER. They focus on bread and butter issues affecting marginalised groups.

Being involved with POWER is not about advancing my “denomination,” or increasing our membership, it’s about working in broad coalition. In Baltimore, our interfaith coalition has numerous non-theist organisations involved, like homeowners’ associations and day-care cooperatives too. They tackle tough issues.

They show up time and time again, whether at city hall, the city council meeting, or protesting on the streets. They protest against the proposed youth jail being built or against a large tax giveaway development program, which will create a gentrified neighbourhood in an urban area displacing those currently living in substandard housing.

There are people who put their lives on the line in ways I can’t manage quite to do. I am more sheltered, more comfortable, more scared, less able to take that so-called “leap of faith” into a commitment that is truly inspiring. I do my best

Those would be two areas I find heart-warming – testimonies from our members, and interfaith work – where I feel the joy and the warmth of work that I do.

For those that might want to found a humanist organisation or an Ethical Humanist organisation in particular, to build on previous legacies of Ethical Culture in their locale, how might they go about doing that?

Reach out to the American Ethical Union in New York, or call me at the Philadelphia or Baltimore Ethical Society, I will connect them. One Ethical Society was begun this past year with incredible energy and vibrancy. They have support from inspirational and historical elements, to practical advice on the various elements of congregational growth best practices in terms of how to get off the ground.

They get advice about routines that seem to work, which help groups craft intellectually satisfying and aesthetically pleasing events. I don’t think Ethical Culture is at its best when it is intellectual alone. We have a long history of that. Some deep thinking and talks offered, but more and more it’s necessary to create a sense of belonging and a rhythm of shared living. You can learn about that by studying successful congregations.

In Ethical Culture, we even have a sort of informal liturgical calendar. We celebrate the solstices, the equinoxes, the harvests, and the Spring festival. There’s a focus on the cycle of life. There’s a focus on various transition moments in life. We have coming of age programs. We perform weddings and memorial services. Different societies have different levels of programs and things to offer. My kids went through the Washington Ethical Society coming of age program.

It was one of the most moving experiences in my life, when I saw what it gave not to my children, and to many families. Ethical Culture is described by some people as “a religion of relationships.” Whether you use the term “religion” or not, Ethical Culture is about relationships so the coming of age program in Ethical Culture is not about the kids coming to a point in their life. It is about how parents and children negotiate the transition from childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood in a respectful way to nurture their relationships.

The broader society does not help teens become responsible adults. It tends to label kids, teenagers, as problems or difficult creatures, when they are in fact incredibly joyous human beings. We need to do better in building relationships between teens and adults. Parents have to be supported so that they avoid being both oppressively dictatorial or overly permissive.

Ethical Societies can help build relationships and deepen communities. It does this by speaking to the heart and the head. It uses rhythms, rituals, and programs that can have an aesthetic beauty to them in addition to wonderful speakers and social justice causes.

Do you have any feelings or thoughts in conclusion about what we have talked about today?

There are so many different areas I could go into, but here are two things I’d want to add:

First, there is a pragmatic streak in Ethical Culture. We are what we are by virtue of our history and communities together. There’s a rich interchange there. We don’t hand down rules and say, “This is how we are.” We come together as a community and say, “What do we agree on what we value? What about our history do we draw forward?” I like it.

We are open to change. Sometimes, it is as if herding cats. [Laughing] But that’s what comes with respecting the integrity of individuals and being open to conversation and pragmatic testing and change. But there are some values that we tend to agree upon, at least in Philadelphia and Baltimore where I serve. There is a lot of agreement.

One value we generally agree upon is the inherent value in every individual. That means respecting the individual as unique and irreplaceable. Every person has infinite worth that is not determined from the outside. It is part of who they are as a person. It is not necessarily proven by reason or given by human nature or divinely provided by God. But we agree to try to live as if all people have inherent worth so we are choosing to act towards people as if they are all unique and irreplaceable. That’s one value: inherent worth.

Second, the application of inherent worth universally, believing that everyone is of worth. To me, that leads to social justice work against systems that deny the worth of so many. Systemic injustice must be confronted. Finally, the third value would be true relationships. We respect that relationships are organic. They evolve. They’re respectful. They’re open. They’re compassionate. They’re candid. It’s about being compassionate and open, not on being superficially “nice.” I don’t think being superficially “nice” is respecting the other person. Respect includes being open and sensitive to reason and facts.

A second point I will leave you with is part of my personal journey. It focuses on the Masters thesis in philosophy that I wrote after my first 5 years of teaching. I was intrigued about how people in ethical conversations often seem to be talking past each other. And I keep using this following example.

Imagine somebody going into a burning house to save their child, and they run out of the house with it. Quite often, in western philosophical circles, people might say, “Oh! Look at that example of altruism, he was sacrificing himself for a child. What was a wonderful gesture!” Other people would say, “No, he was clearly doing it out of self-interest. It was his child.” Others would say, “It’s a bit of both.”

But that conversation occurs within a context of moral thinking in which all moral issues involve the balancing of individual interests. I didn’t think that captured so many examples of human behaviour. I didn’t think the father was being altruistic or selfish. It was not a case of whether he sacrificed himself for the baby or used the baby to feel better about himself. I prefer to say, “No, he ran into the fire because he was the child’s father.” This is not about individual interest. That is not about the weighing of values or the worth of individuals. It is about a relationship.

I saw wisdom in alternative approaches to justice that focused on relationships, from aboriginal cultures to Hegelian systems of relationships. Overgeneralising Hegel’s theory, it claimed that the whole is more primary than the parts. Hegel was used by Marx in this way. Marx would say, “We are what we are via virtue of our relationship to the means of production. If I own the means of production, and I am extracting the surplus value of labour from my workers, then I am a capitalist. If I do not own the means of production, and I am a tool of my oppressor and, as a result, I am a proletariat. I am what I am most essentially by my connection to the economic whole.

Fascism, which also drew from Hegel, said, “You are what you are by relation to the whole, the nation-state.” You can see that in Spartan soldiers who died in the battlefield and were said to have died in self-interest. How can you say you died in self-interest? [Laughing] You’re dead! Well if you are defined by your relationship to the state, then you are a soldier. By dying as a soldier you fulfil your role and in a heroic fashion. Nazi Stormtroopers did the same. They were fulfilled as part of the whole. I see these as politically motivated perversions of relationally-based systems of identity.

But there is something important about this regarding identity. I am what I am because of my relationships. I am a father, which is relational. I am not fully described by my autonomous existential existence. While a part of our identity is defined by our autonomy (I am an existentialist after all), part of our identity is defined by relationships. I am living in relationships. What I love about Ethical Culture is that it allows for this duality of human nature. We are creatures who are essentially autonomous from other people in a deep and profound way. That aspect of our identity can be seen in much Enlightenment thinking. At the same time, we are relational creatures. For me, balancing those two poles of my existence is the art of living.

How do I do justice to both my autonomous nature and my relational nature? I don’t do justice by rejecting relationships. I am autonomous, but I also live a life of joy with family and friends, and being a citizen of a country, and a man, a creature, on this planet. To me, that combination of autonomy and relation is fascinating. And Ethical Culture has that assumption of our duality undergirding it. I think this is due in part because Adler came from a very collectivist culture in eastern European Jewish culture and came to America where he was amazed and impressed at our individualism. Somehow navigating both of those aspects was necessary to be a part of individual life and of this country.

I appreciate that very much. It is insightful. Thank you for very much for your time, Hugh.

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2022-04-12

Interview with Andy Ngo – Formerly at the Vanguard, Portland State University

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/13

Andy Ngo is a University of California, Los Angeles alumnus. He is a graduate student at Portland State and a freelance journalist. Shortly before this audio interview, he made a recording of a student speaking on Islam at “Unpacking Misconceptions” at Portland State University.

Based on his reporting, he was fired by the Portland State University student newspaper, the Vanguard. He wrote an op-ed in the National Review about it. The Vanguard wrote a response to it after this audio interview. He can be reached through Twitter. Here is his recounting of the event and aftermath.

*This audio interview edited for clarity and readability.*

Scott Jacobsen: Can you give us an overview of recent events that have landed you in some trouble, and what happened to you as a consequence?

Andy Ngo: On April 26th, I attended a public interfaith panel event at my university. The event was organised by students as well as administrators.

I worked as a section editor for the student newspaper called the Vanguard. I attended the event, not on assignment however. It was purely out of interest out of what was going to be shared.

For most of the event, it was very uncontroversial, as students presented on their religious worldviews. They also tried to clarify on some misconceptions that they think the media perpetuates.

What was interesting to me was during the question and answer part of the event, where somebody in the audience asked the Muslim student about a verse from the Quran, and whether if the Quran permitted the killing of “infidels.”

I shared the video of his answer and some text summarising what he said on my personal social media accounts. In the video, he says that disbelieving — being an infidel — is not allowed when a country is run exclusively under Islamic law.

He said that people who disbelieve have the choice to leave the country or to face punishment for their crime. The punishment was never made explicitly clear in the actual answer seen in the video clip but in the context of the question he was answering, he was referring to a punishment of death.[1]

That night, after I tweeted out the video, I sent it to the editor-in-chief, and also the reporter from the Vanguard that was on assignment covering the event. I sent it to both of them because it was an interesting part of the event and I thought it would be relevant for them to include in the report that they were working on. Neither one expressed concern or outrage at the video tweet.

Four days later, I was called into an emergency meeting with the editor-in-chief, the managing editor, and also a staff advisor for the student media. It was in that meeting that I was informed that I was fired because of what I had shared on my social media. The editor in chief described me as predatory, reckless.

Those were the adjectives she used. She believed that I intentionally targeted another student on campus. She thought that the paper needed to be supportive of him, to protect him, which meant firing me.

They also brought up history they had of me, referring to my affiliations with conservative media in the past. I once did an interview about protests on campus for Conservative Review for their online news report. I’ve also written, at that point, one news contribution to The College Fix.

They talked about the reputation and perception of the paper as another reason why they needed to fire me.

Jacobsen: So they used your history to attack your character rather than target the actual claims and recording that was reported.

Ngo: Yes, that’s right. In the meeting, they did say that because I stood strongly by the accuracy of my tweets. What I really wanted to know was were my tweets really accurate or not and if in their independent investigation, did they find the tweets inaccurate? They were very wishy-washy on this. They said, yes, sort, of, by virtue of “taking things out of context.”

I was trying to ask them what was the context that was omitted that completely changed the meanings of the videos I shared that included this person speaking in his own words? I wasn’t given a clear answer on that. They said I should have included that the panellists “weren’t experts.”

The day after I was fired, they published their report of the event. There was a long editor’s note detailing that I was no longer with the organisation. It had my picture and name in it. The context that they added in did not reflect an incongruence with anything I originally tweeted. I was very puzzled when I read the report because much of the report goes on to summarise what was on the video. The meaning didn’t change.

Jacobsen: Do think this was a politically motivated firing?

Ngo: That’s an angle or a dimension to the firing that wasn’t explicitly clear in the original meeting. In my opinion, the paper had been facing a lot of pressure from student activists for a while based on a lot of reporting that I have done as well as what they think my personal political beliefs are.

I do not know if there were external pressures on the paper or the editor-in-chief. I don’t have evidence of how that ultimately could factored into their decision-making in firing me. It is something I think about, but it is just conjecture on my part if I was to speak more on it.

Jacobsen: Has there been a history of political bias with the Vanguard at all?

Ngo: I think for the most part the newspaper, especially the news section, tries to be politically neutral, or at least make an effort for balance in their writing.

But because it is a student publication, the publication also reflects the ethos of the office as made up by its editorial team of students that changes quite frequently. I was one of the longest serving editors by being there for over a year.

Typically, they have a fast turnover rate term-by-term. And with some of the changes that happened, recently things changed a lot in the office. I don’t know if that played a role in this decision.

But based on my own experience of being in the office, the political views just reflect the majority view on campus. This meant it was often hostile to nuance on conservative perspectives, I would say.

Jacobsen: Do you know the official statistics of the ratio between conservative and liberal views, as a simplified view?

Ngo: I don’t know the ratio for that at Portland State.

Jacobsen: Do you think that the student body as well as the faculty — and you don’t have to answer this question — lean more heavily to the political Left rather than the political Centre or the political Right?

Ngo: In my time at Portland State, my analysis would be that the political culture on campus is very similar to other large universities all across the country. And that means it leans heavily Left or Far-Left in its student body as well as faculty.

However, as we’ve seen after the last presidential campaign, and then the results of the elections, it has caused people to become even more reactionary — politically reactionary — and very intolerant of free speech, nuance and ideological diversity.

My firing doesn’t affect a lot of things outside of my small Portland State community. However, I think the bigger topics that connects to my firing does have implications for what is happening all over the country. Mainly, the subjects of free speech, journalistic practices, as well as the discourse on religious fundamentalism.

[1] The Portland State University Muslim speaker’s response at “Unpacking Misconceptions” on April 26th, 2017, transcribed from Ngo’s recording:

And some, this, that you’re referring to, killing non-Muslims, that [to be a non-believer] is only considered a crime when the country’s law, the country is based on Koranic law — that means there is no other law than the Koran. In that case, you’re given the liberty to leave the country, you can go in a different country, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. So you can go in a different country, but in a Muslim country, in a country based on the Koranic laws, disbelieving, or being an infidel, is not allowed so you will be given the choice [to leave].

Ngo, A. (2017, May 12). Fired for Reporting the Truth. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447563/free-speech-islam-portland-state-vanguard-editor-fired-tweets.

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Politics News in Brief – May 15th, 2017

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/15

UK youth have more power than they think in the election on June 8th

The youth in the UK have more power than they might expect in the turnout and the results of the upcoming general election. As such an election rolls around, so do editorials about the low turnout of the young voters. But there are indications this may be changing.

While it is common knowledge that older people might turn out in higher numbers, the 2016 EU referendum showed 64% of people aged 18 to 24 turning out to vote, which was an even higher number than the 1992 general election.

Turnout by young voters could well swing elections in several key areas. Research by the Higher Education Policy Institute and the Intergenerational Foundation suggested that between 10 and 83 MPs were vulnerable to surges in turnout among younger constituents.

More recent numbers indicate that young people may well be gearing up for June 8th. Hansard’s 2016 Audit of Political Engagement states that 39% of young people expressed a certainty of voting, the highest level in the 12 years.

Since the elections were announced, government data indicates that voters in the two youngest age groups have registered to vote at dramatically higher rates than their older counterparts.

Outside of the political party squabbles and little bitter battles over the youth and old age votes, the young people are beginning to determine the face of the UK with their votes more than ever.

Tony Blair is possibly back, possibly from Brexit vote

There have been numerous unintended consequences from the Brexit vote. One is a return of the previous prime minister Tony Blair. The conservatives are slated to win the next election, and Tony Blair is looking to be back in the political arena, with the stated intention of softening the blow from Brexit. In his own words “This Brexit thing has given me a direct motivation to get more involved in the politics.”

Blair does not suffer any illusions about a welcome comeback, and acknowledges he is not widely popular in his party at this point in time, even lesser than he was during his tenure, but defended his record on doing well for the British people.

Blair also clarified that he would not be immediately seeking a leadership role or status as an elected representative in Parliament. He indicated that he hopes to start an anti-brexit movement, the way Farage did without being an MP, but expressed caution, saying “I am not sure I can turn something into a political movement but I think there is a body of ideas out there people would support.”

Trump fires Comey, overseeing the investigation into Trump’s relations to Russia

In a tremendous political upset, President Donald Trump fired James Comey, the head of Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) who overseeing the investigation into the purported links between the President, his erstwhile campaign, business interests and Russia.

In the midst of the investigation, Trump has now fired him, citing dissatisfaction with his performance. The letter of termination states that while Trump “appreciated” Comey’s assurances that the President was not under investigation, he ‘accepted’ the recommendation of the DOJ that he was not able to “effectively lead the bureau”.

The White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, said the F.B.I. had been “terminated and removed from office.” Trump stated the recommendations were from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, although Mr. Rosenstein is later said to have disputed the extent of his involvement in the decision making.

The move has shocked Washington and many Democratic senators as well as a few Republicans have expressed concern about the dire constitutional situation resulting from Comey’s firing. Subsequent indications from Trump that he had ‘taped’ Comey and attempts to subtly intimidate him through such a statement seems to have made the situation worse.

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2022-04-12

Interview with Armin Navabi – Founder of Atheist Republic

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/13

Armin Navabi is the Founder of the Atheist Republic. One of the most popular pages on Facebook for atheists that has faced repeated censorship and shutdown from Facebook authorities. He was born in Tehran and raised as a Muslim. Now, he is an ex-Muslim and an atheist living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Here is his story.

