Of Morality, Objective and Subjective

by Doug Drake

A funny thing happened at the DC Atheists Meetup the other night. One of the two proposed topics of discussion was “the values we have used to reach our atheism.” I found this rather intriguing. I am not aware that I used any values to reach my atheism. I merely concluded that supernatural beings do not exist. To sound my fellow infidels on the subject, I tossed out the observation that, in my opinion, there can be no such thing as objective morality. The ensuing discussion became sufficiently vociferous to raise the eyebrows of even the most jaded unbelievers in the crowd, and I fear that some of the newbies present may have swallowed their gum. It happened, you see, that a couple of my secular colleagues were decidedly of the opposite opinion. They went so far as to claim that objective morality not only exists, but that it does not rely on any emotional basis, and can be demonstrated scientifically.

Now all this would seem counterintuitive to a superficial observer of the modern scene. After all, Darwin himself had no qualms about recognizing the emotional basis of morality. As he put it (The Descent of Man, chapter 3),

“The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man.”

and,

“A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones. A dog acts in this manner, but he does so blindly. A man, on the other hand, looks forwards and backwards, and compares his various feelings, desires and recollections. He then finds, in accordance with the verdict of all the wisest men that the highest satisfaction is derived from following certain impulses, namely the social instincts. If he acts for the good of others, he will receive the approbation of his fellow men and gain the love of those with whom he lives; and this latter gain undoubtedly is the highest pleasure on this earth. By degrees it will become intolerable to him to obey his sensuous passions rather than his higher impulses, which when rendered habitual may be almost called instincts. His reason may occasionally tell him to act in opposition to the opinion of others, whose approbation he will then not receive; but he will still have the solid satisfaction of knowing that he has followed his innermost guide or conscience.”

Similar examples of his thought on this subject may be found in his “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.” Given the flood of books on the subject that have appeared in the last decade, it would seem that Darwin’s conclusions regarding the emotional fundament of morality are being abundantly confirmed in our own day. See, for example, Hardwired Behavior by Tancredi, The Ethical Brain by Gazzaniga, The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley, and, regarding Darwin’s observations of a moral sense in animals, Wild Justice by Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce. As students of philosophy are aware, Hume came to the same conclusion without sitting on Darwin’s shoulders. As psychologist Jonathan Haidt noted in his paper “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail,”(pdf available online),

David Hume in Particular proposed that moral judgments are similar in form to aesthetic judgments: They are derived from sentiment, not reason, and we attain moral knowledge by an “immediate feeling and finer internal sense,” not by a “chain of argument and induction.”

Even the brilliant John Stuart Mill, that great architect of the moral system of Utilitarianism, balked at accepting such an animal as objective morality. As he put it in Utilitarianism,

The ultimate sanction, therefore, of all morality (external motives apart) being a subjective feeling in our own minds, I see nothing embarrassing to those whose standard is utility, in the question, what is the sanction of that particular standard? We may answer, the same as of all other moral standards – the conscientious feelings of mankind. Undoubtedly this sanction has no binding efficacy on those who do not possess the feelings it appeals to;

and, giving further point to his belief that morality is subjective, not objective in nature,

There is, I am aware, a disposition to believe that a person who sees in moral obligation a transcendental fact, an objective reality belonging to the province of ‘Things in themselves’, is likely to be more obedient to it than one who believes it to be entirely subjective, having its seat in human consciousness only.

I point out in passing that Mill was anything but a “Blank Slater,” meaning someone who, after the fashion of the orthodoxy prevailing in the social sciences for much of the 20^th century, denies any significant role of human nature as an influence on human behavior. Steven Pinker, who I somehow suspect hasn’t actually read some of the authors he cites, makes that claim in his book, “The Blank Slate.”In fact, while Mill was of the opinion that fully developed moral codes are not innate, he stated quite explicitly that the sentiments that give rise to them are, as can be immediately seen by anyone who takes the trouble to glance through “Utilitarianism,” and he by no means denied the significance of human nature.

Those whose tastes run to more ancient thinkers can look at Plato’s wonderful dialogue, Euthyphro. There we find Socrates conversing in his famous dialectic style with one of the “ethics experts” of his day about the definition of piety. The man was so sure that he knew the “objective good” that he was prosecuting his own father for manslaughter. As Socrates demonstrated, the thing Euthyphro thought he had such a firm hold on was very slippery indeed.

In a word, there is a strong philosophical case, and increasingly compelling evidence based on scientific research, that morality is subjective, not an objective thing that is legitimate in itself, independent of any emotions, sentiments or predispositions in the mind that might seem to give rise to it. Were my fellow atheists at the meeting, then, merely outliers and anomalies? Hardly!

