Monkeys Making Moral Decisions

Many people think of evolution as peaking with humans. We picture our own species as the greatest achievement of and ultimate reason for billions of years of evolution. This way of thinking-- the idea (in this case, of evolution) as making positive progress and being purposeful, is called "teleology".

While this perspective may be deeply appealing intuitively, it is a misunderstanding of biology. In the broadest sense, evolution means "change"- a change in the genetic frequencies of a gene pool. This is not the same as "improvement" in the gene pool. Those kind of value statements don't make sense in a biological context, because in biology, "success" is defined genetically, and is entirely intertwined with and accorded by an organism's environment. What succeeds in a harsh winter might not in an especially mild one. (This relationship, between the organism and its environment, is what is considered "ecology".)

Among countless other justifications for this belief that humans are the pinnacle, and entire point of the existance of planet earth, we point to our own reason, and our morality. We intuitively feel that these abilities are uniquely ours, and are largely what sets us apart.* "Beasts merely act on their instincts!", it is explained. One of the problems with this perspective is that it relies on uninformed assumptions, rather than real knowledge and understanding of what other animals' capacities are. For some reason, just because we see might see animals in the zoo, or in a photograph, we tend to feel fully authoritative of their capacities and limitations.

However, according to at least one study involving empathy, and an awareness of other's pain, humans actually tested much worse in morality than another group of primates.

In a laboratory setting, macaques were fed if they were willing to pull a chain and electrically shock an unrelated macaque whose agony was in plain view through a one-way mirror. Otherwise, they starved. After learning the ropes, the monkeys frequently refused to pull the chain; in one experiment only 13% would do so - 87% preferred to go hungry. One macaque went without food for nearly two weeks rather than hurt its fellow. Macaques who had themselves been shocked in previous experiments were even less willing to pull the chain. The relative social status or gender of the macaques had little bearing on their reluctance to hurt others.

"If the circumstances were reversed, and captive humans were offered the same deal by macaque scientists, would we do as well? (Especially when there is an authority figure urging us to administer the electric shocks, we humans are disturbingly willing to cause pain - and for a reward much more paltry than food is for a starving macaque [cf. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental Overview].)

The study mentioned at the end is a famous one, performed after World War II, where humans, if directed to do so by an authority figure, were to found to willingly induce shock and torture. Horrifyingly, we saw random human beings, as ordinary as you or me- were complicit and at times eager to induce intense pain on others of our species, simply because they were told to by a man in a lab coat.

I am not claiming that these two studies, where the macaque monkeys acted "humane", and the humans acted, well, worse than "brutes", are the last word in characterizing entire species. I also understand the studies are not identical. However, I do think that these findings have the potential to grease the hinges of mental shutters and let in some light and air to our previous, and, I might add, gravely self-serving assumptions regarding the character and potential of our own and other species. To learn of monkeys who steadfastly refused to torture unrelated others, and even turned down enormous personal reward, (ie. relief from starvation) can perhaps lead us to question inherent entitlements due us as a species. Perhaps such insights could work to move us off an increasingly shaky pedestal of righteous morality.

If we humans are at all moral as we fancy ourselves to be, this sort of shift would probably be an indicator of said morality. We'd start to see that non-human animals are not only capable of feeling intense pain, but also feeling intense empathy and concern for pain in others. Perhaps we'd reconsider categories of who and what we are in relation to other species, and what is acceptable treatment of them. As our our understanding of other animals changes, will our moral consideration of and responsibilities towards them, as well?


* We tend to overstate not only our unique morality, but also our own (mythical) rationality. The western philosophical heritage emphasizes this now outdated stance- traditionally we've aligned ourselves with God and the angels (and, thereby, rationality and morality!), and regarded other animals as fundamentally different creatures.


**The book Good Natured: The Origins of Good and Evil in Humans and other Animals is devoted to examining the continuum of morality across species.

Happy Darwin Day!

chimpanzees, originally uploaded by Lizzetta.

Charles Darwin was born 197 years ago today. In his honor, I post the above picture of a chimpanzee mother with her baby.

My favorite discovery from Darwin has to do with the relatedness of all living things. Humans didn't "evolve from monkeys", but we do share an ape-like ancestor with chimpanzees, branching apart from them about 6-7 million years ago.

In fact, we share an ancestor with every living being on earth. Pretty profound, don't you think?

The gift (and burden) of a bigger brain: Imaginative Empathy

I've had a review on my desk for a couple of months, though, that I'd like to make an exception for. It is so entirely in line with my own take on ethics and evolution that I must share it with you! It was written by Ralph Blumenau in reference to a book by philosopher Mary Midgely, "The Ethical Primate". I found his review on Amazon, here's what he had to say:

In the last third of the book, then, Midgley considers how in evolutionary terms our moral sense might have developed. Her starting point is a hitherto little noticed comment of Darwin's: indeed, most people did not seem to know that he had written anything at all about ethics. Darwin had observed that parent swallows follow one of their instincts in joining migrating flocks while being apparently untroubled by the rival instinct not to desert nestlings who are left behind to die. In this case an instinct which is temporarily very powerful quite blots out one which Midgley describes as "a habitual feeling which is much weaker at any one time, but is stronger in that it is far more persistent and lies deeper in the character." The reason why the swallows evince no hesitation or feeling of conflict between the two courses is that their intellectual power is not highly enough developed. It is, Darwin wrote, "exceedingly likely 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 anything like as well-developed, as in man." Morality develops when creatures become conscious of the inevitable conflict in their feelings; and in the more highly developed animals the signs of the struggle between opposing impulses are quite clearly observable.

Human thought brings with it a number of characteristics which, if they exist at all in animals, do so to a much weaker degree: humans have a well developed possibility of imaginative empathy with the feelings of other creatures: they become not merely self-conscious but also conscious of others. They care about what others are thinking and feeling, not least about themselves. They understand the consequences of actions. When they have violated what the weaker but deeper feelings tell them, they feel guilt; when they observe others violating them, they become judgmental. They understand the consequences of actions. They want to have some control over their conflicting emotions - not just for mechanically "evolutionary" reasons, but because they value the freedom which may prevent them from being passively swept hither and thither by their instincts like a piece of flotsam on a powerful wave. Having become conscious of their instincts clashing, they want to establish for themselves a system of priorities; and the purpose of a moral code is to establish that system of priorities. The priorities they establish bear some signs of "selfish" evolutionary programming: to put the interests of one's children before those of the needier stranger, for example; but it is the capacity of thought and of feeling (Midgley constantly stresses that theories which set these two in a hierarchical scheme are badly reductionist) which gradually widens the range of creatures towards whom we accept increasing degrees of responsibility.

Bam. That's it. Once a creature's brain gets big enough, complicated enough, it can experience imaginative empathy (what an exquisite term) and can start to have morality.

This is partly why relying on outdated moral guidelines established thousands of years ago makes little sense to me. I think our capacity for morality came from our own brains, not from external codes handed down from god - and apparently this perspective can be traced back to Darwin himself. However, it often seems like, despite this wonderful capacity for imaginative empathy, it is more common to find moral-code following people who are not particularly moral at all. This is where we find someone praying 5 times a day who turns around to beat his wife, or who fastidiously uses two sets of dishes, but cares not a whit how the animal she eats on one of those dishes was treated whilst living. This is where we get someone who authoritatively declares that all (human) life, even a blastocyst, is sacred, must be forced to continue to exist, regardless of the existance of nurturing circumstances, yet votes for funding cuts for support services for the already born. The code is superceding the empathy, which to me is just perverse.

One of the main things I've been trying to express in Teardrop Souffle is that insights from modern science, particularly biology, can lead to a deeper understanding of our relatedness with the rest of the natural world. These insights can stimulate our "imaginative empathy"! As a reader pointed out, our empathetically capable big brains also give us the abilty for torture and cruelty, even sadism. An excellent point, and I will add that our big, complicated brains probably hand us neurosis as well. But I dwell on empathy because, as I might have said before, out of Pandora's Box of tragedies that is planet earth, it's my source of hope.


Now, please excuse me while I return to my cool drink by my pool.

On Illusion and Delusion

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

-- Irish dramatist, novelist, and
poet Oscar Wilde(1854 - 1900)

I think "delusion" must be right close in there, don't you think?

Wow, I just remembered my friend Teacup was quite stunned by a phrase he once heard tumble out of my mouth.

"Delusionism- it's a real nice way to make life go okay!"

I think I must somehow operate with gobs of delusion and illusion in my personal life ("My new boss loves me. He'd be so upset if I don't accept the position." ) For another example, see Butterscotch Souffle



my other blog where I post luscious pictures of, say, movie stars, birds of paradise and cupcakes. You might not even believe it comes from the same writer as TS, but it does! Apparently I seek out the bitter and the sweet.) Perhaps there is some equation whereby I subsist on so much delusion in my personal life that I don't much need it in the global, ultimate sense. Which might have to do with how I can obsess on the heaving, tragic topics I do, yet still be a happy little monkey.

I wrote another post a while back about this very topic of delusion and our regard for our position in the world- much better and more fleshed out than this one... It's entitled Fat, Dumb and Happy, Who Me?"

A Funny Song

This guy Don Wise wrote these funny lyrics, meant to be sung to the stirring tune (it really is, if you think about it) of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" . Here is also read a neat interview with my new hero.


My bones proclaim a story of incompetent design.
My back still hurts, my sinus clogs, my teeth just won’t align.
If I had drawn the blueprint, I would cer-tain-ly resign.
Incompetent Design!
Evo-Evo-Evo-lution! Design is but a mere illusion.
Darwin sparked our revolution. Science SHALL prevail!

Of course, essential tragedy in the world goes much farther than only the poor design of our own bodies, but I still love the song.

The Bottom Turtle

One of my plans for the new year is to write more on why a biological understanding is needed for making sense of the world. I think that's been a weakness of Teardrop Souffle so far. For me, biology's insights into eternal questions such as "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?" are obviously significant and profound, yet to others, apparently biology seems about on the level of significance as last night's Mets game. (Actually, the sports game probably feels more profound to a lot of people.) Why biology (evolution) matters is, I suppose, not so apparent.

So, in 2006, I'm going to try to better explain the relevance of biological viewpoints, by relating them to various real life situations. (I'm also going to try to do shorter posts, though that somehow seems a little more challenging.)

In understanding life on earth, I consider evolution via of natural selection to be pretty much "the bottom turtle". This is a phrase I use that references a story you might have heard. Here's Wikipedia's version of the tale, from a very nice entry about the story:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"

"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down.

I've heard the meaning of the story explained in a couple of ways. For me, the first came from the anthropological theorist Clifford Geertz. He was using it to explain that in understanding culture, there are always more layers of interpretation to peel away. The second explanation has to do with the idea of conflicts between versions of "truth", - my story versus yours, folk story versus expert analysis.

There are lessons in the tale to be learned, regarding perspective and humility. But I consider the fact of evolution via natural selection to be the "bottom turtle" for understanding life and culture, consciousness, and morality. Love, fear, death, experience- for me, it's NOT turtles all the way down! Evolution is the bottom turtle for all of these concerns, and more. I think we come much closer to getting things right once we start cleaning out the intellectual closets that are our brains, and start reorganizing our thinking starting with this fundamental, rudimentary fact. Even if how this is so is not yet clear, please stay tuned to hear more!

Sometimes I Talk about Teacup

Teacup on the Train, originally uploaded by Lizzetta.

This is a photograph that I took from a while back of my dear friend who I call Teacup. No relevance whatsoever to Teardrop Souffle, I just wanted to put this picture up. Oh- I think there's a small chance we might have been traveling to see Darwin's Down House (this is in England.) That's relevant! But mainly I just wanted to post a picture since I haven't for a long time, and I like this one. Hi Teacup!

PS. He actually writes the most hilarious blog any of us have ever read, entitled Give Me the Valium. The only problem is that he's so busy he hardly ever posts. But what little there is priceless...

A Cultural Refinement

I shall now attempt a refinement on some former opinions regarding "culture" :

In the past, on Teardrop Souffle, I've tried to make the case that "culture" (just like "religion") is not a sacred, undiscussable entity that must always be respected from afar and left alone. While it is true that outsiders never understand the inside as well as they think they do*, I also believe that various cultures, just like various religions, definitely need to being discussed, criticized and considered. Why should any line of human thought be beyond investigation? I feel this approach is ultimately more respectful, not less, to the participants involved and more likely to result in a more inclusive civilization, rather than a ghettoized crazy quilt of various isolated groups of society who have no understanding of one another outside their costumes and recipes.

My position is largely in response to an outlook that I was first exposed to in anthropology classes, and which appears now to pervade liberal thinking. (And believe me, I'm a liberal). I am responding to several erroneous beliefs:

1) The belief that all cultures are equally good and respect-worthy, regardless of what happens there.

2) The belief that the outsider, not being from that culture, doesn't really know enough to understand, and it is deeply arrogant to assume that our opinions ever matter.

3) The belief in the noble savage: what we call primitive societies are probably much closer to ideal than so-called modern society- people in primitive societies live in peaceful cohabitation with their surroundings and each other, and it is only when modern society, with its corrupting captitalism, invades and disrupt these societies that the imbalances, and therefore violence, environmental depletion, etc. occur. (Anthropologist Roger Sandall has lots to say about romantic primitivism.)

Even though I list them as falsehoods, I also do agree there is value to be found in these viewpoints. The underlying ethos in the above sentiments is "respect" and "humility" in our own viewpoints, and these are a precious values. The human tendency (in my opinion) is to value our own perspective more than others, and the above claims are attempts to temper that temptation.

So, what's the problem?

The problem is that an attempt towards understanding the truth is the most precious approach of all. Again, I'm not claiming that I have the truth or you do or that we'll ever acheive it, but I think that working towards it in a spirit of open inquiry is the most valuable approach out there.

When we put up false protections and say "oh, that's their culture, I can't criticize that", then we're cutting off discourse, we're stifling thought and we're ultimately isolating ourselves from others.

I think that the more effective approach is to respectfully take on the question of "what is going on here?" In other words, to actually give a shit.

In past entries, I've been crude and I've said "some cultures are better than others". Now I'd like to refine that, and propose the phrase "some cultures work better than others". In changing that verb, what I mean is that some cultures work better for the individuals within it than others. I think that it'd be helpful to think of the individual as the client, so to speak. It is the individual who matters and who should be respected. The culture should serve the individual, certainly not the other way around.

I also like this refinement because I think that it is in the secular humanist tradition of valuing the individual- humans (and other animals) most. We don't put god first , we don't put culture first, we don't put ancestors first, we care about what works for the individual. And, it also might clarify that I'm trying to think about culture from another's perspective, not just my own. What's more, we are all individuals, each of us vulnerable to less than ideal culture norms. ( Ideally, I'd like for us to relax our dependence on "culture" in constructing our personal identities. That might be impossible, but to me it's an ideal to strive for. For example, just because I was a southern debutante doesn't mean I shouldn't read fuckthesouth.com. Cos it's really funny-- and quite true. It especially doesn't mean that the guy shouldn't have written it.)

The issue of veiling comes to mind. Yes, it's probably true that I don't understand the complicated reasons why women wear veils in some Muslim cultures. I do try to figure it out, though. Because I care about people, care about women, I try to figure out what's going on when I see a woman on the subway platform, draped entirely in black, including her socks, sneakers and leather gloves, peeking out of a narrow slit of cloth. To me, my gut reaction is I am observing a woman, perhaps living just a few blocks from me, who is quite nearly a slave. It's a nasty, sickening feeling. I'm sure the real story is more complicated than that, and I need to continue to try to understand better. (Science encourages us to investigate our intuitions, not to take them on face value, right?) However, our friend Danny would say "We don't understand, that's her culture, it's deeply arrogant to claim what's going on". And yes, maybe I don't really know what's going on. But I have spent some time- years- trying to figure this out. I think it is not beyond the realm of possibility that this (not even truly traditional) dress is a symbol of something very bad. Because I think that culture can be very bad- human nature can be very bad. The wearer of all this might likely say her black cover is about modesty, about humility toward god and man, and she may say she feels most comfortable being anonymous on the street. These are various explanations I've been given, when I've intestigated this question. And I can see value in these approaches. But I also think here is a person who is literally and figuratively trapped in her culture. Is this okay with Danny? It's not okay with me. I don't think this culture seems to be working for her- helping her live up to her unique personal potential. And that's my wish, for everyone.