*Interview edited for clarity and readability.*

Scott Jacobsen: So, to begin, let’s talk about your background to set the framework. You were a practising Muslim. Now, you’re an ex-Muslim. What is the story there?

Armin Navabi: I was born in Tehran into a very Liberal family that was Muslim by name, but not so much in terms of devout practice. But I took it seriously when I started going to school. What happened is that from a very early age, I was very worried about ending up in hell.

Hell is really terrifying. Right? Most people didn’t take it seriously. I took it very seriously.

Most people around me also didn’t really practice it. But I really, really wanted to make sure that I never ended up in hell. It was eternal torture.

Most people were worried about their careers, their grades, their next party, and so on. Nobody seemed to worry about the real possibility of burning forever. Even though, they all thought this was a real thing. So it seemed to me like it should be the highest priority to avoid. Right?

Our teachers in school taught us that children are innocent. This is different from what Christians are taught, for instance. In Islam, you are not born with sin as a baby. You are innocent until you reach the age of reason. For girls, that’s 9. For boys, that’s 15.

That means you’re completely pure and sinless before age 15 as a boy, right? So I thought to myself, “What about suicide? Suicide is a sin as well, but there is no sin before age 15 for boys?”

So based on what I was taught, I concluded that if you commit suicide before age 15, you have not committed a sin as a boy. So you can make sure you go to heaven. To me, it seemed like a loop-hole! Right? In the system.

[Laughing] I felt like I found a loophole. I was surprised that more people weren’t taking advantage of the loophole. I asked the religious teachers to make sure I am not missing anything. If I kill myself before 15, am I going to heaven?

The only reason they gave me not to do that was to say, if you earn heaven then you can go to a higher-level heaven. But I thought, who cares if upper or lower heaven/elite heaven? You can escape hell. At age 12, I jumped out of my high school window.

Jacobsen: Oh my goodness.

Navabi: Yeah. I was not successful. For 7 months, I was in a wheelchair. I broke my left hand and fractured my back. The only reason that I never tried it again was because I saw what it did to my parents. I saw my dad cry for the first time in my life.

I saw my mom in the hospital. I was like, “Okay, I am not going to do that again.” So when I became 15, I decided, “Okay, I will take this seriously. No more sinning. I will pray.” Now, I started fasting at Ramadan. I didn’t look at girls. This was the most difficult part.

Even though I was practising everything, I saw my parents as un-Islamic. They weren’t praying. I kept on trying to get them to take things seriously. I was annoyed with them. In Iran, I – like many others – watched a lot of American movies. All these people on TV– I thought – they would all go to hell. It seemed so unfair to me.

Jacobsen: Would you say the ‘unfairness’ of the ‘hell’ concept led you down this path?

Navabi: I wanted to study other religions to see what’s wrong with them. Maybe, they’re like Islam-ish – and actually had the same rules? Why were they doing all these sinful things? Maybe, I thought, they are not going to hell.

I started studying the history of religions.

When I started studying religions, it became very obvious they were all changing and evolving through history. Increasingly, it started to look like they were made up. It seemed like they were political tools and that it was all strategic.

One religion looked like another religion plus a mix of local culture. So I thought, “What if it is all made up?” Everything made sense as to why they would make these things up.

I started panicking and believed I would go to hell. So I prayed to God. I never questioned it before. I just accepted it. “Why? Why do I just accept it?” I asked myself. I prayed and prayed, and cried and cried. I kept going like this.

“God, I don’t want to be an atheist. I don’t want to go to hell. Anything. Anything!” But eventually, I became an atheist. When I did, I didn’t know any other atheists and thought to myself. That maybe I was just crazy, and that they were seeing something that I am not seeing.

By then, I was in university. So I told two of my friends, the first people I talked to about why I thought this is all made up. They became sceptics themselves after I talked to them about it. I felt that perhaps I was not crazy and so I made an online group.

Before then, I did not know many atheists. So I made a group before Facebook for Persian atheists. A bunch of people joined! I couldn’t believe! There were so many of us! That made me make it more international with Atheist Republic.

Now, it is the largest atheist page in the world with 1,600,000+ followers worldwide. I was very surprised. I thought we were alone.

It has been almost 12 years now, but even now, in the Age of Social Media, we have many atheists coming to our online groups and saying something like, “Hey! I am an atheist from Manila. Any atheists in Manila?”

They are always surprised by how many atheists are in their area. Now, they are supporting each other. It is a good community.

Jacobsen: What are things people can do to help atheists be open active citizens who could also happen to be ex-Muslims?

Navabi: By giving them a voice. Right now, especially with the anti-Muslim bigotry, people think that we shouldn’t bring attention to anything, anybody, who is against Islam. They shy away from that because they don’t want to be labelled a “bigot.”

But by doing that, they talk about shutting down a ex-Muslim voices. Just like Muslims, ex-Muslims also could use support. And they are often targeted from both anti-Muslim bigots and Muslims themselves. They are shutting down a minority group within a minority.

Jacobsen: I heard that from Maryam Namazie before. It is very descriptive as a phrase. Would you say then, that it is a form of double-persecution?

Navabi: We are all people. Just because we are ex-Muslim, it doesn’t mean supporting us is anti-Muslim. If Muslims are being prosecuted by non-Muslims, they need support. If non-Muslims are being prosecuted by Muslims, they need support too. Right?

Ex-Muslims who are here believe that this is the land of liberty and that they will find liberals here to support them. The thing is that here they are being shunned and silenced. We want to show that these people need support without being seen as anti-Muslims.

The easy way to do that is by just letting them speak, sharing their stories. Even if they are criticising Islam, that is not bigotry.

Jacobsen: How do you think liberals can extend support to the atheist community, especially the ex-muslims community?

Navabi: Invites them to your podcast, blog, YouTube channel, event, let them come on and share their stories, let others see them for the human choices they made. When you say, “Islam is oppressing people.” They might think it is a lie.

But when people tell their story, they can connect the dots. Some ex-Muslims have to come here because they were activists in an Islamic country.

They are putting their lives at risk. It is important to recognize that. They are rejected by the Left because it believes they should condemn anyone who speaks against Islam. But the funny thing is that real racists and bigots target all the people who come from Islamic countries no matter what they believe, and may not have a problem with Islam as an ideology.

They don’t like you because of where you come from. So you get rejected from the extreme Left and the extreme Right. It is very important to note this – when we talk about Islam, we are not talking about people. We are talking about the ideology.

When we go to somebody and don’t agree with them on economics or a scientific topic, they don’t think about it as a personal attack, but when it comes to religion, and especially Islam, then for some reason it becomes bigotry.

It is taken as a personal attack. Firstly that means they are not recognizing people who are actual bigots, whose views then become louder. Secondly, if you can’t challenge people’s ideology, the only voice against it will come from people who are actual bigots.

You are removing the discussion out of the equation. You are removing people who don’t hate Muslims but just want to have civil debates with them. I hope this changes and I hope we can start to have better discussions about the religion itself.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time, Armin.

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Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/13

Mr. Aron Ra was born in Kingman, Arizona. He was baptised as a Mormon. He is the ex-President of Atheist Alliance of America. He is a public speaker, secular activist, and an advocate for reason in education. He hosts the Ra-Men podcast with Dan Arel and Mark Nebo of BeSecular. Now, he is running for Texas State Senate. Here is his story.

*This interview edited for clarity and readability.*

Scott Jacobsen: To begin, you were born in Kingman, Arizona. You were baptized as a Mormon. What was the family background surrounding your growing up? What was a moment of realisation, or a series of them, in becoming a non-believer, in becoming an atheist?

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

Jacobsen: Okay [Laughing].

Ra: I would say the better part of my family identifies as Mormon or they identify as Christian – not that that’s a different thing because all of them identify as Christian because they all think that Mormon is Christian, just like every Mormon seemingly does.

It is just other denominations that don’t think Mormons are Christians, just like they don’t think Catholics are Christian. This was an advantage for me growing up. I got to see the interdenominational bigotry within Christianity.

When we lived in places like New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado that were Mormon dominant, they were places that the Mormons controlled everything. And if you were not a Mormon, you were not employed, at least not if you were white.

There were places that were like that. Utah is rife with them. When we moved to other places, and I moved a lot as a kid, I moved an awful lot – up to 8 times a year.

Jacobsen: Oh wow.

Ra: Both of my parents – I would be with one parent, then another. They would always be living at a different place, and then the last time I saw them and so forth.

When we moved to places like Los Angeles area, for example, where the Mormons didn’t own and control everything, then anytime somebody asked, “What is my religion?” I know there is going to be a problem, well two problems.

They care what my religion is. And that’s always indicative of an issue right there. We are about to have an argument and the fault of the argument is going to be your assumptions. I would say, “My family is Mormon.” There’s obviously a “but…” coming, but I didn’t usually get to that.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Ra: Right away, I would start hearing all of these ridiculous things Mormons believe. Now, I do not argue. Mormons do believe ridiculous things.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Ra: Every religion does, to be completely honest. But the Mormons have their own collection of ridiculous things that are exclusively Mormon that are not the same ridiculous things that other Christian denominations believe, but the accusations these people were making were ridiculous things that my family, so far as I could tell, did not believe – none of them.

So my mum was always the most devout of all of the Mormons in my family that I could talk to.

I would invite these people in, “Hey, you want to come in and tell my mother that she believes all of the things that you tell me Mormons believe?”

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

As a little child, I remember having conflicts with other people over religion at 5-years-old, at 8-years-old, and without realising it. Certainly, not realising my whole life would be this whole argument.

I would ask simple questions to my babysitter when I was a little boy, like, “How does Jesus turn water into wine? I know water is H2O. I know that wine is alcohol and fruit juice, and I don’t know what the chemical components of that are.”

But as it turned out, when I grew up I looked it up. It is only the difference of a carbon atom. The molecules are much more complex. But they involve oxygen, hydrogen, and some additional carbons. That’s it.

But all I knew at the time, water is H2O, and alcohol and fruit juice are something else. How does Jesus turn water from H2O into H2O and whatever else? I thought someone would give me some kind of intelligible answer.

Like how Jesus does that, whether he uses telekinesis or whatever he does.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Ra: But they don’t come up with explanations like that, they didn’t want explanations. They didn’t even want to believe people had explanations. When I was growing up, I found believers not only hated accurate scientific answers, but they hated any answer that sounded scientific.

It was a funny thing. I was told all of the time that “sceptics were cynics” because we miss out on the big picture that only the believers can see.

They should’ve paraphrased this: People that make up stuff and call it truth have the power to imagine all kinds of nonsense. But that’s what it is all about. It really is make believe, and it took me the longest time to figure that out.

I thought, honestly, naively, even into middle age. I was in my 30s before I realised there were some people who do not believe what they do for a reason.

If you ask anybody, “Why do you believe X?” They are going to give you a reason why they think X is true. I thought this was true for everyone. I thought that you couldn’t believe something for no reason because that’s stupid.

You wouldn’t believe something against all reason. I have had people tell me exactly that. I get into more and more arguments moving into my 30s. I would identify as an activist since then, since around Y2K. I got into these arguments heavily on the internet, on Usenet.

I found myself in a position where I had unrestricted browsing and unlimited overtime. This was my first internet experience up to 12 hours a day in a job that doesn’t require really anything of me. So I am on Usenet while monitoring other things and not being interrupted.

And I get into these discussions, in-depth discussions with professional scientists and professional theologians on both sides.

They are both giving me references to look into. So I did for a number of years. It was almost obsessive the amount of time that I dedicated to this subject, this argument. When I came across people and asked them, “Why do you believe this?”

I had never really bothered to ask them this. The answers people give are, “I believe this because I want to. I believe this because it makes me happy.” You piece it together eventually.

People would be criticising me for the reasons that whatever they believe cannot be true. They’d say, “Why can’t I believe what I want to believe?” Why would you say that about something that I just proved is not true?

Why would you want to believe something after finding out it is not even possibly or even probably true, in either case? It is not possibly true. It is not probably true. It is not indicated by anything. It is disputed by everything.

There is no possibility here. This did not happen. There are no two ways about it. What the hell are you going on about? “But I want to believe that.” Why [Laughing]?!

Jacobsen: [Laughing] that’s hysterical.

Ra: [Laughing] I want to believe I’m a multimillionaire. I do. I want to believe that I have time travel capabilities. Great! But that doesn’t make anything real. And it is insane to imagine that. It took me forever to realise that. I actually said this myself ahead of Peter Boghossian.

He famously did a video on ‘faith is pretending to know what you don’t know.’ As if people know they don’t know it, and they’re pretending on purpose. But yes, I said something similar on video prior to that.

I said, “But faith is often a matter of pretending to know what you know you really don’t know, and that no one even can know, and which you merely believe – often for no good reason at all.” That was the way I phrased it.

I didn’t quite make as much money out of mine as he did the way he phrased his. This is actually true. That’s what faith is. Faith is literally make-believe. If people tell you that they want to believe something, even after they know that it’s not true, and people have told me that they want to continue believing, and that they will continue believing, even after they know that it is not true, that it’s not possibly true.

There’s no way in hell that this happened. If you believe in God, if you believe in miracles, then you believe in magic. You believe in magic. People argue against that all of the time, but that’s actually true.

If you look up a collection of dictionaries, online it is easy to do. Open up a bunch of them, and see where they all agree, find the points in the context where all of the dictionaries agree.

You will discover that if you compare the definitions between a miracle and magic, you will see that they are both the ‘evocation of supernatural forces or entities to control or forecast natural events in ways which are inexplicable by science because they defy the laws of physics, meaning they are physically impossible.’

That’s what both miracle and magic mean. So miracle is the same things as magic in the same way a boat is a yacht is if it is big enough.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Ra: A murder becomes an assassination if it is a VIP. A miracle is magic in that way. So people were making things up. “Let’s think hypothetically”, I said to someone, which is another thing the believers can’t really do, because that is kind of what they’re already doing.

It destroys the self-made illusion to step in and jack that up with another illusion, even for a moment. Let’s imagine that there’s some form of technology sometime in the future that can detect the essence of God and can measure it.

We can confirm God exists, and importantly whose God it is. All of these people are making claims about this personal God and calling it Allah, or Krishna, but failing to call it Jesus. Jesus isn’t the only personal saviour out there.

There’s a bunch. All of these people making absolute statements about what they know for absolute certain about this absolute God. They are all mutually exclusive. They can’t be all right. They can all be wrong, but at most only one of them can be right.

So we have the device that can prove God exists and can show the qualities or the properties of God, and can verify who is right about God. Everybody was against that idea. “No, there can never be such a device because God must always be personal. God is always in your heart” … as opposed to reality?

God is something a lot of believers – and I realise a lot of people have not given this any thought, and a lot of people believe things for rational-logical reasons–that they have been misinformed all of their lives or been duped by the propaganda, or believe everybody believes it and so there must be some truth to it.

When you look in-depth and start talking to non-believers, when you start talking to people who know what they’re talking about, people have named this “Aron Ra’s Fork.”

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

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

You will either have to concede that the claims of creationism – absolutely all of them – are unsubstantiated and fallacious or you’re going to have to start lying to preserve and defend that faith.

And that’s the choice they all have to make at some point. I have seen them come to that point and go the wrong way. “These may be what the facts are, but I prefer to believe this.” There is one that is the easiest to demonstrate. I can tell all of these anecdotes.

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

He goes to an atheist conference and he lets the atheist speak. The whole game is, and I have seen this done many times, I have seen where churches will host an atheist to talk to their congregation.

They’ll have the whole thing where everyone seems to be on equal sides, but the obligatory statement at the end for the guy who has had his fingers figuratively in his ears the entire evening comes up and says, “And he didn’t change my mind at all. I’m still just as convinced. My faith is even stronger.”

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Ra: This is pretend! That was the game in the first place! That it doesn’t matter what anybody says. You’re going to continue to believe. This is what I bring up in my book. If you look up any of the leading creationist organisations – creation.com, Creation Moments, Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation research.

Almost all of them post most prominently on their website. Sometimes, it takes a little work to find it. Generally, they will have a “Statement of Faith.” They might phrase it differently, but they will say there is no evidence that they will ever accept, acknowledge, or consider (!) that shows that they are wrong.

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

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

He’s going to keep on believing. There are so many people who tell me, “if I had a time machine and could prove that Jesus never rose from the dead”, with the admission that “I hope my faith and I are strong enough that I can keep on believing, even when my eyes tell me otherwise.” That’s make-believe! That’s lying to yourself. That’s the entirety of what religion is.

So I started making a challenge to people: “Can you show me anything in your religious belief that you can show to be more accurate than any other religious belief?” I would stress for people not just to show me where other religions are wrong, but to show me where theirs is right!

