The Humanist Part of the Techno Dissent Discussion

by Gary Berg-Cross

I do like the term and think of myself as a humanist -  secular humanist. And in the Washington Post recent series on Tech Doubters kicked off by Joel Achenbach's THE RESISTANCE. I see that there may be an opportunity to get the humanist position, even the progressive, nature centered and deliberately rational, progressive secular view into the conversation.  At least this can be in regard to the human-technical interaction in society.

The article kicks off the issues thus way identifying people uncomfortable with how the internet and associated technology is influencing modern life.

"They are the digital dissenters.

They see tech companies tracking our every move.

They want to go back to the basics – to a world where the interests of

humans come before robots, algorithms and the needs of Silicon Valley.

 Meet the people on “Team Human."n.” █ 

From a distance I don't much object to this stance.  I don't like the invasion of privacy with companies (or governments) tracking our behavior etc. And I share the view of human values being central.  It is just that I also appreciate science and technology and perhaps want more thought to go into its use. Some of the critics do too and Achenbach starts introducing them like this:

"Techno-skeptics, or whatever you want to call them — “humanists” may be the best term — sense that human needs are getting lost in the tech frenzy, that the priorities have been turned upside down. They sense that there’s too much focus on making sure that new innovations will be good for the machines.

'I’m on Team Human!' author Douglas Rushkoff will say at the conclusion of a talk."

Well again, I agree with part of these critiques including the judgment that parts of our digital age has nightmare elements run by digital "robber barons" who mine data our personal info for profit. So it is not paranoid, that one of the tech skeptics, political activist Astra Taylor keeps duct tape over the camera lens on her laptop computer. Someone might be listening.

There are many people who have this view:

"You could fill a college syllabus with books espousing some kind of technological resistance. Start the class with “You Are Not a Gadget” (Jaron Lanier), move on to “The Internet Is Not the Answer” (Andrew Keen), and then, to scare the students silly, “Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era” (James Barrat)."

Also cited is Pope Francis' recent encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home” which "contemplates the mixed blessings of technology." He acknowledges the marvels of modern technology such as the beauty of an aircraft or a skyscraper), but warns of potential dangers,unless technological development isn't been matched by "development in human values and conscience." There might be a spiritual ting to Francis' values though.

I might a bit more uncomfortable with the broad brush labeling of techno-skeptics as humanists. There are some qualifications to make along the way.  

I would agree with the point that humanism, and in particular a secular humanist position has potential here. There is something lost in blindly designing things for machine culture in an arms race, first to the market, winner take all style that we have. I would feel some affinity to both ‘believe’ in humanism and trust (well hope) in a fair view of technical innovation;which includes that humans find some meaning in through work (Jörns, 1997). As the article notes we currently have a problem here:

 “The economy accepts every advance in technology with a view to profit, without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings."

Yes, and humanist values could be the basis of doing this in a human friendly way.  The humanist movement, has what Roy Speckhardt calls a forward-thinking outlook with an emphasis on critical thinking and self-reflection. It also has a naturalist outlook which wouldn't want an intrusion of spiritual values into this conversation. So that type of humanism is what we want now.  It is more sophisticated than a human vs. computer labeled wrestling match. Secularism, understood as the dominance of naturalistic and scientific thought over supernatural explanations of reality, was seen as the future for America and might be seen in light of techno skepticism a solution again. What come along with a "progressive secularism" view is a belief-stance that human beings are alone in the world and must act responsibly by forming their ethics solely from their human experience, human reason and science (source Is Reality Secular?: Testing the Assumptions of Four Global Worldviews.)

To me then is not an either machines/computers or us issue (human reason & science apply), although I can understand dissent in the face of an un-thought through tech "advance" imposed by a morals-free system.  Few of us want to be slippery sloped or bludgeoned into accepting an unacceptable future. The problem is as much a slow versus fast thinking for-profit style. In a deliberate manner we may be able to answer how humans and smart, communicating systems can usefully interact and profit all human life not just the masters.

It seems to me it also the values of a shallow capitalist culture (the robber baron image again) allowing tech use for company profit.  It is the old fire is good or bad depending on how you balance its use within a cultural system. We need reflection to do this.

Paul Kurtz in Quote- Part 1

By Gary Berg-Cross

The thoughts of Paul Kurtz, one of America’s leading humanists, will be the topic of the Sept. 8^th 2012 WASH MDC-organized panel. As a preparation for this I thought it interesting to provide some Kurtz quotes. These reflect some of the many subjects Kurtz has commented on over a long career. As the author of several version of the “Humanist Manifesto, including the recent Neo-Humanist statement, he’s earned the title of a modern” father of secular humanism.” As a member of the American Humanist Association, and a long-time editor of its magazine, The Humanist, he contributed to the writing of Humanist Manifesto II in 1973, which was an update on the original which his mentor John Dewey co-authored. He served as editor-in-Chief of Free Inquiry and Chairman of the Council for Secular Humanism.

Below are some quotes from these and other sources.

Free Inquiry & Tolerance

"Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom." 

"Free inquiry requires that we tolerate diversity of opinion and that we respect the right of individuals to express their beliefs, however unpopular they may be, without social or legal prohibition or fear of success."