I think ideas matter, ideas shape society. So even though, yes, respect for individual freedoms and civil liberties are important, so is open discussion. I'm not claiming that the veil should be outlawed, but I am claiming that it is not beyond investigation and critique. One may accuse me of arrogance if I seem to say "I understand what's going on". But to me, more unsympathetic and arrogant is the implicit claim " I don't need to even try to understand what's going on, and really, we shouldn't even speak about it."

Happy New Year, Will Post Soon...

My brother was in town and so I wasn't able to post this weekend like I'd have preferred. Which is too bad because I have quite a bit to say. For one thing, the New York Times magazine printed a magnificent cover story this week (I don't know what's going on with them- I often find that paper quite annoying but I've just loved a couple of articles in their magazine recently.) PLEASE print it up and read it- it covers so many things I discuss in this on-line journal. The article is called The Case for Contamination. I'd also like to respond to some comments, and make quite a few updates/ corrections to previous posts, but I simply haven't the energy. Too much fun times! Happy New Year to each of you, more to come soon, I hope, though it might not be til the weekend.

My Holiday Wish for Ladies Everywhere

I have come to realize that I am quite alone in feeling the urgent importance of admitting that natural selection is a horrifically mindless, cruel process. Even when people are willing to even sit through my argument, oftentimes the feeling is, "Well, you've just thoroughly and utterly depressed me. Now what? Why does this even matter?"

Well, sometimes even I forget. But then, I'll go to a Christmas eve party at Amy and Steve's house, and and I'll be talking to a Czech girl about menstruation.

"My husband says he doesn't trust anything that bleeds for five days but doesn't die."

Oh, Holy Shit. I think I spilled my drink onto the floor, and exclaimed about four times, (four more times than was polite, helpful or appropriate) "Oh my God, what an unbelievable asshole".

You see, dear Reader, I think a despicable comment like that shows why a widespread, well-accepted critique of nature matters, and is deeply needed. This poor woman is getting insulted (by the man who should love her the most) for the ridiculous situation that "nature*" makes females suffer through every 28 days. Nicely enough, I think this woman's Eastern European cynicism* provided her with the (frankly realistic view) that we are all wretched creatures and the entire human race has an abundance of absurd problems. The Czech woman doesn't think it's just menstruating ladies who seem cursed... "We're all screwed", she explained.

Ironically, the reason we were talking about menstruation is that I consider periods to be pointless and probably entirely avoidable. In our evolutionary history, women were likely to be almost constantly either pregnant or lactating. So, our ancestors didn't have nearly as many menstrual periods as modern women do. It turns out that a lifetime of hundreds of periods is neither as "natural" as we are inclined to believe, nor particularly healthy. But the scientists who created the birth control pill in the 50's included the placebo (that permits monthly bleeding) only because they thought women would feel unnatural not bleeding. How crazy is that?

My holiday wish for the world is for every woman to be able to take the pill starting from menses, without breaks for the placebo pill, and only stopping once she was prepared to have and love a baby. If you are a woman, this is perhaps already an option for you! You don't even need to buy specially marketed products like Seasonale (the pill where you take breaks four times a year). You can just take your pill (I recommend as low a dose as possible, such as Levlite, particularly if you've had trouble with higher dose pills in the past.) Because although the temptation might be to associate nature with what is right and good, here is yet another instance where arguably it's neither.


*Her husband is American.

** It'd be more correct for me to say "natural selection", rather than "nature" - as you know, I tend to consider nature, (or more particularly, sentient beings we consider a part of nature) to be the victims of natural selection.

Why Maslow Holds the Magic Key

Life is suffering, the wise ones say. It is a great truth, an essential truth, and one worth dwelling on.

A while back, in a real fit of passion, I placed Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a permanent part of my Teardrop Souffle side bar. I put it there due to the special place his hierarchy holds in my heart and mind, for unlocking and explaining, and thereby potentially diminishing terrible suffering in the world.

There's a book long argument here, but just quickly, I'll put forth the following. This is my overdue attempt to explain why the "needs getting met" concept is to me both precious and profound.

Whereas natural selection maximizes shortsighted selfishness, a more thoughtful goal might be to maximize longsighted compassion. In my view, Maslow's hierarchy provides profound insights on how to achieve this. The root of compassion is an awareness of suffering. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs identifies sources of essential suffering: Unmet needs create suffering. It is only after needs are met that one can live to one's full potential (and yearn to help others, as well.)

I really loved this explanation of Maslow's work and its significance. Scroll down beyond the biography to get to the real special parts...

Ignorance as God? I Don't Get It

Here is an excerpt of a Dawkins interview from BeliefNet.


You've said, "don’t name our present ignorance 'God"'--which you said is what intelligent design proponents are doing. They’re taking an area where we’re ignorant and naming that God. Do you think science will eventually explain everything we wonder about now?

I don’t know the answer. I’m equally excited by both in a way. I rather like the idea of understanding everything and I also quite like the idea of science being a never-ending, open-ended quest.


I quite like that: "Don't name our present ignorance 'God'. In this context, he's referring to the "Christian" (though hardly Christ-like) Intelligent Design proponents. But I really like it because sometimes people like to say that God represents the Unknowable. Which, to me, is just a non-starter, go-nowhere outlook, but, I can only supppose for a lot of people (my friend Teacup, perhaps some Jews...) very interesting and/or meaningful. But who's to say what is "unknowable"? Furthermore, for me, the "unknown" is, to speak baldly, our own ignorance. And ignorance is not something I'm really inclined to think is worth honoring. At all. Ever. Humility is desirable, yes, but ignorance? I wish us to flee our own ignorance, not praise it.

PS. I don't know why the hell Dawkins would think it possible that we could ever possibly understand everything.

Something My (supposedly) Christian Mother Said

"I think God made a mistake in associating sex with creating babies."


Ahh, yes, I couldn't agree more. (If I believed in God, that is.) Since Christians believe God is perfect, I don't know how this "mistake" sits with her faith but I think I'll just appreciate her statement and not ask too many questions.

Just for everyone to know, I have a new job as an administrative assistant at a corporation in midtown Manhattan. This is why I'm so busy these days, and can pretty much only post on the weekends. I am trying to save lots of money to build a cabin upstate with my sweetie, and also for graduate school. I want to get a Masters in Social Work. At this point, I think I'd like to try to prevent unwanted pregnancies, probably working with teenage girls. This is the practical expression of various ethical concerns I discuss on these (virtual) pages- sex, love, needs met, family, culture, etc, etc, etc.

I'm really excited, though I think it'll probably be a very difficult field to be effective in. And my goal as a social worker will always be to be effective in reducing suffering. But I can imagine I'll spend a good bit of my career wishing sex had nothing to do with making babies.

A Shocking Take on Christmas by a Secular Humanist!

Again, I realize I'm a little late (I've just started a new job and it's kind of sopping my time away), but- I just think this thing about secular humanists stealing Christmas is a little odd. Seeing as how I'm a secular humanist, just went to the Secular Humanists World Congress, but am now learning for the first time how my organization feels about this apparently high priority issue through, uh, Bill O'Reilly.

But I guess the "they're stealing Christmas" meme reached its tipping point this year. I read am email that was sent out to a church congregation something along the lines of:

"I might be be old fashioned, or hopelessly out of touch, but I still think "Merry Christmas" says it best.

Poor, poor little fake victim. Like anyone ever thought a Christian church shouldn't celebrate Christmas.

The reason I'm bothering to write about a topic that's been so thoroughly covered and laughed about is that I do think that, as a secular humanist and the purported source of this cultural calamity, it's fair for me to provide my (tardy) opinion.

I'm for the increased secularization of the holiday. (Haha- surprise!!)

I think that Christmas has long been both religious and secular. In fact, the secular elements already drive many Christians mad. There is of course the annual church's call to arms: "Put Christ back into Christmas!!!" And any serious Christian knows that December 25th (or so) was already a pagan holiday long before Christ, and also that Santa Claus, stockings hung with care, and reindeer are hardly gestures of glory to God on the Highest. On a personal note, I will mention that when my mother became super-fundamentalist (mid-1970's), my brother and I had to throw away every single bit of Santa ("Satan Claus") , reindeer and elves and non-Christ centered paraphanalia in our house. Even a homemade and cherished "Father Christmas' doll had to go.

Therefore, I think it makes sense for anyone who is not currently religious, including and especially those Americans of non-Christian heritage, to recognize that there are many non-Christian elements in Chrismas to celebrate. Plenty of good traditions and habits that can be picked up, stripped of the religious meaning, as well as gross commercialization, and carried on as nice, warm, and perhaps even needed celebrations for a nice Winter holiday: Gift giving, egg nog, pretty Christmas lights, parties, sparkliness, holiday dress up outfits, peppermint hot chocolate, Christmas cards, even tidings of peace and good will- you get the idea. Perhaps these celebrations are already your idea of Christmas. Perhaps you already know that if only you so choose, it's quite easy and fun to wholeheartedly and happily celebrate the festive and warm aspects of Christmas, all whilst leaving sweet baby Jesus behind.

However, having spent yesterday's Christmas night with my Jewish husband, and my Hindu friend (with these labels, I'm describing their "heritage", not their currrent religion- they're both quite thoroughly secular, of course....) and hearing of their mild bewilderment with the holiday, I think their alienation was entirely preventable. Their parents could have, I think, figured out ways to participate in the fun elements of the holiday, and contributed toward making it their own. (Then again, their parents weren't secular themselves, so that probably explains why it didn't happen already. Though I still think it would have been nice- and much easier for their children- if it had.)

My husband Daniel says that he still considers Christmas at root a religious holiday, and that's why he doesn't want to participate*. For me that argument holds little logic or appeal, and my feeling is that this is an example of someone thinking in entire categories, rather than with, say, creative pragmaticism. (If celebrating Christmas can be considered creatively pragmatic...)

Then again, Daniel will quickly assure me I really wouldn't want him doing anything other than making curmudgeonly comments, and being a little silly grinch. Which I must admit has some truth. The only thing better than sweets and presents and sparkly outfits might be... funny comments. Which, I suppose, alienation from the biggest celebration of the year by society's dominant cultural group will most certainly provide.


* One of the problems with this claim is that that he doesn't like any holidays, except the New York City Marathon, which isn't even a holiday! But he claims it's a great day, which he would entitle Human Endeavor and Encouragement Day. I'll give him some credit here for his creative pragmatism, and shall now invite him to do a guest post on "Why I Love the Marathon".

Have a Breathtakingly Merry Kitzmas! (a little late)

I must acknowledge the exciting court decision that Judge Jones produced last week. I'm sure you've read this already, but I just love going over it again and again:

"The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision [to interfere with biology teaching] is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."

You may read more (if you haven't already) on, among many other sources, Panda's Thumb.

I just want to say that my favorite part (so far) of Judge Jones' decision (I haven't yet read the whole thing yet, but can't wait to) was his pointing out the mind-blowing amount of lying done by the supposedly upstanding, religious people on the ID side:

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

And, we now see some greed around Christmas: I 've been fantasizing a little about how wonderful it would have been if angry Judge Jones had subpoenaed the liars for perjury. I mean, they lied to the court- that's serious. How come they didn't get legal action against them?

But mainly I am just happy. I really loved this post, and also this (anonymous) commenter's point from evolution blog about what happens when issues are settled in the painstaking laying out of evidence, as opposed to political showboating: (I also think it's an interesting point about the dynamics and value of debate in general.)

(quoted from previous writer:) "I believe it was Stephen Jay Gould who pointed out that while creationists do well in public debates in front of lay audiences, they are lousy in court. Courts, you see, have strict rules of evidence and are, generally speaking, completely devoid of theatrical flash. In such an environment, creationism can't win."

That was from Gould's 1985 Caltech lecture, where he was talking about debating creationists and the McLean v. Arkansas trial:

"Debate is an artform. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact - which they are very good at. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief...." (S.J. Gould, Caltech lecture, 1985)

So it was in Arkansas, and so it is in Dover.

What a lovely gift and conclusion to 2005. Maybe things aren't so bad, after all. They probably are, but maybe not!

Why I'm a Secular Humanist, rather than a Defender of any Particular Traditional Culture or Creed

The reason I'm a secular humanist, and wish so much that the rest of the world were, is that secular humanism tries to dispense with the divisions between us, in an effort to join us in search betterment for ALL humans. (and I'll add, betterment for ALL sentient beings- including animals!) In my opinion, the natural world is a tragic affair, and to me, traditional religion and culture is not much better. I think we must be educated into more desirable, modernized lives. This means thoughtfully considering what is good and beautiful from various cultures, religions and experiences, and rejecting the rest.

I try to value compassion for the suffering of others - all others, not just those who are a part of my group. However, if someone points out problems with my thinking, or my own group, I try to be open to the criticism, rather than defensive. I try to figure out if there is any truth about what their saying. (For example, I need to post on an excellent clarification recent commenters made, that was critical of my point of view.) This is because I wish for people to be as objective about life on earth as possible (however difficult this may be) . I believe that relinquishing religion and traditional culture we were born into is the first step to the eradication of this in-group out-group sentiment that infests our planet like a nasty disease. With education and ideas providing our common ground, replacing traditional ways, perhaps we can actually begin to make, well, progress towards modernity.

Each time I criticize a religion, people who grew up in, or who currently belong to that particular faith background tend to write in and say "Hey, what about the other groups!" The focus of their complaints seem to be " just don't single my group out." What is frustrating is that as a secular humanist, it should be known that I am rejecting ALL religions and ALL traditional cultures. That doesn't mean there aren't good things to be learned about them, or that some have more good points than others. I just wish that we could at least attempt to see them more objectively, rather than have this "well, look at what bad things your government did" mentality.

Please, for the record, let it be known that I think pretty much everyone, everywhere is fucked. It would be funny if it weren't so sad. Most recently, I wrote about these new violent horrors that my own society is pretty much in DENIAL about regarding the Muslim (though I probably should be more specific and add middle-eastern Muslims- I need to research further) and a commenter wanted to talk about the Vietnam war. As though there weren't a generation of dissenters who voiced their opinion 35 years ago. Believe me, Vietnam can keep me awake at night, the waste and horror of it all. But you know what? People talked about it. People still talk about Vietnam. They talk about the war in Iraq, too. And I'm saying, look, here's another pattern of injustice to be aware of. It's ALL awful, but the only hope we have is love and education. Closing one's eyes to bombings, riots, and fratricide is no help, for members outside that community, and certainly not within it.

From the article "The New Berlin Wall"

by Peter Schneider
Translated from the German by Philip Boehm

From the article that I hope you will read about the German Muslim woman who apparently got murdered by her own brother(s)...

...Hatun Surucu grew up in Berlin as the daughter of Turkish Kurds. When she finished eighth grade, her parents took her out of school. Shortly after that she was taken to Turkey and married to a ccousin. Later she separated from her husband and returned to Berlin, pregnant. At age 17 she gave birth to a son, Can. She moved into a women's shelter and completed the work for her middle-school certificate. By 2004 she had finished a vocational-training program to become an electrician. The young mother who had escaped her family's constraints began to enjoy herself. She put on makeup, wore her hair unbound, went dancing and adorned herself with rings, necklaces and bracelets. Then, just days before she was to receive her journeyman's diploman, her life was cut short.