So I have to define my terms very rigidly all the time. If I look at the definition of truth, it took me a long time to figure out what people meant by “truth” when they were talking about it.

They are not being philosophically deep as I thought they were.

Truth is really whatever can be shown to correspond to reality. Truth is what the facts are essentially. Facts are after all points of data that you can verify to be accurate. A lot of people hate these definitions because it completely undermines their theology.

They can’t make the assertions that they want to by saying anything is the absolute truth, because under the definition of either word no you don’t! That’s the problem. People want to say what they know only what they believe. They pretend. There’s not a part of it that is honest.

My biggest sticking point is that the only value that any information can have is however accurate you can show it to be, and if you can’t show that it is accurate at all then that information has no value at all.

So it is just an empty assertion. You can tell me whatever you believe all day and night, and I won’t care, until you can show me what you believe is actually true.

That it has some truth in it – when you show me something actually true in your belief. I can show you the truth of evolution. I can show you the facts of evolution. I can show you the positively indicative and physical evidence that is exclusively concordant with one conclusion over any other.

I can do that all day, but religion can’t. No religion can because they’re all just made up. They don’t have any truth at all in them, none of them. The best that you can get out of people is that they can give anecdotal nonsense or will cite logical fallacies or they will say, “Somebody wrote once that there were Christians back in the 1^st century and that means Jesus existed.”

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Ra: Well, that doesn’t give you any more evidence than it does for Krishna or Mohammed.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Ra: We also know by the way that there was a Joseph Smith. Mormons can point to exactly who that guy was, and when he died and why. There is no question on whether the prophets existed. We are talking about whether the religions they invented were true.

Can you show me the truth of that? Of course, they can’t. None of them can. They don’t want to. They don’t need to. I have seen people make that admission too.

Eric Hovind, son of the famous fraudster Kent Hovind, said that he will believe whatever the Bible says. Basically, if God said it, I believe it. That’s it. You just closed your mind to reality. He said that we don’t need science to back us up.

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

If you want to posit some preposterous thing, then you want to do it for no reason at all. And I say, “I don’t believe you.” They challenge me to prove that they’re lying. No!

It is not my job to prove that you’re lying. It is your job to prove that there is a THERE there. That there is justification for the horse-shit that just fell out of your face. But there never is! It is a completely emotional lack of justification for anything. I say this all of the time.

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

Think about every example, every time someone comes up with religion as the reason why they want to impose it. It is always stupid. It is always imposing bigotry or limitations against somebody else’s freedom because you want to pretend in your special brand of pixie dust that is different from the gods and monsters other people want to make up.

That’s what it is all about. There is simply no true religion because literally none of it is true.

Does that answer the question?

Jacobsen: [Laughing] Yes!

Ra: [Laughing].

Jacobsen: In association with the independent intellectual work that you’ve done on both the religious and the scientific sides from a very young age, you also have an activist side, which you did touch on briefly with regards to creationism and evolution and the teaching of proper science via evolution.

You are the former president of the Atheist Alliance America. As well, you were the Texas state-director of American Atheists. So without defining what those obviously are – collectives of atheists, what platform does that give for the unified voice for atheists in the country?

And what have been some prominent initiatives and campaigns? For instance, the creationist-evolution—I don’t want to call it debate.

Ra: [Laughing] what do you call it?

Jacobsen: Maybe, propaganda vs. science wars – creationism vs. science wars – respectively. What is the importance of a unified voice for non-believers in the country, at least under the banner of atheism?

Ra: I am running for Texas state senate. That has proved to be a lot more demanding, and will be. So when the job of president of Atheist Alliance America became more demanding my campaign would be a lot more demanding because they’d be at the same time.

At that point, I realised it would be a lot worse. So I realised that I’ll have to do one over another.

Atheist Alliance of America and American Atheists have pretty much the same goal. They were trying to achieve them in different ways.

Obviously, Atheist Alliance of America wanted to develop an alliance of atheists. American Atheists was all about putting money together for court challenges on various grounds. There are a lot of atheist organisations that do that sort of thing.

There are a number of atheist organisations focused on charity and helping people get out of Muslim countries. They focus on helping those people who come from countries which put atheists in danger, just because such people have, say, blogged something like “I don’t believe this anymore,” and now their lives are threatened.

Pakistan demanded that Twitter and Facebook give the name of anyone that speaks out against God so that people can go out and kill those people.

I don’t know if I am allowed to use harsh language on Conatus News. Blasphemy is not a crime. It’s a right. It needs to be exercised. We have the right not to believe lies. That’s important. Freedom of religion means freedom from religion as well.

You can’t have freedom to practice your religion if you’re not free from the dominant religion. It is basic sense.

If there’s one religion that owns and controls everything, and you have to bow in obeisance to that, then how do you practice your own religion which you believe to be true if you don’t believe that other one is true yet you still have to pay homage and acknowledge it, and pray to that God five times a day, for example, or give homage every morning with your hand over your heart with all of the other kids in the classroom where you’re swearing to defend this country “One nation under God”?

No matter what it does, you are going to support this country. No matter how evil it degenerates. No, we shouldn’t be doing that. The pledges come from a believers’ standpoint. The country needs to earn the support of its citizenry.

You can’t extort it. You can’t get people indoctrinated by always saying every morning before class where they’ll never question what you’ll do.

That’s what religion is all about. It is about controlling the masses. That’s why the powerful consider it useful and the lesser people consider it real.

Jacobsen: As side statement, please use any language you feel that you need to express your thoughts.

Ra: [Laughing] I am sorry to do that to you!

Jacobsen: [Laughing] it’s fine. Okay, so, that provides background. That provides your thoughts and the development of your thoughts. This includes your work in Atheist Alliance of America as well as American Atheists.

Now, you’re transitioning from the intellectual work and the activist work, social activist work, to political work. What was the inspiration for getting more involved in politics, and why now?

Ra: The biggest problem I’ve had with people as activists, whether they’re organisations or individuals, is the great deal of apathy. People who don’t follow things the way believers follow things. The infidels, or the atheists, have been categorised as a herd of cats.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Ra: Everyone is an independent freethinker. They won’t be one-issue voters. You can’t find anything in the atheist collective upon which everyone would be a one-issue voter. I found atheists vote against their own interests in favour of things they care about more.

On the Republican side, they are very much one-issue voters at times. They will vote the exact way their leaders tell them too because of the authority.

Consequently, what happens any time there is low voter turnout? The Republicans win. The Republicans are predominantly the Right-wing religious types. They congregate on that side. What is called “the Left” is far away from what people say the Left is.

The Left is not the extremist communists. There are extremists; there are communists, but the vast majority, of what is called “the Left,” are reasonable people. But we don’t vote often. Many people are apathetic about the system.

They are critical of capitalism and socialism. It is a sad. In this last election, people didn’t vote for lack of interest. In the previous elections, there was simply disinterest. They think, “This is a broken system. Why would you contribute to a broken system?”

I find that bewildering that people think it. Now, we’ve seen the product of it. The worst of all imaginable options will happen if you don’t do something about it – if you don’t choose the lesser evil.

If you want to choose the greater good, then you need to work from the grassroots. When I became an activist 20 years ago, it was primarily because people that I was talking to were bragging to me that they had positioned all these senators and judges at various levels because their church pastor told them to do it.

This is the way the church votes in order to replace the entire political sphere with Right-wing believers, which is what they’ve done. That was 20 years ago. So this is a plan that has been enacted for a long time.

Now, we have every member of the presidential cabinet who is a Right-wing science denier. One says the earth is 5,500-years-old. They deny climate change. They’re all anti-science. They are all advocating Noah’s Flood among other things.

Of course, they are denouncing evolution as well. So we have all three areas of the federal government governed by Right-wing religious dominionists for the most part. I think there is also 38 out of 50 states governed by religious Right-wing conservatives.

Every level of Texas government is run by Right-wing religious conservatives. So I am taking the impossible odds. I am running in an election, in a district, where I know it is heavily Republican. You can’t win.

I could win every democratic vote and still not win. Given my obvious lack of charisma, I am going to hope to sway votes from republicans who may see the imbalance of what’s going on and how little they care about the platform issues.

For example, the bathroom bill: we want to prevent trans-people from being able to pee? Really?

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Ra: So they’ll all be on their moral high ground saying, “Yes, we don’t like men in dresses.” Or however they want to paint that. While that is going on, they don’t even recognise that they’ve

had their Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, and Health Benefits stripped from them.

Veterans’ Benefits, all of that, because they were fighting the good fight against what they see as perverts, which is that which they don’t understand or deviant and outside of their immediate family.

It is a frustrating thing, but I am thinking most people really probably would value their health care and their job, and how well they can sustain themselves and their family more than they do about where Trans people pee. I am just making a guess.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Ra: I am thinking that if we can improve the quality of life and the way people get around and do things the way that it used to be. You know? Maybe, that would have a greater impact than being terrified of foreigners.

So we don’t have to become Russia by building a wall and keeping the foreigners out, and where we become disgustingly monochromatic and even more ethnocentric than we already were.

When I was a little boy, it was people who were proud that this was a “Melting Pot.”

Remember when Donald Trump said the “American Dream” was dead?

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Ra: In a sense, the American Dream was foreigners could come to this country and, through hard work, they could be successful, make a new start, and realise and fulfil their dream despite their caste or their religion in their homelands.

So Trump erected a system that denies them all of that. A system that sets castes, restricts religion, prohibits foreigners, and breaks all of the groundwork for small business, and for them to be able to do anything.

The American Dream is being destroyed by the current administration and also to a degree by the previous administration. I am no fool. I understand what has gone wrong on both sides. A lot of people don’t seem to realise it.

They want to see it in a false dichotomy. They want to see everybody as either far-Right, or far-Left. They don’t understand what any of the labels are. You have to express exactly what it is you believe in.

They won’t understand. They’ll think it means something else. I am supportive of people. I am supportive of the American Dream Trump is trying to destroy. I want them to understand. Regardless of your religion, you don’t get special privileges because you claim to believe something different from everybody else.

You don’t get special privileges because you get to claim that you believe the same things as the majority. It doesn’t matter what you want to make believe. You don’t special privileges for that. You aren’t restricted from it. No one should restrict your belief.

If someone says, “You are not allowed to believe that.” That’s ridiculous. It goes on in other countries, but it shouldn’t go on here. But that’s exactly what they’re trying to enact, where everybody has to pay homage to a Christian God. This is the last stronghold of that Christian God.

Everything that we set up for legislation that will promote Christianity will only pave the way for Islam later on because it is the fastest growing religion while Christianity is in a state of decline. Demographics change; you can’t fight religion with religion.

What will happen is Islam will eventually dominate Christianity; there won’t be any Christians left. Fortunately, secularists, atheists, and nonbelievers are on the rise faster than even the fastest growing religion. You can’t fight religion with religion, but you can fight it with reason. That’s what the atheist groups are really all about.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Mr. Ra.

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Science News in Brief – May 12th, 2017

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/12

Astronomy is one of the few winners in Australia science budget

The new science budget for Australia is reportedly quite ‘bland’ and hardly remarkable. Les Field, the science policy secretary for the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra, said, “There are no big spending initiatives but no major cuts.”

The CEO of Science and Technology Australia in Canberra, Kylie Walker, agreed and said that this budget reflects a ‘business as usual for science and technology) approach.

Since the release of the budget on May 9, it has been seen as rather weak in its support of publicly funded science research, especially in terms of the allotment to the Commonwealth scientific and industry research organization which recently suffered major cuts.

The budget does not also allow for private investment to take up the slack, slashing a tax incentive that was designed to stimulate innovation in the public sector. However, that seems to be counterbalanced by an investment in innovation in manufacturing.

Higher education will also not see a boost. While one needs forward estimates to determine how much will be lost or gained, it is clear that the budget favours one branch – Astronomy. Astronomy has received $19 million to take part in major initiatives around the world and has a guarantee for a few more years.

Scientists name dinosaur after “Ghostbusters” villain

Royal Ontario Museum scientists have discovered the fossil of a 75-million-year-old species of armoured dinosaur which was unusually well preserved. It has been termed the ankylosaur in taxonomical, formal biological, classification and will be covered in the prestigious Royal Society Open Science Journal.

However, it has also been named the Zuuul crurivastator, also known as the destroyer of shins. The destroyer of shins title comes from the movie Ghostbusters – the name is sure to delight many a movie fan.

A palaeontologist, Victoria Arbour, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the ROM and the University of Toronto, said, “Me and my co-author David Evans were batting around for ideas for what to name it, and I just half-jokingly said, ‘It looks like Zuul from Ghostbusters’…Once we put that out there we couldn’t not name it that.”

Big Bang celebration from the Vatican

The Vatican has put on a celebration of standard Big Bang cosmology through the Vatican Observatory. The Vatican invited some of the best cosmologists and scientists to discuss gravitational waves, space-time singularities, and black holes.

It is an event honouring the legacy of one of the great Jesuit scientists ever to have lived named George Lemaitre. The Vatican Observatory was founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to correct the false notion that the Catholic Church is in some way hostile to science.

This has been a consistent motif of derogatory commentary on the receptivity and acceptance of science by the Catholic Church since the heresy trial of Galileo 400 years or so ago.

The current position of the Vatican however, is that science and its explanations can quite harmoniously co-exist with religion. The head of the observatory, Brother Guy Consolmagno emphasised that belief in God and the Big Bang are reconcilable and not necessarily in conflict.

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Philosophy News in Brief – May 12th, 2017

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/12

The official stances of the Eastern Orthodox Church on LGBTQ

The world’s second largest Christian sect has is the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is composed of autocephalous or independent churches, or multiple patriarchates such as those found in Constantinople, Russia, and Greece.

Thus, all patriarchs all hold equal authority in the Church and there is no centralized headquarters or ultimate authority, which can sometimes make it difficult to ascertain the Church’s exact position on something.

The Church however does appear to have some consensus an official policy on LGBTQ. Thus, a few dioceses have unequivocally listed homosexuality alongside fornication, adultery, abortion and abusive sexual behavior and describe them as “immoral and inappropriate forms of behavior in and of themselves, and also because they attack the institution of marriage and the family.”

Therefore, it believes “homosexual behaviour is a sin”. On the topic of trans people, the dioceses mostly believe gender reassignment is condemned as an affront to God’s design for each individual.

The Eastern Orthodox Church is clear that it does not perform or recognize same-sex marriages. A statement by the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops, has categorically refused to bless same-sex unions. The church also does not ordain LGBTQ people. However, alternative organizations such as the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America do ordain both women and LGBTQ people.

Gaps remain. The Church has no statement on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). In general, it is fairly unwelcoming, but some report that individual congregations may follow a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Feminist associate professor publishes controversial philosophy article

A journal of feminist philosophy, Hypatia, published a controversial article, recently, by Rebecca Tuvel, entitled “In Defense of Transracialism”. Essentially, Tuval cited the argument about ‘identifying as a certain group’, that is used to validate and legitimise transgender people and bring them into mainstream society and argued that Transracialism could be defended on the same grounds. Predictably, Tuvel, assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College, has generated considerable controversy.

The editors of the journal drew “opprobrium” shortly after the publication because of its controversial subject matter. The article was widely criticized as a product of white and cisgender privilege.

An open letter called on the journal to retract the article, which was signed by 100s of academics. The article was accused of ignoring the work of transgender and black scholars, and using harmful language.

The editor of the journal now disagrees with the article, and Tuvel has been subjected to an academic witch hunt – with some even comparing her to Rachel Dolezal, who a former leader of an NAACP chapter, who claimed she “identified as black,” although her racial markers identified her as white, and home Tuvel had defended in her article.

‘An eye for an eye’ principle in punishment making a comeback?

Frustrated community leaders are exploring whether punishments that essentially epitomize the ‘eye for an eye’ principle should be used for petty crimes such as vandalism. The destruction, defacement, and disrespect of the material goods of an individual in a community caused by vandalism, they feel is lost on the perpetrators, who never know or care about the effects of their actions.

Someone vandalized a part of a streetscape with a cost of $4,500 to the taxpayers, in Lake Weeroona. The perpetrator, if caught would likely face a lighter fine. The author questions if that is fair to the masses of people in a community at the same time.

He, therefore, wonders about the efficacy of light penalties where the consequences may not be quite sufficient in some cases, and where heavier hands might do the trick – such as a punishment that would extract ‘an eye for an eye’.

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Religion News in Brief – May 12th, 2017

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/12

Brain damage could be linked to extreme religious beliefs

New research by scientists seems to indicate that damage in a certain part of the brain is linked to an increase in religious fundamentalism. Reportedly, in particular, lesions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex reduced cognitive flexibility – the ability to challenge our beliefs based on new evidence.