In fact there is a very strong, and perhaps dominant, current among the secular public intellectuals who interest themselves in the subject of morality today according to which the Good exists as an objective “thing in itself,” as Mill put it. This Good is supposed, not only to transcend the subjective minds of individuals, but its existence and legitimacy are deemed scientifically verifiable. It is often identified or associated with “human flourishing,” or something akin thereto. “New atheist” Sam Harris is an outstanding example of this trend. He has a fervent belief in a “moral truth” that he suggests is discoverable using the latest scientific technique. According to Sam, we must “think about moral truth in the context of science,” in order to “maximize human well-being.” He deems it “obvious” that “we need some universal conception of right and wrong.” However, as he sees it, there is an “impediment” in the way of our search for “moral truth.” As he put it in remarks he delivered at a recent conference organized by the Edge Foundation on “The New Science of Morality,”

(http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/morality10/morality10_index.html)

“…most right-thinking, well-educated, and well-intentioned people – certainly most scientists and public intellectuals, and I would guess, most journalists – have been convinced that something in the last 200 years of intellectual progress has made it impossible to actually speak about “moral truth.” Not because human experience is so difficult to study or the brain too complex, but because there is thought to be no intellectual basis from which to say that anyone is ever right or wrong about questions of good and evil. My aim is to undermine this assumption, which is now the received opinion in science and philosophy.”

It’s hard for me to understand the basis for such a claim. I honestly wonder what people Harris is referring to here. He claims to have received thousands of e-mails from them, and perhaps they are out there, but I have run into very few of them. Certainly the other two among the “big three” atheist intellectuals, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, are both passionately devoted to their own versions of good and evil. Read the blogs of the left or the right with some claim to intellectual heft, and one gets the impression that their authors are much more likely to suffer from pathological piety than any ambivalence about what they consider right and wrong. Be that as it may, Harris assures us that he is prepared to defend claims to “moral truth in the context of science.” And how are we to recognize “scientific moral truth?” According to Harris,it is that which “maximizes human well-being,” and “human flourishing,” presumably as those terms are understood by secular intellectuals in the early 21^st century.

And what kind of scientific proof does Harris have in mind to establish the verity of his moral truths.

Read his book, The Moral Landscape, or, if your time is limited, his blog or theonline remarks referred to above, and you will find that it amounts to evoking morally linked emotions in a group of ideologically similar individuals and daring any of them to step outside the ideological box they live in by denying they feel those emotions or that they are not elicited by the kinds of evils Harris evokes. Some examples of his scientific technique:

“In 1947, when the United Nations was attempting to formulate a universal declaration of human rights, the American Anthropological Association stepped forward and said, it can’t be done. This would be to merely foist one provincial notion of human rights on the rest of humanity. Any notion of human rights is the product of culture, and declaring a universal conception of human rights is an intellectually illegitimate thing to do. This was the best our social sciences could do with the crematory of Auschwitz still smoking.”

“Just imagine how terrifying it would be if the smartest people around all more or less agreed that we had to be nonjudgmental about everyone’s view of economics and about every possible response to a global economic crisis.”

“I don’t think you have enjoyed the life of the mind until you have witnessed a philosopher or scientist talking about the “contextual legitimacy” of the burka, or of female genetic excision, or any of these other barbaric practices that we know cause needless human misery.”

And so on. In other words, Harris’ “proof” of the legitimacy of “moral truth” amounts to demonstrating that he can elicit moral emotions similar to his own in a group of like-minded individuals. This is less than compelling evidence of what he proposes to prove. Harris also plays games with the word “values.” For example,

“The truth is, science is not value-free. Good science is the product of our valuing evidence, logical consistency, parsimony, and other intellectual virtues. And if you don’t value those things, you can’t participate in the scientific conversation. I’m saying we need not worry about the people who don’t value human flourishing or who say they don’t. We need not listen to people who come to the table saying, “You know, we want to cut the heads off adulterers at half-time at our soccer games because we have a book dictated by the Creator of the universe which says we should.” In response, we are free to say, “Well, you appear to be confused about everything. Your “physics” isn’t physics, and your “morality” isn’t morality.” These are equivalent moves, intellectually speaking. They are borne of the same entanglement with real facts about the way the universe is. In terms of morality, our conversation can proceed with reference to facts about the changing experiences of conscious creatures. It seems to me to be just as legitimate, scientifically, to define “morality” in this way as it is to define “physics” in terms of the behavior of matter and energy. But most people engaged in the scientific study of morality don’t seem to realize this.”

Here, Harris evokes emotion as before, in this case in response to the beheading of adulterers, and then conflates two different definitions of the word “value.” In one case, it is the utilitarian value of doing good science to accomplish some desired end. For example, the technique used to create the atomic bomb was “valuable” in that sense, because the goal was achieved; the bomb went off. Emotion had nothing to do with that fact. It would have gone off whether its creators had strong emotional feelings about the utilitarian “values” they used to create it or not.

In the second case, the “values” referred to are moral values, and while “good science” can be demonstrated with repeatable experiments, good morality cannot. It may be that on occasion the outcomes of moral actions can also be demonstrated with repeatable experiments, but at that point one must answer the question as to whether those outcomes are “really good.” Such questions cannot be answered unless, at some point, one makes a subjective value judgment. What Harris is doing here is simply assuming that what he defines as “human flourishing” is “really good.” Anyone who doesn’t agree with him is consigned to outer darkness, without appeal, certainly a good way to deflect criticism if rather dubious as a means of approaching the truth. “Science” only comes in after the fact, as a means of discovering how best to achieve “human flourishing,” which is accepted a priori as “really good”based on a purely subjective value judgment. Listen to any “scientific proof” of the “objective good,” and such a subjective judgment will inevitably creep in at some point. It’s equivalent to the “miracle happens” step in a “scientific proof” that appears in one of Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoons.