Strategy and Criticism of Religion

I am not suggesting that we should not critically examine religious claims, especially where they are patently false, injurious, and destructive. The secular world constantly needs to be defended against those who would undermine it, and we need to responsibly examine the transcendental and moral claims of supernaturalism and criticize its pretensions—especially when they impinge on personal freedoms. (from Free Inquiry May 2004)

Freedom from Religion

A key point to recognize is that one does not have to be an atheist or agnostic in order to defend the separation principle. In the United States, most Protestant denominations defend separation, as do secular Jews, liberal Roman Catholics, Unitarians, and members of other denominations. Secular humanists have many allies in this great battle. Indeed, both liberals and conservatives, believers and unbelievers, have stood firmly in support of the First Amendment. (from Free Inquiry May 2004)

Humanism and Liberation of the Human Mind

“If God is dead. Humanism is alive.”

Most humans feel the transcendent temptation, the emotional drive to festoon the universe with large-scale meaning.

“There is a broader task that all those who believe in democratic secular humanist values will recognize, namely, the need to embark upon a long-term program of public education and enlightenment concerning the relevance of the secular outlook to the human condition.” 

from  the   Humanist Declaration

Humanism and "Secular Humanism

Secularism needs to be adapted to diverse cultural conditions if it is to gain ground. I submit that we cannot legislate secularism uberhaupt without recognizing the cultural traditions in which it emerges. Accordingly, multi-secularism seems to be the best strategy to pursue: that is, adapting secular ideas and values to the societies in which they arise.

The question that I wish to raise is: What is secularism and/or the secular society?

Among the secular values that emerge today is the compelling need to develop a new Planetary Ethics. Because we must share the Earth, no entity can any longer be allowed to attempt to impose an exclusive, doctrinaire religious creed on every man and woman. We live in a multicultural world in which multi-secularism needs to be developed—in which different forms of secularism need to be adapted to the diverse cultural traditions and contexts of specific societies. Thus, we need secularized Christianity, secularized Judaism, secularized Hinduism, and even secularized Islam; all are requisite for societies to be able to cope with their problems. (from Free Inquiry May 2004)

A New Enlightenment

If we are to usher in a New Enlightenment, we need to spell out new goals to be achieved in the future. I can only briefly suggest what these might entail:

•The New Enlightenment needs to defend secularism, that is, the separation of church and state and the secularization of values.

•It must be planetary in scope, applying to all members of the human family—thus it would develop a new planetary ethics.

•It would seek to develop the public appreciation of scientific methods of inquiry and the scientific outlook.

•It would emphasize the need to use reason to resolve social differences and to lessen the resort to violence on the national and international level.

•It would defend the protection and cultivation of democracy and human rights everywhere.

•It would seek to banish poverty and disease from all parts of the globe and to reduce the disparities in income and wealth by expanding the amount of wealth and income available.

•It would focus on education and persuasion as the best methods for achieving social change, and it would make education and cultural enrichment truly universal.

•It would seek to elevate taste and appreciation, to cultivate the best of which we are capable as human beings, to achieve excellence, and improve the quality of life.

•It would seek for all people to work together to deal with global problems such as the unmeasured growth of population, environmental hazards, and global warming.

•It would seek to cultivate individual freedom consonant with the rights of others.

•While it would respect diversity and multiculturalism, it would seek always to find common ground that we may share.

•It would encourage cultivation of open societies, equal access to the media, and freedom of inquiry and research.

•It would seek to go beyond the ancient religious, ethnic, and national moral prohibitions of the past and move on to new alternatives appropriate to the contemporary world, new ethical values and principles.

•It would seek to generate and expand equality before the law and equality of opportunity for all individuals.

•It would seek to develop cooperative efforts among all segments of the world to deal with common problems.

Finally, it would exude some optimism about the human prospect, some belief that the human condition can be progressively improved, and above all, express the resolve to do so. (Free Inquiry Editorial -October/November 2005 Vol. 25, No. 6)

Life, Happiness & World View

Life, when fully lived under a variety of cultural conditions, can be euphoric and optimistic; it can be a joy to experience and a wonder to behold.

It is not the "courage to be" that we must develop as much as the "courage to become." We are responsible for our destiny. The meaning of life is not located in some hidden crevice in the womb of nature but is created by free persons, who are aware that they are responsible for their own futures and have the courage to take this project into their own hands.

The meaning of life is not to be discovered only after death in some hidden, mysterious realm; on the contrary, it can be found by eating the succulent fruit of the Tree of Life and by living in the here and now as fully and creatively as we can

Ethics & Values

…since the Renaissance, secularity in the ethical domain has been growing in influence. Secularists do not look to salvation and confirmation of the afterlife as their overriding goal, but rather focus on temporal humanist values in the here and now—happiness, self-realization, joyful exuberance, creative endeavors and excellence, the actualization of the good life—not only for the individual but for the greater community. (from Free Inquiry May 2004)

Far from living in a moral vacuum, secular humanists “wish to encourage wherever possible the growth of moral awareness.” (The quote comes from “A Secular Humanist Declaration,” the Council for Secular Humanism’s founding document, authored by Paul Kurtz.)

“common moral decencies” (include) qualities including integrity, trustworthiness, benevolence, and fairness. These qualities are celebrated by almost every human religion, not because God ordained them, but because human beings cannot thrive in communities where these values are ignored.

Free Inquiry into Science

Not the least among secular values of course is free inquiry and freedom of scientific research, the very basis of science and technology. Religious censorship or limitation—such as that intelligent-design advocates seek to impose on scientific theories of evolution—is unacceptable. The free mind is vital for the open society. If one wants to pursue scientific inquiry, then one needs to abide by methodological naturalism: objective standards of evidence, rational coherence, and experimental testing are quite independent of the Bible or Qur’an. (from Free Inquiry April/May 2004)

Skepticism (The New York Times called him "a skeptic of everything but fact.")