Evidently, in the eyes of her brothers, Hatun Surucu's capital crime was that, living in Germany, she had begun living like a German. In a statement to the Turkish newspaper Zaman, one brother noted that she had stopped wearing her headscarf, that she refused to go back to her family and that she had declared her intent to "seek out her own circle of friends." It's still unclear whether anyone ordered her murdered. Often in such cases it is the father of the family who decides about the punishment. But Seyran Ates has seen in her legal practice cases in which the mother has a leading role: mothers who were forced to marry forcing the same fate on their daughters. Necla Kelek, a Turkish-German author who has interviewed dozens of women on this topic, explained, "The mothers are looking for solidarity by demanding that their daughters submit to the same hardship and suffering." By disobeying them, the daughter calls into question her mother's life--her silent submission to the ritual of forced marriage. Meanwhile the two elder brothers have papered their [prison] cell with pictures of their dead sister.

Please Rush to Read This Link

The New York Times magazine has published an article, The New Berlin Wall, which I consider to be very important. I urge you to follow this link immediately (it will only be free on-line this week,) print it out (it's long) , and read the article in its entirety.

The article is about Muslims in Berlin. Muslim enclaves are growing utterly parallel to mainstream German society, and many are expanding in their separation from and hatred of German (ie. modern) society. (However, 70 percent of incoming Muslim immigrants immediately sign on to the priviledges of the country's welfare system). To many Germans, who had simply been ignoring the issue in efforts to be positive, accepting and multicultural, their wake-up call came when the murder of a Muslim woman by her own brother was publicized. The reason it was publicized was that other Muslims went on record for supporting the brother for his atrocious act.

I am reminded of early reports of Hitler, and concentration camps. I'm not saying this tyranny is as organized as the Nazis, and I'm not exactly claiming we've got WWIII on our hands. But the situation is deeply, deeply serious, and a lot of us are oblivious and tuning this out. Also, I will remind you that Islam has not yet had its reformation, and that offensive Jihad is a commandment of Islam. Mohammed was a soldier, not a pacifist.

A lot of liberals are so swept up in their (very reasonable) hatred of George W. Bush and our own fundamentalists in the US that they are not able to comprehend that Islamic fundamentalists are even worse. Liberals don't seem to want to take on the seriousness of the problem of having accepted Muslims into the Western world, only to have many of them hellbent on violently destroying the very society they fled to. We are seeing this pattern not only in Germany, but in France (with the recent violent riots) and England (with their lovable little home-grown terrorists). Even Canada had Muslims who were trying to install disgusting Shariah law in its land, and this came very close to happening. They claimed that Shariah law, which allows women to be the" property" (aka slaves) of men, should be permitted because Shariah is their Muslim " culture". (It probably is their culture, and dispicable at that. )

Secondly, lots of liberals are so bent on accepting, including and helping those they see as the "Other" that they neglect to identify a system of violent tyranny.

And that, my friends, is what we've got on our hands when we look at many (or most - possibly even all) traditional, isolated Islamic communities. And the problem is only spiraling towards more and more fundamentalist (read violent) positions.

Please read the article if you care about people and the world around us, and viewing the world with clear-eyed, paradigm-shifting honesty.

Where are the Parents?

In my last post, I wrote that my personal explanation for the riots in France does not start and end with economic inequality. I point my finger at the problems that come from a lack of transitioning from a tribal culture to a modern one. Part of what led me to this conclusion came from a stunning Associated Press article that I read a few days ago. It really pulled back the curtain for me, shedding light on the home lives of these kids who are running amok.

From the article:

'Life is very difficult here,'' Fatna said in Arabic. She, like her husband, is illiterate and doesn't speak French despite having lived here for more than 25 years.

[Her son] Khaled, who dropped out of school after failing his high school exams, is unemployed. He worked for eight months and then stopped, but his mother said she didn't know what kind of job he had.
"I don't read, I don't write," she said. "I don't know anything.
...
Parents complain their children don't listen to them, often lie and sometimes threaten to report the parents to police for abusing them if they can't have their way.
''France is a democratic country. It gives rights to women and children,'' said Abderrahman Bouhout, director of the Bilal Mosque in Clichy-Sous-Bois.

(Please note he is using this as a complaint- a defense.) Bouhout continues:

''Now parents cannot do anything -- if they hit their 12-year-old, police will come to their door. There's a hot line the kids can call to report parental abuse.

''We cannot bring up our kids the way we want, to teach them Islam,'' said Sabrine, adding that France encourages children to choose how they want to practice religion.

(Islam is the apparently not only his religion, but also the only culture he knows, and cares to know.)

''They say religion is not obligatory or that parents are not allowed to make their children wear the hijab (veil) or to pray,'' she said. ''They want to give our children the same freedoms they give to the French.''

Again, this parent considers this a problem, an excuse.
...

Some youths admit they don't take grown-ups seriously.

''The 'elders' of the projects have tried to calm us down, but we don't care,'' said 20-year-old Karim, rolling a hashish joint.

What's striking, said Marie-Noelle Botte, who works with children and mothers in Clichy-Sous-Bois, is that the youths jailed for the riots show no remorse. ''Generally, they don't feel guilty,'' she said, ''For them, it's like stealing sweets from a shop.''

Unemployed parents are not a good role model, Botte said.

Asked why she had not learned French after 27 years in France, Fatna shrugged. ''I don't go out, I'm home all the time. I don't meet anyone.''

I am reminded of the story of the Yanamano woman who got brought to America by her anthropologist husband, Kenneth Good. Apparently Yarima had never so much as walked on a flat surface before. What would she make of the wonders of modern civilization? What would she be most fascinated by? How would she spend her time? Apparently (so far as I recall the story) she spent it by rarely leaving the house, eating mainly McDonalds, and eventually returning to her people in the jungle.

I suppose change takes a lot of effort, and is quite difficult, particularly when you are from a shockingly different culture that is based on tradition, and doing what your kin before you have done. And I don't know what kind of assimilation programs France has, maybe none, maybe many. Perhaps they scoff at them as embarrassing American silliness. But what I think these riots show is that it doesn't work to pretend that all cultures are the same, and that more active efforts need to be made to help immigrants understand not only their rights but also the priviledges, responsibilities and opportunities of living in the modern world.

Culture Clash

The rioting in France is on my mind this week.

Anthropologist Roger Sandall has lots of writing that feels significant to the conversation. In the excerpts below, he reviewed an apparently prescient text from 1962 by Karl Popper called The Open Society and Its Enemies. Reading this review makes think I'd really like to bring back the dichotomy "tribal" and "modern civilization". I think it would contribute so much toward making sense of the confusing world we live in...

We can all be glad [if] we live in nations that are commercially prosperous, cosmopolitan, and democratic. We can agree that a free-trading nation in a free-trading world, with representative government, an independent judiciary, and liberty of thought, association, and expression, is a very fine thing indeed. Popper more than once appeals to the stirring oration in which the Athenian leader Pericles proudly boasted that "Our city is thrown open to the world; we never expel a foreigner..."

But what do you do after you have thrown your city open to the world, only to find you have let in enemies who not only decline to assimilate, but want to destroy it? When these same destroyers have been given all the rights of law-abiding citizens—including the cultural right to be as disagreeably hostile as they wish?

In this next bit, I'm not as much reminded of the (apparently non-religious) rioters as to Islamist extremists:

It is a curious fact that there is no mention of Islam in The Open Society, and no indication whatever that it might emerge as one of the ‘enemies’ of open societies in the years to come. But Popper would have had no trouble recognising what is happening in Europe now. Metastasising cells of unassimilable jihadis, often united by language and ethnicity, driven by irrational resentments, galled by their failure to cope with modern life and feeling “the strain of civilization in their bones, hating an imagined exclusion and fearing a suspected inferiority, inspired by a debased fundamentalism more concerned to kill than convert, fortified by prophecy, and aggressively promoting a sacred text containing all one needs to know this manifestly represents “arrested tribalism” in its current form today.

As for the rioters, I don't think the problem is in this case literally their (formerly) tribal society. I think it's the collapse of tribal culture upon arrival into the modern world, and a failure to fill that void with the values of modern civilization. (By the way, I'm not denying that the liberal explanations for the riots such as racism and exclusionism exist. Surely discrimination and deep economic disparities fuel the flames of frustration and isolation. I just don't agree that's the ultimate source of the problems.)

One reason Sandall endeared himself to me so thoroughly is that he is an anthropologist and therefore by definition something of an expert on culture. Yet he does not fall prey to the horrible ideal that is pretty much the foundation of contemporary anthropology, which is that all cultures are equal. Here Sandall describes a book he wrote that I can't wait to read:

The Culture Cult is about romantic primitivism-—the belief that traditional ethnic cultures provide a better home for humanity, more fair, more healthy, more harmonious, than today's free and open civilization.

In fact, traditional cultures usually have most of the following: domestic oppression, endemic disease, poverty, clan enmity, violence, religious intolerance, and severe artistic constraints. If you want to live a full life, then modern civilization, not romantic ethnicity, deserves your thoughtful vote.

It's definitely got mine.

Apparently I'm Dragging My Feet

Ah, the world can be so overwhelming. I'm really looking forward to writing all sorts of ideas and insights from the Towards a New Enlightenment conference. But for some mysterious reason I haven't yet. Actually, that reason is not so mysterious at all: there's so much to say, I'm not quite sure where to even start.

Also, sometimes I think that instead of spending so much time on the internet, I should try to organize my thoughts into a more publishable format. Am I accomplishing anything with this on-line journal? Is this a big waste of time? Perhaps my point of view could actually have an impact if I fleshed my positions out into chapters, rather than mere posts. Chapters would probably be more difficult, even more (naively) ambitious, but if one wants to have any influence in life....

So many questions. Til I answer them some, here is reporting on the actual conference events from one of Center for Inquiry's own...

Maybe I'm a Scientific Humanist

as opposed to a secular humanist. Nah, I'm both.

Via NY Times, here is an exerpt from E.O. Wilson's afterword to his new publication of Darwin's works, "From So Simple a Beginning", out this week:

Why does such intense and pervasive resistance to evolution continue 150 years after the publication of "On the Origin of Species," and in the teeth of the over-whelming accumlated evidence favoring it? The answer is simply that the Darwinian revolution, even more than the Copernican revolution, challenges the prehistoric and still-regnant self-image of humanity....

....In the more than slightly schizophrenic circumstances of the present era, global culture is divided into three opposing images of the human condition....The dominant one, exemplified by the creation myths of the Abrahamic monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), sees humanity as a creation of God....

The second world view is that of political behaviorism. Still beloved by the now rapidly fading Marxist-Leninist states, it says that the brain is largely a blank slate devoid of any inborn inscription beyond reflexes and primitive bodily urges, and it is the product of a cutlrue that itself evolves by historical contingency....

Both of these world views, God-centered religion and atheistic communism, are opposed by a third and in some ways more radical world view, scientific humanism. Stil held by only a tiny minority of the world's population, it considers humanity to be a biological species that evolved over millions of years in a biological world, acquiring unprecedented intelligence yet still guided by complex inherited emotions and biased channels of learning...

Bam! He nailed it. Yes, it's three main groups, at least in the western world. And again, it is a relief and a pleasure to find myself not entirely alone. Mainly alone, but not entirely.

What about those who say they LIKE wearing the Veil?

"We may act on free will, but that doesn't mean that will is enlightened, educated...."

--Ioanna Kucuradi is a philosophy professor from Kacettepe University in Turkey.

How truly "free" our wills actually are remains in question, but I still love her point. I've been trying to figure out how to say this for some time...

Rather than Survival of the Fittest

Chris from the conference made the wise observation that rather than "survival of the fittest", a more apt phrase might be "death of the unfittest". And of course, "fittest" is not an absolute term; fitness is always relative to the organism's ecological niche...

I also have been thinking of the word "cull" recently. I've never heard anyone other than myself use it to describe natural selection, but it seems apt. That might help people get the (not-so pretty) picture...

I am not Alone

It is an eerie feeling to have worked hard on my personal worldview, to have come up with my own melange of beliefs and explanations, thinking myself to be quite the odd one out, and to suddenly find---many others like me! Actually, it's really great.

I think it's safe to say that I am a secular humanist. I want what is best for the world, and I think the most effective way to figure out, and achieve, what that might be is to approach problems using reason and insights from science, rather than faith in a (non-existent) God. This joins me with secular humanists all over the world.

Last weekend I flew to Buffalo, NY for a thrilling conference called Towards a New Enlightenment. It was sponsored by the Center for Inquiry's Council for Secular Humanism.

From the conference pamphlet:

Thousands of years of human history and the ravages of world wars and religious resentments have brought much of the world to the brink of peace and the eve of enlightenment. The last century in particular has seen the emergence of international treaties and institutions which have been steps toward ensuring that a truly international civilization develops, casting off the mistakes and prejudices inherent in religious fundamentalist cultures...The values of the European Enlightenment have been largely achieved via these new institutions and codes, even while setbacks occur in both the Middle East and the Western democracies...

For three and a half days, illustrious speakers (such as Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris and anthropologist Lionel Tiger) spoke with passion on topics that I, and perhaps you, find deeply compelling- particularly having to do with science and religion and... morality! How wonderful. Soon I will be reporting here on Teardrop Souffle on the many, many things I learned while away.

But now, I rest. I think I was immersed in so many topics that I need to sort myself out a little. I don't want to write it all up just yet. Til then, I leave you with a couple of links- one from Newsday and another from Buffalo News, both nice synopses on the inspiring conference.

Stay tuned!

Some Clarity

I try to remind myself of this as often as possible:

"For the truth of the matter is that people have mixed feelings and confused opinions and are subject to contradictory expectations and outcomes, in every sphere of experience."

- Donald N. Levine, The Flight from Ambiguity

Two Interesting Posts from Elsewhere

Majikthise was asked: "Have you ever succeeded in changing someone's mind when they were holding an illogical or internally inconsistent position? If so, how, and, if not, why do you think not?"

I think that anyone who writes an on-line journal and who has opinions (that probably don't really ever sink in at all) is going to be quite interested in this. And, I was quite captivated. But actually, maybe anyone with opinions would be! Go here to read more (interesting comments, too)...

And this is a post where the specialness and exceptional-ness of the human species in relation to other animals is discussed. The discussion actually started at Crooked Timber. But at Philosophy, etc., Richard Chappell continues the discussion. His take is a combination of two separate classic arguments- Yes, humans are special, but in materially explained way. I especially liked the commenters' reactions, many of whom were saying that humans' ability to learn from others in such specific and recordable ways probably best explains the our uniqueness. That is pretty much my own view as well. (Although they express it much better than I just did...) Here is one comment I especially liked (from Richard Cownie at the Crooked Timber site, actually...)

“Chimpanzees may have 99% of our DNA but they do not write poems 99% as good as Wordsworth’s”

And neither do 99.999% of humans. So as I’ve said before, all these attempts to draw bright lines end up drawing the line in the wrong place. On the historical front, 200K years ago there clearly wasn’t any complex human culture, 10K years ago there clearly was. Surely the accumulation of such a culture was a gradual process, rather than appearing instantaneously ? So during that emergence of culture, where are you going to draw the line ? And let’s take the hypothetical case of a human being either with a neurological defect, or raised in isolation, who thus never develops higher language abilities. Which side of the line would that individual fall ? Do I get humanity points just for being born into the same culture as Michaelangelo and Shakespeare, even if I have no such talent myself ?

A Beautiful, Seductive Lady with a Wretched Soul

I'm thinking today about people who consider nature evidence of God's presence.

I think this is rather like a teenage boy who has fallen in love with a dizzyingly beautiful woman, who pins his hopes and dreams on her, without consideration of her essential inner character.

Generally, when theologians and philosophers address the question of "evil", the argument is framed as though evil were an exception to a general good. But to me, the "inner character" of nature, of life, is revealed in the process of natural selection. The beauty of the cheetah, the grace of the gazelle, the splendor of an eagle- their magnificence was honed through millions and millions of years of bloody failure. The animals we admire today are the successful ones, (though even they will likely struggle to survive and then die a painful death) whereas, countless others before them were culled. Really, what could possibly be more horrific? This process is not, from any reasonable perspective, even morally "neutral". It is more tragic than we can ever begin to conceive. To imagine otherwise- to imagine the opposite- that nature is the handiwork of a giving God worthy of praise and honor - is to be seduced and fooled, tricked and cajoled. To imagine otherwise is to callously dismiss tragedy, and that, to me, is the essence of immorality.