Does all this really matter? Most definitely so. The fact that there may be unpleasant consequences to belief in the objective existence of things that really have no such existence should be obvious to those familiar with the history of religious wars, the holy inquisition, the murder of hundreds of thousands of women in Europe as “witches,” and the countless massacres of Jews that have occurred over the centuries, not to mention anyone who experienced the events of 911. The same can be said of secular delusions. In their most pathological manifestations, they can spawn secular religions such as “scientific” Communism, whose adherents believed just as fondly as Sam Harris that it would lead to a future of unprecedented “human flourishing.” The mayhem and misery it really led to is documented in the work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and many others.

And what if I am right and morality is really subjective, having no existence other than as the expression of evolved behavioral traits in creatures with large brains? Will it lead to an amoral society and “moral relativism?” I think not. Our brains are not wired for “moral relativism” for the very good reason that it would not have enhanced our chances of surviving as social animals. The expression of human morality will continue along familiar tracks regardless of the “objective” reasons contrived to justify it after the fact. As Jonathan Haidt pointed out in the paper referred to above, “moral reasoning is usually a post hoc construction, generated after a judgment has been reached.” In my own case, I can testify that I am the least of “moral relativists.” I tend to experience the moral rules I subscribe to as absolutes, and am subject to occasional episodes of virtuous indignation, pious outrage, and the distinct impression that I am morally superior to other human beings. I have merely come to realize that there is no objective basis for such pious buffoonery and self-righteous posing. It strikes me that the world would be a more pleasant place if the strident zealots of the left and right who currently set the tone of debate touching on matters political and philosophical would come to the same conclusion.

Posted for Doug Drake

Towards Understanding Rationality and its Limits Regarding Complex Issues

Rwahrens recently penned an article on this Blog addressing what he called real challenge for Democrats and “progressive voters” – should they support Obama for a 2nd term, or should they send a message to a party and president who is not being progressive enough. Rwahrens presented what seems a reasonable argument that Progressives should agree on one thing: “beating the Republican Party and preventing them from getting into office” For example he pragmatically cited the damage that a Republo-Conservative tide could effect which should override “every single other issue you may have.” It also makes reasonable arguments, including historical precedents such as what happened when moderates were beaten by ideological conservatives. But it is also true that some of the assumptions can be challenged. I’m not writing here to fight this specific battle, which is obviously an important one, but rather to briefly (very briefly) frame some of the problems that make it difficult to reach objective conclusions on such issues. The questions concerns conceptualization of truth and objectivity and why we think certain things (x, y, z) will happen if we have a or b. Well it is usually complex and there is a threefold mix of rational, empirical and pragmatic elements in all such arguments that make the pursuit of good judgment difficult.

All 3 elements (rational, empirical and pragmatic) are part of the humanist tradition, but the type of reasoning we call rational is probably a good place to start. The pre-Socratic Greeks, starting with Thales, gave us a style of natural/rational explanation of phenomena. History notes that Anaxagoras brought philosophy and the spirit of rational inquiry from it start in Ionia to Athens where it developed further. Much later the Enlightenment humanists built of this idea and its products using what they called reason and logic to create moral and ethical systems. This was not just armchair philosophy as they advanced the proposition of using reasoning as a progressive tool to effect good in society. It is natural for modern day humanists to pursue a rational system of inquiry to advance the good in and through the political realm. The Secular Coalition, for example, commits to:

“ promoting reason and science as the most reliable methods for understanding the universe and improving the human condition. Informed by experience and inspired by compassion, we encourage the pursuit of knowledge, meaning, and responsible ethical codes…” http://www.secular.org/

Which brings me to the scientific-empirical side of reasoning and logic. We now know more about the limits of human rationality and reasoning. It is deeply flawed and subject to leveraging by all kinds of biases. Indeed the American Pragmatists like Peirce, James and Dewey, who built on Kant’s critique of reason (pure reason ends in irresolvable paradoxes), were all over this limitation in the late 19th and early 20th century. Humans reasoning, as given to us through the building blocks of our animal evolution, is in practice, often limited and not strictly logical. Our reasoning includes adaptive heuristics that offers quick and compelling judgments, which ignore details that are too hard to compute. Indeed cognitive studies have shown that much of thinking depends on emotion, and that people’s rationality is bounded by limitations of attention and memory. This means for example, that we find it difficult to employ all relevant facts. For one thing facts and asserted arguments are not passive, objective things. People are actively trying to make their case and using selective facts, shading issues and fuzzing up arguments all the time. We live in a dynamic mix of half truths and manufactured positions. We often have to rely on external fact checking because, to paraphrase Twain, much of what we are exposed to in the media just ain't so. This inability to handle all the uncertainly and complexity that we find in our culture means we focus on some details/facts and avoid or dismiss others. We are aware of this in debates on complex topics, but often in debate we aren’t sure of why reasonable arguments, based on empirical evidence, do so poorly in persuading others. Can’t we see the facts, for example, of what a Conservative administration has done (2000-2008) and just extend the inferences to current and future situations? Well yes, but mechanistically it requires lots of assumptions and long lines of reasoning that can be challenged along the way. It is an inexact science and subject to influence by the intents of the reasoner.


