loquacious

The Brain Science Dot: hidden forces in human thinking

I'm not quite sure what to call this dot, nor really sure what it means, yet.  But I think it does fit somewhere into the world of the major dots I'm trying to connect, under the assumption that there are some key interacting forces in our culture (and maybe the world) that are driving current affairs and might provide some kind of hints as to what direction things are headed in, or conflicts that may await us.

If I'm moving toward something here, it's that we're not really all that much in control of ourselves and our perceptions of the world. According to many books I've been reading, there are unseen battles going on in our heads, which we are largely unaware of. These battles impact our ability to think and the actions we take.  Without doubt, these have always been around, and as a believer in evolution, they no doubt at one time served an important evolutionary purpose (or at least they did not have an evolutionary downside). I think what I'm starting to wonder is if there now might be some serious downsides to how our brains work, given the world we now live in.

Just a few thoughts here, I'm sure it's not all adding up to anything yet (damn my brain...maybe it's purposely trying to thwart me?).

• Randomness: our brains are hardwired to see patterns and meaning where there is none. Randomness may actually be threatening to our brains, so we actively ignore it, causing us to misinterpret the world.
• Evil is Easy to Get Used To: based on Zimbardo's book, The Lucifer Effect, shows how easily it is we can accept 'evil' things that would otherwise shock us, based largely on whether we think that authorities have approved such actions. Calls into doubt whether any of us have any real moral compass of our own, when other pressures come into play.
• More than One Brain: it's not even clear that we're in charge of our own brains. They make up some of their own shit part of the time. Our brains are particularly bad at managing times when they are receiving contradictory information.
• We can't trust our own Perceptions: and finally, even the inputs we think we are getting are not very trustworthy. Of what does get in, the brain is editing and/or filling in the missing parts, sometimes to disasterous results. 
• We're completely unaware of our biases: check out this great website, which can tell you more about your unconscious biases than you really ever wanted to know. They are beyond our control. How can we be just if we are unaware of the reasons for the judgments we make?
• Lakoff has written extensively about the (invisible to most of us) frames that guide our lives, opinions and decisions.

So, are we in control of ourselves? Can we shape our own futures -- and especially, can we change our perceptions/how we are?  I think it's the idea that all of this is invisible to us, that we're unaware of it, that I find so interesting. It makes working logically through problems much more difficult if there are forces at play that logic has no bearing on.

When I was working as an artist, I was always most fascinated with unsurfacing ideas or notions that lay beneath the surface of the human psyche, to get people to be willing to question ideas or assumptions which they found so apparently obvious that they had never thought to question them. I guess that interest continues still.

Fundamentalism Dot [The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism]

Karen Armstrong
2000
370 pp.

I haven't been blogging the books I've been reading lately (wow, for a year and a half!), but this one, The Battle for God, intersects with so many other books I've read, I had to put some notes down on paper screen.

The Battle for God, briefly, is the story of fundamentalist movements of the major monotheisms -- Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Her thesis, which I will not do justice to here, is that fundamentalism arose as a reaction to the Enlightenment. She traces the history since then (as well as events leading up to the Enlightenment) with a special concentration on the emergence of fundamentalism as a political force in the 20th century. Basically, she argues that for the first 1000 years of all these religions, no one would have dreamed to try and take the holy books literally. That ancient people's knew the difference between mythos (metaphor) and logos (reason/science), and that they were comfortable using them side by side. Only as reason came to dominate life in Europe did some religious believers start to confuse mythos and logos. She follows how that has played out over the centuries, eventually getting us to where we are in terms of Christian fundamentalists in the US, religious Zionists in Israel, and the Muslim jihadists seen in some Arab countries.

One of my long-term projects, and a major reason for this blog, is to try and connect the dots out there. There are a lot of complex, interacting forces at play in the world, which makes it very difficult to understand the reasons why things are as they are, and why things play out the way they do. I keep thinking there must be a way to isolate and define a few key drivers. Hence, the dots. I think that fundamentalism, as explained by Armstrong, probably ranks as one of the dots. [Other dots covered so far are Globalization and Framing/Linguistics. A dot that I still need to work on is Masculinity, mainly based on Susan Faludi's brilliant book Stiffed.]