*I'd like to add that even without accepting the theory of evolution and natural selection, but instead simply taking a vast, vast survey of the observable natural world, one would detect patterns that entirely support my point of view.

"There Seems to Me Too Much Misery in the World"

"I had not intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [parisitic wasps] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."

- Charles Darwin, in a letter to his devout Christian friend and supporter, Asa Gray

Equation

"The more withered the reality, the more gigantic and tyrannical the dream."- writer Mary Gaitskill in her novel "Veronica"

For Regular Readers

For any of you who are interested in my writings on Judiasm, I just now searched my "archives". I was particularly looking for the follow up to Paradox. I finally found it! The post is entitled God is Not So Great. I wrote about a month after Paradox. In the follow-up, my tone is admittedly glib, but I think there are points in there that needed to get made, and that you might find interesting...

I Think This is Beautiful

Here is an excerpt from a post by Girl Scientist that I found very moving. She is reflecting on a lecture she gave to her Anatomy and Physisiology class on RNA and DNA and proteins:

After lecture was over, they [the students] gathered around me like wet sheep asking plaintively, "Do we have to know all these details for the exam, like, you know, what the signal peptide does? and Do we have to memorize the codons and their amino acids for the exam?

I responded, feeling annoyed with myself for wasting their precious and limited lecture time on details, annoyed to realize that I was not strictly teaching to the test as the other Adjuncts always advise me to do. No, you don't have to remember all the details. I told you about some of the details because I think they beautiful....

....I told you those details because I am a scientist who is deeply awed and in love with my subject and I wish you to be awed and to love it, too.

I wish my students to see that molecular biology is a bold masterpiece upon which rests the larger masterpiece of life. I wish my students to realize that every gene represents a brushstroke within this masterpiece, each one unique and special. I wish my students to understand that individual genes contain, within their sequences, the record of their passage through time and that deciphering the story contained within our DNA is to learn about our history. I wish my students to recognize that even as our genes disclose our distant past, they also reveal how our lives are intimately intertwined with all life on earth. I wish my students to learn that even though they are defined and described by their genes, their individual fates are not dictated by their genes any more than by the stars. And last but not least, I wish my students to understand that nature is the great scientist and we all are her pupils, that we are trying to decipher her grand and multi-faceted experiments as they unfold before our eyes, each one possessing an itinerant beauty and completeness that defy mere words.

More from Lewontin's Essay

This excerpt is directly from the Richard Lewontin essay in NY Review of Books. Reading it makes my heart sink in sadness for the world.


"How then are we to explain the continued strength of the campaign against evolution? We can do no better than to listen to the Reverend Ron Carlson, a popular preacher, lecturer, and author. He presents to his audience two stories and asks them repeatedly whether it matters which one is true.

In the secular (biological) story,

you are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system... in an empty corner of a meaningless universe. You came from nothing and are going nowhere.

By contrast, the Christian view is that

you are the special creation of a good and all-powerful God. You are the climax of His creation.... Not only is your kind unique, but you are unique among your kind.... Your Creator loves you so much and so intensely desires your companionship and affection that...He gave the life of His only Son that you might spend eternity with Him.

Lewontin continues:

"What is at issue here is whether the experience of one's family, social, and working life, with its share of angst, pain, fatigue, and failure, can provide meaning in the absence of a belief in an ordained higher purpose. The continued appeal of a story of a divine creation of human life is that it provides, for those for whom the ordinary experience of living does not, a seductive relief from what Eric Fromm called the Anxiety of Meaninglessness. The rest is commentary."

Why I Haven't Deleted Teardrop Souffle So Far

In this on-line journal, I'm trying to make a case for actually integrating insights from biology, the study of life, into our understanding of our own lives. As you may be aware, I do not feel that the findings of biology should remain only in the classroom, but instead, I feel (as apparently the creationists do!) these findings challenge our long cherished notions on life, people, nature, good, evil and God. I feel that the responsible, mature thing is to question our former understandings of the world, and update ourselves into more truthful explanations of our place on earth.

I should point out, again, that I'm no scientist! I have, in the past, tried to make a distinction in what I mean between biology pure, and the implications thereof. I personally am interested in the latter, and I would never, ever, for one instant feel that my opinions belong in science class . That said, I do think there is a place, a need, even, for some of these thoughts (particularly the vast implications of Williams' Lament) in philosophy and perhaps even religion class.

However, since Intelligent Design has been in the mainstream news recently, I have felt a little uncomfortable. These dishonest arguers (on the side of ID) are setting the national conversation so far back, and off-track, that the advances I am arguing for can end up seeming unrealistic, or perhaps even downright inappropriate.

Apparently others feel similarly. Here is a quote from noted geneticist Richard Lewontin, via Evolution Blog, that is claiming that views such as mine threaten legitimate science education. He feels those who interpret evolution into real life thinking (aka, in his words, "overzealous academics") pose a threat on par to the threat to science education posed by the creationists:

From Lewontin:

The other reaction, from academics in search of a universal theory of human society and history, embraces Darwinism in a fit of enthusiasm, threatening its status as a natural science by forcing its explanatory scheme to account not simply for the shape of brains but for the shape of ideas.

The threat from the "overzealous" did get reassessed by the Evolution Blog writer, Jason:

Yes, but. One of those is a considerably more important threat than the other. A handful of overzealous academics does not worry me as much as a vast ocean of religious zealots who have control of much of the government.

Yet here is an outright admonition to cease interpreting (in terms of science as worldview), from one of my favorite bloggers, Mike the Mad Biologist. (I recommend the entire post, but here is the relevant excerpt):

Stop with the atheist talk. (Paging Richard Dawkins) Whether one thinks evolutionary biology (or science as a whole) speaks to the invalidity of religion or the validity of atheism has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

This I understand. I would never argue with, say, a creationist about the validity of Intelligent Design and bring up atheism. I can see how that's a separate conversation- with a different audience. And again,the subjective implications of biology are not to be taught in biology class. (I appreciate his point so much that I've brought this up once before.) I don't want to be impolitic, especially in such a charged atmophere as one finds in the US these days. I believe in the need for message discipline, too!

But.

I was reading some Abraham Maslow this morning, and he put into words the reason why I feel deeply about the need to continue actually thinking about the implications of biology.

He was writing about how the ecstatic states that people feel come from God, or some supernatural source, actually can be experienced by those with naturalistic world views, (ie., non-believers) and explained naturalistically! And he was addressing what happens when rationalists decide to sit back and tolerate, uncontested, religious viewpoints:

He writes, in Religions and Peak Experience:

...Positivists (empiricists) as a group accept the same strict dichotomizing of facts and values that the professional religionists do.

(which is pretty much what we observed in the sources I quoted above.)

Since they exclude values from the realm of science and from the realm of exact, rational, positivistic knowledge, all values are turned over by default to non-scientists and to non-rationalists to deal with.

Not all positivists/empiricists do this- turn over their values to the religionists. But it's definitely the norm. A few groups that I'm just now learning of are actively working to stake their own positions. But that's just it- I am 35 years old and I just learned of, say, the wonderful Center for Inquiry a few months ago. If there's a debate on morality on television, who gets called in? A scholar from the Council for Secular Humanism? Hell, no. The clergy, the rabbis, that's who. They're considered the moral authorities. Because we, as a society, have allowed them that authority.

So guess what! We are left standing crippled with the uninformed, uneducated leading the way! Is that really what we want? No, we don't! Critical, clear thinking should be valued in all realms, including those that are getting relegated to the realm of "nonoverlapping magisteria". We shouldn't check our brains, nor our precious knowledge at the door when we are considering, or reconsidering, our beliefs, values, morals and greater questions of existence.

Some Self-Criticism

I am going to make a generalization about my own group. Ahh, finally, you say? Yes! This is some criticism of myself and other atheists: I think that atheists often have a tendency towards snarkiness. Unfortunately we have a tendency towards a condescending, dismissive tone of communication. I see it a little bit in my own writing, in the early posts of Teardrop Souffle, and in the writings of others. (In my own pitiful defense, I think my early posts were funnier than my more recent ones. Sniff.)

And, well, I like funny. But I've sort of started taking my subject matter with more gravity. I think these are some of the most important ideas in the world, and, in my opinion, most people are getting things wrong. Does that sound snarky? I hope not. I'm really trying to be sincere these days. And what's more, I'd like to be listened to. What hope does an arrogant jerk have of convincing anyone of anything?

I was thinking today about, as an athiest, I'm still closeted in my life. My birthday is coming up in a couple of days. I'm hearing "Oh, so you're a Libra?" a lot. This would be a perfect time to say something like, "Oh, Gosh. Actually, I don't agree with star signs at all! I really believe in real science, and education! I actually am have naturalistic world view- I don't believe in supernatural explanations of any kind...." But I never do.

The other day, I received my email newsletter from the brights ("A bright is a person with a naturalistic worldview..."), and I was thinking about how us secular people have a real public relations campaign ahead of us. Supporting this belief is the following excerpt from Dawkins, from the brights' website:

A Gallup poll in 1999 asked American voters the following question: 'If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be an "X", would you vote for that person?' "X" took on the following values: Catholic, Jew, Baptist, Mormon, black, homosexual, woman, atheist. Six out of the eight categories secured better than 90 percent approval. But only 59 percent would vote for a homosexual, and just 49 percent would vote for an atheist. Bear in mind that there are 29 million Americans who describe themselves as nonreligious, secular, atheist, or agnostic, outnumbering Jews tenfold and all other religions except Christianity by an even larger margin.

The "brights" of course, is a neologism, and probably all of us self-identifying as a bright are aware that the new word might not stick. We are desperately hoping it will, though. We are so in need of a positive, easy, approachable umbrella term for a naturalistic, not supernatural, point of view. We are using the word "gay" as our model. We hope that the noun "bright" will take on a new meaning of its own, and that we might be accepted as another group of citizens, like any other, who are capable of empathy, compassion, generosity and neighborliness. I especially hope that we will learn to be a little more "bright", (and by this, I think I mean more generous in spirit).

I found myself fantasizing today about a new sitcom. It could star two atheists. (The names "Will" and "Grace" would work quite nicely for the main characters, but I hear they're taken.) One of the atheists would be typically snarky, impatient with the simple-mindedness of the world, and the other would mainly be just sad for the world. She would always trying her best to be a loving, fair person, and who dedicated herself to helping other people and animals.

Somehow I don't think I will be seeing this show on television anytime in the next 30 years or so. I might just have to make do watching it play out in my own psyche.

Does Natural Selection Still Operate on Humans?

Below is an exchange between myself and Andrew, the writer of the on-line journal Universal Acid. He wrote: " natural selection never stops and still acts on human populations today" . I asked him about it, below is his elucidating response:


Lizzie: I was just wondering if it's natural selection that doesn't stop for humans, or if it's evolution that doesn't stop. I'd think that evolution (change of frequencies in a gene pool) happens, but that natural selection might not anymore, especially since we humans are at least SUPPOSED to try to protect and preserve every human's life.

Andrew: I think natural selection would still happen even in modern times, but in a different way (as you say, we in society try to protect everyone's life, even/especially people with disabilities who would in "nature" be weeded out). For example, now that contraception is widely available, there might be a strong selection pressure in favor of behavioral tendencies toward wanting to have a lot of children (as opposed to wanting to have a lot of sex, which is probably the main thing selected for in the past). But in any case, life was not so easy even 500 years ago, and the genes here were selected over the last 50,000 years - recent in terms of evolutionary history, but still a long time before the advent of modern health care.

Pinker on Origins of Morality, from a Biological Perspective

I just found this discussion with Steven Pinker in my files. I think of it as an extension of the post called Notes and Quotes on Origins of Morality. I'm posting it, even though unfortunately, I have no idea where it came from! Still, I found it too relevant to let go...



RADFORD: If there is a sense of good which is independent of us, who put it there? If a sense of god is a product of evolution, why do we all have such a consistent idea of a divine experience? When one reads the lives of the saints, one comes across the same phenomenon. We can't all have the same brains, or we don't all have the same brains -- why are all these things -- I know these questions are going to be asked, so I'll get them in now, if you don't mind. Richard? Or who wants to start with that one?

PINKER: As for the first question, who put them there -- it may be like the question, "Who put the number three there?" It would be best to get a real moral philosopher to defend the theory of moral realism, but I'll do my best. Perhaps morality comes from the inherent logic of behavior that has consequences for other agents that have goals. If one of the goals is to increase total well-being, then certain consequences may follow in the same way that the Pythagorean theorem follows from the construction of a triangle. Moral truths may exist in the same sense that mathematical truths exist, as consequences of certain axioms. That's my best rendition of the premises of a theory of moral realism.

As for the second question, why do so many people and cultures end up with similar views of a deity or spiritual theme? -- these beliefs may come from two mental faculties that may not have evolved specifically for spiritual belief, but may have evolved for other things, and as a byproduct give us particular notions of gods and deities. One of them is what psychologists call a "theory of mind"; by "theory" they don't mean a scientist's theory but a folk theory. We all tacitly subscribe to the "theory" that other people have minds. We don't think of other people as mechanical wind-up dolls. Even though we can't know what someone else is thinking, we do our best to make guesses. We look at their eyes, we read between the lines, we look at their body postures, and we assume that they have minds, even though we can't see them directly. Well, it's a short step from imputing an unverifiable entity called the mind to another body, to imputing a mind that exists independently of a body. Beliefs in souls, spirits, devils, gods, and so on, may be the products of a theory of mind or intuitive psychology that has run amok, and is postulating entities divorced from their physical home.

The other part of the explanation comes from a conclusion that anthropologists have drawn about what you find in common in all the world's religions -- not just the major proselytizing religions, but the animistic beliefs of hunter-gatherer tribes. Ruth Benedict put it succinctly: the common denominator of religions is that a religion is a recipe for success. She didn't necessarily mean this to apply to the most sophisticated theologies, but in general, what people do in common when they think of deities is to pray to them for recovery from illness, for recovery from an illness of a child, for success in love, for success on the battlefield, for good weather, for the crops coming up, and so on. I don't want to say that sophisticated theology can be reduced to praying for good weather, but if you look at what's common across cultures that's what you find.

Sorry, I Must to Ask You to Sign In

I have too many commenters responding under "Anonymous". I know it's a pain, but I would like to ask you to please sign in, so I can know who I'm responding to. I'd appreciate it if you'd use a real name (or a your website), too.

While I'm on the topic, if you are quoting someone, it helps to distinguish another person's words by perhaps adding italics.

Thanks again to everyone who writes in.

What I Have Learned from My Commenters, Part II

One of the earliest responses to the post I did on a former, controversial post was an obviously fake racist/ anti-Semitic response. Upon reading it, I deleted it immediately. (So don't bother looking for it!) I would like to respond to that commenter, though.

I think that that readers' point was "when you criticize the practices of group of people, there are racists out there whose prejudices you are fueling." To that, I have two main responses. One is, I'm deeply sorry if you have personally experienced racism. For what it's worth, I hate racism, too.

Secondly, does the threat of racism mean I shouldn't write honestly here? I don't really think so. Again, perhaps my initial argument was coarsely worded. And perhaps it seemed like I was picking on the Jews in particular. I had thought it would be clear, and perhaps it wasn't, and perhaps I'll add a disclaimer to make such a point.

But really, I post on my side bar profile that ALL traditional religions and cultures are to be rejected! Any regular reader of Teardrop Souffle will see complaints (either direct or indirect) against: Catholism, Saudi culture, the Muslim world in general, Western Philosophy, Liberals (and I'm a Liberal), Republicans, Hindus,Fundamentalist Christians, and a post entirely devoted to complaining about behavior and values observed in my own hometown, Macon, Georgia.

One of my main values of this journal is to have enough respect for the individual to view him or her as separate from the culture into which he or she was born. I believe we have the potential to be greater than the cultures from we which we came, (whether we realize it or not! ) I myself used to have a very strong Southern identity, and I consider it personal growth on my part that I have moved away from it.