"a skeptic is one who is willing to question any claim to truth, asking for clarity in definition, consistency in logic, and adequacy of evidence." Skepticism and Humanism by Paul Kurtz

“I would like to introduce another term into the equation, a description of the religious "unbeliever" that is more appropriate. One may simply say, "I am a skeptic." This is a classical philosophical position, yet I submit that it is still relevant today, for many people are deeply skeptical about religious claims.
Skepticism is widely employed in the sciences. Skeptics doubt theories or hypotheses unless they are able to verify them on adequate evidential grounds. The same is true among skeptical inquirers into religion. The skeptic in religion is not dogmatic, nor does he or she reject religious claims a priori; here or she is simply unable to accept the case for God unless it is supported by adequate evidence.” From Why I Am a Skeptic about Religious Claims

Life, Happiness & World View

As I see it, creative achievement is the very heart of the human enterprise. It typifies the human species as it has evolved, particularly over the past forty to fifty thousand years: leaving the life of the hunter and the nomad, developing agriculture and rural society, inventing industry and technology, building urban societies and a world community, breaking out of the earth's gravitational field, exploring the solar system and beyond. The destiny of humankind, of all people and of each person, is that they are condemned to invent what they will be - condemned if they are fearful but blessed if they welcome the great adventure. We are responsible in the last analysis, not simply for what we are, but for what we will become; and that is a source of either high excitement or distress. Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 18, Number 3.

Facing Death

…each person must face death: life has meaning only if we realize that it will end. It is in viewing one's life as a complete whole that one sees it for what it is: what I accomplished and did well; whether I fulfilled some of my dreams and plans; whether I enjoyed life, made friends, fell in love, worked for a beloved cause, and so forth. I should have no false hopes about death, but I should do what I can to ward it off. Indeed, health is a first condition if one is to live well. We must not be deluded by a belief in immortality but should face death realistically. A free person worships the creative life as the ultimate good. But when death comes, he or she will accept it with equanimity, if with sorrow; and he or she will realize that in the face of death the only thing that really counts is what has been the quality of life, and what has been given to or left for others.

Image Credits

Skeptic Card Trumps by Crispian Jago: http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2010/05/skeptic-trumps-paul-kurtz.html

Free Inquiry Cover: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=index_25_6

Considering Some of Paul Kurtz's Thoughts

by Gary Berg-Cross

Paul Kurtz has had a long and remarkable career as a public intellectual which includes major contributor to secular humanism but also to critical thinking, ethics, skepticism and American philosophy in general. From a perspective that started in the 50s by 1980 he could look at 30s years of struggle to advance the humanist community against the rising power of fundamentalism and still has perhaps good advice for our current struggle. There is some backlast, fundamentalist similarity

As James A. Haught noted in Fundamentalist Political Power in America

The historic U.S. Supreme Court rulings in 1962 and 1963 against government-led school prayer, plus the 1973 opinion legalizing a woman’s right to choose abortion, along with the easing of social stigmas against gays and the like, all convinced them that Satan was gaining control of America.

Evangelist Jerry Falwell coalesced this group by forming the Moral Majority.

What to do as fundamentalism tipped the ballot balance to conservative hero Ronald Reagan and the 80s and 90s saw growing politicio-religious influence of groups like the moral majority? It was the issue facing the humanists, secularists (and the country) at the turn of the century and we feel it surging again.

Writing in the 80s Paul Kurtz drew up analysis of the problems and added some reasonable strategic ideas. These have sometimes been simplified down to an accomodationist label and contrasted with the New Atheists’ strong anti-religious stances and statements. As one might expect from a strategic and philosophical thinker the Kurtz position is, I think, more complicated than can be covered by the passivism evoked by the accomodationist tag. Here is a very small bit of the advice he offered the Humanist Movement back in the 8Os:

“First it is vital that we offer strong negative criticism of false religions and ideologies. All the great religions have grown by attacking those about them. As secular humanists, we need to defend skepticism, nontheism, agnosticism, atheism, and we need to question false doctrines found in Judaism, Christianity,, Islam and Marxist ideology, as well as the newer cults of unreason. Moreover, we need to guard against the intrusion of religion into our secular institutions.

Second, we need to enunciate the positive thrust of humanism. That is why humanism is more than atheism, for humanism is committed to an alternative set of ethical values. We are not simply negative naysayers; we have a constructive, alternative perspective full of meaning and significance.

Third, we should not clothe our message solely in rational terms but must make it eloquent and dramatic, appealing to the whole person, including his emotions, and expressing both the tragic and numerous elements of the human condition. This means we are committed to the expansion of the creative dimensions of humanism.

From “The Future of the Humanist Movement”, Free Inquiry, Fall, 1983, reproduced In Defense of Secular Humanism. By Paul Kurtz(1983)

I take this argument to subsume some of the strategy of the New Atheists. Point one is supportive of that effort and Paul has said that New Atheists have had a positive impact. People are talking about the issues.. But point 2 adds an important aspect to a strategy. You need to be positive as well as negative and go farther into discussion of things like ethics and how we live. As Kurtz said in interview speaking of the New Atheist writings:

“But for the secular humanist, it is not so much the stridency of these books that is at issue, as it is what’s missing from these books. Are there any ethical values and principles that nonreligious individuals can live by?"

