Like most of us, I was taught while growing up that humans have free will. That important lesson was not delivered by my school teachers, however, nor even by my parent or relatives, but by my nanny.
My nanny was an elderly lady with no formal education beyond high school. She was diligent, caring, and tolerant, but she was an uncritical thinker. That is, she simply accepted what had been taught her, without much mulling it over, and passed it on to me.
One of the things that had been taught her, and which she uncritically passed on to me, was the notion of hell. My mother, an agnostic at the time, was no more concerned with teaching me about hell than she was concerned with teaching me about what some far distant Amazonian tribe wore to weddings. I don't even know if she believed in hell. But my nanny had been taught hell, had never questioned it, and thought it important.
I was about five or six when my nanny taught me about hell. And it was in teaching me about hell that she introduced me to the concept of free will. I vaguely recall she actually used the term "free will", but that could be my memory adding its frills and laces to the facts. At any rate, I believe it was as my nanny was teaching me about god, afterlife, hell, and salvation, that I formed my first notion of free will -- although I can't be sure whether I learned the term then or later.
Naturally, all that talk of hell caused tears. When my mother got home from work, she had to comfort me. Which she did -- as was her custom -- in an intellectual way. There were no hugs and kisses and reassurances that I was a good boy and would go to heaven. I probably would not have been satisfied by those things anyway, for I was an intellectual kid.
Instead, mom verbally asserted -- like the good agnostic that she was -- that the concept of hell was highly questionable, and that I was too young to make a decision about whether there was such a thing. As I recall, her words did not entirely calm me down and comfort me, but they did, I think, steer me in the direction of critical thought -- for one of the most important lessons to learn about critical thinking is the wisdom of suspending judgment.
Over the years, my sporadic reflections on free will have led me to greater and greater uncertainty about the concept. Today, I only think there is an exceedingly small chance of it. That is, if you define free will as whether, given two absolutely identical situations, your choice of action could vary from one of those situations to the other, then I think the odds are overwhelming that free will does not exist. And if it does exist, then -- for reasons too complex to discuss here -- I suspect it might be negative in nature. That is, you cannot freely will to do something, but in some limited way, you might be able to freely will not to do something.
In other words, what we call "free will" might not amount to much more than the inhibitory functions of consciousness. I guess it would depend on whether or not those functions are caused. If they are caused, then the will is not free. If they somehow cause themselves (and how could that be!), then the will has a certain measure of freedom.
What do you think about the notion of free will? Does it have any merit? Why or why not?
Showing posts with label Human Nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Human Nature. Show all posts
Sex and Fallacious Reasoning
Like most people, I am keenly aware the reason you do not often see "sex" and "logical fallacies of relevance" in the same sentence together is because logical fallacies of relevance are intrinsically so exciting they do not need sex to sell them.
Merely mention one of the numerous fallacies of relevance -- say, the Ad Hominem Fallacy, the Red Herring Fallacy, or the Naturalistic Fallacy -- and you create an atmosphere of tingling anticipation. To toss "sex" into the mix would only be overkill.
So it may astonish my readers that I am about to
Make no mistake about it, though: I am not mixing sex withpleasure logic merely in order to titillate you, my beloved readers. Nor am I mixing sex with logic merely because I am a man of passions -- strong, huge, even alarming passions. No, there is nothing gratuitous about this. Instead, it has simply become necessary to mention the two together.
And why is that? Because someone -- someone! -- has made a mistake on the internet! That is, they have committed the Naturalistic Fallacy in the all but certain presence of impressionable children. Children who might now grow up to promiscuously introduce fallacies into the very core of their reasoning. Children who might one day run large multinational corporations, huge NGOs, entire governments, or even departments of philosophy. DOESN'T ANYONE THINK OF THE FUTURE OF OUR SPECIES BEFORE THEY COMMIT FALLACIES OF RELEVANCE ANYMORE?
The person in question -- let us call him the "perpetrator" -- committed the fallacy in the course of arguing that we should derive our morals from "evolutionary biology". Allow me to quote:
But that is precisely the form of the Naturalistic Fallacy, which can be described as, "An argument whose premises merely describe the way that the world is, but whose conclusion describes the way that the world ought to be...." The Naturalistic Fallacy is a fallacy because you cannot reason from an "is" to an "ought".
If you could reason from an "is" to an "ought", you could reason all sorts of ridiculous things. "There is theft, therefore there ought to be theft." "There are wars, therefore there ought to be wars." Even, "There are murderous fallacies of logic, therefore there ought to be murderous fallacies of logic."