When I was in college, I was taught that we must respect all cultures. So, this led to quite a bit of confusion, when you consider a cultural practice such as, to take an extreme example, the clitoridectomy. I spent a long time mulling over the question. Obviously, from an outsider's point of view, a clitordectomy is horrific abuse. But, it's their culture! It's been performed for thousands of years, often by elder women who experienced the same act in their own childhood. Does that mean, since it's ordained by the victims themselves, that it's okay? NO! It's not!

I believe the more loving approach is a more engaged one. Rather than thoughtlessly respect all cultures, an improved approach would be to learn about a culture, and to judge it in light of what makes sense for the individuals within said culture. Yes, we should show restraint and senstivity in our judgments, and yes, we should listen to the experts on the culture (especially the members themselves.) But we shouldn't make ourselves into mindless spectators. (This is quite different from racism, by the way, which is often simply mindless, antagonistic disregard for the individual in light of group stereotypes.)

The following interview excerpt is from an excellent collection of interviews and essays, from a website called Butterflies and Wheels, on the dangers of Cultural Relativism:

Maryam Namazie: This is something that comes up a lot when you criticise a cultural practice or norm or religion. You hear people say that it is offensive to do so and that you need to respect cultures and opinions. That is something that you often hear about from the perspective of cultural relativism. What is your analysis on that?

Fariborz Pooya: Cultures and religions are not harmless concepts. They are institutions; a part of the organisation of society... But in reality, culture is part of the institution of the ruling class. Religion is an establishment that practises and advocates a certain way of life. As part of society's organisation and institution, it forms and regulates the way society functions. And various political movements and social movements intervene all the time and criticise it constantly. They try to improve or change the shape of the society that exists.

So to argue that we need to respect those institutions, effectively you are saying, keep the status quo; you don't have the right to criticise it. ...I don't think there's any [institution] that's sacred.

Maryam Namazie: Except for the human being [the individual]

Fariborz Pooya: Absolutely, the only thing sacred is humanity. But everything else is subject to criticism and that is a very healthy thing for society...

I am not a person who believes that all cultures are equal, nor that all ideas are equal. Some ideas are better than others. Some ways of living are better than others. And in fact, I think that making the distinction between good and bad ideas might be one of our only defenses against the insidious reach of natural selection, and "traditional cultures and religions everywhere". A lack of reflection on these matters only fuels the status quo.

What I Have Learned from My Commenters

For some reason, my posts of the last couple of weeks have been provocative in inspiring commenters. I want to thank everyone for writing in, I have learned so much recently! In this post, I would like to discuss what I've learned from these exchanges.

There was some discussion, inspired by House of Comments, that science and religion should stay separate. (At least I think that's what his point was.) I think I finally understand what he was saying, and can agree with him. This is a salient point for an on-line journal such as Teardrop Souffle! Basically, I have come to the conclusion (where I wasn't so clear before) that the science of Biology is different from the human implications of Evolutionary Biology.

I think that when George C. Williams wrote that natural selection (from a human perspective) is a wicked phenomenon, he was, for a few moments near the end of his career, stepping out of his role as a biologist. He was writing from the perspective of (arguably) the world's foremost expert on natural selection, but also as a human being. I think the world desperately needed him to do that, and he did, and I think it's appropriate for non-scientists to take it from here. He's not a philosopher, and he's not a theologian, he was just reporting to us the observations that he had special access to.

One of the commenters brought up physics and phamous physicists' views on life as they see it. (Or at least as is understood in the popular imagination. I think a lot of those claims of what, say, Einstein said about the mind of God or whatever might be folklore.) Anyway, I think there might be an idea out there that when physicists "pull back the curtain" so to speak, and examine at the underlying structures of the physical world- time, space, energy, mattter- they are awestruck (as human beings) by what they find. I think there is an idea that the underlying patterns and mechanisms work in ways of great elegance, perhaps beauty, and even inspire feelings of admiration.

I believe the biologists feel a little differently about the phenomena they observe. While they might also experience feelings of awe, and are might even be struck by a physical beauty of their subject matter, I don't believe "admiration" is the word that they feel when they observe the ultimate, underlying mechanisms of life (eg. natural selection and sexual selection). Instead, they are saying, this system maximizes short-sighted selfishness. This is tragic!

So, the rest of us, upon learning this, are now poised to take it from there. Will we? We shouldn't allow the separation of science and religion, which is appropriate in science class, let us off the hook for integrating into our world view some of the most significant intellectual insights known to humankind! While scientists themselves probably shouldn't mix their roles too much, particularly in an educational setting, the rest of us really need to step forward and think about this. These insights are, in my opinion, a portal to modernity and progress! Most of us don't spend a lot of time considering the world from the perspective of the Greek gods Zeus or Poseidon- we consider those concepts quite irrelevant and outdated. We as human beings need to move onward with the more recent knowledge we have been handed, as well.

So, while I do now understand that the implications of evolution have no place in science class (and really, I doubt I ever thought otherwise- this is just more clear to me now), I think the philosophers have been absolutely negligent in not integrating biological insights into their teachings. Theologians, too, though I do feel that the implications of biology would, if they are to be honest, put them out of business.

How Wicked Natural Selection Influences Traditional Culture and Religion

This is overly broad, but I want to post it anyway, because I realized I have absolutely neglected it so far. Perhaps I will expand later, when I don't have (literally) 14 other posts to edit. I will say that this is just my opinion. I would probably need to research for ten years, arm in arm with cultural anthropologists across the globe, to make a comprehensive case. But still, I would argue:

Traditional cultures and religions tend to be outgrowths of the "values" of natural and sexual selection. These "values" include thoughtless reproduction, without a consideration of the circumstances. These values usually translate into an obsession with control of women as reproductive vessels, and a single-minded insistence on their never abandoning the reproductive role. This is usually achieved by submitting women to the will of men in their community. Often paired with this is a valuing of men as warriors, who are acting at the very basest levels of domination and violence, which serves to decrease their competitors and increase their own reproduction.

What about traditional religions and cultures that don't outright support these values? Well, those traditional cultures and religions are very rare. Also, for example, one could look at the Catholic church. The highest calling is celibacy (for the priests, etc.) so on the surface that would appear to contradict goals of genetic reproduction. But, of course, the same organization that demands celibacy for the priests outlaws contraception!! The church literally forbids perhaps the kindest, most civilized act on earth: the thoughtful planning of reproduction.

Newspaper Reader Responses to Conservative Views of Penguin Film

The article on the penguins that I described in the last post provoked some wonderful letters from NY Times readers. Here are a few of them:

To the Editor:

The life cycle of emperor penguins as "proof" of intelligent design? If I were designing a bird to live in Antarctica (and why I would be hankering to do that I cannot imagine), I would have done it very differently.

I would have supplied a pouch so the father could carry the egg instead of shuffling around for months with it precariously teetering on his feet. If survival of the species is the goal, I'm not impressed with the intelligent designer.
Sharon Raymond
Shutesbury, Mass.

To the Editor:

I'm delighted that the conservatives are looking to penguins as models of intelligent design, and I'd like to direct them to a slightly older article: "Love That Dare Not Squeak Its Name" (Feb. 7, 2004).

They will perhaps be surprised to read about gay male penguins of Central Park Zoo, who happily set up home (fittingly) in Manhattan, though one couple apparently ended their relationship recently.

I hope that we can all learn something about tolerance, love, and the struggle to survive from our black and white friends. The penguins reflect real life relationships of all kinds - not just those of the conservative bent.
Rick White
New York

This next one is my favorite. I hope is doesn't sound snarky. I actually think there is a lot of literal truth to this statement, and is a wonderful explanation of how and WHY traditional, fundamentalist thinking emerges, again and again, across cultures, revealing similar underlying patterns.

To the Editor:
In the spectacular movie "March of the Penguins," I too found the behavior of the penguins to present a fine model for the fundamentalist conservative approach to life: mass adherence to a program of reproduction, with unquestioning obedience to perceived forces with no desire for analysis of underlying mechanisms or the possibility of alternative ways of living.
Randolph Y. Hampton
San Diego

The "mass adherence" and "unquestioning obedience" he described is widepspread across the earth, even among humans, because natural selection rewards this behavior. Damn. I think I might be quoting Mr. Hampton in the future.

March of the Poor, Starving, Suffering Penguins

I was going to write about honorable attributes that you see in various religions, that I believe are worth preserving. But then I got distracted. I just found, via Blue Republic, a fascinating (and a little upsetting) article from the NY Times science section.



The article was discussing how the documentary March of the Penguins is popular with many conservatives. These people take the film to be inspirational for anti-abortion messages, family values and "evidence" of intelligent design.

"That any one of these eggs survives is a remarkable feat - and, some might suppose, a strong case for intelligent design,"

The article did reference a dissenting conservative voice- that of columnist George Will:

"If an Intelligent Designer designed nature," the columnist George F. Will asked recently, "why did it decide to make breeding so tedious for those penguins?

When I saw the film, all I could think about was how much suffering the penguins were going through (well, that and how how cute the babies were.) Though I appreciate George Will's point, I actually think that "tedious" (meaning "dull" and "tiresome") is absolutely the wrong word for a professional writer to select when we are looking at birds who must waddle awkwardly for 70 miles, and then starve for several months in -80 degree weather, to have a chick who may or may not freeze to death herself*.

I'm not saying the penguins aren't admirable, and I'm not saying I don't also believe in monogamy. I do value monogamy, and I value in both parents putting tremendous effort into child-rearing (if one is to have a child). I can celebrate the "values"" of the movie along with the conservatives. But to miss all the suffering? And not only miss the suffering, but to say this could be an example of omnipotent intelligence? How limited this feels!

Suffering is sort of a central issue of mine. I think for most people it is, if it's happening to oneself! But I think that a moral world view would be one where suffering of others is not to be dismissed.

Catholics, I think, might have sort of a special relationship with suffering. Rather than disregard it, or even simply being vaguely be impressed by it, I think they might give it some uplifting significance.

Here is what Pope John Paul said about suffering (as quoted in February 2005 Newsweek. These words are absolutely meaningless to me, yet probably a big relief to the sick, for whom they were intended:

"Sufffering seems to belong to man's transcendence", wrote John Paul. "It is one of those points in which man is in a certain sense destined to go beyond himself...Your suffering is never useless, it's a precious thing..."

Hmmm.

How about the the penguins who've been marching while starving for millions of years. Is that suffering ever anything other than useless? How small-minded we can be, when describing life on earth.




PS. I plan to do some more hopeful-feeling posts soon.

PSS. Those figures of (-80 degrees and such) are just from my memory- they might be off, but you get the idea. The conditions were so brutal that I might even be under-estimating the extremes.

PSSS. It is noteworthy that even as the conservatives are praising the monogamous breeding arrangement of the penguins, we observe many other arrangements (like harems) in the animal kingdom. The key insight that the conservatives are unaware of that is that those breeding arrangements, from monogamy to harems and so forth, are determined and can even be predicted by specific ecological conditions.

PSSSS. I guess one could argue "how do we know how much these birds are suffering?". I think that's another post, but I'll just quickly argue that the fact that the birds are often find themselves within a few hours of either starvation or freezing to death that these conditions would have to be assumed to be rather miserable. We humans almost invariably err on the side of underestimating other species levels of perception and feeling.

Romance and Weaver Ants

My mother recently passed on to me her copy of Sierra, which is the print magazine published by the Sierra Club, the great environmentalist organization. They do wonderful work, I think, and I support them in their fights against industrial takeovers of land, endangered species protection and mass destruction of ecological systems.

However, the back page is adorned with a large picture and huge quote that illustrates to me how a misguided, inaccurate view of nature affects (infects?) even the more enlightened, educated among us.

The picture is a close up of about 6 Weaver ants apparently gnawing on a leaf. The entire page is devoted to that photograph and to this statement:

All the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productiveness nourishes plants, animals and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do." -William McDonough, architect and designer

I don't know a thing about Weaver ants, but if they were another sort of insect, say, the larvae of the ichneumonidae, I think they could very well be gnawing on a live caterpillar.


"In early spring we [the photographer and his/her family member(s)] found this Ichneumon wasp attacking a case moth caterpillar on a Acacia tree. Although the caterpillar was protected by its case bag, it seemed it was useless to prevent the attack from the wasp. We saw the caterpillar head come out a few times try to get rid of the wasp but no use either. The wasp kept on punching her long ovipositor into the case bag for over half an hour. "

The reason the mother wasp is attacking the caterpillar is that she wants to sting and paralyze the it, so that her larvae can eventually feed on the caterpillar's live flesh. And that to me, is a design problem. (Particularly if we decide that we care about suffering.) What a terrible set-up! But natural selection rewards this sort of catch-as-catch-can behavior, in endless horrific manifestations. I'm sure one could come up with countless ant examples that could describe my point just as well, but I just bring this up because Darwin cited the ichneumonidae in a related context.



There has been much written on this subject, on this on-line journal and others. My point here is simply to point out that this romantic viewpoint, where nature is glorified and only people are claimed to be the problem, continues to get propagated in places and publications that I think should know better.

PS. For the record, I personally now don't consider nature the problem, either. I think natural selection is. (Which isn't the only force out there, but it's an important one.) I consider nature, or more precisely feeling beings, to generally be the victims of natural selection.

Even a Fake Controversy has Two Sides

Thanks to Panda's Thumb, I found this article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Although I try not to get too caught up in ID too much here, Jay Bookman writes in that article all about what we've been discussing here on Teardrop Souffle recently. What an eerie feeling to have my personal obsessions intellectual curiosities cross over with the talk of the day!

...Unfortunately, though, I don't believe ID advocates are sincere about wanting to teach the controversy. If they are, they simply haven't thought through the implications.

A controversy, remember, has two sides. And if alleged weaknesses in evolution theory are to be taught in our schools as science, then scientific evidence against the existence of an intelligent designer or God must be taught, too.

That's how science works. If you propose a theory, you issue an invitation to others to shoot holes in your theory.

So think about that: Do we really want science teachers exploring the evidence for — but also against — the existence of a designer? I don't think that's wise or useful for a number of reasons, but that's what a rigorous and intellectually honest debate would require.

To take a tiny example, the existence of an appendix — which serves no purpose except to enrich surgeons — certainly calls into question the intelligence if not the existence of an ultimate designer. To take a larger example, would an intelligent designer allow the birth of babies so malformed that they are doomed to live only a few hours of a painful existence?...

How could God do Such a Thing? Well, maybe He didn't.

Yesterday I read what a theologican, Peter Steinfels, wrote in the NY Times about Hurricane Katrina. He was pointing out how he hasn't heard Americans asking the question of how God could create a force that hurt so many people*, and he was saying (and I deeply respect this:) that we should be asking such a question.

"Delving into such mysteries might at least lead to a more profound understanding of the human condition and the untidiness of reality generally."

He also said:

"There may be no final, fully satisfactory answers to questions like how God could allow 9/11 or the tsunami to happen, or in Katrina's case, allow officialdom and decades of neglect to allow it to happen. "

On the other hand, I think we already do have an answer- in fact, a very simple, elegant answer: there is no God. Questions that used to seem unanswerable fall neatly- perhaps more neatly than we ever imagined possible- into place.

Notes and Quotes on Origins of Morality

I think that one of the reasons I haven't been writing so much recently is that I've been sort of "researching" instead. I've been investigating what has been written about evolution and morality. In this post, I'm going to offer a collection of comments on the topic.

Yesterday I had the privilege of hanging out with a philosophy professor emeritus from NYU whose specialty is Ethics, and who has a real interest in bring philosophy into real life. My new dream is to involve him in my drive to name some of these important biological findings that impact on human notions of morality, and to get them considered a part of the canon of Western philosophy. Wow what a humble little peanut am I.

Actually, I'm just astonished that this hasn't happened already. I think there must be some silly reason like philosophy and biology being on different sides of the university campus or something. I might not believe in my own eloquence, but I'm a great believer in the ideas themselves. That's why I have the gumption to run around and expect something to come of all this. I hope that even if religion and biology can't be united, perhaps at least philosophy and biology could be to some extent.