Another way of speaking about such reasoning (and reasoning in general) is that it is practical and serves our pragmatic purposes. A tool for this pragmatism is to frame issues and using metaphors to organize our thought. This idea has been developed by the linguist George Lakoff, who argues that most (if not all) thought is based on unconscious metaphors that are usually physical in nature. So when arguing about the economy we heard then Fed Chairman Greenspan talking about “headwinds” slowing down recovery. This grounds us in the idea of resistance, but what exactly is the nature of these headwinds? They are certainly an uneconomic item. The familiar metaphor allowed him to ignore real economic details but give us a sense that we understand what is going on. Beliefs on complex issues, such as economics or politics, are largely determined by the metaphors in which these ideas are framed. Facts are organized to serve the purposes of frame designers and they influence how we feel about them. We see this in some of the arguments used in the Wisconsin union collective bargaining dispute. Actions by the executive, that seem extreme by one standard, are framed as powerful action to avoid fiscal disaster. Increasingly, such political arguments are understood in terms of physical conflict, struggle, disaster and war or sports metaphors –e.g. They shot down my argument, He couldn’t defend his position, or She attacked/tackled my theory. These are all motivating metaphors which can push rational argument to the back of the bus.

This view of our rational abilities is humbling. It further undermines the Enlightenment ideal of conscious, universal, and dispassionate reason based on logic. It even challenges an easy scientific formulation that empirical facts combined with reasoning gives us a privileged view of the world. This is possible, but it requires great discipline since we are attracted to compelling arguments that offer a good story (as previously posted on the Meme idea). Such narratives do make sense based on our experience, but these too are shaped by a non-logical process. To make sense of the world we inevitably see things from a particular point of view. This point of view includes the many experiences and biases accrued over our lives and is hardened into beliefs that serve our immediate needs. Beliefs and opinions are further shaped into belief systems by our cultural experience, exposure to stories and as member of political groups and parties. In most conversation these selective, easy to communicate and attention-getting, subjective experiences and judgments tend to be dominant over purely objective experiences.

Which I guess brings me back to the recent blog on “beating the Republican Party and preventing them from getting into office”. How do we decide? We are rarely isolated and reflective enough to have an objective base, but it may be possible to expose the issues involved, the relevant data and the chains of reasoning over time. It takes time and we need tolerance in our conversation to avoid continued conflict between formulated and preprocessed perception of reality. This is especially true in complex situations such as political topics which are generated from frame models of reality. This is not to criticize the Humanist tradition of rationalism, science or empiricism. Indeed these are important. It is just that these aren’t enough, without being integrated together into a system that deals with the imperfections of human cognition. These remain part of a larger systematic solution which includes a sustained effort to understand. Understanding rather than debate for its own sake is a useful goal and part of real process of inquiry. Open inquiry in turn depends on critical thinking, some tentativeness if not doubt and pragmatic ways of resolving uncertainty.

Rock Beyond Belief Cancelled

Justin Griffith, organizer of the Rock Beyond Belief concert at Fort Bragg, NC, is now saying that the event will have to be cancelled.

Jen McCreight has a good rundown of the backstory, but the tl;dr version is that Billy Graham's organization held a "Rock the Fort" concert at Fort Bragg, with full support (monetary, personnel, and official endorsement) of the base, even though it was explicitly billed as an evangelical event.

When Griffith organized a similar secular event, he was originally promised a level of support similar to that given to Graham's organization. But then the base denied financial support to the event. And then said that all advertising for Rock Beyond Belief would have to carry a disclaimer that it wasn't endorsed by the base. And then the event was moved to a small indoor venue, rather than a larger outdoor one, which effectively killed it.

Now the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is planning to sue for religious discrimination, in violation of the first amendment.

Good.

I normally try to be fair, and to look at the other side before jumping to conclusions, but in this case I can't see this as anything but a giant dick move on the base commander's part, and an illegal one at that. I could have understood moving the event to a smaller venue, since Rock Beyond Belief could have been expected to draw a much smaller audience than Rock the Fort in North Carolina. Except, of course, that Rock Beyond Belief was supposed to feature Richard Dawkins, who could easily be expected to attract thousands of people.

If the facts reported by Griffith are correct, this should be a very simple case. Let's hope that this sends the message that the military (and the US governement in general) can't favor one religion over another, or religion over irreligion.

Update: I notice that billygraham.org used to have a bunch of pages about Rock the Fort, as recently as February, but these seem to have disappeared. Please tell me I'm paranoid for suspecting that they've been scrubbed in response to Rock Beyond Belief.