The rise of fundamentalism pretty neatly fits into these other cultural happenings. Fundamentalism and Globalization are deeply intertwined, and by globalization in this case I mean exploration/colonization that started hundreds of years ago. Presumably, fundamentalism wouldn't be the force it is if Europeans hadn't both come to the Americas as well as done the Crusades, as well as economically controlled/colonized the Middle East in the 20th Century. The kind of literalist backlash that is fundamentalism is of course exactly what Lakoff is describing in Don't Think of an Elephant . . . a kind of thinking that some find basically impossible to understand. Armstrong's book goes a long way to explaining the (religiously) conservative mind set: it's a fundamental focus on the past as the best possible time, which therefore needs to be recreated. Liberal thinkers (or Enlightenment-thinkers/believers in science/technology) focus on the best times being ahead in the future. If you are focused on recreating the past, of course more change is bad... especially unknown change.

As Armstrong explains it, fundamentalism is basically a by-product of the speedy progress that started happening with the Enlightenment. It might have been inevitable, but it was definitely hastened (and deepened?) by people feeling very threatened by the new world that was envisioned by the elite few at the time that could see the power of science. Basically, science did a really bad job of bringing people along, and we're still feeling the backlash. [Also explained much more eloquently than I have here.]

Armstrong doesn't write about this, but of course it's pretty much all men both pushing the enlightenment side, as well as leading the reactionary fundamentalist side. I haven't really thought through the why of this -- there could be many causal or non-causal relationships in there -- I'm just saying. There's some kind of drive for power/control that's very male... or maybe as Faludi would put it, there's some male reaction to loss of power/control that's very dangerous for our society.

Anyway, I think the book goes a long ways to explaining why things are as screwed up today as they are. Why there are fundamental splits within societies (ie. 50/50 split elections) as well as between societies (US hegemony vs. Muslim self-rule, for eg). Why people 'vote against their own interests' (they aren't!). How it is that the balance of power can be held by a small, radical few in the world we've built.

Globalization Dot: Reading List

Two years ago i was part of a great book group that read only books on Globalization for a year. Since Globalization is definitely one of the dots I'm trying to connect, I might was well start with the list of books we read on the topic (and a few I read before).

• World on Fire. Amy Chua
• Globalization and Its Discontents. Joseph Stiglitz
• The Future of Freedom. Fareed Zakaria
• Empire. Niall Ferguson
• The Poisonwood Bible. Barbara Kingsolver [or you could read King Leopold's Ghost if you prefer non-fiction. Things Fall Apart would be another great fiction book to add to this list.]
• The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Thomas Friedman (dull, I'd skip it)
• Life and Debt (film)
• Tropical Gangsters. Robert Klitgaard.
• Guns, Germs and Steel. Jared Diamond
• Jihad vs. McWorld. Benjamin Barber

See also Memoirs of an Economic Hitman, which I read much more recently.

Of these, I think that Guns, Germs and Steel and Chua's World on Fire might be the books that impacted me the most.  I'll blog later about GG&S, but let it suffice to say that it provides an excellent overview about how we got to where we are today -- namely, a globe where certain peoples have managed to suck up all the resources and are thus disproportionately able to control the circulation of global capital. I really can't recommend it highly enough as a sort of baseline reading to coming to understand the current state of globalization (the other thing you should be sure to get in is a strong book on colonialism).

But for today's globalization environment, World On Fire is hands down the single best book at fairly quickly describing the current state of globalization on a number of different fronts: economic, political, and cultural. Almost all the other books we read covered one of these areas (or one sub-portion, or period, of these areas). What Chua does so effectively is to call attention to the intersection of the simultaneous rapid democratization and rapid expansion of capitalism/free markets that is the hallmark of current globalization. She looks closely at a number of countries where this is occuring, and tries to draw attention to where gloablization seems to be working, and where it does not. Her compelling thesis is that in countries where a minority sub-population group holds a decisive economic position over the majority ethnic population, mixing together rapid democratization and free markets is a recipe for social unrest (and economic failure). Her list of examples is convincing: Rwanda, Indonesia, West Africa. I'm not doing the book justice here, but I have to say that I still haven't seen someone bring together these threads in as compelling a way as Chua does.

If you find the economics part of all this intimidating, try watching the film Life and Debt. It lays out the way that western countries (through the IMF and World Bank) effectively and unfairly control the economies of smaller developing countires in ways that seek to create a permanent economic servitude (at the expense of educational, health and other social services).

Africa Reading List:
Some time previously, I set out to read up on Africa, a place I came to realize I knew little about, had never been taught about, and seldom read of in the news.  Reading up on Africa is pretty useful for understanding globalization.