Anyway, here are some notes and quotes on the origins of morality. In case you haven't detected, I think these are IMPORTANT, worth thinking about. They really are different from the religious beliefs most all of us were raised with, or the philosophical ideas we were taught:

Richard Dawkins wrote:

"Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish."

On the other hand, here is George C. Williams explanation for the origins of morality. I think it comes closer to hitting the mark. He's not claiming we're entirely selfish, yet he's starting with natural selection in his explanation of the origins of morality:

"I account for morality as an accidental capability produced, in its boundless stupidity, by a biological process (natural selection) that is normally opposed to the expression of such a capability."

Frans de Waal says something similar, in his nearly magnificent book Good Natured The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and other Animals.

"In biology, the very same principle of natural selection that mercilessly plays off life forms and individuals against one another has led to symbiosis and mutualism among different organisms, to sensitivity of one individual to the needs of another, and to joint action toward a common goal. We are facing the profound paradox that genetic self-advancement at the expense of others- which is the basic thrust of evolution- has given rise to remarkable capacities for caring and sympathy.
Instead of human nature's being either fundamentally brutish or fundamentally noble, it is both-- a more complex picture perhaps, but an infinitely more inspiring one."

I think that that profound paradox is one of the most difficult aspects of understanding evolution. I think hardly anyone understands it- maybe including me.
Williams has said:

"If this enemy (yes, natural selection is the enemy) is worse than Huxley thought, there is a more urgent need for biological understanding."

And as Peter Singer explained in this exactly context:

"The more you know about your opponent, the better your chances of winning."

Singer also said

"...far from justifying (wicked) principles that are shown to be "natural," a biological explanation is often a way of debunking the lofty status of what seemed a self-evident moral law."

Dawkins said

"We must rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators."

And according to Lopreato, morality should be:

"the ultimate negation of the commandment of natural selection."

Which makes some sense. Natural selection can be described as a process that maximizes short-sighted selfishness. And what woudl be more moral than long-sighted compassion?

The Claws that Strangle

I regret this long quote, especially since I haven't been writing so much recently. However, I urge you to give it a chance. Plus, I think I have something pretty interesting to report afterwards.

This is from an impromptu speech by Douglas Adams in 1998:

Now, the invention of the scientific method is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the mjost powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day, and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that. It has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down, you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'I respect that.'

The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking, 'Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?' But I wouldn't have thought,'Maybe there's somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics' when I was making the other points. I just think, 'Fine, we have different opinions'. but the moment I say smething that has something to do with somebody's (I'm going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say, 'No, we don't attack that; that's an irrational belief but no, we respect it.'

Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party...this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows- but to have an opinon about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe...no, that's holy? What does that mean?....Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be.

It may interest the casual reader of Teardrop Souffle that I have reason to believe that this site has inspired some strife. Among my husband's friends, at least. So far as I know (and I have to piece things together a little bit because they don't really speak to us anymore), a while back I wrote a post criticizing religion that I think least two of his friends were offended by.

What's extra interesting is that neither of these people are, to the best of my knowledge, personally religious themselves. I think they just didn't like Judiasm to hear discussed in negative light. Also interestingly, they are both in math/science fields (both pursuing Phd's, no less!). Meaning, they are well-educated people who are supposedly accustomed to honoring logic and reason. Maybe my post didn't exhibit those traits. And yes, maybe my tone was harsh, and I shouldn't have used the term (since deleted) "dumbshit". But I don't know. I think it actually has to do with them simply not liking what I said, and sort of being unaccustomed to hearing anything legitimately critical about practices and/or beliefs they were exposed to as children.

These days, there are those who are argue that we shouldn't mix talk about religion together with science, particularly in regards to conversations about God (or the lack thereof) while advocating that biology taught in biology class. They say that if you try to mix the two, the athiests will lose. This I understand, I accept.

But wow, do I have to lose with Daniel's friends, too? Is this really how things need to be? That I can't speak my free, American mind among our own friends? Or even on my own little on-line journal? (Not that either of them would EVER read it these days...) Sadly, it's looking like that's the dreary situation, where the claws of religion strangle even the non-religious, along with the religious. I do hope I can escape its stranglehold on me.

Gulf Coast Tragedy

The entire tragedy of the Gulf Coast as left me pretty much speechless. I feel like I've been kicked in the stomach. I am writing about it here because I want to acknowledge the event, though at this point I feel I probably have absolutely nothing helpful to add to the national conversation.

I would however like to encourage anyone who reads this to please donate to help the victims. One place to give is through through SHARE, the Secular Humanist Aid and Relief Effort. Donations to SHARE benefit AmeriCares.

I suspect that after the initial shock of the event fades, the more complicated challenges of rebuilding cities and lives will emerge. I imagine those efforts will need support as well, and we should be prepared to not forget about the Gulf Coast once the headlines are gone.

Corrections, Updates and Oversights

I just want to let you know of a couple of changes I'm making to previous posts. For whatever reason, I always like to write and "publish" quickly. Which probably is less than smooth for my reader(s). Meaning, if I were cool, I'd write my piece as a draft, let it sit for a couple of days, reflect, edit and correct, and then publish. But I'm just too immature and impatient, which means I have to go back later on...

The first little omission is that when I wrote about meeting the Williams, I neglected to mention that Doris Williams, wife of the famous scientist George C. Williams, largely did his math for him. I found this out when we visited. George said he made it through calculus, but due to some quirks in his personal graduate/ post-graduate curriculum, he managed to escape the typical math demands of a working scientist. Doris is particularly talented at advanced mathematics, and so she "did his math" throughout his career. She also happens to be something of a specialist on genetics, and contributed quite a bit to his career with her insights on that topic as well.

When I wrote of Niru and religion, I should have used a different phrase. I really didn't mean to sound condescending about her lack of religion, I mean it to sound descriptive. I mistakenly fell into a cliche that atheists tend to use describing the faithful, and I regret it. I used the phrase "comforting mistruths". I come from a religious background, so I should have known better and instead used the phrase "exhilarating mistruths." I think it's much, much more accurate. I think the feeling of otherworldliness inherent in religion IS exhilarating- quite seductively so. It takes us away from the difficulties of daily living. And I think that the potential for exhilaration is the reason the faithful stay faithful. I think religion feels too good to let go of easily.

Finally, I made some updates to the post on Gary Numan, including some a new photo and some details about him.

Just for Fun

I like these pictures of my husband, Daniel.





They were taken when he was home from work on a lunch break.

Evolution gets the Front Page

The NY Times is doing a series on Evolution and the current controversies surrounding it. I like and (mainly) agree with Mike the Mad Biologist's comments (though he's more accepting of God coexisting with evoution than I am), so I'll just direct you there. (The latter post is especially exciting.) On one hand it's kind of thrilling that evolution is in the news, but mainly it's just depressing that people are falling for the PR of the Discovery Institute. Sigh.

One thing I do find encouraging, is, in the midst of a lack of human rationality, a lack of human rationality. Here's what I mean:

Salon Magazine: Well, there's also the capacity of Americans to hold essentially contradictory sets of beliefs. On one hand, we're good Christians who believe in Genesis. On the other hand, we want our kids to have a modern scientific education. I don't know how widespread that is, but I suspect it's out there.

M. Ruse: That's quite right. There are always 5 percent who do believe in evolution but also think humans and dinosaurs coexisted. Science is part of our culture as much as Genesis. You can't turn everyone into an evolutionist, but I'm not certain that the level of opposition is as black as people think. Americans, given your exceptionalism and your feeling that you are God's chosen race, have more of a capacity for self-delusion than other people. With the possible exception of upper-class English people.

God, things have gotten pretty bad, if hearing about self-delusion feels encouraging.

Treatment of Women in the Saudi Kingdom

Thanks to Erik at Fear of Clowns, I was introduced to an amazing website, The Religious Policeman. The writer is Saudi Arabian and discusses women and veiling and fatwas and Saudi culture, among other things. I encourage you to visit the original post quoted below to see pictures and read the fascinating comments, (including a defensive one from a fellow Muslim). Alhamedi had been on hiatus, as writing appeared to be too risky (!) , and has just this month resumed his valuable work.

Earlier this month, a prominent Saudi television presenter made international headlines when she permitted newspapers to print horrific images of injuries she said she had sustained from an alleged beating by her husband.

Rania al-Baz's bruised and swollen face shocked the global community - and ignited an unprecedented public debate within Saudi Arabia itself over the normally taboo issue of domestic violence.

For me, the real tragedy of this story was not the actual beating, although that was horrific in itself. It was that it took a high-profile personality to bring it out into public. It is the very small tip of a very deep iceberg.

Men beating women is not, sadly, an unusual story. However in Saudi Arabia it is an untold story, hidden behind the high walls and barred windows of our houses. Nobody knows the scale because public indifference and the victim's fear prevent these stories coming out. Our towns and cities are home to thousands, tens of thousands, who knows, of unheard screams.

Then we have the treatment of the Indonesian maids. Usually the perpetrators of this routine violence are Saudi women themselves, possibly venting their frustrations and suppressed anger, and demonstrating to the next generation of little Saudis how to treat women, how to treat our guest workers.

Violence apart, consider the lot of the average Saudi woman.

As a young girl, she can play out in the street with the young boys.

When puberty comes, she must retire inside, only appearing in public in abaya and veil.

She has no opportunity to seek her own marriage partner. She is dependent upon her family to find one, and one who can afford the dowry. She can say "no", but not too often, otherwise the introductions will stop.

Her husband can divorce her with relative ease.

Her husband can marry up to 3 other wives. Yes, in material terms, he must treat them equally. But his affection will obviously not be split 4 ways.

If she is caught herself in adultery, she will be stoned to death. Yes, it happens, it's just not reported these days.

She has equality of education. Like men, she can go to university. However her career choice is limited.

She can work in the Ladies' branch of a bank. She can teach female pupils. That's about it. She can't even, at the moment, be a flight attendant on Saudi Aiirlines. If she's very lucky, she can work in the "ladies only" floor of the Kingdom Shopping Center in Riyadh. But she can't work on the perfume counter of a regular shop, or in a lingerie shop; you'll find Lebanese men doing that.

She may well be wealthy in her own right, and own a business. However she can't manage it, if that would bring her into contact with men.

She can't drive. She can of course walk to the shops. Try that wearing black artificial fiber head-to-toe, in temperatures up to 50 celsius. (We men, of course, wear cool white cotton). Drivers are within the reach of many family incomes; but leave them at the door of the shopping center, otherwise you'll both be arrested.

She'll find it difficult to go out "with the girls". Many restaurants will not allow a group of unaccompanied women in. Same problem by herself. The safest way to get into the "Family" section of a restaurant, is with husband and / or children.

She can of course entertain her lady friends at home. That assumes her husband allows it. Many Saudi homes have bars on the windows, and the women are locked in during the day.

At home, she can do whatever she wants to amuse herself. However, there are clearly few opportunities to fulfil herself. Typically, therefore, she will start a family early. We have one of the highest birth-rates in the world.

If she has domestic problems, there is no network of support groups. Her family may help, it depends. Having got her married with some difficulty, they may be unwilling to take her back again.

The story of women in Saudi Arabia is one of unending tragedy. They are our mothers, our wives, our daughters, yet on the whole we treat them like our cattle. It's a story that needs to change.

Poignant Review

I looked on Amazon.com and read some reviews of The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins (a book I've never read) and this was the lead. It's really quite poignant. I think I would like to contact the writer, Michael Edwards.

I wish I could rate this book at 5 stars and 0 stars at the same time. It is a fascinating book, very well-written, and it conveys a real sense of how life works on the biological level, how all sorts of diverse factors interact with each other to create an incredibly complex system (the evolution of life, in this case); it also just as vividly conveys a sense of how scientists come to understand these processes.
I started it many years ago at the suggestion of a friend, thinking I wouldn't find it very interesting, and not much liking the kind of philosophy of life that (on the basis of my friend's description) seemed to lie behind it. But only a chapter or two in, I was completely hooked, and wanted to read more Dawkins.

On one level, I can share in the sense of wonder Dawkins so evidently sees in the workings-out of such complex processes, often made up of quite simple elemental mechanisms, but interacting so complexly to produce the incredibly complex world we live in.

But at the same time, I largely blame "The Selfish Gene" for a series of bouts of depression I suffered from for more than a decade, and part of me wants to rate the book at zero stars for its effect on my life. Never sure of my spiritual outlook on life, but trying to find something deeper - trying to believe, but not quite being able to - I found that this book just about blew away any vague ideas I had along these lines, and prevented them from coalescing any further. This created quite a strong personal crisis for me some years ago.

The book renders a God or supreme power of any sort quite superfluous for the purpose of accounting for the way the world is, and the way life is. It accounts for the nature of life, and for human nature, only too well, whereas most religions or spiritual outlooks raise problems that have to be got around. It presents an appallingly pessimistic view of human nature, and makes life seem utterly pointless; yet I cannot present any arguments to refute its point of view. I still try to have some kind of spiritual outlook, but it is definitely battered, and I have not yet overcome the effects of this book on me.

Richard Dawkins seems to have the idea that religion and spirituality are not only false, but ultimately unable to give a real sense of meaning and purpose in life. Their satisfaction is hollow, empty, and unreal, in his apparent view, and only a scientific understanding of life can give a real, lasting sense of wonder and purpose.

I would question this. While I am not sure what (if anything) there is spiritually, I know that a scientific view of life cannot offer the slightest hope of life after death, and since we're all going to die and most of us don't want to, this is a crippling drawback to the kind of scientific vision Dawkins wants us all to have. If there is nothing beyond death, no spiritual dimension to anything, and everything is just a blind dance of atoms, I fail to see how this by itself can give one a real sense of purpose, however fascinating the dance that Dawkins describes - and it *is* fascinating; let there be no mistake about that.

Because of this, I have the curious feeling of dichotomy about Dawkins' book that it is certainly fascinating on one level, but that I cannot give even qualified emotional commitment to the outlook on life that seems to lie behind it. I would in the end rather have the hope of something wonderful and purposeful that only some spiritual outlook can offer, even though it may be a deluded fantasy, than the certainty of a scientific vision that eliminates any possibility of long-term hope, that condemns us to an empty, eternal death of nothingness in the end. This scientific view may be completely rational; but rationality is not the only important consideration to shape our outlook on life.

Anyone who has a narrow religious view of life, who is absolutely sure their religion is completely right, would be best off avoiding this book like the plague - it probably won't change their views, but they will quite likely get very upset and outraged. And anyone with an open-minded spiritual view had better at least be prepared to do a lot of thinking, and perhaps be willing to change some of their views, because this book *will* challenge almost any spiritual or religious viewpoint I can think of - whether it is of the open-minded or dogmatic sort.

Some critics of this book have found its reasoning unconvincing, its materialist reductionism too superficial and shallow. But, from my perspective, the problem does not lie here; the problem with the book is that it is *too* convincing, that it is *entirely* convincing. The book makes it very difficult to continue to believe in anything that contradicts its basic premise, but which might be more comforting, and might give a greater sense of hope and inspiration, and provide a real sense of purpose in life.

Such have its effects on my life been that, in my more depressed moments, I have desperately wished I could unread the book, and continue life from where I left off.

It has been said that each of us has a God-shaped hole inside, and that we spend most of our lives trying to fill it with the wrong things. I firmly believe that God-shaped hole is there, that we have inner longings of a wonderful sort almost impossible to describe in words. Whether a God exists to fill it, I do not yet know. But what I am sure of is that, as wonderful as Dawkins' view of nature and of life may be on its own level, it will not fill that God-shaped hole.

How to Learn of Updates

I found out something I've been looking for for a long while, and would like to share it with you. It's a service that notifies you when your favorite online journals are updated! I haven't yet registered myself, but if you want to, just visit Bloglines.

Excerpts from "Is Science a Religion?"

Well I'm supposed to be on a break from all this, but I just found this Dawkins interview that I can't resist quoting from. He's so quotable, isn't he?