The Values of Tahrir Square

To gain a deeper understanding of the Egyptian revolution, I visited Cairo during the first week of March and attended the demonstration at Tahrir Square on Friday, March 4.  The demonstration was originally called to demand the removal of the Prime Minister, Ahmed Shafiq, a former airforce commander and Minister of Civil Aviation appointed by Mubarak.  However, following Shafiq's participation in a television program where he was severely attacked by the writer Alaa Al Aswany (who wrote the marvelous book, The Yacoubian Building), he announced his resignation on March 3.   The demonstration therefore was quite joyous, although still focused on the removal of other ministers named by former President Mubarak and other demands for political reform.

Tanks were stationed on the outskirts of the square, and metal barriers were established at each entrance. The Square itself appeared to be a music festival, with families picnicking, people of all ages taking photos and videos, tomtoms beating and music blaring. Crowds formed around several stages, where speakers urged the army to clean the government and make way for civilian control.  Young people cheered, laughed and sang. Hawkers sold Egyptian flags, ribbons, bumper stickers and cards celebrating the start of the revolution on January 25 and mourning the martyrs killed.  Women and men cleaned the streets with their brooms.

Adding to the joy of the day was a visit by the new Prime Minister, Essam Sharaf. He came to the Square to tell the protesters that he would work to meet their demands. He saluted the "martyrs" of the revolution and told the crowd that he drew his legitimacy from them. Protestors escorted him from the stage on their shoulders.

Although at first I was nervous at the prospect of attending a demonstration at a site where so many protesters had been killed, I felt very comfortable.  When many Egyptians recognized I was American, they welcomed me and expressed their pride at unseating Mubarak.  Others spoke of their happiness in gaining the freedom to shape their future. I felt a common bond with the demonstrators, as human beings seeking to live their lives as they wished.

The values in evidence were respect for others, collaboration, citizenship, political activism and integrity. A clear and focused political agenda brought together people with a tremendous diversity of interests. Organizers created a climate that welcomed Egyptians alienated from the political process.

It will be a challenge to maintain these values as Egypt builds responsive democratic institutions and legal frameworks. However, I am convinced that the demonstrators and everyone in their lives have been transformed.  They are determined to do everything in their power to combat the values that facilitated their subjugation by the Mubarak regime. People throughout the world should support them in their struggle to translate their values into a democratic system that respects the interests of all Egyptians.

Rick Gold
From Post-Revolutionary Egypt

Earth Hour and 2011 Secular Spring Holidays

It’s March and with longer daylight hours things are thawing things out. I look forward to the change of seasons and some secular festivals options that this offers. It's interesting, for example, to look at the list of Holidays listed at http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/. The enumeration there includes 138 "holidays" in the US. At a glance there are roughly equal numbers of religious and secular holidays. Some are well known and many others are small ones such as Wright Brothers Day and Maryland Day 2011, coming Friday, March 25, 2011.



To me the Spring equinox is an obvious secular Spring event, Celebrate -The Renaissance, The Enlightenment, and Astronomy. There's a nice write-up on how to celebrate at http://www.secularseasons.org/march/spring_equinox.html.
Earth Day on Friday April 22nd (which is also Good Friday this year) is another secular event I look forward to. With an estimated half a billion people around the world celebrating Earth Day, is one of the world's largest secular holidays (some people count New Years as a bigger one). In light of the recent oil gusher in the Gulf it’s interesting to recall that senator Gaylord came up with the Earth Day idea after witnessing the environmental consequences of the Santa Barbara Oil Spill of 1969. Perhaps this will make the 2011 one a reflective reminder of what we celebrate and what we dread. See http://dc.about.com/od/specialevents/a/EarthDay.htm for Earth Day events in the DC area.


Recently I was surprised to learn of one other secular environmental events in the same environment spirit as Earth Day. The United Nations holds a similar event known as the World Environment Day held on June 5th(http://www.unep.org/wed/intro/intro.html). World Environment Day is one of the UN's principal vehicles through to:

stimulate worldwide awareness of the environment and

enhance political attention and action among the member nations.

This year the World Environment Day theme is: "Forests: Nature at Your Service". For ways to get involved see http://www.unep.org/.

Another event is coming even sooner. March 26th we have the 2011 Earth Hour(8:30pm-9:30 local time). Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney Australia when an estimated 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change. It has become an annual global event, organized by the non-profit World Wildlife Fund. In 2008, for example, it became more of a global sustainability movement when over 50 million people who own homes and businesses across 35 countries participated by:
"switch(ing) off their lights and to stop using electrical equipment for one hour in order to raise awareness about the effects of global warming and climate change." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Hour

It's a nice, focused effort to make our world a better place and a platform for collective action, although not much energy can be saved or CO2 reduced in an hour. The real value is symbolic and personal. I take it this way as a suburban Maryland dweller. I'm not in the city to see the big lights go off, but I can darken my house and take a slow walk around the neighborhood seeing some darken houses and meeting neighbors walking.
This year the effort aims at building personal commitments that go beyond just the hour with an emphasis on sharing personal acts with the world - see http://www.earthhour.org/About.aspx.

