Why do such things happen?

By Gary Berg-Cross

An NBC headline reads, “Massacre leaves America shocked and grieving ... again.”

Further below House Speaker John Boehner is quoted appealing to Americans to come together to seek solace.  How?   

“In religion….The horror of this day seems so unbearable, but we will lock arms and unite as citizens, for that is how Americans rise above unspeakable evil. Let us all come together in God's grace to pray for the families of the victims, that they may find some comfort and peace amid such suffering,” 

Psychological studies ( see Chris Mooney's reporting On The Republican Brain and Understanding Confirmatory Bias and Dead End Arguments) of Conservative Republicans,  like  Boehner, tells us that they tend to ignore evidence contrary to their initial position, and they tend to reinforce their previous commitments.  And they value group unity. .As a result.they are quick to close on an issue without studying all sides of it  So Boehner was probably more comfortable talking about some vague notion of evil and the comfort of prayer that fit his group thinking than of taking on the very American, National Rifle Association to give us more security from guns.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell had similar words of some narrow idea of unity with a look towards more peaceful days:

“I invite everyone to lift their hearts in prayer for the victims and their families and to unite around the hope that there will soon come a day when parents no longer fear this kind of violence in our nation again,”

And such appeals to come together in ritual are understandable, although some of us would rather it not be around an assumed religious ideas of prayer and evil.Critical thinking using science based evidence is probably a better way to go in the long run.

Religion isn’t unique in providing comfort, which is easier if we accept the irrational in our thinking and in the world, but it is convenient security blanket and indeed there is some thinking that this is one of the main reasons for Religion:

According to the security blanket concept of religion, supernatural belief systems provide peace of mind and help believers to cope with the more stressful events in their lives. This is a valuable service because chronic stress increases blood pressure leading to heart disease, clinical depression, and contributing to a number of other health problems ranging from obesity to cancers.

OK, so maybe it  provides an easy comfort for people. It has a simple explanation for everything even for people who ask, “Why do such things happen?” It’s part of God’s plan…don’t ask more, it’s beyond us. Broad appeals to prayer and religion provide comfort rather than answers to such things. And we prefer real attempts at understanding rather than religion driven thinking. According to the Huffington Post, Republican Mike Huckabee said the crime should be no surprise because we have "systematically removed God" from public schools.
In his own words, delivered on Fox News:

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

Yuk and hogwash! Systematically eliminating open inquiry and humanist values, lack of support for counseling, addressing the causes of poverty, stress and mental illnsess and  the like are all things discuss as an alternative criticism.

Some of us want more than that type of blaming or that God is punishing us or, "God has a plan,"  That’s a more difficult take on reality which quickly leads into more divisive topics of policy, politics and interest groups. And we need more understanding to yield us answers that will work. We might prefer the role of secular counselors and Psychologists to handle grief and real problem solvers with political skills and wisdom to deal with the issues.

Image Credits

Brad on religion: http://cafewitteveen.wordpress.com/tag/pope/

Leading the children to safety: http://perezhilton.com/tag/sandy_hook_elementary

Evolutionary Psychology of religion:http://www.fairobserver.com/article/evolutionary-psychology-religion-part-1

Animated, American Dreams of Summer

It’s the start of the summer movie season, which offers some relief from reality and more celebration of cinematic American Exceptionalism. With the help of computer generated imagery (CGI) an Americanized Thor is already smiting evil giants. Many are salivating for the unreal, computer enhanced world of movies like Kung Fu Panda 2, Captain America, X-Men: First Class, Transformer: Dark of the Moon and Green Lantern. All potential blockbusters. I’m a childhood fan of the Green Lantern, so it will be fun to leave the world of real problems behind and see the emerald crusader deal justice to powerful CGI-created aliens with my grandsons. The image of a huge green hand swatting evil characters is compelling. And I like the combined message of achievement and serving Justice even if the violence used is a bit too up front compared to say Toy Story. Maybe it's all a comfortable distraction, but the smooth effects that technology-enabled effects allow, stand in contrast to our mired situation in the real world. One thought is, if we can do this why can't we solve REAL problems.

As American summers fill our screen with neat, crisp, wham-bang solutions reality, as in unemployment, rising oil prices and declining home values for many Americans, has no immediate good ending. Real, down-to-earth problems haunt lives back here on the non-animated earth. As many have noted, the Great Recession that started in 2007 continues to echo the unemployment and dim prospects of the Great Depression. One non-obvious comparison is the attraction of youth into the military since times of high unemployment and expensive education make this a more attractive option. But another phenomena is the success of movies. The 1930s weren’t necessarily boom times for all Hollywood dream factories, but there was a serious effort to put out comforting messages. These took many forms and were sometimes a mix of breadlines and champagne - see In Hard Times, the Hoi Polloi Stay in the Picture.

Champagne-style included the Shirley Temple and Fred Astaire musicals, and light, “screwball” comedies (and Marx Brothers) but also King Kong and SF features as harsh economics drove more people to seek cinematic escape. A movie like My Man Godfrey (1936) presents a common man embodying rare common sense in contrast to the foolishness of "privileged" society. These are portrayed as both insularly out of touch with reality, but also unprincipled. There were more critical perspectives offered in more breadline style movies such as Sullivan Travels, Our Daily Bread, and American Madness.

Perhaps we’ll see their like, but for this summer technology-enabled animations are in the forefront of advertizing. There are now TV, computer games and the social web to comfort and distract. Still Hollywood produces Blockbusters of the American Exceptional sort. They promise to be great distracting comfits. Their appeal is perhaps a bit of the idea of American Exceptionalism that I covered in a previous post. They feed into concepts we want to be proud of. They also give use a sense of doing things or knowing how to do things without really doing things in a way that can be done this side of CGI. And going along with it they are often implicitly militant. I don’t mean militant in the sense used in the phrase "militant atheist". There the term is used to describe an atheist who stands up for his/her values and is bold enough to, as David Niose says, “openly question religious authority or vocally express his or her views about the existence of God,” http://www.psychologytoday.com/em/55708. I’d be happy to see a movie, animated or CGI heavy or not which included such values. It's not even the celebration of Veterans we see on Memorial Day.  No, the militancy I see is the one that take a stance that we are in a continual war with “evil” and that our physical-technical might is key to overcoming it. It's the the continuing hold that violence has on the human psyche, especially when its real consequences are abstracted away. Movies help create a cultural slippery slope celebrating combat and its militant values. As Chris Hedges says, "The communal march against an enemy generates a warm, unfamiliar bond with our neighbors, our community, our nation, wiping out unsettling undercurrents of alienation and dislocation."