Before I get to the quoting, though, please allow me to address the question: "Is science a religion?" No, it's not! Since science doesn't depend on God, it's not a religion. Simple as that. God/gods/deity= religion. Besides, science in this sense is an approach, not a belief system. So, again, it's not a religion. Please don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

Continuing with Dawkins:

On the supposed moral superiority of religion...

Science is actually one of the most moral, one of the most honest disciplines around — because science would completely collapse if it weren't for a scrupulous adherence to honesty in the reporting of evidence. (As James Randi has pointed out, this is one reason why scientists are so often fooled by paranormal tricksters and why the debunking role is better played by professional conjurors; scientists just don't anticipate deliberate dishonesty as well.) There are other professions (no need to mention lawyers specifically) in which falsifying evidence or at least twisting it is precisely what people are paid for and get brownie points for doing.


...Humans have a great hunger for explanation. It may be one of the main reasons why humanity so universally has religion, since religions do aspire to provide explanations. We come to our individual consciousness in a mysterious universe and long to understand it. Most religions offer a cosmology and a biology, a theory of life, a theory of origins, and reasons for existence. In doing so, they demonstrate that religion is, in a sense, science; it's just bad science. Don't fall for the argument that religion and science operate on separate dimensions and are concerned with quite separate sorts of questions. Religions have historically always attempted to answer the questions that properly belong to science. Thus religions should not be allowed now to retreat away from the ground upon which they have traditionally attempted to fight. They do offer both a cosmology and a biology; however, in both cases it is false.


...Should we value human life above all other life? Is there a rigid wall to be built around the species Homo sapiens, or should we talk about whether there are other species which are entitled to our humanistic sympathies? Should we, for example, follow the right-to-life lobby, which is wholly preoccupied with human life, and value the life of a human fetus with the faculties of a worm over the life of a thinking and feeling chimpanzee? What is the basis of this fence that we erect around Homo sapiens — even around a small piece of fetal tissue? (Not a very sound evolutionary idea when you think about it.) When, in our evolutionary descent from our common ancestor with chimpanzees, did the fence suddenly rear itself up?

This next bit I especially appreciate, because I am one who has a tendency to get very emotional about my "beliefs":

...But I would want to deny even the lesser charge of purely verbal zealotry. There is a very, very important difference between feeling strongly, even passionately, about something because we have thought about and examined the evidence for it on the one hand, and feeling strongly about something because it has been internally revealed to us, or internally revealed to somebody else in history and subsequently hallowed by tradition. There's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority, or revelation.

Favorite Tee Shirts

Dear Reader,

Wow! I guess I've been on a little summer vacation from Teardrop Souffle. And maybe I still am. I always have more to write than I possibly can. But I think I still need a break, too. So, in honor of summertime, here are a couple of awesome tee shirts I've recently found. The first one is worn by Richard Dawkins. It kind of says in three words something that I've spent hours trying to express:




And this guy has no relevance to this site that even I can imagine, but his tee shirt is, in my opinion, pretty funny:




Happy Summer! Back soon, promise!

xxxoo,
Lizzie

I Met My Hero

As regular readers know, (and maybe new readers, as well), George C. Williams was one of most important biologists of the last century. But what you probably don't know is that a while back, I wrote George C. Williams a "fan letter". What's more, he wrote back!

My interest has to do with an interview I read with George eight years ago. It was that interview that kicked off my pursuit of evolutionary biology as an explanatory world view. I was particularly captivated by his belief that natural selection deserves a stronger moral condemnation than it usually receives.

That concept has been in the back of my mind as deeply significant for all these years. Yet it doesn't seem to have a real estate in anyone else's head. So, when I wrote back to him, I suggested that this concept of his be named after him, (in the hope that defining and naming the idea would help it be absorbed.) He wrote back again with support and enthusiasm. In fact, he told me I could use his name however I wanted. (That is why I feel free to use his name in the side bar.) He wrote: "I hope your ideas conquer biology real soon" Oh, wow!

Then a few weeks ago he invited me and my husband out for a visit. So, on Sunday, Daniel and I rode the train out to eat lunch, tour Stony Brook, and spend the afternoon with George and his wife, Doris. This was very exciting and meaningful to me.

George and Doris were lovely, and outstandingly humble. Humble is not even the right word, because that almost implies some sort of an ego at all (which I didn't detect- period.). HIghlights from the afternoon included hearing George's fond recollections of working with some of the other giants of the field such as Hamilton and John Maynard Smith. Richard Dawkins' name came up early on. I said I hadn't read The Selfish Gene, (probably the best selling book of popular evolutionary biology out there), but that it seemed to be a popularization of George's ideas. I asked if Dawkins gave him due credit for the concepts, and George indicated, with typical humility, that if anything Dawkins over-credited him. He seemed proud and happy that these days Dawkins was corresponding with their grandson. (Grandchildren seem to be his greatest joy right now! He has ten grandchildren nearby.)

Daniel asked George a biology question: Are humans evolving? Even those of us who live in the first world, where society more or less tries to care/ save everyone- are we evolving?

George said: Definitely yes! We are evolving, since genes mutate as they copy. (Evolution= change in the gene pool). But 99% of mutations are deleterious, so they ordinarily would be get selected against, but because of modern medicine, modern welfare systems, etc. that's not happening. So, our "fitness" is deteriorating!! But, since it takes millions of years for changes to show up in any significant way, it doesn't really matter.

As for the concept getting named...George has been retired for several years now. He's created a mountain of work, and my impression is that his life's work is near its completion. So, whatever happens with the naming of the concept might need to happen without him. Nevertheless, it was a great honor and real fun to spend an afternoon with my hero.

Exemplar of Values: Niru

Niru is my new friend! AND, she just happens to exemplify what we here at Teardrop Souffle (ie., me) believe in: She REJECTed her own traditional background (her parents are deeply religious Hindus) and came out to them as an athiest! Like most of us, she has her share of demons, yet she addresses them directly and head-on, rather than making up excuses or relying on exhilarating mistruths. AND, in spite of her demons, she is VERy oriented to the larger picture- ie. not just her own problems, but the suffering of others as well. So, she decided to dedicate herself to helping people- she became a nurse and now works in an H.I.V. clinic.

She is also just a real sweetheart. Yeay Niru!

I'd like some Brains with a little Heart on the Side, Please

Here's an excerpt from an interview with George C. Williams:

Frans Roes: In your latest book, you describe the biological creation process as being both "evil" and "abysmally stupid." What do you mean when you say this?

George Williams: Natural selection maximizes shortsighted selfishness, no matter how much pain or loss it produces. There are far more losers than winners, and great losses often arise from trivial gains. The killing of monkey infants for minor male reproductive gain is the example that most persuasively led me to use words like evil.

As to its stupidity, natural selection produces what seem to be ingenious devices, like eyes and hands and the human capacity for language, but a close examination shows these devices to be just the sorts of things that can arise from trial and error, with no modifications that would arise from any real understanding of the problems to be solved. As a result, all organisms are burdened with maladaptive historical legacies, such as the many problems that arise from the close association of the human reproductive and excretory systems.

Recently I've been reading a little more of other blogs and hearing what scientists have to say. One thing that comes up again and again is that science is just the "how", and that for scientists to interpret the meaning of their findings is always to be avoided.

I think there are two main reasons you hear about how terrible an act it is to interpret (meaning, to draw moral and social significance) scientific findings. One is what I just mentioned, that to interpret findings is outside of the domain of science. The other is that in this horrible political climate where science education is so threatened, the more that can be done to restrict science to be just descriptive, not interpretive, the less likely science educators are to get squelched.

This I feel a little uncomfortable with. I mean, I can appreciate that one must be politically sensitive to survive. I suppose maybe it's fine for the scientists not to go around making proclamations about what their research means. But for me, who is pretty much anything but a scientist, I feel like it's actually very, very appropriate for me to try to develop interpretations based on research. Everyone has a worldview, you could almost say everyone has a religion, if you can say everyone has beliefs they organize their life around. So, why not form your worldview around science, rather than, say, star alignment, or the mishmash of Western philosophy and history and Judeo-Christianity and popular culture that people end up relying on unless we deliberately replace it with something better?

I feel like we have arrived in the true post-modern nightmare, and that it'd be much better for all of us if we replaced that with a modern, enlightened quest for truth and beauty! (Wow I dont' even know what "Beauty" means when used in that phrase, but I can't resist throwing it in.) But that "truth" (or perhaps I should say, those "truths") would be based on a clear-eyed quest to consider the mechanisms that motivate life on earth.

George C. Willliams, he did this, he interpreted his findings about the motivating force of life on earth. To me, that's profound. It's like he is studying God, (I mean, evolution and natural selection are so vast and so omnipotent I don't think that term is too out of place) and found that God is not so good. Instead, natural selection is "evil" and "abysymally stupid". The thing is, he's one of the people in the world who is most able to understand evolution. He helped write contemporary evolutionary theory. So to me, that gives him more, not less, authority to use interpretive words like "evil" and "abysymally stupid". Those words help the world make more sense. And that's what a scientist should do, is help make sense of things.

The creationists feel like they've already made sense of things. And this is where I think I understand the creationists quite well. Because in many ways, I'm in their camp, meaning, I'm just a little guy with a worldview that means a lot to me. The creationists are actually a lot of times MORE aware of the potency of the universal acid that Darwin unleashed than the scientists are! In this way, they are not idiots. They know the gravity and breadth of what they're dealing with, they don't limit the findings to only the "hows", they recognize that if you really are thinking on this, it DOES affect our answers to "why's." They know how threatening it is, and that's why they long to suppress it.

But another reason I believe so strongly in interpreting science, particualarly with the awareness and understanding that George C. Williams displayed, is that the perspective can bring out empathy. It did in me, at least. It's what led me to focus on suffering in the world, and to think about how can I be most effective in reducing suffering in this world that I feel so much sadness for. I think that focussing on the world and it's suffering is more motivating to actually get out there and do something about it than 1000 Sunday sermons, or prayers to Mecca, or candles lit. For me, an understanding (however imperfect) of natural selection leads to more empathy, not less. It gives me the ultimate "big picture" view of the world, and makes me connected to it and honest about it.

One might argue that a lack of natural empathy should be welcomed in our scientist researchers. Feelings would only get in the way of objectivity. But I think that mostly, empathy is not (only) a feeling, but an additional awareness. It's a form of consciousness. If one is empathetic, one is more aware, not less. I think that the extent that humans are able to empathize is the root of being "humane". It's almost like the positive quality flying out of the pandora's box of humanity- out of so much that is awful about us, we are sometimes able to empathize, and that might be our saving grace.

In fact, I think empathy is the most important awareness, far, far more important than mere knowledge. I think that it is absolutely undervalued, particularly, I think, by men, and probably because they don't come by it so easily. That is a shortcoming. If one is trying to understand the world, I think that it is a essential TOOL, rather than a burdensome distraction.

Do you know what other scientist possessed the special awareness provided by empathy? ?



It was because of his empathy that allowed Charles Darwin to see what others didn't. He observed orangutans and chimpanzees and "savages" and rather than look at their differences and be repulsed, as most people were of the day, he instead could feel what we had in common with these others.

from Charles Darwin's Notebooks 1836-1844 (pp. 263, 264, 300):

"Let man visit ourang-outang in domestication, hear expressive whine; see its intelligence when spoken (to), as if it understood every word said; see its affection to those it knew; see in passion and rage, sulkiness and very actions of despair; let him look at savage... and then let him dare to boast of his proud pre-eminence.....Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a deity. More humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals."

It turns out that empathy was an essential source of one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time.

Much Better

Wow, I discovered a new on-line journal that I find quite engaging! I can't wait to read more of Mike the Mad Biologist. Also, he's used to be based at Stony Brook, which is where George C. Williams (my hero) is Professor Emeritus, which is a fun connection for me.

As a follow up to my most recent post, here's what Mike has to say on meaning. He too sees "meaning" as a big issue for evolutionary biology advocates:

Many people want life to have some deep, extrinsic meaning or purpose. Evolutionary biology (and to an even greater extent, evolutionary psychology) don't ascribe a purpose to life. In fairness, most evolutionary biologists (though not all, e.g., Gould's earlier work) think evolutionary biology has no bearing on the purpose issue on way or another. Unfortunately, this is unsatisifying to many people, including those who support evolution. There is a fear that without extrinsic purpose, the Cartesian view of man as machine is right–this leaves many people empty and afriad. At its core is the notion that life (and humanity too) generates its own purpose.


That...sums up the underlying dread many have of evolution–that we invent purpose & meaning: purpose was not designed into the world (at least consciously). To put this another way, when I've been asked what evolution tells me about life's meaning, I reply along the lines of "If you want meaning, go do something meaningful." Meaning is the issue we have to figure out to deal with, and why evolutionary biology is such a hard sell.

And of course, what I was trying to say was that maybe there is some meaning to be found in facing the truth. And that facing the truth might help one to "do something meaningful."

Meaning and Meaninglessness

In a recent post, I quoted my husband talking about the essential meaninglessness of the universe. This term gets brought up a lot in discussing the implications of evolutionary biology, and usually in a bad way. In fact, it appears to have something to do with people's resistance in accepting the truth of evolution. This is why Daniel calls it a "painful truth". It's so painful for us that a lot of people refuse to accept it, and choose to believe in other comforts, often having to do with God's purpose in our lives. ( I am realizing it's not only the religious who experience this resistance: even "secular liberals" can have tremendous personal resistance towards the depressing implications of the lessons of evolutionary biology, as well. )

I would like to say, that although from a naturalistic point of view, there is no ultimate purpose in our existence, that doesn't mean one cannot still find an abundance of personal purpose and meaning.

This resistance to letting go of ultimate meaning, and the refusal to replace it with a search for personal meaning through what I'd consider legitimate avenues, is in itself deeply sad for me. Because I think that continuing to believe in the myth of ultimate meaning can obscure the path to finding genuine fulfillment on an individual level, as well as obscure the path towards viewing the rest of the world with the compassion it deserves. I tend to believe in the paradox that one must face truths of life, no matter how tragic, to be a happy, loving, whole person.

This sound surprising, but one of the most influential books of my life has been The Road Less Travelled. In it, M. Scott Peck distills what I consider to be some great truths. His premise is that life is difficult, and that there are different ways to address that. Most of us choose short term comfort and pleasure as a relief from the inevitable suffering of life.

Fearing the pain involved, almost all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, attempt to avoid problems. We procrastinate, hoping that they will go away. We ignore them, forget them, pretend they do not exist. We even take drugs to assist us in ignoring them, so that by deadening ourselves to the pain we can forget the problems that cause the pain. We attempt to skirt around problems rather than meet them head on. We attempt to get out of them rather than suffer through them.

This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness. Since most of us have this tendency to a greater or lesser degree, most of us are mentally ill to a greater or lesser degree, lacking complete mental health. Some of us will go to quite extraordinary lengths to avoid our problems and the suffering they cause, proceeding far afield from all that is clearly good and sensible in order to try to find an easy way out, building the most elaborate fantasies in which to live, sometimes to the toal exclusion of reality. In the succinctly elegant words of Carl Jung, "Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering."

But the substitute itself ultimately becomes more painful than the legitimate suffering it was designed to avoid. The neurosis itself becomes the biggest problem.

I think there is true meaning to be found in facing, head-on, the suffering and pain of life. To me, this has to do with facing the suffering of one's own life, and hopefully, eventually expand one's awareness to include and take on the pain and perspectives experienced by others. I think the latter is ultimately one of the most significant lessons of evolutionary biology.

As you may know from my sidebar profile, I believe that love and education are the tools we have to help overcome the inherent suffering of the world. And I think in a similar way, M. Scott Peck does, too:

What are these tools, these techniques of suffering, these means of experiencing the pain of problems constructively that I call discipline? There are four: delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing...
The problem lies not in the complexity of the tools, but in the will to use them... Therefore, we shall...examine the will to use them, which is love."

I would like to take this moment to let my reader(s!) know that I respect and appreciate very much that you read this on-line journal of mine. I am starting to realize how rare it is for people to allow themselves to even consider the worldview that I put forth here. (or that you might already maintain.) It's not so easy, I suppose...