The WWF folks are asking people to make pledges about they will do to make a difference after the lights go back on. Each day the core group is sharing people's self describe inspiring actions with friends on Facebook and Earth Hour followers on Twitter as well as other Social Media. You can see more about what people have already pledged and http://beyondthehour.org/.

OK and Some Not OK Memes: The battle for Union Rights

Some ideas just catch on like viruses. You know the kind – tunes playing in our heads from the Oscars, Super Bowl ads, storylines and bumper sticker slogans attacking teacher union selfishness and campaign-like talking points (‘public employees need to start making some "shared sacrifice’). The idea of mind viruses, aka "Memes" was developed by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins came to this construct by analogy to how genes propagate themselves. Genes use the physical bodies they are housed in, as Dawkins said, selfishly. That is they have evolved to act only for their reproduction without knowing about or caring about their host’s quality of life. Genes succeed just as long as they are passed on. A side effect is that they help construct hosts that survive their environments.


Looked at this way genes are reproducing and infective specialists with side effects for hosts who need to survive environments to reproduce. Dawkins generalized this idea to propose that our mental life includes entities, which he called memes, that are similar to genes but a unit of cultural transmission. They are ideas that play in a mental host and "seek" to replicate themselves in one mind after another. Having a host with advanced skills (think of early humans making tools) and communicative abilities allows better reproduction of ideas, especially if they are selfish in spreading themselves. So without conscious intent (let along divine ones) our memes infect host-minds, copying themselves not for host interests but for their own reproductive ability. The idea is more of a framework than a well worked out theory but people like Daniel Dennett think that considering the meme focus on “who profits” answers some key evolutionary and cultural ideas, such as chain reaction of one innovation leading to and affording another. A simple example is the idea of a belonging meme for human gregariousness. The concept of staying with others is reproduced, since there was safety in numbers for our ancestor’s tribes.

Dennett and Dawkins along with others have applied the idea vigorously to discuss various memes that they hypothesize are involved in propagating religious ideas. In this formulation ideas giving people a feeling of belonging to a group (say a religious group) have an advantage. There is also the idea of distinguishing oneself by doing something new, innovative, or significant. An individual with memes about how to find food, shelter, and stands out from the crowd is more likely to find a potential mate. Religious leaders stand above others and so a religious story meme is likely to be reproduced as they are voiced by what a tribe recognizes as favored mates.

But other non-religious cultural advances and economies of scale efficiencies may also be propagated by a concentrated population. One group economy of scale comes with such innovations such as farming which requires stable groups. Population concentration also then works to increase mate choices and possibilities, who in turn can pass on innovations.


I was reminded of the meme model by 2 recent things. The first was a light BBC article called 'How did the word "OK" conquer the world' which illustrates why some ideas spread and take over. The article was based on Allan Metcalf’s book OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word in which he traces the word’s journey from “joke to business tool and then to staple of everyday conversation and an attitude toward life.” "OK" like "you know" or "I mean" crops up in daily speech dozens of times every day, although it seems habitual and carries little real meaning. My personal knowledge of OK’s origin was limited to what was declared in a Pete Seager song - "All Mixed Up". This asserted that OK came from Native American Choctaw - Okeh. But as Allan Metcalf explained the sound is also similar to Scottish German, Finnish and Greek affirmative words. Some idea-thing like OK is a good viral candidate in part because it sounds distinct but has simple acoustic components that are familiar to a multitude of languages. Thus its sound travels well and its graphic balance of the round /O/ and a /K/ made of straight lines makes it stand out clearly, easily distinguished from other words. These are good distinctions for a “Virus of the Mind” as Richard Brodie notes in his book of the same name. They help a meme virus get into the system and be communicated to others via a diffusion network. You can see some diffusion networks for recent memes that are afforded by the internet and social media online.

But as Dawkins noted early on, we are now aware of memes and so are at a new stage where people can intentionally design mind viruses. Those of us aware of the danger or having an interest can track some forms using a tool like Truthy .

Viral marketing is now a well known phenomena, which brings me to the 2nd phenomena that reminds me of memes – the attack on organized labor and the various memes of conservatives echoed my a mostly passive and tame media. It starts with simple sounding quotes as recorded in a NY Times article on dueling protests in Madison WI.

“‘You don’t care about this country! Shame on you, you’re selfish,’ one supporter of Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal told union supporters, wagging his finger as he spoke.”

Eric Alterman, for one, believes the issue of selfishness implied here isn’t merely rhetorical, but something we need to understand. It is dangerous. Alterman asks how did our country become a culture where “poor and middle-class folks willingly engage in internecine class warfare against one another, with one side essentially acting as a cat’s paw for mega-wealthy conservatives intent on undermining every worker protection in existence.” See http://www.thenation.com/blog/158844/whats-matter-wisconsin for the full article and the analogy to crabs fighting to escape a steaming pot. Altermann thinks that Thomas Frank framed an understanding of deceptive efforts by conservatives in his 2004 book, What’s the Matter with Kansas? The problem is that many of us have fallen for well designed memes disguised as populist, conservative messages that are in fact in conflict with the middle and working classes best interests. These have been called truthy memes since they rely on deceptive tactics to represent misinformation and half truths as fact. In a phrase we are infected with some bad ideas, which we are also in danger of passing on. They are spreading through the culture in part because they are driven by some basic fear of decline and by being packaged in a simple, relatively message about who to blame. Easy targets make for simple messages, which move along more easily than cognitively complex ones.