Scientists involved in these research studies have found that people with brain injuries are more likely to be extremely religious. This has led to speculation about the human brain having a God spot, which might be responsible for religious belief.

Experts have begun to think that the God spot may be the cause of – or have a high positive correlation to – extreme religious belief. As it turns out, more and more research is pointing to brain trauma as the ‘cause’ of extreme religious belief.

The damage to the brain is indicative of people being less able to critically evaluate their most fundamental religious beliefs. Thus, this inability, which in turn fuels their unwillingness to examine or challenge their most fundamental religious beliefs results in such individuals holding on ever stronger to such beliefs, and therefore being increasingly extreme in their adherence to such belief systems.

Texan Republican proposes bill designed to restrict adoption by minority groups.

Texas is making the headlines again over religion. A bill has been proposed by a Republican James Frank over whether to have adoption agencies ban Jews, Muslims, and gay people from taking children in from these adoption agencies. The bill is due to be debated this week

It would probably amount to one of the most “sweeping” bills to differentiate entitled to services to certain groups based on the concept of freedom of religion bills in the United States. The bill, if passed would amount to a denial of adoption services, based on religious beliefs.

The bill has been proposed by the Republican-controlled legislature to protect faith-based adoption agencies. In addition, this would permit state-run agencies the ability to decline services based on the sincerely held religious beliefs of the providers’, and the adoption services’.

Some of the other objections, on the basis of which applicants could be rejected would be if there single, an atheist, or an interfaith couple.

Ban on distribution of Qurans by campaign liked to jihadists proposed in Zurich

Zurich’s Public Safety Office has recommended that the country’s most populous canton ban a campaign called the READ! campaign that distributes Qurans in public space. The Office believes the campaign is a front for incitement and recruitment relating to radical activities, and to jihadist movements.

This, however, is in contrast to the opinion of the Federal intelligence Services, which opined 3 days prior to the recommendation that such a ban could lead to strong conflict with regards to freedom of religion.

However, Zurich’s Public Safety Office has referred to it’s own legal opinion, and stated that it was under no obligation to provide public spaces to be used as a platform from which views that were irreconcilable to the country’s basic values could be spread.

The READ! campaign could not be reached for comment. The campaign was initiated by Germany’s DWR “True Religion” Group, formed in 2011 with the intention of distributing 25 million Qurans in Europe.

However, DWR was banned last year for being instrumental in recruitment of jihadists. Swiss authorities, citing the more than 80 people who have left Switzerland to fight with jihadist movements, point to the trend as allowing for obvious justification for such a ban.

The Association of Islamic Organisations did not expect a widespread negative consequence from the ban, since it was only to a particular campaign.

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Education News in Brief – May 11th, 2017

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/11

Preventing cuts on school spending means more money on income tax

The protection of England schools from “real-term cuts” will mean an equivalent increase in spending. This money is to come from raising the basic rate of the income tax according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The Institute is a financial think-tank. Based on its team’s analysis, the maintenance of current funding levels for England schools will mean an increase in spending of 3.7 billion British pounds.

Luke Sibieta of the Institute for Fiscal Studies said, “A promise to protect schools from cuts will not come cheap.” The funding for schools has become an election battleground with opposition parties pointing out the funding shortages.

UK and Australian academic life is more stressful than Iran and Uganda

Stress runs high in the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia for academics in contrast to Iran and Uganda. Academics in these areas of the world report fairly high and low levels of stress, respectively, in a study that is the first of it’s kind.

The global first is the global comparison of stress levels in higher education. The research found Germany’s researchers are the happiest; China’s are those reporting the “greatest strain.” Germany’s greater success comes from the high levels of staff morale and the strong job satisfaction.

Professor of educational psychology at Jönköping University, Roland Persson, made the ranking list. Persson analysed 91 articles, literature reviews, and national surveys in order to arrive at his conclusions. According to his study it seems that a significant reason for Germany’s success comes from the lack of management culture.

Prescription drug use by kids a concern for British parents

There is an increasing trend of prescription drug use by Britain teens, which appears to have been a more common and long-term trend in the United States. It can be a worry for parents, who have been urged to warn their kids about the issues around it.

The problems have come out after the Wiltshire police pointed out that over 20 kids either age 15 or 16, school age kids, needed treatment after increased use of Xanax, a drug to help with anxiety and panic disorders.

This casual or recreational drug use while increasingly common in North America now appears to be seeping into Britain. In the United States of America, in the state of New Mexico, 16 pupils have been hospitalised in 2017 alone with the year not even reaching its halfway point.

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Two Men in India Killed by Mob for Stealing “Sacred” Cows

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/07

Indian villagers beat a pair of Muslims to death. The two Muslim men were claimed to have been stealing cows and were asserted suspects, according to the police. Cattle are considered sacred by Hindus, who are the religious-majority in India.

In the Nagaon district, the police of Assam state registered the cases of Abu Hanifa and Riyazuddin as murderers. Two people were detained and questioned over the murders.

Nagaon’s chief police officer, Debaraj Upadhyay, said, “They were chased and beaten with sticks by villagers who said the two boys were trying to steal cows from their grazing field…By the time we took them to the hospital at night they had succumbed to their injuries.”

There was footage taken by a local witness, which was aired by the broadcasters in India. In the recordings, the two Muslim men were being beaten with their hands tied and the villagers surrounding them, beating them.

There have been killings and smugglings of cows, recently, and it has become a recent tension with regards to the religious and holy significance of cattle to the Hindu majority in India. The slaughter of cattle is a punishable offense in many states in India.

Various vigilante groups have been talking about “cow protection” in the early months up to the present of 2017. Another Muslim man was beaten to death in Rajasthan. Why? The mob discovered cows in his truck.

The vigilante groups, or mobs, have been inspecting transportation for cattle. The man beaten to death in Rajasthan was a dairy farmer and was in the middle of transporting milk cows. There were accusations hurled at the police. That they didn’t act in enough haste for the dairy farmer.

Some critics argue that the Narendra Modi victory has emboldened the vigilantes. Modi is the leader of the Bharatiya Janada party, known for being a Hindu nationalist party. Modi won the position of prime minister in 2014.

In 2016, Modi criticised the “cow protection vigilantes,” especially urging a “crackdown” on those that would use religion to cover their crimes. Across India, 10 Muslim men, at least, have been killed by these types of incidents with Hindu mobs descending to protect cattle and kill Muslims.

Not for being Muslims necessarily, but for suspecting the consumption of beef or the smuggling of cattle. To protect against smuggling, the government will be issuing millions of identification numbers for cows in a national database – linking the cows and the national database – in an effort to protect them from future smuggles in India.

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The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople on a “Post-Secular Age”

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/06

The Archbishop and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, from the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Sheik Ahmad el-Tayeb, who is the Grand Imam of al-Azhur University, attended the opening of the al-Azhar International Peace Conference in Cairo, Egypt on April 27, 2017.

The Head of the Roman Catholic church, Pope Francis, attended on April 28th. The focus of the event however was to be the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew who used the opportunity to provide a blueprint for interreligious dialogue in the future with a central role for religion in people’s lives.

It has been speculated before, that the spotlight on the Holy See, Pope Francis may possibly result in reducing the spotlight on Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I within the global Christian community. With the trip to Cairo, Egypt, by Pope Francis, Patriarch Bartholomew should have been, according to conventional thought, unseen or at the very least in the background.

But religious spheres of influence also appear to be shifting, and old realms of power are no longer as strongly held. With the retirement of Benedict XVI, observers of religious trends have asserted that some of the heavy lifting for Christianity has been done by Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I.

In particular, the intellectual and religious heavy lifting in association with Islam, or rather in relation to Christianity’s relationship with Islam appears to have been taken on by Patriarch Bartholomew I. The reasons for this are not hard to surmise.

While the Eastern Orthodox Church has had a longer and deeper interrelationship with Islam in the past than the Roman Catholics, in addition to doctrinal Christology, this is one other major difference between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The religious head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, lives in Istanbul. It is a mostly Muslim city, but one that has the historical distinction of having been a “bridge” for the Muslim and Christian religions for several centuries.

In Cairo, Egypt, he spoke to the future of interreligious dialogue and a post-secular world, exhorting the return to a religious way of life, and heralding a time when more people would return to religion.

Patriarch Bartholomew said, “[The] modernistic expectation is of a post-religious secular age…[however, it is] becoming a post-secular period, or even [an epoch] of religious explosion.”

He argued for religion as a core factor to human life, individually and socially. He listed four main reasons for religion affecting humanity. One, he explained that faith and religion connects and taps into some of the greatest concerns of people while providing answers to existential questions and thereby affording meaning and orientation in life.

Two, he pointed out that religion was inextricably related to the identity of civilizations and groups. Three, religion, he argued, has been the creator and preserver of some of the great achievements of culture in addition to the compassion, and ethics, and solidarity seen today.

Four, Patriarch Bartholomew I underlined his conviction that religion remained a vital factor in the peace process. Adverting to an extremely well-known quote by the famed St. Paul, he recalled that God was not the author of confusion but of peace.

The Patriarch acknowledged that while religion could, of course divide by causing intolerance and violence – the causation of such chaos was a symptom of its failure, and cannot be said to be its essence which, the Patriarch reiterated, wasthe protection of human dignity.”

He sees relativism and fundamentalism as extremes in the modern era and secularism as a reaction to the extremes that relativism and fundamentalism have been taken to.

Patriarch Bartholomew views the religious fundamentalist “outbursts” as ammunition for the critics of religious faith and called on the faithful to resist such influences, but rather remain true to their religious calling.

Memorably, The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I closed with these words – “True faith does not release humans from being responsibility for the world, from respecting human dignity, and from struggling for justice and peace.

On the contrary, it strengthens the commitment of human action, enlarges our witness for freedom and human core values.”

Al-Azhar, where the speaking engagement took place, is seen as a major institution of Sunni Islam. Patriarch Bartholomew denounced terrorism and disassociated it with any religion, which was received with applause from the crowd.

“This is the biggest challenge for religions, to develop their own potential of love, solidarity, and compassion…this is what humanity deeply expects from religion today,” Patriarch Bartholomew said.

The event at Al-Azhar is certainly interesting for its unifying of three of the most influential religious figures in the world today. Their uniform message of the role of religion in today’s world, its necessity, and their disavowal of religion as the cause of any of the extremist violence follows an old and well worn script. Whether the followers of these religions find new meaning within the words of Patriarch Bartholomew I and will become champions of a tectonic social change remains to be seen.

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2022-04-12

UN Intercultural Dialogue on Peace and Human Security

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/06

The government of Azerbaijan hosted the Fourth World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue in coordination with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural organisation (UNESCO) and others.

One modern issue is the integration of migrants and refugees into large cities. Associated with this is the rise in extremism and how it has turned violent, as well as, the radicalisation of youth via extremist context on the Internet.

It was reported that this will provide an opportunity for the examination of potential effective responses to the various issues surrounding human security, mass migration, and violent extremism.

Numerous government heads and ministers, private sector individuals, policy makers, journalists,

civil society activists, intergovernmental organisation representatives, and others gathered at the forum.

It was themed with ‘Advancing Intercultural Dialogue – New avenues for human security, peace and sustainable development.’ The UNESCO assistant director general for social and human sciences, Nadia Al-Nashif, said, “[The forum has a] very strong vision and resonates deeply with UNESCO’s mandate to build peace in the minds of men and women.”

Al-Nashif described the modern world as a complicated place with massive innovations in technology, increased tensions, and a lack of general trust based on insecurity. However, she noted in a UN forum UN dialogue is an important platform.

It allows for global citizens to debate coexistence with regards to the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” It is an agenda for acceptance, integration, social inclusion, and tolerance plus empathy.

UNESCO will host 13 sessions at the forum. As an international forum through the UN, it is not simply academic, as noted by Ms. Al-Nashif, but there are cities and local authorities coming too.

UNESCO has been working to help with the increased influx of migrants into major city centres. Many of the products from the forum will be turned into a research publication entitled, “Interculturalism at a crossroads, comparative perspectives on concepts, policies and practices.” Al-Nashif said, “What the Baku Forum and UNESCO is doing is finding a common access where we continue to engage, to inform scientific evidence for why it doesn’t make sense to be racist, [and] why discrimination hurts socially and economically as well.”

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2022-04-12

The UK Air Quality Plan – A Weak, Half-Hearted Attempt?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/06

The government of the United Kingdom, after much rebuke from European Union institutions, has finally drafted a strategy for the improvement of air quality. The improvement of the air quality in the United Kingdom is based on the reduction of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere.

Recalling that the UK was reprimanded by the European Commission for being one of five countries that persistently contravened EU regulations regarding the amount of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere and it was after the threat of legal sanction that this initiative has come to pass.

Air pollution is a serious problem in the UK. The exposure to outdoor pollution of air is associated with about 40,000 deaths per year in the UK.

This damage to the body can be inflicted across the lifespan, starting from some of the first weeks in the womb all the way to the older years of an individual. In addition, it has been linked with cancer, heart disease, asthma, and diabetes.

Therefore, the plan’s stated objective was to reduce pollution to such an extent as to bring the UK into the ranks of some of the cleaner and healthier areas. Vehicle manufacturers have an important part to play within the framework of the quality of air, according to the UK government.

The government has signalled that the options are open for consultation, which could run from from now until June 15. The final plan for the publication will be at the end of July.

However, the lawyers and activists who pushed for the plan and hoped that it would be designed in a manner to encourage or insist on the weakening of the impact of diesel vehicles in addition to the rapid transition into cleaner forms of transport seem to have been disappointed.

The plan allows for discussion around the possibility for a tax treatment for diesel vehicle drivers. However, the government has refrained from imposing any specific charges; there will need to be an engagement with stakeholders before any formal tax changes, circa the Autumn Budget 2017.

Even with the plan in place and the consultation in preparation, however, some have criticised the air quality plan as insufficient.

Some environmental lawyers have seen the plan as “much weaker than hoped for.” Chief executive of ClientEarth, James Thornton, described the government as removing personal responsibility, and shirking it to the local authorities.

Activists and politicians in favour of a more stringent plan point out that this plan was the result of Ministers facing a series of defeats in the courts, where the prior plans were viewed as illegal.

“The plan looks much weaker than we had hoped for,” said Thornton. “The court ordered the government to take this public health issue seriously and while the government says that pollution is the largest environmental risk to public health, we will still be faced with illegal air quality for years to come under these proposals.”

It remains to be seen whether the present plan will be approved of as being in line with public health requirements and the consequent obligations of the government.

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2022-04-12

Technological Innovations – Opportunities and Challenges

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/06

The International Labour Organisation, as the putative authority and overseer of labour and industry trends has had frequent occasion to comment on the difficulties with new technological innovations disrupting industry, but has also highlighted the opportunities they present.

Clearly, development of new technologies permit new modes of production. With new modes of production based on such innovations the landscape of work changes significantly and this has lead to disruptions in both blue-collar work and at some of the simpler levels in the sphere of white-collar work.

These disruptions can clearly upset lifestyles and lives and necessitate the need for further retraining. Those with the desire for work-life balance might be able to get it based on retraining and the ability to find a new job in the new market made by the new technologies.

With these disruptions, occasioned particularly when the pace of innovation outpaces society capacity to retrain, the job market collapses in some areas and reduces in some others, but expands in different ways.

This entails the creation and sustaining of new industries, which, in turn creates new jobs – however, an insufficiently prepared workforce may not be able to reap the benefits of such advanced. Technology is changing the landscape, and society, as well as authorities, have to gear up to address the challenges and opportunities associated with new technologies.

In a sample of 15 countries, those highly involved in telework and ICT-mobile work (T/ICTM) had a higher level of work intensity. This is regardless of the place that they have been working.

However, they have also managed to attain higher levels of work-life balance, which may be considered an overall social good, and therefore one of the more obvious benefits of technological disruption.

Some of the increased work-life balance can come from the reduction in the amount of time necessary to travel to work in addition to the flexibility of one’s own working time. However, this has led to longer work hours and ambiguity between work and personal time.

Some have found that the constant and consistent need to be on call has produced higher levels of stress. The ILO’s research has noted that the new forms of work will intensify within the era of large-scale electronics.

So, “working time regulations” will have to adapt to this, which should take advantage of the positives and mitigate the negatives, and ensure that technologies remain a force for good.

Technological innovations have always been profoundly dependent on the use to which they are put, and the manner in which they are utilised.

In much the same way that the industrial revolution set human society on a period of rapid advancement, the current leaps and bounds in industrial evolution due to information technology will have significant effects on society.

Their impact therefore, will depend largely on how they are received and managed. Ultimately, as the ILO’s research reflects, innovations such as automation represent both opportunities and challenges. What they end up being depends on how they are used by human beings.