Yet, for the moment, let us accept the perpetrator's reasoning, despite it's power to shock us. What, then, might happen if we were to buy into his notion that "evolutionary biology lays on us certain [moral] absolutes?
Would not any behavior with a genetic basis that increased someone's reproductive success then become moral? I cannot see why it would not.
For instance, it appears that war has a genetic basis in territorial instincts and other such things. But if that is so, then wars would be moral if they increased someone's reproductive success. Again, there is a hypothesis that rape has a genetic basis. But if that is so, then rape would be moral if it increased someone's reproductive success.
Such implications must disturb even the calmest of men and women. To permit the notion that evolutionary biology lays on us moral absolutes seems to invite a deluge of undesirable consequences. Fortunately we need not permit it, for sound logic does not compel us to permit it. For that, and for other reasons, men and women of conscience may justifiably and emphatically wag their fingers while saying to the perpetrator in the most passionate terms, "Buffoonery! Mr. Perpetrator, your notion is buffoonery!"
Merely mention one of the numerous fallacies of relevance -- say, the Ad Hominem Fallacy, the Red Herring Fallacy, or the Naturalistic Fallacy -- and you create an atmosphere of tingling anticipation. To toss "sex" into the mix would only be overkill.
So it may astonish my readers that I am about to
Make no mistake about it, though: I am not mixing sex with
And why is that? Because someone -- someone! -- has made a mistake on the internet! That is, they have committed the Naturalistic Fallacy in the all but certain presence of impressionable children. Children who might now grow up to promiscuously introduce fallacies into the very core of their reasoning. Children who might one day run large multinational corporations, huge NGOs, entire governments, or even departments of philosophy. DOESN'T ANYONE THINK OF THE FUTURE OF OUR SPECIES BEFORE THEY COMMIT FALLACIES OF RELEVANCE ANYMORE?
The person in question -- let us call him the "perpetrator" -- committed the fallacy in the course of arguing that we should derive our morals from "evolutionary biology". Allow me to quote:
My position is that evolutionary biology lays on us certain [moral] absolutes. These are adaptations brought on by natural selection to make us functioning social beings. It is in this sense that I claim that morality is not subjective. [bracketed material mine]As it happens, there is more than one way to lay out his argument. In the spirit of good sportsmanship, I shall now lay out the perpetrator's argument in the strongest possible manner I can come up with, despite the risk of giving us all the vapours:
- We evolved various behaviors ("adaptations") that make us functioning social beings.
- Because the evolved behaviors ("adaptations") make us functioning social beings, they are moral absolutes.
- We ought to behave according to moral absolutes.
- Therefore, we ought to behave according to the various behaviors ("adaptations") that make us functioning social beings.
But that is precisely the form of the Naturalistic Fallacy, which can be described as, "An argument whose premises merely describe the way that the world is, but whose conclusion describes the way that the world ought to be...." The Naturalistic Fallacy is a fallacy because you cannot reason from an "is" to an "ought".
If you could reason from an "is" to an "ought", you could reason all sorts of ridiculous things. "There is theft, therefore there ought to be theft." "There are wars, therefore there ought to be wars." Even, "There are murderous fallacies of logic, therefore there ought to be murderous fallacies of logic."
Yet, for the moment, let us accept the perpetrator's reasoning, despite it's power to shock us. What, then, might happen if we were to buy into his notion that "evolutionary biology lays on us certain [moral] absolutes?
Would not any behavior with a genetic basis that increased someone's reproductive success then become moral? I cannot see why it would not.
For instance, it appears that war has a genetic basis in territorial instincts and other such things. But if that is so, then wars would be moral if they increased someone's reproductive success. Again, there is a hypothesis that rape has a genetic basis. But if that is so, then rape would be moral if it increased someone's reproductive success.
Such implications must disturb even the calmest of men and women. To permit the notion that evolutionary biology lays on us moral absolutes seems to invite a deluge of undesirable consequences. Fortunately we need not permit it, for sound logic does not compel us to permit it. For that, and for other reasons, men and women of conscience may justifiably and emphatically wag their fingers while saying to the perpetrator in the most passionate terms, "Buffoonery! Mr. Perpetrator, your notion is buffoonery!"
"An Honest and Pure Drive for Truth"
I have mentioned previously on this blog the interesting theory of Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber that reasoning evolved -- not to nobly discern truths -- but to persuade our fellow apes to cooperate with us. Thus Mercier and Sperber argue:"Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself — in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity — is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense.