I would add that point 3 shows Kurtz’s a John Dewey-like psychological sophistication of human understanding of factors, as discussed in earlier blogs on associative thought, cognitive biases and the role of emotions in holding on to beliefs.

In my opinion Kurtz has lead a noble life. His many ideas  span a long period of time are deep and remain contemporary.  Many would profit from hearing considering them. 

To this end WASH’s MDC chapter has invited a panel of 4 people who know him well. The will be on hand Saturday, Sept 8^th, 2 -4 p.m. at the Wheaton Regional Public Library, 11701 Georgia Ave to discuss this and his effects to build a constructive secular alternative to religion.

The Panel: Edd Doerr, Stuart Jordan, Margeret Downey and Nathan Bupp

Please come and invite your friends. The meeting if free and open to the public.

Image credits:

Margaret Downey and Nathan Bupp: Provided by them

Edd Doerr: http://humanism.ws/featured/former-aha-head-embarrassed-by-negative-humanism/

Stuart Jordan: http://www.instituteforscienceandhumanvalues.net/appearances.htm
Wordle graphic at the top was created by Gary Berg-Cross from the Kurtz quote used above and is publically available online.

Not all Free Books are Free Thinking

By Gary Berg-Cross

The other day

I got a free copy of Darwin’s On The Origins of Species from my daughter-in-law.

She had picked it up at a State Fair along with some religious material on “What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs. As a Physical Anthropologist, studying our Australopithecus ancestors, she was outraged with what she saw as an anti-science effort to rebut Darwin. The book was one of those infamous new, antievolution versions first printed in 2009 by Minister and TV host Ray Comfort. The problem with the book is that it starts with a 54-page "special" introduction. This Intro is a crafty construction beginning with a brief, factual Bio of Darwin. But it quickly heads South into an irrelevant discussion of Darwin’s musing on atheism. This is followed by a shallow section on DNA. Comfort merely describes DNA complexity and then calls on Francis Collins, of human genome mapping fame, to find the mind of God glimpsed therein. Succeeding sections (Missing Links, Mutations, Disdain for Women etc.) are critical without showing respect for critical thinking and smear Darwin with a mix of faint praise and louder dissing arguments. For example, on DNA similarity between species to gauge species evolution he somehow confuses functional similarity (bats and birds) to genetic ones. He argues that the DNA complexity seen in humans couldn’t arrive by chance, seemingly forgetting that the selection process is at the heart of Origins. Hardly something that we would expect from a critical analysis (such as I discussed on my recent blog). And indeed Comfort shows his confusion on simple things like Atheist positions:

"An atheist is someone who believes that nothing made everything. He will deny that through gritted teeth, because it is an intellectual embarrassment. But if he says of his Toyota that he has no belief that there was a maker, then he thinks that nothing made it (it just happened), which is a scientific impossibility. So, to remain credible, he falls back on something made everything, but he just doesn’t know what that something was. So he’s not an atheist--he believes in an initial cause." from http://raycomfortfood.blogspot.com/

But luckily there are many good, critical analyses and fact checking of Comforts Intro. One example, that real Scientists note, is that Comfort sneers at the fossil evidence for transitional forms such as seen in the terrestrial ancestry of whales and the dinosaur ancestry of birds. These turn out to bad examples since are good and growing fossils of dinosaurs that have feathers and of whales that have legs, sometimes with proto feet. Just recently Exceptionally well preserved dinosaur fossils uncovered in north-eastern China display the earliest known feathers. These creatures are all more than 150 million years old

Darwin biographer and science writer David Quammen characterized the Intro this way:

Comfort's confused polemic, disguised as an informational Introduction but full of mistakes, half truths, untruths, muddled logic, old creationist arguments, misleadingly excerpted quotations, and ill-framed analogies — plus a good dose of fire and brimstone at the end — will do a severe disservice to anyone who takes it for an entryway to Darwin's great book.

Back in November of 2009 LA-based creationist Ray Comfort launched an effort to distribute thousands of free copies of Darwin's On the Origin of Species to students at the "100 top U.S. universities." The effort was thwarted by my responses including a wonderfully coordinated campaign by the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) that reached to colleges across the U.S. in an effort to “put the record straight”. You can see great material and NCSE alert on their site including resources, that provide a:

“ blow-by-blow analysis of the Comfort introduction, a one page flier ("Why Ray Comfort is Wrong"), the NCSE Safety Bookmark (for use with Comfort's edition of Origin), details on the best web sites and books devoted to evolutionary science, and a Public Service film about the dangers of certain book introductions.”

Thanks to such efforts the attempt to give out a planned 100,000 out on college campuses was not a total success. He probably didn't help himself in later debates where he argued that the banana was designed for humans. They did apparently give away the first print run of 30,000. But now they seem to be at it again at State and County Summer Fairs. Comfort recently reported they had placed an order for 175,000 more books. As Ray explains:

“ My name will be on the cover (for those who think that we are somehow being deceptive). In one day, 170,000 future doctors, lawyers and politicians will freely get information about Intelligent Design (and the gospel) placed directly into their hands!”

http://www.livingwaters.com/index.php?id=383&option=com_content&task=view

So we may need another campaign to knock down Comfort's silly attempts again. They are especially dangerous in these times that mix conservative politics and conservative religion.