One thing that makes these messages difficult to resist is that the mainstream media has adopted conventional storylines as their hot button topics. This is done while crowding out competing and less sexy memes that provide the larger context digging into the real causes of the accelerating budget deficits seen in Wisconsin and elsewhere around the country. The real story might be to understanding the confluence of the failed housing market, high unemployment and Wall Street speculating and wild leveraging. These, rather than meme stories about public-employee union activity, are much better predictors of which state’s revenues are now in the red. But they are not simple, “OK” stories. They appeal to higher understanding and not the sexy, fear-based, scapegoating message being pushed.

Nor do you get much hard to resist messages about how the new cohort of Conservative governors have (or are) enabling state budget deficits by slashing corporate tax rates. Ron Brownstein had a column on a new war front role that Republican governors are playing in Washington's conflicts now –“American politics increasingly resembles a kind of total war in which each party mobilizes every conceivable asset at its disposal against the other. Most governors were once conscientious objectors in that struggle.” Instead of these ideas being widely discussed we hear echoes of misinformation dressed up as good statistical analytics. One cited example is the talking-point meme-statistic used by GOP politicians around the country. It appeared in USA Today in this form in August during the campaign:

“At a time when workers' pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees' average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn.” USA Today, August 10, 2010

This notion of public union employees milking excess benefits from local government while the rest of the middle-class is simultaneously struggling sparks much of the public’s resentment. But it is a designer meme that is easily refuted by grounded realists like Ezra Klein of the Post who pops meme bubbles like Organized labor is in the hands of the teacher's unions. Klein points out that, "Wisconsin public-sector workers face an annual compensation penalty of 11%. Adjusting for the slightly fewer hours worked per week on average, these public workers still face a compensation penalty of 5% for choosing to work in the public sector."
(see http://www.politicalruminations.com/2011/02/truth-about-wisconsin-public-sector-employees-compensation.html)

That’s a meme we need to hear more about. Like conservative stories it needs to be made ubiquitous and give some organic growth time to put down hardy roots into the public’s mind. This is what Conservative memes echoes over their media and do it religiously. When they are wrong on an issue, based on a hard look at the facts, they ignore the facts and keep repeating their meme story. Dangerous designer memes...Beware.




















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An Open Letter to Progressive Voters

As a registered Democrat, I feel that I can speak as a member of the family. But as a relatively recent convert from Republican and then Independent voter status, I can speak with an outside perspective.

One of the most obvious problems you have is that Democrats have no party loyalty, and trying to get all of you to point in the same general direction at once is like herding all of those silly cats everybody is always failing to keep in one group.

Yes, I know, there are so many groups that call themselves Democrats that they all have different agendas, but that is why I am using the term “progressive voters” in this letter. All of you should be agreeing on one thing: beating the Republican Party and preventing them from getting into office is the number one priority, that should override every single other issue you may have.

But you don’t. You still are capable, in a fit of pique, of staying home and away from the polls to punish the President for not being as left wing as you are.

WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

Almost every single crazy right wing bill sidelining women’s rights, targeting labor unions, making religion an official part of various governments’ activities, the impending shutdown of the Federal government and what will certainly turn out to be a two year gridlock of government at the Federal level is due to to an increased testosterone level in Republicans’ political activities that is virtually certain to be traced back to their being convinced that they won the 2010 elections because more people are thinking like them.

And they are able to think like this BECAUSE TOO DAMN MANY OF YOU STAYED HOME!

If you had gone to the polls and voted as you did two years ago, chances are that the Republicans’ wins in 2010 would have been much more diluted, if not much fewer and further between. It would have been much harder for them to claim some victory out of the whole thing if you’d just gone to the polls and voted for Democratic candidates.

But, that is water under the bridge, and can’t be changed.

What can be done is to get yourselves together to fight everything the Republicans are doing, everywhere! There is everything to win and a hell of a lot to lose.

I have some suggestions.

First, every progressive voter should, after finishing this essay, pick up the phone and call the White House. Urge President Obama to get on Air Force One and fly straight to Madison, Wisconsin, put on a pair of walking shoes and join the protestors in fighting this nasty, unconscionable attempt to destroy union power in the United States. Remember, it is your livelihood the Republican are trying to attack. And by destroying the unions, they will also destroy your Party’s ability to affect national elections in a major way. Which is their purpose!

Second, if you are a private sector employee who has no pension, a lousy health insurance policy and what you consider a poor salary compared with other people in other companies doing the same job, call a union. Seriously, CALL A UNION! If your complaint about public sector employees is that they have better pensions, health insurance and a better chance of keeping their jobs, CALL A UNION! Don’t help the Republicans destroy the livelihoods of others out of jealous spite, do something about your own poor situation!