In other words, those of us who wish in at least some cases to arrive at rational beliefs and rational decisions are somewhat in the position of a person who must drive screws with a hammer -- the tool we have available to us (reason) did not evolve for the purpose to which we wish to employ it, and only by taking the greatest care can we arrive safely at our goal."The evidence reviewed here shows not only that reasoning falls quite short of reliably delivering rational beliefs and rational decisions. It may even be, in a variety of cases, detrimental to rationality. Reasoning can lead to poor outcomes, not because humans are bad at it, but because they systematically strive for arguments that justify their beliefs or their actions. This explains the confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and reason-based choice, among other things."
I do not think Mercier and Sperber quite address Nietzsche's question of how any of us could actually have "an honest and pure drive for truth". Moreover, I'm not sure Nietzsche in his later writings maintained that any of us had such a drive. But I'm curious what you think: Do any of us -- even the rarest of us -- have what Nietzsche called "an honest and pure drive for truth", or do we always have one or another ulterior motive on those occasions when we actually seek the truth (as oppose to a mere justification for our beliefs or actions)?
My High School Math Teacher Was A Space Alien!
I am fascinated -- I have long been fascinated -- that the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in others.
If I were a scientist with an adequate research budget, I would probably want to study human intelligence just to find out what I could about that one unexpected fact. (Of course, if I were a scientist and I had an adequate research budget, that, too, would be an unexpected fact.) How can the same person be both smart and stupid?
I don't know a reliable answer to that question, but I do think many of us -- perhaps even most of us -- more or less fit the description of being smart in some ways and stupid in others. And those of us who do not fit that description seem more often stupid in everything than smart in everything.
I'm aware of Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. And his theory would seem to explain why the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in other ways. Yet, so far as I know, Gardner's theory is as yet unsupported by much in the way of hard evidence. Consequently, I remain an agnostic about it.
Often, when I think of the people in my life who have most deeply -- some might say "most traumatically" -- impressed me as smart in some ways and stupid in others, I think of my high school math teacher, Mr. B.
No one -- not even I -- questioned Mr. B's competence as a mathematician. I will submit, however, that Mr. B, despite his smarts in math, was twenty years ahead of his time in some kinds of stupid.
I had Mr. B as a teacher in the early 1970s. William F. Buckley was alive, and Buckley was frequently a very smart man. He also had the clout to be the intellectual guardian of the Republican Party. That is, if he decided someone or some group was too stupid to fit in as a Republican, Buckley would use his considerable influence to exile them from the Party. The Republicans have no one like him today. Today,. the crazies have become the Party.
The John Birch Society was one of the groups Buckley succeeded in kicking out of the Party. The "Birchers" believed -- in the way stupid people fanatically believe things -- all sorts of nonsense. For instance, they thought Dwight D. Eisenhower was a willing tool of the Soviet Union and a deliberate traitor to America. Buckley thought the Birchers were in danger of sliding into fascism. Perhaps he was right.
My math teacher subscribed to the John Birch Society, and perhaps to other Radical Right organizations as well. We knew whenever he had received in the mail another one of their newsletters -- he would put aside teaching mathematics for the day and instead lecture us on themes that were rarely enough heard in the early 1970s outside of certain circles.
I can still recall a few of his more memorable pronouncements: "Pollution never killed anyone". "Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist out to destroy America. Don't let anyone tell you different." "The Soviets will invade us any year now. Maybe any day now." "Women don't need equal rights. Men do! Women are smarter than men." "Negroes are shameless whiners. They haven't been discriminated against since the end of the Civil War."
I am a strong believer in the notion that, although everyone has a right to his or her opinions, not all opinions are created equal. Some opinions are forged of sound logic and a weight of evidence. Some other opinions are forged of logical fallacies and bullshit. Many people believe that differences of opinion never reflect differences of intellect. I disagree. Some opinions are so stupid their owners, if not merely ignorant, must be stupid.
Yet, it is simply true that -- often enough -- the same one of us who is so stupid as to believe the Theory of Evolution is a conspiracy of the world's 500,000 biologists, is nevertheless a brilliant (or at least competent) engineer. How can we account for that?
Mr. B once said something that I think is about half true: “No matter how good you get at math, you will never cease to make mistakes. But if you practice, you will catch your mistakes as you make them, and then correct them yourself, instead of needing someone else to correct them for you.”