And it is deeply troubling to see an ideological group hijack quality works, such as Darwin’s for their own purposes. Ray Comfort, of course, describes his mission benignly as providing "world-weary Christians the refreshing opportunity to dive deeper into God's Word". But you can see his anti-freethinking strategy in books such as "You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence But You Can't Make Him Think," . Indeed this book and the free Origins seems to be part of a roll-out of a campaign. It is also preparation for the Deeper Conference, scheduled for Oct. 14-15 at Calvary Community Church in Westlake Village, Calif. The conference has the same tone as Rick Perry’s Texas event calling on God to get us out the mess we’ve created:

"While much of this world gets itself deeper into debt," says Comfort, "we want to see you set aside such concerns and, for two days, dive deeper into God and His Word."

It perhaps prefigures a witches brew of Religion and Politics we'll see in 2011-12.

As extra motivation Comfort notes an alarming trend – a survey showed 61 percent of U.S. professors in biology or psychology said they were atheists or agnostics. Moreover,

"Atheism has doubled in the last 20 years among 19 to 25 year olds. So young people are being brainwashed by this stuff," he said. "All we want to do is give an alternative."

"So many young people are being convinced that atheism is right, that evolution is right, there's no god, there are no moral absolutes," he said. "Who cares if you marry a dog? What's the big deal? And that's what atheism believes, too. It's very sad, and we're going to do our best to fight back."

Yes, and I imagine many atheists, agnostics, secular humanists and biology teachers will too. It is just that we’ll use different tools, such as real Science, Empiricism, Skepticism and Critical Thinking.

The Scandal of Anti-Intellectualism and Elites

by Gary Berg-Cross

Like a civil society, secular humanism and its kindred freethinking cousins require a certain base mixture of tolerance, curiosity, sophisticated of thinking, respect for truth and an intellectual environment. The hard truth of contemporary America is that we swim in a tide that seems less tolerant and appreciative of sophisticated thinking, such as required to understand systems of things.

I recently wrote about Transparency into Conservative Media Influence and the soft corruption of its methods. These combine threats, bribes, distractions and plain-out lying. It's unbalanced too. I expressed the hope that a larger group of people would take the opportunity to see how things work among the real power elite. For decades, Murdoch and his empire has cultivated the ability to influence elections on both sides of the ocean. As the dominatrix of News Corp, he ruled a layered suite of British papers. He could use the daily tabloid Sun to set the tone of electoral debate and echo it with a higher-minded Times, which was then backed by more aggressive voices coming from other parts of his empire. You get the tone from the way the American Propsect described the 1992 election:

"It was The Sun Wot Won It" declared the tabloid the day after the Labour party's fourth successive General Election defeat in 1992. The surprise result followed a sustained campaign of character assassination against its leader, Neil Kinnock. Pages and days of "Nightmare on Kinnock Street" propaganda culminated in an election day front page with his head on a lightbulb: "If Neil Kinnock wins today, would the last person to leave Britain please turn off the lights?" The British public decided that Kinnock wasn't prime-minister material.

Clearly, subsequent candidates and party leaders got the threatening message. On this side of the Atlantic the Clintons didn't need to think too hard about this, since it came at them at the speed a multiple scandals backed by conservative money. In Britain later pols pragmatically sought Murdock's support or at least a pass from his active opposition. And in a democracy this all comes at a chilling price, which should get our attention for the upcoming American election.

So maybe we can learn something from the unfolding scandal and take steps to change the environment through what Jefferson stressed - learning, which is essential in a Democracy. The media hasn't been helping to provide 2 things people need - knowledge of the facts but also an historical perspective so they can understand how things have developed and who did what and why. Both are necessary to hold politicians accountable for their past acts and current plans.

After the failures of the conservative policies leading to unnecessary wars, loss of rights, inequity and a financial meltdown at the end of 8 years, have we learned too little? The 2010 election suggests that Americans remain too receptive and unskeptial about well packaged, conservative messages. All too often we are lulled into passive acceptance of lies and manufactured explanations. A convenient history is invented and packed into a tale. If that is not enough to lull us, then pop culture & distracting video images fills up the cognitive space leaving little room for reflection.

Now a scandal has our attention. For a while get to peak behind the curtain and see some of those ugly power elites relations, but also some of the techniques that influence the populace.

I've previously mentioned the use of Framing of issues and the masking role of false dichotomies. One may add that unfactual facts used on both sides of the Atlantic, but another technique is to appeal of the common man. Tabloids and Fox appeal to the common man and identify various enemy to what they call the American Way of Business, I mean Life.

For conservartive convenience the enemy is an amalgamation of liberals, gays, secularists, intellectuals etc. These are the parts of society that are out of touch with the common person as well as common sense. You can hear it from Fox & newsreaders that lip sink the party line. It opines that traditional news organizations are out of touch with the real America. Rupert Murdoch provided this talking point, when he bought the Boston Herald in 1982, complaining that other media (not his) had too much "allegiance to the upper class" which has a liberal attitude. It's a bogus claim that a healthy dose of skepticism can challenge, but mainstream media seems unable to knock intellectual elitism claims down and point to the real troubling network of allegiances. Indeed the current scandal shows a bit of what really goes on with what Janine R. Wedel calls the Shadow Elite (Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market ).

These elite are a new breed of flexible political operators ("flexions") who may serve the roles of lobbyist, government insider or elected official but who converge into a single network such as seems to be the case with Murdock's network. Wedel sees them: "snaking through official and private organizations, creating a loop that is closed to democratic processes." We saw this during the Bush administration where a a core group of flexions provided a witch's brew of power to advance several cultural transformations that favored their networks:

1. government outsourcing
2. privatization
3. deregulation, and
4. "the embrace of 'truthiness.'"