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2022-04-12

Boy Beaten to Death at Islamic School for ‘Making Noise’

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/06

A Malaysian school boy aged 11 has died in hospital after being severely beaten at an Islamic school. Mohamed Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi’s beatings were so bad that his legs, which were whipped with a water hose, were amputated to prevent the spread of infection. Bernama, the state news agency, reported on the death.

The boy’s death has sparked outrage in the Muslim-majority country. He, and other pupils, were whipped with a water hose. An assistant warden gave the whippings at the Johor Islamic school, which is north of Singapore.

There have been circulated photos of the boy with blackened legs, which were swollen from infection. After admittance to the hospital 2 weeks later, the doctors had to amputate the 11-year-old’s legs while he was in a coma.

The amputations were to prevent the spread of infection. The district police chief, Rahmat Othman, said, “We are now waiting for the medical and autopsy reports from the hospital before taking further action.”

Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim, chairman of the Parent Action Group for Education, said, “To this day, we do not know who are actually in charge of regulating tahfiz schools.” Many of the Islamic educational schools are privately operate and have registration in a government/state religious department.

They tend not to be with the education ministry. The education ministry has “strict guidelines” on corporal punishment, whereas the private Islamic schools do not. This particular case has prompted many to demand more scrutiny of the “tahfiz” educational institutions.

Students memorise the Quran there. Prime Minister Najib Razak has announced a 5.4 million British pound fund for the development of tahfix education, but has expressed condolences for the loss of the boy.

The death of Mohamed Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi has focused a lot of public attention on a new bill being discussed in the Malaysian Parliament, a bill that would impose more stringent forms of the Islamic penal code. This could include whipping.

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2022-04-12

Trump Signs Executive Order in Favour of Religious Right

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/06

US President, Donald Trump, has signed an executive order, which provides the basis for the easier political manoeuvring of the religious in America as opposed to the non-religious.

There was a weakening of the enforcement of a rule that prevented churches and tax-exempt groups from the endorsement of American political candidates.

There were steps towards resolution of the dispute over Obama-era healthcare care plan rules, which moved in the favour of the religious Right by the opposition to birth control. More or less, Trump’s inner circle mostly belongs to the religious Right.

To faith leaders at the White House Rose Garden, Trump said, “We will not allow people of faith to be targeted, bullied or silenced any more and we will never ever stand for religious discrimination…With this executive order, we are ending the attacks on your religious liberty.”

Evangelical leaders and scholars consider this to be a watered down version of a drafted executive order that was leaked earlier in 2017. Even so, the executive order is highly in favour of the religious Right.

It was filled with religious exemptions and language that could give millions of Americans “a licence to discriminate” against parents that were unwed, some rights advocates, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.

This will possibly result in a new policy for the Health Department. The accommodation will be for religious institutions or groups that can tell the federal government that they were after the amendment “to provide employees with contraceptive coverage.”

The Centre for Reproductive Rights has an opening that is ready to block the order in court. The order seems to have gone far, but not as far as the refusal of services to individuals and organisations based on religious beliefs.

For example, if an individual was a Christian and did not want to provide a service to a Muslim, a homosexual, or a nonreligious individual, then the Christian owner of the business would be able to deny them the service based on their religious ‘superiority;’ being Christian.

There have been rumours about the Trump administration and their preparation of a sweeping executive order that would allow any government worker or organisation receiving federal funding the right to target LGBT people.

The president of Naral Pro-Choice America, Ilyse Hogue, said, “Americans did not vote to have their healthcare taken away or to have their access to birth control cut off.” As well, Trevor Potter, the president of the Campaign Legal Center, said, “For decades, the charitable political activities prohibition has kept tax-exempt religious institutions focused on their religious missions, freeing them from the pressures associated with partisan political campaigns.”

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2022-04-12

Gay Men at Risk of Torture in Indonesia

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/05

The government of Indonesia has been attempting, repeatedly, to threaten the rights and safety of LGBT citizens of the country. There have been a number of comments with regards to it and a call on the Indonesian authorities to release 2 gay men from the Aceh province. The local ordinance at the moment criminalises homosexuality.

On the night of March 28, 2017, unidentified vigilantes forcibly entered a home and brought two men found there to the police for having alleged same-sex relations. The two men, in their twenties, have been detained at a Wilayatul Hisbah, a Sharia (Islamic law) police facility in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital.

The chief inspector stated the 2 gay men confessed to being gay and would be detained for being male homosexuals. In the Aceh Islamic Criminal Code (Qanun Jinayah), the men may face 100 public lashings.

Under international law, this section of the Islamic Criminal Code constitutes torture. There is disagreement between international law and the Aceh Islamic Criminal Code and was noted by the deputy Asia division director of HRW, Phelim Kine, that these two cases exemplify the embedded anti-LGBT discrimination in the Qanun Jinayah.

“These men had their privacy invaded in a frightening and humiliating manner and now face public torture for the ‘crime’ of their alleged sexual orientation,” Kine said.

There was cell phone footage of the raid. The ordinances in the Qanun Jinayah against gays is said to empower the public and the special Sharia police force in the public identification and detainment of someone in violation of the rules.

The Aceh authorities detained LGBT individuals in the past, including an 18-year-old and a 19-year-old pair of young women who were assumed to be lesbians. The charge was “embracing in public” with detainment for 3 nights.

Over the past 10 years, the Aceh parliament has begun to adopt various Sharia-inspired ordinances, which have criminalised non-hijab-wearing women, and other activities such as the consumption of alcohol, gambling, and extramarital relations. These can be enforced onto non-Muslims.

In 2016, 339 people received lashings – a Sharia-based punishment. Out of the 34 provinces in Indonesia, Aceh is the main one that can adopt, by law, the Sharia-based bylaws. The Human Rights Watch openly opposes all discriminatory laws and policies; especially those that violate the most basic human rights.

HRW said, in June, that the Minister of Home Affairs Tjahjo Kumolo backtracked on an announced commitment for the abolishment of abusive Sharia regulations in the nation. The government officials in Aceh province have worked to actively stoke the homophobia.

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2022-04-12

Q&A on the Philosophy of Economics with Dr. Alexander Douglas – Session 2

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/05

Dr. Alexander Douglas specialises in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of economics. He is a faculty member at the University of St. Andrews in the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies. In this series, we will discuss the the philosophy of economics.

Scott Jacobsen: With the words such as “capital,” “debt,” “money,” and “wealth,” what creates moderate levels of confusion over use in public discussion?

Dr. Alexander Douglas: Take “debt,” for instance, the subject of my last book. We apply one word to a wide diversity of cases: my debt to a friend, a household’s debt to a bank, a government’s debt to its bondholders.

These cases have important differences, which are ignored if we assume the word to be perfectly univocal. I won’t say more about this example here, since I’ve written about it elsewhere.

Another example is “money.” We know that cash is money, but are bank deposits “money”? Some say yes, some say no, leading to unhelpful debates about whether or not banks can “create money” by making new loans.

Many people don’t count UK Treasury Bills and Gilts as “money,” but traders do: they call them “securities accounts” and treat them just like term deposits at a bank. The ambiguity in the concept leads to confusion.

But worse, if we restrict it to mean a certain class of financial assets, it loses almost all its explanatory power. In elementary textbooks, you find something called the Quantity Theory of Money, which tells you (among other things) that changes in the total amount of money, other things being equal, change prices.

But the theory breaks down if you restrict the definition of “money” to a certain class of assets while people make payments by creating and circulating different sorts of assets. Thus, the term “money” is either imprecise or of no real explanatory value.

How about “capital?” An economics textbook might tell you that it refers to the various physical equipment that can be combined with labour to produce output. But can we quantify it? In what units?

Weight, for instance, isn’t the relevant measure, since a lighter tool can be more productive than a heavier one – some sharp chainsaws weigh less than some blunt axes.

We can measure capital by its monetary value, but then we can’t distinguish between, e.g., the loss or physical destruction of £100,000 worth of capital and a drop of £100,000 in the market value of existing capital.

Meanwhile, Marx defined capital as power – the power of the capitalist to command labour and resources. Is Marx presenting a revision to the meaning of the term “capital,” or is he advancing a theory about what we all agree to call “capital?”

As for “wealth,” well – just what is it, and how should we measure it? Ruskin said there is no wealth but life. Was he obviously wrong?

Jacobsen: What have economists really tested against the data? What are some more established findings?

Douglas: There are lots of important recent developments in empirical economics. In the 80’s and 90’s, Alexander Rosenberg pushed a fairly critical line against economics. Drawing on some research by Wassily Leontief, he argued that economists had made almost no reliable precise predictions.

Prediction is the gold standard of explanation in science: if you can’t predict it, how do you know you’ve properly explained it?

But recently, economists have developed new techniques for gathering data and testing theories – they no longer depend only on time-series data, which is notoriously inconclusive.

They now design controlled laboratory experiments, which can be as simple as giving people choices with different parameters and seeing how they react – the growing field of behavioural economics uses techniques like this.

They are also starting to employ the research of sociologists and others to study how different sorts of institutional contexts affect human behaviour. They have developed new ways of measuring crucial macroeconomic variables like rates of inflation and growth.

But there is still much room for criticism. Many core theories are still almost impossible to test.

For example, if you try to measure the ‘price-elasticity of demand’ by seeing how the quantities purchased of some commodity change when prices change, you need to assume that the preferences of the relevant consumers are stable over time.

You also need to abstract away from interactions between the market for that commodity with all the other markets in which the consumers participate.

Although I’m not an expert, I think that many macroeconomic models use variables whose values can’t be tested – the rate of technological change, the degree of institutional trust: since these floating variables can absorb any error margin between the predictions of the theory and what shows up in the data, they put an opaque screen between the theory and the data.

Since these are the sorts of models that get used to guide economic policy, this should be of concern to society in general, not just to economists.

Jacobsen: You mentioned many names. From Jevons, Keynes, Smith, and Aristotle to Hausman, Rosenberg, Cartwright, Laws, Sen, Robinson, and Hicks. Logic, to an extent, forms the foundation for the ideas and thought processes. Here’s a general question, what is the logic below economics? The logic that gives rise to terms, which, as noted earlier, are used, even abused.

I ask because philosophies have logic. Thus, the philosophy of economics, seems to, at root, look at the logic of economics.

Douglas: One way to think of the theory of choice that underlies standard economics is as a sort of normative theory: it studies the choices that people should make, given their preferences, just as logic studies the sorts of inferences that people should make, given certain premises.

The fact that people often make irrational choices or bad inferences is simply not relevant to the aims of the discipline in either case.

I think there is still some confusion in economics around this: there is a lot of slippage between a purely logical theory of choice, given some formal definition of rationality, and a predictively powerful theory capable of explaining what actually happens in the world.

Sometimes the slippage is covered up by an appeal to ‘the long run:’ people might make irrational decisions in some cases, but if they repeat the choice-problem many times they will wise up and converge towards the formally rational outcome. I don’t buy it.

Jacobsen: Two questions for you: “Are economists justified in using abstract mathematical models?” and “Is Rational Choice Theory, which forms the basis of much economics, empirically unfalsifiable?”

Douglas: On mathematical models, it’s hard to say, since there are so many different sorts of mathematical models. Tony Lawson, whom I mentioned before, has come out very strongly against the use of mathematical models in economics.

He thinks it just gets the ‘ontology’ wrong: neither individual people nor economic systems as a whole are elementary particles operating according to fixed laws. I think there is a lot in his argument.

One issue I have with mathematical models in economics is that they sometimes assume an optimum exists, with no solid mathematical argument for this. To give a simple example: suppose I set you the problem of choosing the greatest real number that is less than 5.

There is no optimum solution – for any answer you give, there are an infinite number of better answers. If, on the other hand, I set you the problem of choosing the greatest real number that is less than or equal to 5, then there is an optimum answer: 5.

Economic models sometimes assume that the optimisation problems they describe are like the second example without proving that they aren’t in fact like the first example.

On the other hand, the difficulty with non-mathematical theories is in testing them. I like to think of this in terms of René Girard, an anthropologist whose writing I admire.

He has a single theory for explaining all human mythology and institutions, based on the centrality of what he calls the ‘scapegoating mechanism.’ He finds hints of this mechanism in the Upanishads, the plays of Shakespeare, and the phenomenon of global terrorism.

I find his work profound and illuminating, but would I bet my life on its truth? No, because there’s no way to measure just how accurate, and therefore, just how predictively robust the theory is. It’s easy to find hints of the scapegoating mechanism in any story, but there’s no way to quantify just how much any story really conforms to the model.

With Rational Choice Theory, I can be briefer. Yes, in its standard form, it is empirically unfalsifiable. The problem is simple: the theory claims that people make the choices that maximise their preferences subject to constraints.

But all we observe are the choices people make. If we take “preferences” simply to mean people’s patterns of choice – this is recommended in Paul Samuelson’s famous economics textbook – then the RCT is trivial: it just tells us that people choose what they choose. It can’t be refuted by any observation of choice behaviour.

But if preferences are something other than patterns of choice, we can’t observe them directly, and again the theory can’t be falsified (nor verified) empirically.

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2022-04-12

An Interview with Narendra Nayak – President of Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations & Founder of Aid Without Religion

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/03

You are one of the more famous unknowns. Your name should be more internationally recognised, I feel. You have done plenty of work in the sceptic movement and for reason. Your father bought a lottery ticket on the advice of an astrologer. This was a turning point for you.

Why? What other personal/educational background assisted with the development of rationalist perspectives and tools?

As for me being an unknown, I do not mind that! But you have to remember that ours is a country of 1.20 billion people, and among them I am quite known as one of the most visible faces in the field. We would rather do the work than seek publicity.

The international scene is replete with those who make orations at international seminars, and I have attended only a few. The IHEU had awarded me for outstanding services to Humanism at their Oslo conference.

Thanks for your feeling that I should be more recognised internationally!

One of the reasons for my turning a sceptic was my father’s obsession with astrology. But there are more reasons. They can be read here. http://nirmukta.com/2010/12/26/a-twice-born-atheist/ and here too http://nirmukta.com/2009/12/11/am-i-a-hindu/.

It was that I first became an atheist and remained one for quite some time. Atheism is just a conclusion. Later on, I should say may be at the age of 21 or so I became a rationalist who investigates things and looks for evidence before accepting something.

At the age of 25 or so I joined the movement. My undergraduate training as a chemist and later on my post graduate training as a medical biochemist made me more and more methodical in investigating claims of the paranormal.

The choice of a life without succumbing to any of the irrational practices thrust upon one by the society was a challenging task but I have managed to live up to it. You could read more here http://nirmukta.com/2010/11/26/practicing-atheism-in-ones-life-under-all-circumstances/.

The easy availability of literature and references was another plus point as I was teaching at a Medical College. Again we had many colleagues with such inclinations and would cooperate when needed.

Later on about three decades back, when I came in touch with Humanism, I realised that that was what I have been doing all my life. So, can now say that I am a Humanist!

In your experience and transition, rationalism is not only a scientific and philosophical stance. It is an ethical stance derived from personal, likely emotional, experience within the family. How do you maintain high ethical standards in this professional work over decades?

This was probably because I was working at a university where there was very little interference in the personal lives of the faculty unless their stands were a threat to the commercial interests of the set up. Even in such situations I have stuck to my stand, and attempts were made to ‘put me on the proper track’. These did not succeed.

When punitive action was taken in 1989, I approached the courts and won my battle, and it was technically held to be termination from service which could be done only after a due process of law which had not been followed as there were no grounds at all for such an action.

Of course, due to the slow moving Indian judicial system it took nearly five and a half years for the courts to decide in my favour.

But I had made my point and after that, there has been absolutely no interference in my activities! In my personal life, I have always stuck to my stand about ethics; no active participation in any religious ceremonies, no treatment from quacks etc.

This has been followed even in my business which is run on totally ethical lines.

To you, what is a rationalist, or makes a good rationalist?

According to me, I would define a rationalist as one who puts things to the test of reason before accepting them. Leading a life by one’s convictions makes a good rationalist. Though this looks almost impossible in a country like ours, many of us have done it.

You are the president of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations(FIRA). What tasks and responsibilities come with this position?

My responsibilities as the President of FIRA are to hold the movement together on common points of action. I also work to promote the movement by going to places all over the country to speak to our member organisations, conducting workshops for developing rational thinking, representing our points of view at seminars, TV discussions, media and anywhere else needed.

I write regularly for the printed media through press handouts, web site publications and a regular column for a monthly magazine called Mangalore Today.

For a long, long time I have been conducting workshops for teachers at the national children’s and teachers’ science congresses. Of course, it has been stopped after the present government has come into power.