I think it sometimes happens that way. But I also think very few -- if any -- of us ever get so good that we catch and correct every one of our own mistakes, whether in math or in any other field. We will always need the help of others. Indeed, it seems one reason the sciences have been so successful at establishing reliable facts and producing predictive theories is because they employ methods of inquiry that encourage people to correct each other's mistakes. That is, science is a profoundly cooperative endeavor.
Buckley once described some of the notions of the John Birch society as "paranoid and idiotic". To some extent, those two things go together. A "paranoid" person is typically unwilling to accept anyone correcting his ideas. Quite often, the result is his ideas drift into idiocy. That's to say, it seems one of the best ways to become stupid is to systematically reject or ignore the efforts of others to correct us when we are wrong.
But why are we humans so often wrong in the first place?
Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have come up with a rather interesting theory that could go far to explain why our species of great ape seems prone to cognitive errors. It's called "The Argumentative Theory", and it is well worth reading up on.
The gist of it is that our ability to reason evolved -- not to figure out what is true or false -- but to win arguments, or to persuade others to do what we want them to do. Consequently, our ability to think logically and evidentially is imperfect -- one might even say, "somewhat remedial".
Part of the evidence for the Argumentative Theory is our species built in cognitive biases. By "built in", I mean that the biases seem hereditary. The fact our thinking is inherently biased is strong evidence our thinking evolved for some other function than to merely figure out what is true or false. Mercier and Sperber would say that function was to persuade people.
Regardless of whether the function of reason is to discern reality or to win arguments, the fact our species is so prone to cognitive error might go far in explaining how it happens that the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in others. That is, perhaps we are smartest -- or at least, we tend to act smartest -- when we have some corrective feedback.
That feedback might come in the form of ourselves "checking our work" -- as when we check a mathematical solution. It might come in the form of whether we achieve our intended outcome -- as when we fix a car so that it runs again. Or the corrective feedback might come in the form of constructive criticism from others.
Perhaps the less corrective feedback we have, the more likely we are to adopt stupid opinions. Or, in other words, we should not expect our own reason alone to take us where we want to go. Rather, we should expect our reason plus some form of corrective feedback to take us there.
I think my high school math teacher, if he were alive to read this essay, would be appalled by my suggestion that -- no matter how good we get -- we are still wise to listen to the critiques of others. It seems to me Mr. B cared so little to hear the opinions of others that he might as well have been a space alien orbiting his own little planet and all but totally out of touch with earth. He seemed to think he was his own sufficient critic. And perhaps his lack of concern for the input of others explains why he found it so easy to harbor so many "paranoid and idiotic" notions. Notions that, in a sense, were more stupid than he was.
If I were a scientist with an adequate research budget, I would probably want to study human intelligence just to find out what I could about that one unexpected fact. (Of course, if I were a scientist and I had an adequate research budget, that, too, would be an unexpected fact.) How can the same person be both smart and stupid?
I don't know a reliable answer to that question, but I do think many of us -- perhaps even most of us -- more or less fit the description of being smart in some ways and stupid in others. And those of us who do not fit that description seem more often stupid in everything than smart in everything.
I'm aware of Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. And his theory would seem to explain why the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in other ways. Yet, so far as I know, Gardner's theory is as yet unsupported by much in the way of hard evidence. Consequently, I remain an agnostic about it.
Often, when I think of the people in my life who have most deeply -- some might say "most traumatically" -- impressed me as smart in some ways and stupid in others, I think of my high school math teacher, Mr. B.
No one -- not even I -- questioned Mr. B's competence as a mathematician. I will submit, however, that Mr. B, despite his smarts in math, was twenty years ahead of his time in some kinds of stupid.
I had Mr. B as a teacher in the early 1970s. William F. Buckley was alive, and Buckley was frequently a very smart man. He also had the clout to be the intellectual guardian of the Republican Party. That is, if he decided someone or some group was too stupid to fit in as a Republican, Buckley would use his considerable influence to exile them from the Party. The Republicans have no one like him today. Today,. the crazies have become the Party.
The John Birch Society was one of the groups Buckley succeeded in kicking out of the Party. The "Birchers" believed -- in the way stupid people fanatically believe things -- all sorts of nonsense. For instance, they thought Dwight D. Eisenhower was a willing tool of the Soviet Union and a deliberate traitor to America. Buckley thought the Birchers were in danger of sliding into fascism. Perhaps he was right.