By wearing several hats simultaneously (think tanker, retired military or government official, corporate representative, "objective" expert) flexions can gain extraordinary insider knowledge and influence in order to custom-tailor a version of the "truth" benefiting the highest bidder. Some bidders are media tycoons like Murdock, but there are many others. Versions of truth can then passed as memes to a media network like Fox. In this way, they not only "co-opt public policy agendas" but "craft policy with their benefactors' purposes in mind." We end up saying, "What's the matter with Kansas, and Wisconsin etc."




Rational analysis, skepticism and critical thinking are all means of challenging shadow elite gambits and for that reason they and the intellectual power they represent are enemies that must be marginalized by the Sharow Elite.

This enemies list of intellectuals becomes a convenient whipping boy for the failings of society and its anti-intellectual message has been a long time coming. You could hear a proto-version of this enemy story in the 50s when the John Birch Society equated intellectualism with disparate philosophies like atheism and communism. Both were undermining American/Christian values. Intellectualism and intellectuals had to be defeated. To some degree they have succeeded in shoving progressives and progressive policy off to the side.

In The Age of American Unreason Susan Jacoby tells the story of the advance of anti-intellectual in the past 4+ decades. It has resulted in a flight from reason by way of a right-turn descent into a realm that combines intellectual laziness, a lack or curiosity and reflexive skepticism. Jacoby also singles out a lack of knowledge and memory that allows an outlet like Fox to fabricate an alternate, bubble world. Together these created the current anti-rational landscape, personified by the rise of the ultra right wing and its sometime creature the Tea Party. They can get away with crazy claims (like birtherism) because rational challenges are discounted. It's an environment that enables the shadow elite with its power through connections and self serving agenda to rise and thrive.



But slowing and solving this sorry state may not be as simple as identifying a dues paying member of the elite like Rupert Murdock or Larry Summers. As Jacoby notes, the anti or non-rationality seen in our governance is not a simple result of a Machiavellian plot by current politicians. They are opportunists leveraging anti-intellectual tendencies now realized and embodied in a pretty passive populace. Too many of our ordinary citizens, like their elected representatives, live without the basic set intellectual tools needed for sound public decision-making.

We need to work on this steadily. It's not just rationality at elections that matter. It's an entire life of balanced life that is needed. An respect for a richly interlinked world of ideas, truth and facts that makes for an intellectual.

Some Transparency into Conservative Media Influence and Methods

by Gary Berg-Cross

As I’ve said before, our tribe of Secular Humanists, atheists, freethinker etc. are (by and large) a skeptical and critical-thinking lot. We like to know how things work and what’s behind it. We don’t like a superficial story and learn from experience and we like to pass on insights that come from that experience. We don’t like people who bend the facts or hype things into hot button stories. We like the Greek and Enlightenment constructions of fairness and balance more than what comes from ideological media. We are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to alternative views but are willing to adopt hypotheses based in evidence. But even for us living in a torrent of “information” sometimes it takes a scandalous crisis to provide transparency to expose how things really work and confirm lingering suspicions. For a brief time scandal raises attention enough to get the news media to pierce through the din of what seems like distracted coverage of important topics. In such circumstances non-main stream analysis gets presented and events sometimes confirm minority-view hypotheses. We see the uncomfortable reality of how things like power and ideology weave together to make business as usual.

Examples of post-crisis illuminations include the eventual exposure of how the Iraq war was sold to us by the Bush Administration’s with a mix of co-opted news media, the relations people financial interests and politicians or financial institutions and rating agencies that precipitated an economic crash and rolling unemployment as far as the political eye can see. In each case bad policy and politics had disastrous consequences and we many of us got the story from the 4th estate too late. Maybe these should have been obvious to us, and it was to some, but skeptical voices were generally muted in the larger conversation while the megaphone was turned up for official policy. Sadly our largely corporate media largely reflected an inside elite view with a fine tuned skepticism that was largely reserved for non-conformist voices (see my Thoughtful and Shallow Skepticism more more on this aspect of skepticism. Afterwards we get closer to the real story leading to a feeling of frustration and new questions. Matt Taibbi framed the new post-Wall Street meltdown question in the title of his Rolling Stone article - Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? He is not the only one to observe that no top banker (or bank) has faced serious consequences for their actions in the financial crisis:

Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.

Yet inside the institutions and media many knew that there would be an eventual problem. They were just afraid to be the first to blow the whistle. There can be consequences for bucking the consensus of powerful people before it is fashionable. There is all that opposition that can be thrown at a skeptical voice. You can be sued, for example - Analyst Was Punished For Blowing The Whistle On Wall Street . Indeed when powerful people escape responsibility for their actions it is a message to future whistle blowers and allies. The message is "don’t bother; we punish the messenger of bad news". This is sometimes describe as “no good deed goes unpunished”. At the least groups with power can drag it out so that many can’t sustain the effort. In 2004, a Wall Street banker blew the whistle on abusive tax shelters used by Enron and other big companies. He testified about his experience before Congress (anonymously as “Mr. ABC”) noting that a big problem with whistle blowing is that even federal agency’s seem intimidated about battle giant companies. After all, the big guys have networks of friends in high places, loud lobby voices and the ear of the Media (think Fox and the Wall Street Journal). There is “resistance to take seriously outside information from knowledgeable insiders.” This side of Wikileaks not everyone yields to the threat, but it is likely that many are chilled. In the 2010 election we lost many progressive voices including a very ethical Russ Feingold, who opposed against FISA, and a vigorous Alan Grayson, who was outspoken against things like Too Big to Fail banks. Neither endeared them to various lobby groups backed by enormous financial power of multinational/national corporations and out of state interests. There are host of organized interests that can go after people. Some are targeted by religious groups, others by the NRA gun lobby, anti-government groups or financial interests. The message is to not speak up on issues of the dogs will come out. That was the case with Feingold & Grayson and earlier with Cynthia McKinney who was targeted by AIPAC for calling for a degree of fairness and balance in our Middle East policy. For all of these reasons important topics go without serious discussion.