The responsibilities are difficult to perform as there are too many languages in this country and we have to communicate to people in their regional language which is possible for me as I can speak nine of them.

Perhaps that may be the reason I keep getting re-elected repeatedly! The last one happened a few days ago on the 26^th of February.

In July 2011, you founded Aid Without Religion. What was the inspiration for it? How did you identify this niche needing services?

The religious organisations try to justify their collection of funds from the public citing that they are needed for charitable purposes. They also directly or indirectly force the beneficiaries to sing praises of the head of the sect promoting these.

Their photographs are posted all over the place which receives their charity and many time paeans to them are sung. They also promote quackery in the name of medical care. So, it was very much needed to do some work without these.

So, I started this trust for the specific purpose. Again, when I pass away I want my personal assets to be put to use to promote such work. My idea is to see that my work goes on after me and a charity with such specific aims and objectives would help in that.

You put godmen and frauds to the test. They fail. What are godmen? What is the most common trick of godmen and frauds in India?

The term ‘godmen’ is a specifically Indian usage. Some of these gurus call themselves Bhagawan XYZ where the term Bhagawan or god is a prefix to their name. They also change their given names to high-sounding ones having a meaning like ‘a great one’, ‘a realised one’ and so on.

Some of them even add a number of ‘misters’ to their title like Sri Sri, Sri Sri Sri etc., the number of sris quantifying their greatness.

In order to bamboozle their gullible followers, they perform tasks apparently impossible for a normal person say something like ‘materialising’ an object from thin air, walking on embers, dipping hands into boiling oil are a few such examples.

There are also Jesus Christ-like moments multiplying food, converting one liquid into another, reviving the dead, healing disease etc.

Who was a particularly notable story in your professional career so far?

If you mean my profession as a medical biochemist, my involvement in the work about lead poisoning particularly in school children has been the most satisfying. As a consumer activist, we succeeded in bringing about a Consumer Protection Act for the country in 1986.

As a rationalist putting a stop to a fraud called as midbrain activation, which was allegedly conferring supernatural powers on children to see even when blindfolded, was one of our major achievements. Check this- http://nirmukta.com/2015/04/26/midbrain-activation-challenge-an-update/

What is the overall state of rationalism in India?

We are diverse nation with a huge population. We need a lot of activists to make the people think rationally. We have a program which appeals to the people directly which is called the ‘miracle exposure program’.

In this, we go to the people and show them the so-called God man tricks and explain how it is possible for anyone to do them. This helps as a starting point to make the people think about them. The newer generation of godmen have given them up and have started other things.

This would give an idea about some of the attitudes. http://nirmukta.com/2011/01/03/the-super-intelligent-superstitious/. This too- http://nirmukta.com/2010/04/22/yogi-in-politics-a-rationalists-thoughts-on-baba-ramdev/, which pertains to a so called yogi who has built up a marketing empire selling things like noodles and biscuits in the name of promoting yoga!

On one hand, we have the economically weaker sections who have been ruthlessly exploited by the religious system while on the other we have the more affluent the so called middle class http://nirmukta.com/2016/03/14/hypocrisies-of-the-great-indian-middle-class/, whose icons are again an example of irrationality many times- http://nirmukta.com/2011/05/26/icons-of-the-middle-class/.

How does one present the rationalist worldview in a respectful and positive light in various sectors of Indian culture, and subculture?

The rationalist world view is nothing new to India. Gautam Buddha taught about it 2500 years back. Charvaka was one of earliest materialist philosophers. Two religions, Buddhism and Jainism, have originated in India which are basically atheistic.

The Upanishads and Darshans encourage questioning. The Shad Darshanas are an example of this. Again the term ‘Hindu’ is a vague one with a legal definition as ‘one who is not a Christian, Muslim, Jew or a Parsi’ which means that all rationalist/atheists come under that ambit!

So, it is quite difficult for the rightist forces to attack us on logic and reason. So, they tend to label us as ‘sickulars’ (mockery of secular), ‘Commies’, ‘anti-nationals’ etc. But the common people are remarkably receptive to our point of view when properly presented.

What have been the most emotionally moving experiences in your professional rationalist work?

They are too many to be cited here. We have supported inter-caste, inter-religious marriages, helped the so-called untouchables, HIV-positive children shunned by the society and so on. One of these is here http://indianatheists.org/2011/04/07/children-of-a-lesser-god/

What are some of the demographics of FIRA? Who is most likely to join it?

FIRA does not take memberships from individuals. We are a federation who affiliates organisations who have members. We have organisations with thousands of members who are registered societies and trusts having a few members.

One of the strongest is Punjab Tarksheel Society with thousands of members. Kerala Yuktivadi Sangham has a very systematic setup with an organised membership. Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti has hundreds of branches in villages.

As already said, we do not take individuals as members. Those likely to join us are like-minded organisations – atheist, rationalist, secular, humanist- all are welcome who are interested in development of rational thinking.

What have been the largest activist and educational initiatives provided by FIRA (and you, individually)? Out of these, what have been honest failures and successes?

We have made a systematic effort to have activists in every district of the country and organised national and state level programs which were funded by the government of India. Some of them worked. Many did not.

Two times we have organised marches to the parliament to demand the enactment of a bill to separate religion from politics but nothing has happened on that front.

We have tried for anti-superstition acts in many states but have succeeded in only one state. Another of our failures has been our inability to attract younger people to join us actively. The younger generation has no significant presence in our movement.

Though many of them agree with our point of view, they do not want to take an active part. We have to work hard to bring them in.

Who/what are the main threats to rationalism as a movement?

The religious bigots, who now have the official support from the government ruling at the centre. The so-called minority pressure groups also target us. We are attacked from every side. Three of our people have been murdered so far.

Dr. Narendra Dhabolkar was the first one to be killed, and he was a very active member of FIRA. I am forced to go around with an armed bodyguard appointed by the government because threats to my life have been perceived.

How can people get involved with FIRA, even donate to it? How can people further rationalism in India?

We are more in need of participation than funds. My appeal to people is start an organisation of rationalists in your locality and join us as a member. We shall provide resources in terms of inputs and training.

Thank you for your time, Mr. Nayak.

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2022-04-12

An Interview with Michael Cluff – President of South Jersey Humanists

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/03

How did you become a humanist?

The story I usually tell is that I stopped believing in a soul the more I read about human cognition in college (I was a psych major). But that over-emphasises the intellect, a habit we atheists are prone to.

I also saw how religion was failing so many people and not living up to how it is advertised. I saw very little bliss and contentment, but lots and lots of guilt, torment, fear, and judgment.

Perhaps the point where I truly became an atheist was during a high-school religious retreat.

At the end of our retreat, our pastor suggested we walk out to the woods to pray. I scrambled to find a prayer-worthy spot — only the best for you, God! — and had to settle for an unremarkable log. As I struggled to come up with a prayer, my inner voice noted, “you’re trying really HARD to do this, aren’t you?”

It took a few years, but that doubtful voice got louder and louder, and finally I stopped suppressing it (Wait, maybe that voice was Satan).

What seems like the main reason for people becoming secular humanists in your experience, e.g. arguments from logic and philosophy, evidence from mainstream science, or experience within traditional religious structures?

I honestly can’t pinpoint one reason! Whenever a new person comes to a meeting, they’re given a chance to describe their belief history. We’ve met everything from life-long atheists to people who lost their faith weeks before.

If I had to pick, I’d say that science is the primary reason. But as my history shows, citing reason or “science” as the cause risks oversimplifying.

What makes secular humanism seem more natural to you than other sentiments, or ethical and philosophical worldviews?

The universe makes more sense to me if you don’t try to fit a personal God into your explanation. The problem of evil — why bad things happen to good people — simply vanishes without God. And the more modern views of God — god as energy or as the “ground of being” — strike me as truthy word games designed to protect a cherished belief.

So without a God, where do we go from there? What do we do with our one life while respecting the one life that others have? That’s the challenge of humanism. Our ethics should derive from the fact that we evolved as beings who feel pain and pleasure seeking to connect with other beings who also feel pain and pleasure.

What is the best argument for humanism you, personally, have ever come across?

I’m not sure if this is an argument. Perhaps it’s an observation:

Even the most religious people cannot be certain of the existence of God, much less know what that God would want from us. So a humanistic perspective, really, is the only honest one. I guess you could call that a flipped version of Pascal’s Wager?

You are the president of South Jersey Humanists. What tasks and responsibilities come with the position?

When we were smaller, being president meant preparing meetings and leading them, getting ideas for discussion topics, and keeping an eye out for battles we should fight. Now that we’ve grown, we have a (wonderful) board where we can share responsibilities and trade ideas.

I also connect with other group leaders and keep current with issues in the larger humanist, atheist, and sceptic movements.

What have been some of its major setbacks, and successes, in its foundation and development?

Growth is a sign of success but it can bring dangerous crises. When you’re small, it’s easy to work by consensus. When you get bigger, it’s harder to make everyone happy. Imagine setting a meeting date and time for five people. Easy-peasy.

Now imagine doing it for 35. No matter when you schedule it, someone will be left out. So when you grow, you have to formalise your decisions, create rules for managing money, and more. It’s a tough but important process!

We faced a different challenge at the same time: our membership hit a tipping point. The American Humanist Association was the first national atheist organisation to explicitly adopt a social justice agenda.

Most of our members were happy with this, as our group was already heading in that direction. However, we lost some of our conservative and libertarian members, some who were uncomfortable with supporting Black Lives Matter, and some who feared losing focus on “atheist issues.”

There’s a natural push and pull for a group to take action versus running an intellectual salon and debating society. Remembering that we’re primarily a humanist group, and not an anti-theism group, helps us stay true to our purpose.

With Trump’s election, it was clear that there’s a big need for humanist social justice. We’ve had an influx of eager, capable people saying that they felt it was time to act on their humanist beliefs.

What are some of the demographics of the organisation? How many members are in it? Who is most likely to join the organisation?

We’re probably more diverse than most humanist groups, but we’re still not diverse enough. Of our 33 paid members, about 40% are women, and only 12% are persons of colour. (Attendance at meetings and actions seems more diverse than these figures suggest, but I don’t have any numbers).

We don’t have data on LGBTQ membership or participation, but we are fully welcoming to all.

What are some activities of the provided by the South Jersey Humanists?

One of our chartered goals is to provide a welcoming community for those who disbelieve in the supernatural.

Each month we discuss a specific topic, article, or book club selection. We’ve had speakers (most recently ,vaccine expert Paul Offit, American Atheists president David Silverman, Death With Dignity activist Barbara Mancini, AHA president Roy Speckhardt, and “Soul Fallacy” author Julien Musolino). We also do potlucks and have a monthly “Drinking Skeptically” event where we always seem to wind up talking about movies.

Has the group taken up any activist causes? What were they?

Another goal in our charter is to promote social justice (not just for atheists).

For social justice, we try to do what a small group like ours can. We’ve raised funds for the AIDS Alliance’s AIDS Walk (Third Place Fundraising Team in 2016) and the Leukemia / Lymphoma foundation.

We volunteer quarterly at the local Food Bank, and we’ve also given them fresh vegetables we grew in our community garden.

Each year, we help students write letters for political prisoners on behalf of Amnesty International. This is at the local university as part of their Martin Luther King Day of Service.

While we did that this year, we met someone who is active in Syrian refugee relief (the Narenj Tree Foundation), so we’re hoping to help them soon. We’ve visited prisons, too, and participated in a prison pen-pal program.

What were their outcomes?

I wish I could say we’ve eliminated poverty, racism, and other forms of ignorance in our area, but there’s always next year. (Kidding, of course). I really admire what groups like Atheists Helping the Homeless have done in Texas, and I’d love for us to have that kind of success at some point.

Beyond the obvious benefits of our actions, taking action has gotten us together with other organisations and activists, which will make us better connected and more effective. And the more we do, the better at it we get.

What is the public perception of humanism in South Jersey?

It’s mixed. We live in a blue state, so we don’t face the same fights other humanist groups have, such as creationism in schools. But our part of South Jersey (near Atlantic City) is a patch of red buried within a blue state.

The church-state issues we see here are quasi-legal, such as non-sectarian prayers at town councils or “Good News Clubs” operating within local schools. But we see lots of reminders that this is a religious area.

Just down the road from me there’s a huge “One Nation Under God and Proud of It” sign at the local Catholic School. (That one doesn’t get vandalised like the “Black Lives Matter” one put up by the Unitarians).

What are the main impediments to the practice and advocacy of humanism in the local South Jersey area? Who/what are the main threats to humanism as a movement in general?

Sometimes, I wonder if apathy among atheists and humanists is our biggest problem. I know it took me a long time before I felt it was important to fight for the rights of atheists. When you live in a blue state, it’s easy to get by without thinking about your disbelief.

But perhaps the biggest impediment (locally and globally) might be the stereotype of atheists as amoral killjoys seeking to smash every Christmas display they see. The biggest compliment I ever got came from a co-worker who found out I was an atheist.

“If someone like you is an atheist then I have no problem with it at all.” The more ‘out’ we are, the less threatening we seem. It humanises Humanists.

How can people get involved with South Jersey Humanists?

Check our Facebook and Meetup pages to find an event you like.

Thank you for your time, Michael.

And thank you, Scott! I appreciate your interest in a group like ours.

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2022-04-12

Moroccan Converts to Christianity Demand Right to Live Openly

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/02

Those who secretly converted to Christianity in Morocco have emerged from the shadows. They are demanding to live their faith publicly because Islam is the state religion and any apostasy is condemned.

Those converts to Christianity are a super-minority within Morocco. There are no formal statistics, but the U.S. State Department estimates the range as 2,000-6,000.

Within Moroccan society, the proselytising of a religion is punishable by law. Those who are found guilty of the attempt to undermine a Muslim’s faith, or attempt to convert another Muslim to different religion will go to jail.

The term for the jailing will be 3 years. “Islam is the state faith of Morocco but the country’s 2011 constitution, drafted after it was rocked by Arab Spring-inspired demonstrations, guarantees freedom of religion.”

Those non-Moroccan Christians, and the other small Jewish-Moroccan population of about 2,500, are able to practice their religion openly.

”Moroccan authorities boast of promoting religious tolerance and a ‘moderate’ form of Islam, and the country’s penal code does not explicitly prohibit apostasy — the act of rejecting Islam or any of its main tenets.”

The history of Morocco is sensitivity to Christianity because of the country’s history with colonisation. The majority of converted-to-Christianity Moroccans live in Agadir and the central city of Marrakesh.

”With the exception of local Jews, Moroccans are automatically considered Muslims and King Mohamed VI holds the official title of Commander of the Faithful.”

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2022-04-12

An Interview with Ajomuzu Collette Bekaku – Founder and Executive Director of the Cameroon Association for the Protection and Education of the Child

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/01

What was the original interest in the protection and education of children?

I grew up in a community where child labour was perceived as “normal”. It was a time in Africa, especially in Cameroon, when it was normal for children to help parents at home with little household chores like sweeping the compound, selling fruits to raise income for the family, etc., just to name a few.

However, it was also a time when it was normal for children to work on banana and rubber plantations. It was also normal for them to carry very heavy loads on their heads (which impairs their health and growth), and it was normal for them to work under hazardous conditions full of dangerous chemicals and insecticides (which also impairs their education, health and growth).

As a result of seeing this situation in my community i.e. child labour, I became motivated and pushed myself to become an advocate for children’s protection and education.

I personally believe that children should be educated, offered opportunities for their development and not used as labourers.

What was the inspiration for the foundation of the Cameroon Association for the Protection and Education of the Child (CAPEC)?

I grew up with a single parent (my mum), in Mambanda Village, who was a primary school teacher. The majority of people leaving in this village were peasant farmers who were working in Banana and Rubber plantations for the Cameroon Development Cooperation (CDC), who were paid according to their daily productivity.

In order for them to increase productivity and make more money at the end of the month, parents were obliged to use their children as labourers in the plantations. Children worked under hazardous conditions.

As a 10-year-old girl, I went through this hardship and pain like other children in my situation. During this phase of my life, I organised storytelling events among fellow children aiming to focus our respective visions on life.

This enabled me to understand that children, even while poor and living in hard conditions, all had so much potential and vision. This motivated me to promote the rights of children in poor, rural communities like where I grew up.

This story and history lives in me, and my actions are still guided by my passion for a community where child rights are promoted and respected.

Immediately I graduated from university, and in conjunction with my work within various communities, I thought of formalising and sustaining the response to challenges faced by children by creating CAPEC, which is a growing, reputable and non-profit organisation. I started CAPEC in order to protect and educate underprivileged children living in various communities across Cameroon.

What tasks and responsibilities come with being the executive director of the CAPEC?