My math teacher subscribed to the John Birch Society, and perhaps to other Radical Right organizations as well. We knew whenever he had received in the mail another one of their newsletters -- he would put aside teaching mathematics for the day and instead lecture us on themes that were rarely enough heard in the early 1970s outside of certain circles.
I can still recall a few of his more memorable pronouncements: "Pollution never killed anyone". "Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist out to destroy America. Don't let anyone tell you different." "The Soviets will invade us any year now. Maybe any day now." "Women don't need equal rights. Men do! Women are smarter than men." "Negroes are shameless whiners. They haven't been discriminated against since the end of the Civil War."
I am a strong believer in the notion that, although everyone has a right to his or her opinions, not all opinions are created equal. Some opinions are forged of sound logic and a weight of evidence. Some other opinions are forged of logical fallacies and bullshit. Many people believe that differences of opinion never reflect differences of intellect. I disagree. Some opinions are so stupid their owners, if not merely ignorant, must be stupid.
Yet, it is simply true that -- often enough -- the same one of us who is so stupid as to believe the Theory of Evolution is a conspiracy of the world's 500,000 biologists, is nevertheless a brilliant (or at least competent) engineer. How can we account for that?
Mr. B once said something that I think is about half true: “No matter how good you get at math, you will never cease to make mistakes. But if you practice, you will catch your mistakes as you make them, and then correct them yourself, instead of needing someone else to correct them for you.”
I think it sometimes happens that way. But I also think very few -- if any -- of us ever get so good that we catch and correct every one of our own mistakes, whether in math or in any other field. We will always need the help of others. Indeed, it seems one reason the sciences have been so successful at establishing reliable facts and producing predictive theories is because they employ methods of inquiry that encourage people to correct each other's mistakes. That is, science is a profoundly cooperative endeavor.
Buckley once described some of the notions of the John Birch society as "paranoid and idiotic". To some extent, those two things go together. A "paranoid" person is typically unwilling to accept anyone correcting his ideas. Quite often, the result is his ideas drift into idiocy. That's to say, it seems one of the best ways to become stupid is to systematically reject or ignore the efforts of others to correct us when we are wrong.
But why are we humans so often wrong in the first place?
Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have come up with a rather interesting theory that could go far to explain why our species of great ape seems prone to cognitive errors. It's called "The Argumentative Theory", and it is well worth reading up on.
The gist of it is that our ability to reason evolved -- not to figure out what is true or false -- but to win arguments, or to persuade others to do what we want them to do. Consequently, our ability to think logically and evidentially is imperfect -- one might even say, "somewhat remedial".
Part of the evidence for the Argumentative Theory is our species built in cognitive biases. By "built in", I mean that the biases seem hereditary. The fact our thinking is inherently biased is strong evidence our thinking evolved for some other function than to merely figure out what is true or false. Mercier and Sperber would say that function was to persuade people.
Regardless of whether the function of reason is to discern reality or to win arguments, the fact our species is so prone to cognitive error might go far in explaining how it happens that the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in others. That is, perhaps we are smartest -- or at least, we tend to act smartest -- when we have some corrective feedback.
That feedback might come in the form of ourselves "checking our work" -- as when we check a mathematical solution. It might come in the form of whether we achieve our intended outcome -- as when we fix a car so that it runs again. Or the corrective feedback might come in the form of constructive criticism from others.
Perhaps the less corrective feedback we have, the more likely we are to adopt stupid opinions. Or, in other words, we should not expect our own reason alone to take us where we want to go. Rather, we should expect our reason plus some form of corrective feedback to take us there.
I think my high school math teacher, if he were alive to read this essay, would be appalled by my suggestion that -- no matter how good we get -- we are still wise to listen to the critiques of others. It seems to me Mr. B cared so little to hear the opinions of others that he might as well have been a space alien orbiting his own little planet and all but totally out of touch with earth. He seemed to think he was his own sufficient critic. And perhaps his lack of concern for the input of others explains why he found it so easy to harbor so many "paranoid and idiotic" notions. Notions that, in a sense, were more stupid than he was.
Why are We so Often Untrue to Ourselves?
Bronnie Ware is an Australian author and songwriter who for many years worked as a caregiver with people who were dying. She was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives."Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure."
-- Meister Eckhart
When she asked her patients whether they had any regrets about how they had lived their lives, she discovered the single most common regret dying people have is that they have not been true to themselves.