I was reminded of this complex of reporting, intimidation, political connections and punishment when I read about the scandal around Murdock’s British News of the World (NOW), a rough and tumble tabloid, famous for manufacturing the wrong kind of news, but also part of a news group pushing a political ideology.

Here in the States we have seen the propaganda techniques used to influence the American public. Now one (and probably more than one) British component of the News Corp empire seems to have slipped from the merely sleazy, indecent and immoral to the illegal. Phone hacking of private voice mail which apparently has been going on six years since the London bombings, which saw 52 people murdered and 700 injured. Reluctantly it seems after being pressed to stop earlier investigations, the police are investigating whether the mobile phones of several of those who lost family members in those attacks were hacked by private investigators hired by the News of the World. Getting the inside scoop never seemed so sleazy and we are now hear that as many as 4000 people may have had their phone messages listened to. The British accepted a loss or privacy for celebrities, but finally the scope of invasion has exceeded the public taste and the dam has broken. For a discussion of various privacy issues involved see What price privacy now?).

Among employees NOW is infamous for relentless pressure for attention gathering “results” (aka News) including paying police officers for information. But it may be part of a much larger cultural picture of how powerful interests operate and have compromised if not corrupted society at several levels. According to a government report the younger James Murdoch approved a 700,000-pound payment to a phone-hacking victim that was accompanied by a non-disclosure agreement. This smells of an organize a "cover-up." Consistent with this, there are claims that NOW paid off police officers investigating this and that police backed off of investigations and cooperated with NOW for favorable news NOW coverage. There are reports that this was partly due to bribes, but also to avoid being the target of unfavorable press and/or to avoid political pressure. Why political pressure? Well Murdock's empire can apply so much pressure that candidates don't even temp crossing him. Prime Minster Cameron's has links with former Murdoch executives most notably Andy Coulson, deputy editor of NOW in 2000. In 2007, Coulson was hired by David Cameron as the Conservative Party's director of communication. He was tasked with the Foxian idea of bringing a bit of tabloid liveliness to Cameron's staid party. Or you could say make it more like the contemporary Republican Party. Andy Coulson became a key adviser in Cameron’s campaign. Cameron needed a press person and as a Labor party leader put it:

"Coulson is ruthless and will go to any lengths to serve his master. I will be his master and he my attack dog" It worked and Cameron is now a PM. Coulson knew how to get the message out to the people, but also how to make the opposition look bad.

Pols need to avoid such negative coverage (based in oppositional analysis) and thus we have see even liberal politicians courting Murdock’s media. For decades British pols have had to had to develop some working (if not close) relations with Murdock if only to avoid being tarred in the tabloids. Labor’s Tony Blair flew to Australia to address a meeting of News Corp executive in the mid-1990s as he sought to woo Mr. Murdoch for his up eventual campaign. Hillary Clinton seemed to have a similar “understanding” with Murdock during her campaign:

"They have a respectful and cordial relationship. He has respect for the work she has done on behalf of New York. I wouldn't say it was illustrative of a close ongoing relationship.” See Rupert Murdoch Loves Hillary Clinton.

It's a forms of soft corruption and acceptance of a dubious practice. I personally saw some changed atmosphere when in 2008 I had conservative friends of mine smilingly tell me that I would be surprised of who they liked in the Democratic primary. Like Murdock they were switching from all those negative things they said and believed about Hillary in the 90s. That’s when conservatives marshaled supporters and paid consultants to investigate the Clinton’s. People look into all aspects of a target's life including legal or criminal, medical, educational, financial, public, private and military service and voting records, as well as prior media coverage. Now it's emails and voice mail too. For Hillary that opposition research and propaganda was then. Now she is RELATIVELY OK.

But the message is chilling to other candidates who on the liberal side risk being knocked out over things that don’t seem to trouble Newt G or others.

So it is a good thing to be getting a bit of transparency into how power media and politics works. Hopefully people will pay attention and assimilate the message. Be skeptical and consider the sources.

For a time the public is being informed about the way things work. Hopefully we won’t be distracted by the next Big News Thing such as politician’s bus trips or the details of a big religious breakfast meeting. There are more important things to understand in these times and we can't afford to lose fair, and on balance, quality people like a Feingold or a Grayson.