As the executive director and vision bearer, I am in charge of the overall supervision of the organisation.

I manage the relationships between the technical team and the Board within the organisation, as well as the relationship between the organisations and its partners. I also oversee the heads of each department of CAPEC, including fundraising, program development, HR management and accounting.

I also oversee the public relation the organisation maintains outside office and normal business hours. Furthermore, I attend and also host a range of fundraising events, new program inaugurations and public-relations events.

I often speak directly with reporters, donors, government representatives and members of the community at these events (spending a good deal of time acting as the public face of the organisation).

What is the current size of the staff and those cared for by CAPEC?

We have twenty-four staff in Kumba and Yaoundé office, five outreach officers, fifteen in the CAPEC Education Project (Teachers/Administrative staff), and four work in the office on CAPEC-related projects.

For those that don’t know, and many simply won’t because grassroots work is learned through action, what difficulties arise in the midst of grassroots organisation?

CAPEC carry out a lot of projects in rural communities ranging from HIV/AIDS, wealth creations, education, gender/capacity building.

Apart from the individual challenges we faced during executing these various projects, there are other general challenges and difficulties we face as a grassroots organisation, such as:

Difficult terrain: Most project areas are very difficult to assess during mid raining season, and thus needing a four-wheel drive vehicle to be able to reach these areas – which we cannot afford.

Social challenges: Weak community leadership and a difficult mindset rooted in the people living here, especially concerning the HIV/AIDS Program. A lot of people living in rural areas believe HIV/AIDS don’t exist, and consider it witchcraft. It’s difficult to convince them to get tested and actually get a sustained buy-in from community leaders.

Money: CAPEC need money for operations. We face difficulty in raising adequate funding to support our programmes and operations. There is no direct correlation between increased work and increased income; unlike a for-profit company where the work you do is directly sold for revenue.

So NGOs have to put a lot of its resources into creating successful media campaigns, getting the right connections, filling in tons of forms and paperwork for grants, aid and taxation. Not to forget, of course, the hassle of getting an NGO recognised as an NGO, and finding a secure way of getting tax-exempt donations.

What all this results in is a lack of focus. The people created the NGO to solve a problem and now the focus is on doing things that get attention to help raise money. This leads to disconnect between vision and work.

The funding environment for Cameroon is getting more and more challenging with more donors reducing funding interest for the country. NGOs struggle to mobilise resources in response to community needs and CAPEC is also faced with this challenge.

What are some of the eventual emotional difficulties and rewards?

NGOs like CAPEC are typically mission-driven advocacy or service organisations in the non- profit sector. Currently, NGOs are critical contributors in global efforts to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

However, the growth in the number of local and international NGOs in this sector has made it very difficult to secure funding to maintain staff and meeting our organisation objectives. Competition has become extensively stiff, especially with the presence of international organisations everywhere.

This has made local NGOs engage in more and more fundraising activities to sustain their activities. The members of staff often work long hours and yet the works itself has proven exhilarating and exceptionally rewarding as it is critically important to causes served.

CAPEC is not governmental and is a non-profit organisation. You founded the organisation in 2002. You work with young people, parents, and various governmental and intergovernmental bodies, and your main aims are the promotion of community welfare. What values and principles inform community welfare for CAPEC?

CAPEC operates with a primary focus on and responsibility for the providing of a higher, broader, and more public level of help for vulnerable children, adolescents, girls and women.

This principle is further attached to the integral values of the organisation that includes but is not limited to: i) respect for human rights; ii) the maintenance of our vision; iii) cooperation beyond borders; iv) public mindedness; v) accountability; vi) truthfulness; vii) transparency; and viii) non-profit integrity.

CAPEC’s vision is to allow children to realise their full-potential. What other sub-visions stem from this?

Other sub-visions include increasing the impact of activities centred on the promotion of child rights. This is achieved through a high-level advocacy in conjunction with a coalition of associations and NGOs with a similar vision.

In this regard, I have contacted a host of leaders of associations and NGOs who have accepted and are motivated to be co-founders of such a coalition. It is hoped that this initiative will have an influence on programming from individual association and NGO perspective so that child-right programming will become a reality.

What are the main activities, campaigns, and initiatives of CAPEC?

The gender and Capacity Building Department:

Gender awareness/Human Rights training.
Training in group dynamics and leadership.
Skill training for women/youth groups (e.g, soap making, tie & dye, production of bakery products, mushrooms, nutrition, etc.)
Training in starting and managing small business for affiliated groups.
In-house training for both national and international volunteers.

Health/HIV/OVCs:

Ongoing basic health training focusing on hygiene, sanitation and nutrition.
Provision of care and support to OVCs and PLWHAs
HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention sensitisation working alongside community-based groups, young people and schools.

Education Project:

Elementary, Primary and Secondary Education:

Under our Education Projects there are several subprograms that seek to develop children and surrounding communities as part of CAPEC’s primary mission. Currently, CAPEC has the following schools: Bitame Lucia Nursery and Primary School (BLIS) and Bitame Lucia Secondary School (BLIC).

Your targeted objectives utilise the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child without regard to tribe, sex, religion, or origin to protect children of sexual exploitation, forced child marriage, and child labour. Your work focuses on centres for the disabled and street children, orphanages, and prisons and the prevention of HIV/AIDS. How do these look on-the-ground?

It’s not an easy task, considering that they look upon themselves as not acceptable in their society. It makes it difficult to approach them. Lots of talking and sensitisation needs to be done in order to get them participating in those important activities that concern their well-being.

It is very difficult working with people with different religions and traditions. They have their entrenched way of thinking and their own entrenched lifestyle. However, we have been able to get some of them listen to us. Our long commitment to hard work and the determination of our dedicated team is proving to be fruitful.

Some of the activities we do to get street children and orphans to listen to us include: arts and crafts; painting; dancing and music – which are activities that can distract their minds from their present predicaments. With such simple and interactive activities, we have been able to get them interested in our activities.

What are your future hopes for growth, expansion of initiatives, and implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?

Children in different parts of Cameroon suffer from different forms of abuse, violence and torture. For example, in Akwaya sub-division there’s a lot of children being forced into child marriage at a tender age of 10.

This is because of the impoverished state that their parents are usually in. My intention is to expand our programs nationwide and to target other forms of abuse suffers by children; not just child labour.

In 2009, CAPEC started a school for orphans and children from low income families to provide them with quality and affordable education. According to CAPEC, education is not only the main solution to poverty but it also stands at the heart of sustainable human development.

However, the present formal education system in Cameroon is not functioning properly and is a serious contributory factor to dropout and failure. The current curriculum in government schools lacks relevance.

The child-teacher ratio is too high (80-100 children per class), and slow children are never taken care of: “once you fail, you have failed.” CAPEC school offer youngsters in Cameroon from 4 until 12 years and adolescents from 13 till 18 years old a high-quality education.

CAPEC intend to expand this child-centred education to other regions in Cameroon. With high-quality education and the holistic development of children, we believe that their dreams can be realised.

For those that want to work together or become involved, what are recommended means of contacting CAPEC?

For those who would like to volunteer in CAPEC’s Projects or work in partnership on specific programs can contact us via

BP 20646 Yaoundé-Cameroon

Tel: (+237) 242030163

Mobile: (+237) 677751606 / 675036025

Email: info@capecam.org / cbekaku@yahoo.com

Website: www.capecam.org

https://www.facebook.com/CAPEC20/?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/Nkolfoulou/

Thank you for your time, Ajomuzu.

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2022-04-12

An Interview with Dan Arel – Secular Activist and Godless Parent

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/27

Scott Jacobsen interviews Dan Arel who is a secular activist, author, blogger and Godless parent. In this interview, they discuss secular activism, Dan’s blogging and parenting methods, as well as his favourite topics to write on.

You are a godless parent. You wrote a book on the subject. How does someone parent secularly in the 21^st century?

Buy my book and find out!

Also, it’s evidence based, and it’s about fostering your child to think for themselves, and giving them the tools to question everything and find the truth on their own. They need to learn from their mistakes, but also trust you and know they can come to you with questions, and be mentored.

You are a secular activist. As someone working for secularism and against the encroachment of religion on the ‘public sphere,’ what seem like the perennial battles for the separation of religion and government?

It seems today the biggest issues we face are religious attacks against the LGBTQ community and women’s rights. They are using their bible and “personally held beliefs” to find ways to discriminate, legally, against people they feel are “living in sin.”

This seems to be the focus right now, especially against the transgender community. I think they know they lost the battle against the LGB community and won’t be able to do as much damage, so now they are focused on the T and hoping they gain some ground they lost.

One does not need to be godless to be secular. One does not need to believe in gods, or God, to share rituals (e.g. rites of passage), sentiments (e.g. feelings of transcendence and awe), and values (e.g. the Golden Rule) important in the upbringing, experience, and raising of well-rounded children—barring some specific gift, talent, or interest of the child needing targeted care and nurturing to the detriment of being ‘well-rounded’.

Who are unexpected allies in the battle for secularism in public life and godlessness in parenting?

Some of the biggest allies are simply anyone, religious or not, that allows their kids to be themselves and do not dictate their beliefs. Religious parents, like my own, brought me to church, but allowed me to ask questions.

I asked enough to become an atheist, and they never tried to stop me. I know many parents like this who are more concerned with their children being smart and kind, rather than obsessing about what they believe.

You blog, too. As Seinfeld might say, what’s the deal? What are your favourite topics to write on?

Politics. Atheism is important, but not as important as politics are on everyone’s lives. This includes church and state separation, but also healthcare, education, etc. These issues are important regardless of what someone believes.

I am a far-leftist and I think I have an important role of using my voice to make sure people understand what the left wants and what we stand for.

What have been the most moving moments in your parental life?

Honestly, any time one of my kids accomplishes something they have been working hard on -from potty training, to reading, to my son learning to ice skate, play hockey, and then score his first goal. Each and every moment like that is just awe-inspiring.

Another important part seems to be the creation of a community; a parental culture. How do you build relationships, associations, and bonds of mutual solidarity for, not only a secular family, but a secular community; someone else to babysit, coach the Little League game, take out the trash for the elderly widow or divorcee next door; to give parenting lessons to the younger couples with newborns on the way, and so on.

I started coaching youth hockey and found a community here. Another coach knew my work and we hit it off. For me it’s easy because people in our community know me from my work, so I didn’t have to seek out much, it was just there.

However, just joining community events, volunteering at my kid’s school, coaching, all of those things build community. I don’t ask for people’s beliefs up front, and only if they bring up negative beliefs is there a problem, but overall, I find people are just amazing and want community too, regardless of their beliefs.

You can be found on your blog, the website, Twitter, and Facebook. How else can people connect with you?

I have a new podcast called Danthropology and you can find out more by visiting www.danthropology.com

It’s mostly a political podcast with a lot of atheism and intersectionality.

Also, head over to Amazon and check out my books!

Also, any upcoming projects?

Drafting up some ideas for book number three, and working on some summer speaking gigs about how to mount a secular resistance to Trump.

Any closing thoughts or feelings based on the discussion today?

Thank you for taking the time to interview me.

Thank you for your time, Dan.

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2022-04-12

‘Cooooooooal!’ A Score in the UK for Sustainable and Renewable Energy

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/24

BBC News reports that the United Kingdom might be spending its first day without generation of electricity from coal based energy, from a statement by the National Grid. The previous time for a no coal-generation of electricity was in May, 2016, for a total of 19 hours. The goal this time, however is to sustain that for a full 24 hours.

This is based on an increased demand and need for sustainable and renewable energy including natural gas. In addition, the power used for the United Kingdom tends to be low on Fridays.

The use of coal has declined since the 1990’s, with the advent of greater access to alternative fuels such as biomass. As of 2016, coal made up only 9% of electricity generation. In 2015, this number was much higher at 23%. The United Kingdom government wants to phase out the final plants of coal energy by 2025. This is in large part due to efforts for carbon emission reduction.

Professor of resources and environment policy at University College London, Paul Ekin, described the effects of the day without coal power as “enormously significant.” “As recently as the late 1980’s coal was supplying as much as 70% of UK electricity…We then had the dash for gas in the 1990;s, with nuclear roughly contributing around 25%, and coal dropped below 50%.”

Not only is this an important landmark in the history of the United Kingdom for the reduction of coal energy, but it is also a symbolic gesture as to the eventual elimination of coal power plants.

Ekin described that the “current thrust was to replace coal with gas, but that renewables like wind and solar were also playing a bigger role – accounting for 25% of supply in 2015.”

A large part of this reduction in coal based power is down to solar panels and wind turbines being used to generate electricity from factories and homes. In addition, the energy need has decreased.

Hannah Martin, head of energy at Greenpeace UK, said the first day without coal in Britain since the Industrial Revolution “would mark a watershed in the energy transition.’”

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2022-04-12

Assisted Death 2016 in Canada – Facts and Figures

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/29

The Globe and Mail reports that “at least 970 people in Canada received an assisted death last year, according to a new federal report that provides the first official snapshot of how medical aid in dying is playing out in hospitals and homes across the country.”

Of the total deaths in all of Canada, the assisted death numbers amounted to about 0.6%. This is based on a Health Canada report. ½ of the assisted deaths occurred in Quebec at 463. In Quebec, a separate “end-of-life law took effect” circa December 10, 2015.

This happened 6 months before the federal law related to assisted death took hold. The remaining 507 assisted deaths – medically so – happened between June 17 and December 31 of 2016. Patients wanting assisted death signed on for a variety of reasons.

“Cancer was the illness cited most often by patients granted an assisted death (in 56.8 per cent of cases), followed by neuro-degenerative conditions such as multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (23.2 per cent) and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases (10.5 per cent).”

The average patient age was aged 72, with an almost even split between women and men. Health Canada is making new regulations for dealing with assisted dying. “The formal-monitoring regime is expected to include a broader set of indicators, including how well the eligibility criteria and safeguards in the law are working.”

Nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and physicians will be given this data when helping a patient with assisted death. Data from provinces is now public mostly public.

The chief executive officer of Dying with Dignity Canada, Shanaaz Gokool, said, “How many people who’ve asked [for an assisted death] have a mental illness where they’re not imminently dying and don’t qualify?” Gokool emphasised the possibility of those losing capacities due to Alzheimer’s. She wanted quantitative data on the answers to these questions to inform the Council of Canadian Academies.

“Right now, medical aid in dying is limited to consenting adults who are suffering a grievous and irredeemable physical illness and whose natural death is ‘reasonably foreseeable.’ Some provinces are already collecting richer data that hint at the level of interest in hastening death with the help of a doctor.”

In 2015, the Canada Supreme Court struck down the Criminal Code provision against assisted suicide, which made assisted death/suicide illegal. In that act, it joined only a few other countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands.

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2022-04-12

Parents in UK Removing Children From Lessons About Islam

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/29

According to the Church of England (CofE), “many” parents are electing to remove their children from religious education classes to reduce exposure to Islam and Islamic teachings in the lessons.

It is asserted by some that this is to protect the children from learning about any other faith outside of Christianity, while for others it is simply to avoid their children having exposure to Islamic teachings in particular.

They pointed towards far-right political groups and some minority faith sects as activists who are trying to ‘exploit’ the legal right of parents to withdraw their children from school religious education.

CofE leaders called for the right of withdrawal to be repealed and for RE to become a compulsory part of school timetables to encourage pupils to learn to live with others from different backgrounds.

This is against a background of intense arguments over the future of Religious Education. The lesson is not currently a mandatory section of the National Curriculum and, along with sex education, is an optional lesson for children to take which their parents have the right to withdraw them from.

Derek Holloway, school inspection chief for the Church of England (C of E), said, “…I am aware that some parents have sought to exploit the right to withdraw children from RE lessons. This is seemingly because they do not want their children exposed to other faiths and world views, in particular Islam.”

Holloway described the need to live well together, and that education should be provided to students from all walks of life. However, “sadly,” he remarks, the allowance of withdrawal from religious education is being exploited through “dubious interpretation of human rights legislation.”

“Parents have a legal right to remove their children from RE under a 1998 education law. The CofE, which has 4,700 schools including 200 secondary schools, aims to promote ‘deep respect for the integrity of other traditions’ in RE.”

Religious education lessons are meant to teach about every religion, rather than just Christianity, even in schools that belong to a religious domination such as Church of England. Schools are required to provide a general background in the beliefs and histories of the major faiths and religions in the world today.

There are no figures on how many parents remove their children from RE classes, although C of E officials suggested the figure is small. The subject is popular at GCSE, with more than 250,000 children taking the exam at 16.