Instead of living true to themselves, they all too often felt they had tried to live up to the expectations of others. And that, to me, is Ware's most interesting observation. Of all the reasons one might fail to be true to oneself, why is that the reason Ware heard most often?When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people have had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It seems human nature to want to live up to the expectations of others. Apparently, most of us do it every day in ways both great and small. A friend of mine -- someone I very much admire -- is a middle-aged woman who is now discovering that she has spent her life living for others. She was raised to put the wants and needs of everyone else before her own. And that message was both reinforced and justified by her family's fundamentalist religion.
For instance: The notion she was morally obligated to subvert herself in order to please others was so deeply instilled in her during her upbringing that she felt shock the first time someone stated to her that a woman is not required to have sex with her husband if she does not feel like it.
Today she is discovering -- one step at a time -- her own wants and needs. For the fact is, when you have been thoroughly taught to put the wants and needs of everyone else before your own, you most often suppress your own wants and needs to the point that you no longer clearly know what they are. It is easy to tell such a person, "Be true to yourself". But that person might have a long ways to go before she knows her real wants and needs, let alone is confident of her right to them.
Yet, we do not need to be first abused before we cast ourselves aside in order to live up the expectations of others. Abuse certainly helps us do that -- the very essence of abuse is that it unnecessarily alienates us from our true selves -- but abuse is not required for us to fail to be true to ourselves. We are social animals. Profoundly social animals. Almost anyone of us, if he or she really thought about it, could list a thousand ways in which our species manifests its social nature.
It is deeply ingrained in us to desire companionship, to want the acceptance of others, to value love and friendship. When scientists ask us what it takes to make us happy, we quite often tell them the single most important factor in our happiness is the quality of our relationships with our friends and family. Most of us at one time or another bargain for friendship by trading who we are for what someone expects of us.
Growing up, I gained a reputation for being among the most independent minded people in my cohort. It came to be expected of me that I would often go against the grain. And there probably was some truth to that. But I paid a psychological price for it in tens of thousands of hours of loneliness. However, I did not feel lonely because I was alone. I felt lonely because I was going against the expectations of others.
The loneliest people on earth are not those of us who are physically alone in life. Rather it is those of us who live with parents, siblings, roommates, lovers, or spouses who do not accept us as we are. Who want us to be fundamentally different than we are. If you know how, it is easy enough to live alone while rarely feeling lonely. Yet, it is all but impossible to live with someone who does not accept you without your feeling lonely.
If nearly anyone of us could list a thousand ways in which our species manifests its social nature, anyone of us could list a hundred thousand in which we are encouraged, cajoled, wheedled, browbeat, bullied, or forced to subvert ourselves in order to live up to someone else's expectations.
Allow me to give but one example: A friend once told me he felt he had not fulfilled his promise as a businessperson because he had spent too much of his career compensating for his weaknesses rather than building on his strengths. He then went on to tell me that, as a child, he had done well in math but poorly in English. However, his strength in math was all but ignored while his weakness in English became the focus of his parent's and teacher's efforts to get him to "improve" himself. In the way of a child, he took that to mean that what he was not (i.e. good at English) was more important to people than what he was (i.e. good at math). Although the experience was far from devastating, and he didn't want to make too much of it, he could see how it was one of many experiences that might have contributed to his life-long tendency to pay more attention to his weaknesses than to his strengths.
Of all the reasons we are so often untrue to ourselves, I think our attempts to live up the expectations of others must rank up there as among the foremost. But what do you think? Is there any truth to that? And what are the other reasons we fail to be true to ourselves?
Rape and the Madness of Crowds
About a year ago, a 14 year-old girl was raped in a small Swedish town. What came after the rape is simple to outline: The town not only rallied to the support of her rapist, but eventually drove the girl from the community.
The rape has been investigated both by representatives of the Swedish Government and by private journalists. None of them deny the rape happened. In fact, even the rapist himself does not deny the rape happened: His confession to the police is on record; he has been tried in court; he has been convicted. There seems no legitimate doubt the raped occurred.
Yet, despite those facts, most of the town folk have all but systematically denied the girl understanding, compassion, and even justice (by driving her from the community). For instance: When the girl reported her rape to her school's principal, her principal responded: "You file a police report if you want, although this is not a prioritized case as no serious crime has been committed."
The principal then went on to remark: "Guys do this kind of thing, you have to get used to it."
That "conversation" was not only witnessed -- and reported -- by the girl herself, but by a member of the school staff who had accompanied the girl to the principle.