• Things Fall Apart. Achebe.
• King Leopold's Ghost. Adam Hochschild. 1999.
• The Shadow of the Sun. Ryszard Kapusscinski. 2001.
• Tropical Gangsters. Robert Klitgaard. 1990.

I have never been to Africa (well, except for a day in Morocco, which I don't think counts). However, the above 4 books, when combined with a basic political history of the continent (pick any) and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel I think start to give a pretty interesting overview of the pre-colonial to post-colonial (globalization) period. Africa is not a culturally monolithical place at all, so these books definitely can't even start to describe such a diverse set of peoples, but they do add up to a meaningful start at understanding the West's, ahem, acquisition and subsequent deacquisition and continuing exploitation of the continent, and the mess that has been made of things.

Challenges and Inequities

I was recently asked to comment on what I thought the US's top challenges and inequities were. Here are my quick notes on that... this is really only a partial list, but interesting what came to my mind first...

Would be interested to hear what others think belong at the top of these lists...

Challenges:

U.S. losing global competitiveness: children in the US are not matching the academic advances of their international counterparts. Our education program is working on this, but  I think that schools are only part of the solution. My personal feeling is that there is a co-occuring crisis of creativity in the US. The US built it's economy based on creative people. However, we've greatly reduced the creative outlets and opportunities for youth. Public dollars are completely gone here.

Adult job-skills/re-education: it doesn't seem like anyone has cracked the nut on re-educating adults to have different (better?) careers. Once you are out of the school system, there is no help for people to improve their chances.  Almost no-one works on adult basic ed/literacy.  Entire careers are disappearing (natural resource extraction) or are moving to where labor is cheaper (manufacturing, call centers, software development). Once you are behind, you can never catch up.

Growing culture of violence. We live in the most violent country on earth. As a specific example:
Child abuse and neglect. This is a growing epidemic. "epidemic" is a good word, since rigorous studies have show long term negative physical health outcomes, as well as the expected social and mental health deficits. Child abuse is also cyclical - those abused are more likely to abuse others. This leads to a potential geometric growth pattern. [but also could lead to a geometric pattern of decrease if something is done about it]

A failure to understand globalization and what it means for this country. There is great danger in a populace that does not understand the ramifications of globalization. It can result in misdirected anger and resentment; it can lead to aggressive and unhelpful foreign policy positions.

A culture of fear and a return to fundamentalism (speaking broadly, not just religiously [see for example, Carter]). These are coping strategies for people who feel like they lack control over their environment/lives.

Population mobility / lack of community: people move rapidly. Families get separated, so supports are not immediately available in a crisis. More people are spending time in doors. Children are not allowed to play outside. Neighbors no longer see a role for themselves in each others' lives.  Lack of support leads to stressed out adults, which leads to abuse, neglect, poor health, depression, loss of work, etc.  People living in more and more homogenous communities may be leading to a less tolerant and accepting population, leading to prejudice and bigotry.

No youth 'system' looking out for children/youth: especially for those kids who are struggling, there is no thoughtful, coordinated system to help them. Some of the systems we have probably actually hurt some kids. Resources are being wasted on ineffective solutions, and lost due to duplication of efforts or contradictory efforts by different systems players.  Youth are VERY EASILY 'lost between the cracks' - and it is pretty much no one's job to even notice that they've fallen in the crack, much less try to proactively help them out.  (there is also specific opportunity for reform inside the systems - child welfare, juv justice, education, substance abuse, etc)

Non-sustainable resource consumption. The US disproportionately consumes resources and contaminates global resources. If 'development' means that other countries consume as much as the US, the world is doomed (See Jared Diamond's Collapse). The US will have to manage it's resources better in the future (and preferably without destroying the environment).

Inequities:
[in random order]
1. access to quality health care (including mental health care)
2. access to quality educational opportunities
3. low-income children's access to caring adults / positive, attentive role models  (the wealthy can basically pay people to pay attention to their kids)
4. access to hope (a positive vision of the future)
5. economic opportunity/access to capital

Some reasons behind the inequities:

Race-based inequities (sometimes conjoined with class, sometimes not). These are still huge in this country. Examples are disproportional minority confiment (juvenile and adult) and family asset size (the average white family has 20x the assets as the average african american family; lack of assets makes expensive emergencies...eg health problems, car repair, etc. ... catastrophic to family well-being). I believe there are race-based health disparities as well, althogh I'm less familiar with those. Education disparities of course as well.