National Secular Society representative, Keith Porteous Wood, said, “If the subject was reformed to be genuinely educational and non-partisan study of religious and non-religious worldviews, the right to withdraw may no longer be necessary. But until such time, the right of withdrawal is required to protect parental rights and freedoms.’

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2022-04-12

Q&A on Atheism, Women’s Rights, and Human Rights with Marie Alena Castle – Session 1

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/29

Marie Alena Castle is the communications director for Atheists for Human Rights. She was raised Roman Catholic, but became an atheist. She has been important to atheism, Minnesota Atheists, The Moral Atheist, National Organization of Women, and wrote Culture Wars: The Threat to Your Family and Your Freedom (2013). She has a lifetime of knowledge and activist experience, which I wanted to explore and crystallise in an educational series. Here are the results.

Scott Jacobsen: You have a lifetime of experience in atheism, women’s rights, and human rights. Of course, you were raised a Catholic, but this changed over the course of life. In fact, you have raised a number of children who became atheists themselves, and have been deeply involved in the issues on the political left around women’s rights and human rights.

To start this series, what has been the major impediment to the progress of women’s rights in the United States over the last 17 years?

Marie Alena Castle: It’s actually at least the last 40 years. In the U.S., control of women is no longer about the right to vote or pursue careers. Those battles have been won. What is left is the religious right’s last stand: women’s right to abortion and the ultimate control over their own bodies. An anti-women legislative agenda began and has been going on ever since the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v Wade decision.

Almost immediately, the U.S. Catholic Bishops established a Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities that reached down to every Catholic parish in the country. The bishops recruited Catholic academics, journalists, and political commentators to disseminate “pro-life” propaganda. They drew in Protestant fundamentalists and provided them with leaders such as Jerry Falwell. They organized to get “pro-life” politicians elected at every political level and eventually took over the Republican party.

I was there and watched it happen. We Democratic feminists worked almost non-stop to prevent a similar takeover of the Democratic party and, thankfully, were successful. The “pro-life” campaign has never stopped. Over a thousand bills have been, and are, proposed at the state and federal level to restrict women’s access to contraceptives and abortion, as well as advantageous reproductive technologies that don’t conform to irrational religious doctrines.

(Stephen Mumford has documented this in full detail in his book, The Life and Death of NSSM 200, which describes how the Catholic Church prevented any action on a Nixon-era national security memorandum that warned of the dangers of overpopulation and advocated the accessibility of contraceptives and abortion.)

Jacobsen: Who do you consider the most important women’s rights and human rights activist in American history?

Castle: No contest. It’s Margaret Sanger, hands down. Many people have spoken out and worked for women’s rights throughout history, not just American history. But Sanger got us birth control. Without that, women remain slaves to nature’s reproductive mandate and can do little beyond producing and raising children.

This is often claimed to be a noble task. True enough. However, it always reminds me of the biblical story of Moses, who had the noble task of leading his people to the Promised Land, but because of some vague offense against Yahweh, he was condemned to see that Promised Land only from afar and never go there himself.

Women have raised children over the ages and have led them to the Promised Land of scientific achievements, Noble Prize Awards, academic honours, and so many others. But they – and their daughters – have seen that Promised Land only from afar and almost never allowed to go their themselves.

Sanger opened a path to that Promised Land by fighting to make contraceptives legal and available. The ability to control the time and circumstances of one’s childbearing has made the fight for women’s rights achievable in practical – not just philosophical – terms. She founded Planned Parenthood and we see how threatening that has been to the theocratic religious right. They can’t seem to pass – or try to pass – enough laws to hinder women’s ability to control their own bodies.

As for human rights in general, a good argument can be made that by freeing women – half of the human population – we free up everyone. As Robert Ingersoll said, “There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a generation of free women.”

Jacobsen: What is one of the more egregious public perceptions of atheists by the mainstream of the religious in America?

Castle: It’s that atheists have no moral compass and therefore cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner. No one ever comes up with any evidence for that. Most people in prison identify themselves as religious. Studies that rank levels of prejudice for racism, sexism, and homophobia show nonbelievers at the lowest end of the graph – generally below 10% – and evangelicals at the very highest – almost off the chart.

I’ve had religious people tell me it is religious beliefs that keep people, including themselves, from committing violent crimes. I tell them I hope they hang onto their beliefs because otherwise they would be a threat to public safety. As physicist Steven Weinberg said, “Good people will do good and evil people will do evil, but for good people to do evil, that takes religion.” I have known good and evil atheists and good and evil religionists, but the only time I have seen a good person do evil, it was due to a religious belief.

I have also observed that liberal religionists generally share the same humanitarian values as most atheists, but to have that moral sense they had to abandon traditional religious beliefs. There is a lot of evil in religious doctrines. The 10 Commandments are almost totally evil. Read them and the descriptions of the penalties that follow. Read the part about what you are to sacrifice to Yahweh – the firstborn of your livestock, your firstborn son… Yup, that’s what it says.

So they include don’t kill, steal or bear false witness. There is nothing new about that. It’s common civic virtue any community needs to function effectively. So religion promises a blissful afterlife. Ever stop to think what that might be like, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever? People believe that!? I so hope they’re wrong.

Jacobsen: Your life speaks to the convergence of atheism, women’s rights, and human rights activism. How do these, in your own mind, weave into a single activist thread? What is the smallest thing American citizens, and youth, can do to become involved in this fabric?

Castle: We all are what we are. I’m an activist because I can’t help myself. It’s who I am. Others would rather hang by their thumbs than do what I do. They like to get out in the yard and do gardening. You couldn’t pay me enough or threaten me enough to get me to do that. We should just try to be honest and compassionate and cut everyone some slack as long as no one is getting hurt. Live and let live.

We are a fragile species, making the best of our short life spans, stuck here on this hunk of rock circling a ball of flaming gas that could eject a solar flare at any time that wipes us out. Life is, as Shakespeare said, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Just accept that. It’s reality. Just be decent and helpful and try not to hurt anyone. If that’s the limit of your activism, it’s still pretty good.

If you think it would be great to be able to do more and to be politically active but that is just not in your DNA, then settle for the next best thing: Find a political activist whose views you agree with and vote the way they tell you. That is the smallest thing you can do. If you did not vote in the last election you made yourself part of the problem and you see what we got. From now on, try to be part of the solution.

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2022-04-12

New Robot Can Ask for Clarification

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/29

The World Economic Forum (WEF) reported on a new technology which is a combination of natural language processing, speech recognition, biometrics, video analytics, neural networks, and other computational processes. The novel algorithm allows robots to ask for clarification if unsure as to the request from a human operator. The algorithm permits robots to receive speech commands and information based on human gesturing. It is one form of information processing and commanding human beings use consistently.

Professor of computer science at Brown University, Stefanie Tellex, said, “Fetching objects is an important task that we want collaborative robots to be able to do…But it’s easy for the robot to make errors, either by misunderstanding what we want, or by being in situations where commands are ambiguous.”

It is non-verbal communication. When given the speech and gestural command, the robot was better at interpretation of the information than either one alone. Of course, computers can run into problems. This is one important reason for this new algorithm to allow computers to be able to understand human commands.

“When we ask someone for an object, we’ll often point to it at the same time. The new research shows that when robots received both speech commands and gestures, they got better at correctly interpreting user commands.” Tellex said.

If the computer is needed to only understand the question or query, and also to get information for the answer appropriately or to act accordingly, it needs to know what is being asked of it. Therefore, the speech and gesture command combination is important for computers now and into the future when given commands by human beings.

Now, the computer does not look to ask a question based on every single uncertainty. It will decipher, calculate, and then ask accordingly in an intelligent manner. The robot had performed so well in one experiment that participants in the study thought that the computer had capabilities that it did not in fact have.

One of the important features of the system is that the robot doesn’t ask questions with every interaction. It asks intelligently. And even though the system asks only a very simple question. The algorithm allows the robot to make inferences based on the answer.

The research was presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Singapore, and received funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and NASA.

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2022-04-12

Open Speculation on Alien Life and the Durability of Religion

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/29

According to The Guardian, it is uncertain as to the origin of life on other planets orbiting other stars. NASA’s current count of exoplanets – planets capable of hosting life as we know it – is at 3,500. Six are thought to be similar candidates to Earth.

With advancements in technology, researchers suspect possible discovery of life similar to Earth’s on an exoplanet. Two decades ago, this was more uncertain because of less advanced technology and fewer candidate exoplanets.

“…contact with intelligent life elsewhere in the universe will present theological and philosophical conundrums that many religions will find deeply challenging. This is especially true for Christianity, which primarily focuses on humankind.”

One core education in Christian theology asserts the creation of humankind by God with the flora and fauna of the Earth, and the Earth itself, made for human beings. Alien life has moved from the scientific into the theological now.

NASA invested $1.1 million into the Center of Theological Inquiry, which is an independent institution devoted to the study of the implications for society based on the research findings from astrobiology.

“The idea of infinite space with the infinite glory of God originated with Nicholas of Cusa, a German philosopher who kept his infinite theology within the Catholic framework. In 2017, such philosophical thoughts have given way to practical science…”

The theological inquiries begin with God’s creation possibly existing outside of Earth’s solar system. Outside of the Solar System, others might exist with life, even intelligent life with civilizations and technology – and religion.

“If so, would the inhabitants of those planets believe in the same gods as humans do? How could the creator of the universe deny the inhabitants of those worlds a chance to redeem their sins? Does that mean that God incarnated as Jesus in those worlds contrary to Bible teachings that say that the redemption in Christ was a unique event meant for humans on Earth?”

“Exotheology” could become a thing; “theological issues as related to extraterrestrial intelligence.” Religious institutions, The Guardian claims, have been durable with new paradigm shifts.

The scriptures become reinterpreted to suit the times. “There is also, quite simply, something special about religion that resonates with humans on a fundamental level.”

“For traditional religions and religious institutions, the desire to expand their material wealth and power has often take precedence over the spreading of theological doctrines.” The Earth and humankind have been exploited by it.

The Guardian author speculates that the Copernican or Darwinian revolutions did not overturn the established religious institutions – outside of ideas and some basic views – “in a significant way.”

“The triumph of these institutions is analogous to the audacity of organisms when facing challenges in nature. Religious institutions possess impressive survival skills, greater than individual human abilities.”

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2022-04-12

Q&A on Life in London with Pamela Machado

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/29

Pamela Machado is a contributor to Conatus News, and a journalist based in London, UK. She took some time to sit down and talk about life in London. Here are her thoughts.

Scott Jacobsen: You went on a bold trip to London for a young person. The story needs some background, which we have discussed and will explore in this Q&A. The ups and downs, the pluses and minuses, and the personal triumphs and tribulations with life in London. To begin, when did London seem like the more desirable place for you?

Pamela Machado: Like many of the people here, I used to see London as the capital of the world, as the most exciting place to be. Being an eighteen-year-old in a small town in Southern Brazil, I had desires which couldn’t be fulfilled at home. I wanted passionately to become a journalist and travel and London seemed the place to be when you want these things.

SJ: London is a desirable place. It has an appeal as a global hub for culture and innovation, especially youth culture and education. How did you come to the conclusion at 18 to leave to London? Was this an instant choice or a slow, incremental development?

PM: Leaving to London was the final result of various moments of dissatisfaction I had back home. It felt the right moment to come here because I didn’t have much to lose.

SJ: Travel is an exciting prospect, but the stress and anxiety resulting from new travels into a new place can be both exhilarating and crippling, it’s fun to see and do new things, but it’s nice to have family and friends from the previous life to bolster and encourage the new life.

PM: For a good part of my time here I lived with the excitement. I was excited about all the different things and people I am surrounded by. It felt as if I could never get bored or get disappointed because it would always be a new place, a new person. Probably around after the first year, a new feeling started to grow. I suddenly came to realise that I was getting used to life in London and London felt as much as any other place. The normal frustrations of life hit me, along with longing from home. Coping with the high cost of life, working on pubs and cafes on weekends, leaving with strangers… all that add up to my starting to feel overwhelmed.

SJ: It must be stressful without someone to reach out to, being away from home without too many contacts, especially being an introvert. Also, how tenuous can friendships in London be? Is there fast turnover of friendships? Are there lasting relationships more often than not?

PM: As a foreigner in London, most of my interpersonal relationships are with other foreigners. It is just as enriching as it is fragile. I don’t have any official numbers here, but most foreigners leave London at some point. They go back to their home country or go somewhere else, in many cases because they are tired of life in the city. Most of the friends I made are not here anymore. We eventually keep in touch but it is not the same. A true, lasting friendship takes years to be built.

SJ: There is an “it.” It comes and goes when in a new place and feeling as if without bearings. Have you found out what “it” is?

PM: I discovered it is important to keep things under perspective, always remember myself how much I have conquered and grown by being here. However, for most of the time, I find myself stuck in a mental spin, lost in the thought of things I need to do. People walking around London are usually so busy, rushing somewhere and it is contagious. Anxiety can be a really big problem over here and it definitely is to me. Competition is tough and the pressure one puts on oneself to succeed in London can be insane. No wonder London is the city with the highest mental illness rate in the UK.

SJ: A not common, but more frequent, phenomenon of women outpacing male peers in education and work, then hitting 25-35 and thinking, “Uh oh, what will I do from 40-80?” For many, not all, people, it becomes family – possibly children – and friends rather than work and hobbies. It can be a tough dynamic, which, reproductively and professionally speaking, can make women’s lives more complicated and difficult than men.

PM: I understand your point and even though I haven’t figured out exactly what I want for my later life, I do appreciate the presence of friends and family in life. Relationships and work life shouldn’t oppose each other – like happens in many cases, unfortunately. They should act together. A professional achievement has a lot more sense when it is shared with the ones will love. Coming from a tiring day of work to an empty home is not exactly a happy goal but it is what happens to many.

SJ: Only question that comes to mind for me that I feel as though you would want an answer to is, “What now?” So, what now?

PM: As someone from a small town in the south of Brazil, and as an eighteen-year-old, I wanted to travel and be part of a world that was unknown to me. I came here, left my family, my friends, university and came here. I wanted to study Journalism – which I’m now doing, I wanted to be here and grow but somehow it is not as good as I thought it would be – like everything in life, I guess?

There is a saying in London that you become a true Londoner after four years in the city. Well, more than four years later, I am still here and one could say I am doing pretty well in life. Yet, I did not achieve the fulfillment I expected I would get when I hopped on that plane. The ultimate question is; how can I feel fulfilled?

I mean, doing a general balance, I’m happy. I don’t regret any of my decisions. But this journey led me to value my roots and my people in a more meaningful way, and eventually open my mind to different possibilities.

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2022-04-12

Islamist Pleads Guilty to Planned Bomb Attacks in London

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/28

19-year-old named Haroon Syed from Hounslow, west London, has pleaded guilty to the charge of making homemade bombs and to the plot to use them.

Syed researched the possible bombing of an Elton John concert or Buckingham Palace. He was at the Old Bailey when “researching, planning and attempting to source” the necessary tools for the bomb.

He attempted to acquire the weapons materials online. Then he looked for busy areas online. The intent was to inflict a “mass casualty attack” on the public in the area. He talked online with British Security Service officers.

The officers posed as extremists to help with the sourcing of the weapons. He pleaded guilty to a plot running from April to September 2016 to get materials for a bomb to stage attacks. The judge, Michael Topolski, stressed Syed this was “a grave offence, and he would consider if a life sentence was merited.”

The young man’s brother, Nadir, who is 24, was convicted and jailed for life based on the plotted beheading of a poppy-seller or police community support officer on Remembrance Sunday. The Elton John concert was on the 9/11 anniversary, when planes were flown into the Twin Towers in New York.

At a previous hearing, the court heard how key evidence was gathered from Syed’s communications with the fake contact, Abu Yusuf, via mobile phone and social media. Syed asked for ‘gear’ for his ‘opp’ and when asked to give details, he said he needed a machine gun and an explosive vest.

A police officer pretended to be Abu Yusuf when Syed and him met at the Costa Coffee in Slough. The conversation was taped. “Throughout August, the discussions continued about making or getting a bomb and acquiring a gun, even though Syed confessed he had never used one before.

Syed was looking for a portable device, saying, “I might put the bomb in the train and then I’m going to jump out so the bomb explodes on the train… So ask the brother if he can make that type of bomb with button.”

He had done extensive research into locations, prior terrorist incidents, and the Islamic State. On September 8, the police moved in, seized Syed’s phone, and acquired the password for the phone from him. Syed was arrested in September 2016 and when detained by officers said ‘alright’. He told an undercover officer of his desire to get bomb-making material and was inspired by Isis.

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The Anglican Faith

On Science and Philosophy

On Science and Religion

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The truth on sustainability bears repetition.

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Tell us about yourself – family background, personal story, education, and previous professional capacities.

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