The principal by no means stood alone in his bastard treatment of the girl. At one point, 2000 people from the town and its greater community had signed a petition to have the rapist's conviction overturned. The town's immediate population is about 1800.
I will not attempt to report all that happened to the girl following her rape. You can read a much fuller account of those events here. I recommend that you do.
The story of this poor girl came to my attention when it was reported last month on an internet forum. At first, many of the people on the forum questioned the report. They could not believe what they were reading was true. It was only after they had read several separate accounts that they accepted the accuracy of the reports.
I cannot prove it, but I suspect one reason the forum folk could not believe what they were reading is that the events happened in Sweden. Many of us have come to expect such things to happen in places like Afghanistan. But Sweden? Sweden is not only a progressive society, but it has the reputation of treating women better than almost any other place on earth. It seems improbable an entire Swedish town would almost to its last citizen ally itself with a rapist.
Of course, once someone gets his or her head around the concept that such events actually happened, and happened in of all places, Sweden, then the obvious question for him or her to ask is why did they happen? And this is where it gets dangerous.
It gets dangerous because most of us -- perhaps even all of us -- seem to have a tendency to bullshit ourselves about these things. That is, it seems human nature to at this point demonize the wrong-doers. Or -- if we do not go so far as to actually demonize them -- we usually still find some way to think of them as "not at all like us".
So, for instance, we decide the Swedish townsfolk must, unlike us, be provincial hicks to condone rape. Perhaps they are even inbred. Or maybe it's just that they are socialists. Everyone knows Swedes are socialists -- and some of us at least know what that does to your morals, right? Regardless of how we explain the town's behavior, our "explanations" have one thing in common: All of them insist the Swedish townsfolk are "not like us".
One of the problems with such theories -- besides the likelihood they are simply false -- is that they do nothing to prevent events such as happened in Sweden from happening again. And again.
If the Swedish townsfolk can be dismissed as "not like us", then there is no reason for us to be further concerned. Since they are not like us, and we are not like them, we need not worry that such events as happened in Sweden can happen here. Indeed, the more alien to us the Swedes are, the less we need do anything to prevent ourselves from ever condoning rape.
That attitude would be fine if it were realistic. But I don't think it is. What happened in that Swedish town could have happened nearly anywhere. It's not the Swedes who are to blame: It's human nature that is to blame.
I don't mean it is human nature to condone rape. I mean it is human nature to often enough go along with the crowd. One of the most obvious things about us as a species is that we are a cooperative social animal. I even once heard it said by a notable primatologist that humans are the single most cooperative species of mammal on earth with the possible exception of meerkats. She went onto explain that our ability to cooperate with each other was crucial in our evolutionary success. We didn't have the biggest fangs, we weren't the fastest species, we were by no means the strongest: But, in essence, we knew how to overcome "problems" by ganging up on them. The instinct to coordinate our behavior with those around us -- to go along with the crowd, if you wish -- is deeply bred into us. All of us.
I think that's what happened in Sweden. At least it seems to me a good chunk of what happened. There almost certainly were other factors at play, but one of the biggest factors was "the madness of crowds". Individuals joined together to turn a cruelly raped girl out of her own town because going along with the crowd is a human instinct.
I believe it is true that some of us -- a minority -- tend to be relatively less prone to join in with the crowd than most of us. But I see no evidence to strongly suggest that many of us are without any instinct to go along with the crowd. If any of us are, our immunity probably comes about as the result of some psychological disorder.
Yet, even if I am wrong to place such an emphasis on the role going along with the crowd might have played in all of this -- even if other factors were much more important -- I believe I am right to assert that what happened in Sweden could have happened mostly anywhere. That is, the townsfolk's behavior -- no matter how ugly it is -- is a product of universal human nature, rather than unique to them.
Hence, I think a lesson to take from all of this is that we would be foolish to believe we ourselves would necessarily behave any different than the majority of the townsfolk if we found ourselves in their circumstances. If we ever find ourselves in a similar situation, then let us actively be on guard to do what's right, rather than find ourselves passively carried along with the crowd.
The rape has been investigated both by representatives of the Swedish Government and by private journalists. None of them deny the rape happened. In fact, even the rapist himself does not deny the rape happened: His confession to the police is on record; he has been tried in court; he has been convicted. There seems no legitimate doubt the raped occurred.