Cycle of Poverty/intergenerational transfer of poverty: some families seem to get caught in a cycle of long term poverty. We did an analysis in Libraries many years about about communities with persistent poverty in the US. These are places with over 30% (?) of poeople in poverty over 4 consecutive decades. They are primarily rural. The issues of community development here are complex, but solveable with a long-term approach. A great book on this is called Worlds Apart.

Expensive urban environments: People working at minimum (and sometimes median) wage can not afford to live in the cities and communities in which they work.

Debt: we've encouraged many to take on significant debt. This limits future opportunities and access to capital/credit, and perpetuates poverty.

The Inflexible Worldview Dot [George Lakoff: Don't Think of an Elephant}

Lakoff's book is definitely one of the nodes on the "Connect the Dots" network, so I guess I should write something about it.

Lakoff's slim book is easily read and grasped. I'm not going to do it justice here, but for my immediate purposes, two of his major assertions are of interest in the network of inter-related ideas I'm trying to grow:

1. People perceive the world in 'frames'. These are somewhat like a world-view. They are ways of seeing the world that individuals construct over the course of their lives. By the time they are adults, they may be 'locked into' these frames. Because their frames can be so powerful, facts which contradict their frames can be ignored. That is to say, normal rational processes become less important than preserving the frame. The frame trumps the facts. Facts and opinions that contradict the frame/worldview just bounce off.

2. Lakoff posits that in America there are two predominant frames, both built around the family as a basic unit, but which Americans also extrapolate and apply to our social structure. The first frame is one with the strict father (or 'mean daddy' as I like to call it - think George Bush Sr., James Dobson, Margaret Thatcher, Bob Dole). In this worldview, the father guides the children with a strong hand. He punishes when necessary. It's all for the good of the child, because discipline will lead to success. Being a good person is equated with success (especially $$ success).  The other frame is the nurturant parent (think Bill Clinton, Oprah, Jimmy Carter). The nurturant parent provides encouragement and support to the child, but allows them to make their own choices.

While I'm not sure that I quite agree that these are the central warring frames in our society, it is an interesting framework to consider. Particularly interesting is how Lakoff uses the strict father frame to explain everything extreme conservatives believe in, from tax policy to foreign policy to social policy.  I'm  a sucker for a unified theory that explains things, and Lakoff seems to be well on his way.

I think that Carter's book, and a great book by Susan Faludi called Stiffed really add to the discussion of Lakoff/DTOAE. Carter really lays out in more detail the notion of how fundamentalist religious beliefs are interbreeding with fundamentalist political beliefs (a kind of political "literalism" that supports the strict father model).   Faludi's book is all about the late 20th century crisis of masculinity. Faludi's book is quite complex and ranges far, but some of her more interesting reflections are about how changes in the workplace have de-masculinized men, leaving them needing other outlets for their historical masculine identity urges. Think Promise Keepers, growth in NRA membership, anti-gay hysteria, and pre-emptive war as a policy.  Think the security state and rampant fear as a convenient excuse for the re-introduction of 'traditional' male behaviors and the return of the strict father family model, where everyone but the guy in power is just supposed to shut up and follow the rules.

[added Sept 08] Maybe Lakoff's work, rather than being it's own 'dot', is more of an intersection of several other dots:  fundamentalism, masculinity, and less than flexible brains. This last group refers to the growing scientific evidence that humans seem to have many built-in biological restrictions that screw with their ability to accurately understand the world, especially when it comes to reinterpreting previously established 'facts' ... plus much much more.

The Dots? What Dots?

"Connect the Dots" is what I'm calling this thread of thoughts.

I'm noting that as I get older, I know more and more interesting little tidbits of information, have more theories, and think I know the answers to more questions. These are 'the dots.' 

What's much harder is to make sense of all these dots. To pull them all together into one larger piece of sense. These are the missing connections that would help me to make sense of the world.

I thought it was time that I started to write these down, as they occurred to me (or partially occurred to me, at least). Maybe a blog is the place where I can start connecting the ideas from books, inexplicable current events, and my favorite past time: wondering why it is so many people seem to have a worldview so extremely different from mine.

I keep thinking that this is all explainable somehow....if I could only think hard enough, clarify my half-baked theories about how things work, catalog the brilliant books that start to suggest explanations for broad patterns of human behavior.  As I've often joked, it's all leading up to Ken's Unified Theory of Everything.

We'll see.

UPDATE:
There are some preliminary 'nodes' on the Connect the Dots network forming. So far, we have these:

• Globalization Dot: how we understand today's world and how it operates
• "Framing" Dot (ala Lakoff): why Americans think and act the (contradictory?) way they do