Third, join other progressive voters in organizing for the next elections. Organize for elections at all levels, local, State and Federal. All over the country, elections are held every year at all of the various levels, and it is important - very important - that progressives get elected at all levels.

Fourth, at every opportunity, when faced with the insanity of the right wing, respond! Write letters to the editor, write your Congressional Rep and Senators, even if they are, no, especially if they are, Republicans. Let them know that they are opposed, that you think they are wrong. Be respectful but write them! Post on web sites where comments are allowed, talk to your friends, do anything you can to get out the progressive vote! Don’t let the right wing crazies get away with their insanity!

Fifth, VOTE!! It doesn’t matter whether the progressive candidate is perfectly in line with your political views or if he’s recently made you angry by ignoring your personal issue, if he is a Democrat, and the only other choice is Republican, vote for the Democrat! Don’t stay home, VOTE!

The alternative is to allow the conservative, religious fundamentalists to win.

And if they win, democracy loses, as we’ve seen clearly in Wisconsin.

Moving toward free and fair elections in Egypt

In an environment where elections are valued and voters have confidence in election authorities, it still is a challenge for governments to carry out free and fair elections. In Egypt, since Gamal Abdul Nasser took power in 1954 and abolished political parties, elections have never been a fair competition for power. Until 2005, the Constitution required the President to be approved in a single candidate referendum.  The first multi-party presidential elections took place that year. In presidential, parliamentary and local elections, Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP) prevented viable candidates from registering, restricted their financing, controlled media coverage, restricted campaigning, and used state resources to influence voting. NDP candidates at risk of losing employed thugs to attack supporters of their opponents. In voting stations, NDP officials stuffed ballot boxes, manipulated vote counts and "lost" ballot boxes transported to central facilities.

In 2005 and 2006, the Elections Commission opposed international monitoring and severely limited monitoring of polling stations by Egyptian civil society. Nevertheless, donors, including USAID, funded thousands of civil society monitors. USAID even funded unofficial international monitoring missions organized by the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute. While some of the monitors were prevented from entering polling stations, the combined monitoring operation provided a clear picture of widespread fraud and election abuses.  I experienced vote selling first-hand. As a USAID employee, I joined a group of Embassy employees monitoring the parliamentary elections.  At one station, a woman leaving the polls came up to me and asked for the money she was promised in return for voting NDP.

In efforts to address severe criticism of the electoral process, the Constitution was amended in 2007 to establish the High Elections Commission as an independent and judge-led election management body (Article 88). It has independent legal status and an independent budget. In the 2010 parliamentary elections, it recognized that abuses took place in many electoral districts, but declared the elections were run properly and reflected the will of the people. It condemned those monitoring groups and media who gave the impression that abuses were widespread and systemic. Many Egyptians believe the Commission cannot avoid bias. Four of the Commission's eleven positions are public figures selected by the Parliament, both houses of which have been controlled by the NDP.

Cynicism about the election process led Egyptians to insist that judges monitor the polling stations and receive complaints. A Supreme Constitutional Court ruling in 2000 required judges to monitor all polling stations in three rounds of voting. In most cases, judges have carried out their responsibilities seriously. However, a 2007 constitutional amendment (Article 88) prevented judges from covering all polling stations by requiring that elections take place in one day. Egypt has only enough judges to oversee a third of the polls in one day, and the remainder must be overseen by Ministry of Interior employees, in whom citizens have little confidence. Removal of Article 88 was one of the major objectives of the pro-democracy movement.

Even when judges are monitoring polling stations, their authority is restricted to the inside of the stations. They have no jurisdiction over abuses by security personnel and party officials outside of the stations, including vote-buying, establishing barriers to entrance and improper campaigning.

Citizens who wish to vote must present their voter card or present some form of photo identification and verify that they are registered at the polling station. One obstacle to voting is gaining an identification card.  Millions of citizens, particularly women and the poor, have either not attempted to get IDs or have faced obstacles in doing so.  They also are unable to register to vote for most of the year. Voter registration is only possible during a few months of the year. Consequently, many citizens are disenfranchised.

The seriousness of the Military Commission's commitment to democratic reform will be demonstrated by its support for revising Article 88 and other Constitutional provisions that prevent free and fair elections.  The Commission intends to submit the changes proposed by the Constitutional Review Committee for public debate and then for approval in a referendum.  I am confident that citizens will be much more engaged in this process than they were for the Constitutional referendums organized under President Mubarak, which were met by voter apathy.

I am less confident, however that Egypt will be ready to hold free and fair elections within the six month time limit set by the Military Commission. The challenges are enormous, requiring reform of the Ministry of Interior, attacks on systemic corruption and a change in the mentality of thousands of government officials.  Civil society must be vigilant in holding election administrators accountable.  It is certain, however, that the courage and commitment of those who overthrew Mubarak will serve them well in moving towards free and fair elections over the next few years.

Rick Gold

From Post-Revolutionary Egypt