Yet, despite those facts, most of the town folk have all but systematically denied the girl understanding, compassion, and even justice (by driving her from the community). For instance: When the girl reported her rape to her school's principal, her principal responded: "You file a police report if you want, although this is not a prioritized case as no serious crime has been committed."
The principal then went on to remark: "Guys do this kind of thing, you have to get used to it."
That "conversation" was not only witnessed -- and reported -- by the girl herself, but by a member of the school staff who had accompanied the girl to the principle.
The principal by no means stood alone in his bastard treatment of the girl. At one point, 2000 people from the town and its greater community had signed a petition to have the rapist's conviction overturned. The town's immediate population is about 1800.
I will not attempt to report all that happened to the girl following her rape. You can read a much fuller account of those events here. I recommend that you do.
The story of this poor girl came to my attention when it was reported last month on an internet forum. At first, many of the people on the forum questioned the report. They could not believe what they were reading was true. It was only after they had read several separate accounts that they accepted the accuracy of the reports.
I cannot prove it, but I suspect one reason the forum folk could not believe what they were reading is that the events happened in Sweden. Many of us have come to expect such things to happen in places like Afghanistan. But Sweden? Sweden is not only a progressive society, but it has the reputation of treating women better than almost any other place on earth. It seems improbable an entire Swedish town would almost to its last citizen ally itself with a rapist.
Of course, once someone gets his or her head around the concept that such events actually happened, and happened in of all places, Sweden, then the obvious question for him or her to ask is why did they happen? And this is where it gets dangerous.
It gets dangerous because most of us -- perhaps even all of us -- seem to have a tendency to bullshit ourselves about these things. That is, it seems human nature to at this point demonize the wrong-doers. Or -- if we do not go so far as to actually demonize them -- we usually still find some way to think of them as "not at all like us".
So, for instance, we decide the Swedish townsfolk must, unlike us, be provincial hicks to condone rape. Perhaps they are even inbred. Or maybe it's just that they are socialists. Everyone knows Swedes are socialists -- and some of us at least know what that does to your morals, right? Regardless of how we explain the town's behavior, our "explanations" have one thing in common: All of them insist the Swedish townsfolk are "not like us".
One of the problems with such theories -- besides the likelihood they are simply false -- is that they do nothing to prevent events such as happened in Sweden from happening again. And again.
If the Swedish townsfolk can be dismissed as "not like us", then there is no reason for us to be further concerned. Since they are not like us, and we are not like them, we need not worry that such events as happened in Sweden can happen here. Indeed, the more alien to us the Swedes are, the less we need do anything to prevent ourselves from ever condoning rape.
That attitude would be fine if it were realistic. But I don't think it is. What happened in that Swedish town could have happened nearly anywhere. It's not the Swedes who are to blame: It's human nature that is to blame.
I don't mean it is human nature to condone rape. I mean it is human nature to often enough go along with the crowd. One of the most obvious things about us as a species is that we are a cooperative social animal. I even once heard it said by a notable primatologist that humans are the single most cooperative species of mammal on earth with the possible exception of meerkats. She went onto explain that our ability to cooperate with each other was crucial in our evolutionary success. We didn't have the biggest fangs, we weren't the fastest species, we were by no means the strongest: But, in essence, we knew how to overcome "problems" by ganging up on them. The instinct to coordinate our behavior with those around us -- to go along with the crowd, if you wish -- is deeply bred into us. All of us.
I think that's what happened in Sweden. At least it seems to me a good chunk of what happened. There almost certainly were other factors at play, but one of the biggest factors was "the madness of crowds". Individuals joined together to turn a cruelly raped girl out of her own town because going along with the crowd is a human instinct.
I believe it is true that some of us -- a minority -- tend to be relatively less prone to join in with the crowd than most of us. But I see no evidence to strongly suggest that many of us are without any instinct to go along with the crowd. If any of us are, our immunity probably comes about as the result of some psychological disorder.
Yet, even if I am wrong to place such an emphasis on the role going along with the crowd might have played in all of this -- even if other factors were much more important -- I believe I am right to assert that what happened in Sweden could have happened mostly anywhere. That is, the townsfolk's behavior -- no matter how ugly it is -- is a product of universal human nature, rather than unique to them.
Hence, I think a lesson to take from all of this is that we would be foolish to believe we ourselves would necessarily behave any different than the majority of the townsfolk if we found ourselves in their circumstances. If we ever find ourselves in a similar situation, then let us actively be on guard to do what's right, rather than find ourselves passively carried along with the crowd.
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