Faith and Skepticism about American Exceptionalism

by Gary Berg-Cross
The topic of American Exceptionalism (AE) keeps cropping up like spring blossoms. Maybe it is more like weeds sprouting out of the fertile but dark earth from causal seeds casually sown by conservative sources. It is part of the title of Newt Gingrich’s new book, A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters and there is a short film on this being heavily flogged. The AE concept disparages the simple view of the United States as part of an expanded Western civilization zone. Instead the thrust of the AE argument is that the United States is more of a separate civilization. In this image we have a fundamentally different political system, are self made, highly educated, calm in crisis, devout, are composed of faithful families etc. Conservative say this was the exceptional American described by de Toqueville in Democracy in America (1835) . Indeed the AE term is attributed to Tocqueville. The concept serves as the justification and fortification for American conservative politics. Why was America so different from the aristocratic Europe? Well according to the conservative mantra we were/are a different society where hard work (and money-making) was/is the dominant ethic, where the common man enjoyed a level of dignity which was unprecedented, where commoners never deferred to elites (at least not academic ones). Instead (what de Toqueville described as) crass individualism and market capitalism had taken root to an extraordinary degree.True until the 20th century, and in contrast with rest of Western civilization, the US never had a true aristocracy or a peasantry. We had more of free farming tradition in the United States that for a while provided some different economic behavior and political impulses. One might argue, however, that we now have corporate and financial aristocracy and little left of small farm independence.

In The Myth of American Exceptionalism Godfrey Hodgson takes on the very notion of America as the “divinely anointed homeland of freedom, bravery, democracy and economic opportunity, with everything to teach the world and nothing to learn from it, is so entrenched that this perceptive portrait of America the Ordinary seems downright radical.” He points instead to a lingering mythic memory of this older culture and its reality in terms of Western traditions:

“Observing the sheer density of the claims made for the uniqueness of the American experience and the exceptional qualities of American society, however, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that they are motivated at least in part by a wish to believe in them. On one level it’s not difficult to render the idea of American Exceptionalism to the realm of mythology. After all despite America being established in the so called New World its philosophical foundation came from the philosophy of Europe’s Enlightenment and religion. Even the great western frontier expansion was powered by European investment, European markets, and not to mention European immigration. Plus if immigration and diversity are so much a part of the exceptionalism imagery would that not limit the idea of American as one exceptional, unified culture, or would its multiculturalism paradoxically be a big part of its exceptional nature? “

In 2009 Hodgson may well have been thinking back to the image Ronald Reagan spun in his Shining City Upon A Hill speech of January 25, 1974. Here Reagan appealed to a mystical plan to explain AE:

"You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage."

For conservatives this frames the issues nicely since they see themselves in a very un-American battle with a newly imported version of European socialism. Washington Post Reporter Karen Tumulty has studied the conservative’s belief that America “is inherently superior to the world’s other nations” and finds it to be widely held. Indeed, most Americans believe our superiority is not only inherent but divinely ordained. A survey by the Public Religious Research Institute and the Brookings Institution found that 58 percent of Americans agree with the Reagan-like statement, “God has granted America a special role in human history.”

On the other hand progressives (and many secularist without that devine vision) tend to see this type of extreme American Exceptionalism as a conservative myth. Yes, we have exceptional resources and can look back to wonderful founders and pioneers who gave it a go. We established some institutions to be proud of, but the nation endured slavery and to a larger extent that we are comfortable saying ,was built on “stolen land with stolen people.”

Another problem with clinging so dearly to the AE idea is that it lessens the ability to learn anything from other countries experiences and approaches. If we are so exceptional then little that happens elsewhere that informs us. Indeed we may just look at them from our perspective and ask, "what is in it for us." In the case of the Middle East it is oil. And if Holland is looking at a 200 year plan to combat climate change effects, we can learn nothing from those unexceptional people. Lucky for us all the good Dutch immigrated to America in pre-colonial times.

So this idea has serious consequences. Yet the AE debate seems interminable like a religious one. And as in religious debates people can’t agree on terms. What is the exact meaning of the concept? What current and historical data provides evidence for and against? AE is a broad concept built on other broad concepts like: liberty (or, freedom if you like), egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez-faireness. This point is made by Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset in American Exceptionalism: a Double-Edged Sword. The varied interpretations of history and the American Experience produce such an explosive combination of possibilities that individual terms quickly lose any testable meaning the way biblical passages do. The simple, but vague EA frame leaves us with difficult questions.

• Were the country’s geographical attributes critical to our exceptional development?
• How about resource abundance and the make up of immigration populations?
• How important were economic systems and are systems like contemporary “free” markets a threat to egalitarianism, individualism, and populism?

It’s a complicated chemistry, which makes it fair game for spinning tales around a willfully vague concept.

Besides the interminable argue that has political impacts a long-term problem and real issue with AE is that American culture has changed and maybe we are losing some of what has made us “great”. This is the message of a long, critical article by David Morris called The Real American Exceptionalism. Morris explores the issue from several angles provides a nice discussion of how the myth is used by conservatives despite evidence to the contrary. He has some rude awakening charts that clash with the idea that we are a better nation than others. Two of these are shown below on military expenditures and prisoner populations.

Another shot across our exceptional bow comes from our failing financial strength. This and our dollar currency have been dominant since the end of WWII. Now we have been put on notice by Standard & Poor’s that both may be on the path to a second rate status. Analysts are now working up the possibility of life after AAA ratings as S&P’s shifts to a negative outlook for U.S. sovereign debt.

 

Perhaps the most symbolic dent in our exceptional armor comes from the comics. Superman appears to be taking another step that could have major implications for his national identity and it is happening in Action Comics #900 where Superman announces that he is going to give up his U.S. citizenship. Despite his alien immigrant beginnings, Superman has been patriotic icon for "truth, justice, and the American way. " A white man in a red and blue costume he embraces that 1930s traditional image of small town America ideals and what it means to stand up for the "American way". Now it is increasingly complicated even for him and other superheroes who have come to mirror essy mcurrent events.  This includes dealing with moral and political complexities rather than the earlier era with its simple black and white morality. Exceptionally hard times indeed.