Dog shares Bed with Rescued Fawn

Hogan, the Rhodesian Ridgeback here, pretty much "took over" once his family found this orphaned fawn under their front door step! The family (who are friends of my mother) named the little fawn "Bella".

I post this image because it reminds me of the nurturing feelings that other mammals can apparently have, even outside of their typical roles.

On "Relatedness"

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends of of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whome the bell toll; It tolls for thee.

John Donne

I Made a Mistake

A while back, I mentioned that evolution seems to progress from "simple to complex". I forgot to mention that organisms often stay simple, as well, and sometimes even evolve from complex to simple. An example of this is when some species lives in complete darkness and no longer need eyes. Moles and bats and hagfish (!) come to mind. They have vestigial eyes remaining, they don't need full blown ones. I imagine you know this, but it's important to remember (as I neglected to). Because the temptation is always around to wishfully believe that life is a Great Chain of Being where, again, humans are considered the most complex and therefore the epitome - and purpose!- of nature.

But organisms are formed in response to their environment. "Fitness" is only relative to one's situation.

Here is a wonderful post that I've since found, by a biologist (I think he's a biologist), on this myth of the Great Chain of Being. He talks some about the cultural history of the concept, which dates back to "Aristotle and is found throughout the middle ages until now". His post is much more informed than whatever I've written about this issue.

PS. Speaking of well informed! While I'm at it, I'll provide a link to same writer's outline of the basic concepts of evolution. He originally created it for secondary school students, and I found it to be a great refresher.

Meet "Pig"!

Pig lives nearly next door to me. They say he's a real ham. I know him as a real cutie. Really, he's even more handsome in person.

Pig was found in the street in rural Kentucky when he was a baby. His owners thought they'd have him only temporarily, but never found another home for him, and so he's with them for good. He takes daily walks down my street.

He wags his tail when he's happy. His owner thinks he learned that from the dogs who were his only animal companions when he was growing up. (Learned/cultural behavior related to communication of emotion- how intriguing!) He was wagging his tail a lot while he was being photographed, his owners say he likes attention. When he's back inside, he has his apple and then goes to sleep. He sleeps a lot.

I asked his owner if Pig was smart. Pigs have a reputation for high intelligence. She said, "Ohhhhh yes." Smart like dogs? "Smarter than dogs. He's a planner. He plans things. He moved his pet gate to make it like a ladder so that he could walk on it to get over to his food."

Man Cites Nature as Inspiration for Random Cruelty

Have the folks at the Onion been reading Teardrop Souffle? I guess not. But this joke article from them probably conveys more of what I've been trying to get across in one paragraph than the entire last six months of my earnest typings have.

Man Cites Nature as Inspiration for Random Cruelty
GAINESVILLE, FL—Local resident Stephen Nicolai, 34, said Monday that the harsh realities of the natural world are what inspire him to commit spontaneous acts of brutal sadism. "Nature, red in tooth and claw, destroys without prejudice or regard for feelings, and since I am at one with nature, so too shall I," said Nicolai as he flattened a tree frog with a ball-peen hammer. "When I witness the awesome force of a tsunami, or the shift of a tectonic plate, or even a kitten mercilessly taunting its prey before eating it, I know that I am in harmony with nature." Nicolai said he has found peace through his ritual animal torture and vicious braining of random passersby.

Lions Save Girl from Kidnappers

This newsstory that I found on CNN is so amazing in and of itself, I don't know that it needs commentary. The story does seem to, in it's way, touch on many (if not all!) of the issues I bring up in Teardrop Soufffle (animals, people, interconnectedness, morality, sex, primitive society, violence, cruelty, kindness, tragedy of existence, etc., etc., et cetera!)

Police say three lions rescued a 12-year-old girl kidnapped by men who wanted to force her into marriage, chasing off her abductors and guarding her until police and relatives tracked her down in a remote corner of Ethiopia.

The men had held the girl for seven days, repeatedly beating her, before the lions chased them away and guarded her for half a day before her family and police found her, Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo said Tuesday by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, some 560 kilometers (348 miles) west of the capital, Addis Ababa.

"They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest," Wondimu said, adding he did not know whether the lions were male or female.

News of the June 9 rescue was slow to filter out from Kefa Zone in southwestern Ethiopia.

"If the lions had not come to her rescue then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage," he said.

"Everyone ... thinks this is some kind of miracle, because normally the lions would attack people," Wondimu said.

Stuart Williams, a wildlife expert with the rural development ministry, said that it was likely that the young girl was saved because she was crying from the trauma of her attack.

"A young girl whimpering could be mistaken for the mewing sound from a lion cub, which in turn could explain why they (the lions) didn't eat her," Williams said. "[Which] otherwise they probably would have done."

The girl, the youngest of four brothers and sisters, was "shocked and terrified" and had to be treated for the cuts from her beatings, Wondimu said.

He said that police had caught four of the men, but were still looking for three others.

In Ethiopia, kidnapping has long been part of the marriage custom, a tradition of sorrow and violence whose origins are murky.

The United Nations estimates that more than 70 percent of marriages in Ethiopia are by abduction, practiced in rural areas where the majority of the country's 71 million people live.

Love, Love, Love

This excerpt is from the NY Times today about a Muslim author from North Africa who secretly wrote an erotic novel, called The Almond. It was published in France, has become quite a hit (imagine), yet due to cultural restraints, she has to be so discreet about her book that when she visits Paris, even her friends there don't know she was the author of the successful novel.

I really loved this interview- to the point that I literally gasped at the end.

She did explain, though, that she took the name Nedjma in homage to the Algerian poet Kateb Yacine, who wrote a book by the same name, and because it means "star" in Arabic - and that the star is an Islamic symbol.

"It's my way of saying, 'I am from this tribe, I am not from the outside, I am part of this world and no one can kick me out,' " she said, adding that she was a practicing Muslim.

Yet it is also a world that clearly pains her, so much so that she seemed as eager to denounce the state of much of the Arab world - and the subjugation of women in it - as she was to discuss her book. "It is not the Prophet or God who is responsible for the condition of women today, but society," she said. "It is the sharia, the way laws are interpreted, the writings, the clerics who rule Islam in place of God."

The result, she said, is a suppression of free thinking that paralyzes Arab societies and perpetuates male domination of women. "Every step taken by women towards freedom is seen to undermine their authority," Nedjma said with growing passion. "It undermines this rotten world that is falling apart. The Arab world is like a sick old man, consumed by gangrene, illiteracy, poverty, dictatorships, fundamentalism."

When it comes to relations between men and women, she went on, lighting a fresh cigarette, although they unite for marriage and procreation, most women consider sex to be a burden because few men know the workings of women's bodies. "There are so many received ideas, ancestral fears and ignorance," she said. "Love is only possible when women realize they are not there to be legally raped and men understand that a woman is not a slave or an inferior being."

Even in "The Almond," where the author's own love affair is reflected in Badra's devotion to Driss, Nedjma said, Driss remains trapped by the customs of Arab men. "He loved this woman," she explained, "but he did not know how to appreciate this love outside the traditional framework of society. He was liberated sexually, but not socially."

And in her own relationship, she was asked, was she more liberated than her lover?

She hesitated before answering.

"Yes; there you are, I've said it," she finally replied. "The malaise of the Arab world is that people don't know how to love. They watch romantic soap operas on television out of frustration. They dream about love, they listen to songs, they are sentimental, but they are not tender. They appreciate beautiful love poems, but they don't have the courage of the heart."

I would like to add that I do not feel that this malaise is limited to the Arab world.

Why I Am Married to my Husband

Today was the longest day of the year, and Daniel and I enjoyed it by taking an evening stroll to get some ice cream (me, strawberry cheesecake, Daniel, chocolate malted milkshake). We were talking about an article we'd both just read. It was an explanation on what is really going on in people's head's when they oppose gay marriage. Basically, the article indicated that anti-gay marriage activists believe, fervently, that even though God created everything, being gay is NOT a state that God created, because it's undesirable, and instead it is an evil temptation that people submit to. Dang. I just must ask, what about mutliple sclerosis? muscular dystrophy? God didn't create those undesirable things, either? I don't' want to waste my time here going through the whole "argument", but that one just makes no sense. God didn't create cancer*?

So, basically, we were talking about "religious obscurantists**", and well, "God", and meaning. And, like probably most ANY reasonable person would in this context, I brought up Gary Numan*.


Image from the magnificent album "Telekon".
Numan is holding his mama's vacuum hose.

I did! I asked, (hardly expecting an answer): "Gary Numan sings songs about being stuck in tragic dystopias of robots and solitude, and mulls over such questions as whether we are even real or not. Why is it that I feel so much more pathos in Gary Numan's music than most anyone else's ? Why does Gary Numan's music, made with machines, feel so heartfelt and touching to me*?

Ever the wise, ever my love, he immediately, instantly, answered my question for me:

"He's acknowledging life's ultimate meaninglessness, which is an affront to all that we feel we are, even though it's essentially the correct view. We grow up thinking our lives are significant, our lives are special, and he's going through the painful experience of admitting that this is not so."


I don't know anyone else who could have come back with such an apt response to my question. So, that is the story of why I am married to my husband.





Plus, he bought me my ice cream.

*When I was growing up, these questions, like "Why do bad things happen to good people?" were considered a) spiritually immature, because they were questioning God, and b) inevitably answered with: "God works in mysterious ways." Which is infuriating to any reasonable person, but actually kind of uplifting to a spiritual one, because that answer gives all power to "God", and none to our puny little minds. (In this blog, of course, I move the question up a notch, to ask "Why is there so much tragedy inherent in the make-up of the world?" Meaning, from a broad, moral perspective, tragedy is the usual way- certainly not just the exception. But that never occurred to us ask.)

** If you look that word "obscurantist" up in the dictionary like Daniel just did, you will see that it is PERFECT in this context. But you probably already knew that.

***Daniel was talking about "meaningful" in the ultimate sense of the term- there is no ultimate purpose of life on earth. However, one can definitely find personal meaning, of course. I wrote more on this topic here, here and here.

****For the uninitiated, I should add that Gary Numan's music is the opposite of "unfeeling". It manages to be very emotionally rich, I think. Often both poignant and exhilarating, even!

***** In finding a picture to illustrate this post, I found that Gary Numan actually has explicitly stated views that mirror my own! From Gary Numan by way of AthiestAlliance.org:

"If nature is proof of God's amazing creation then I have truly seen the light, and the light is black. Nature is genius at its most cruel and savage. No benevolent God could have come up with such an outrage."

Also, apparently Numan is something of an animal welfare advocate, and donates time and money to organizations such as the R.S.P.C.A. and (this is so sweet and adorable and cool: ) Caring for Cats. Yep. He might look scary but he cares for cats. Gary Numan's the best.

What I Believe

I recently heard Bush claim that Democrats stand for "nothing but obstruction."

"It is the philosophy of the stop sign, the agenda of the road block..."

Okay, so while I think Bush has the philosophy of the bulldozer and the agenda of a jackhammer, I will say that I think it is a terribly necessary thing for "liberals", to start saying what they believe in, as opposed to what they think is wrong. This is a lesson we desperately need to learn before next year's elections. Supposedly, the "values" vote of last November was going to teach us this lesson, but I don't know if we're actually putting this into action. "I believe, I believe, I believe." That's how we should be talking. And I am happy to oblige.

To assist, I take two books from my shelf. One is called "Darwin's Lost Theory of Love"(2000). (ahh, beautiful...) by David Loye. And the other is called Evolutionary Humanism (1964) , by Julian Huxley. I bring up these both of these books because they each take steps toward putting ideas together and going forward. Unfortunately, both are barely readable.

Actually, I shouldn't even put them in the same category. The Loye book is written by a very well-meaning individual who I think unfortunately has more will than skill. I bring it up mainly because I think the title is very appealing, and in it's own way, sort of inspiring. I still am not quite sure what "Darwin's lost theory of love" actually is, though, and even if this Loye guy claims he had one, I don't know if I could trust him about it. However, he does point out that Darwin, ever the gentleman, was deeply, deeply troubled by two things: the slavery of humans (as was of course still legal in America in Darwin's time) and cruelty towards animals. For example, apparently little upset him more than to see people beat their horses, and he put a lot of energy into animal protection campaigns.

This makes me feel like I'm backed up by "the master". By that, I mean, by the one who probably knew better than anyone the ultimate lessons that evolutionary biology can teach us. There is one main phrase that sums it all up for me, this one is my own, and expresses what I believe. Here it is:

Evolutionary biology shows the relatedness of all living beings.

That's what I believe. And I believe instead of a "faith-based" religion, I've got an evidence-based worldview.

I work full time at what is turning out to be a pretty stressful job, so I don't have as much energy to write these days. I would like to conclude today by quoting from Evolutionary Humanism, however, to emphasize that which I believe in.

More immediately important, thanks to Darwin, "man" now knows that he is not an isolated phenomenon, cut off from the rest of nature by his uniqueness. Not only is he made of the same matter and operated by the same energy as all the rest of the cosmos, but for all his distinctiveness, he is linked by genetic continuity with all the other living inhabitants of his planet.

Why I Love Modernity

The NY Times had an enormous article about class in America today, part of a series. In it, there was a little tiny comment that I found to be very interesting. It started off:

"People like having stuff, and stuff is good for people."

The guy who said this is Thomas C. O'Guinn, a professor of advertising at the University of Illinois. When he says something like "stuff is good for people", he sounds like a wanker. More specifically, he sounds like someone who is into advertising, who thinks that more is always more. Ie., someone who's pretty oblivious to the futility and tragedy of the arms race of the status symbols. Sociologists who studied emotional health have found that once essential needs and stability have been met, happiness actually doesn't increase with more "stuff".

But then, he pointed this out:

One thing modernity brought with it was all kinds of identities, the ability for people to choose who you want to be, how you wnt to decorate yourself, what kind of lifestyle you want..."

Ahh. The choice of an identity. How wonderful! To me, this is one of the biggest reasons why modernity is so much of an improvement over primitive and traditional societies!!

I might have mentioned on here somewhere that to anthropologists, "primitive society", is actually a technical term describing societies that are kin-based. Primitive societies are kin-based, and of course, even in traditional human societies, in every culture across the globe, family is still very much the fount and foundation. (In this post, I'm saying there's a distinction and a progression, from primitive (kin-based) to traditional to modern society.)

Here is more of what anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon has to say, from his experience of studying the primitive (kin-based) society of a tribal Yanamano in South America.

Do the Yanomamö understand how western societies are organised?

I once had a fascinating discussion with a Yanomamö, who had a little bit of training from the missionaries. He had learned some Spanish, and the missionaries sent him to the territorial capital to acquire some skills in practical nursing, so he could treat snake-bites and malaria in his own village. And he told me that when he was in the territorial capital, he dis covered law. He met policemen, and he found out what these people did. They guarantee the safely of other people in the town, and would protect them from abuse or violence against them from other people. He was intrigued and fascinated with that. He thought it was such a marvelous thing, because in his culture his brothers had killed other Yanomamö, and he was worried that their kinsmen would seek revenge and kill him, because he would be a legitimate target, the way the customary system of violence and retribution operates. And he thought it was just marvelous that law existed, and he thought Yanomamö should have law and policemen, because it would protect him from possible retaliation for acts that his brothers committed.

We have our private homes, hide our bodies with clothes, and have other kinds of possibilities for privacy. Is this because we no longer live primarily among kinsmen?


Anthropological textbooks do not always communicate to you the oppressiveness of having to live among kinsmen. Because they can demand and compel you to make extraordinary sacrifices, simply because they are your kinsmen. And it is extremely difficult and tedious to have to live in a society where you are compelled and obligated to give things to your kinsmen simply because they are your kinsmen. And you can have lazy kinsmen. You might want to be a little more ambitious, acquire a few more things and have a slightly better life than somebody else, but if your brother who is a lazy lout, comes along and demands half of what your garden produces, you have got to give it to him. You have no privacy. You are the creature of your relatives.Probably one of the greatest achievements of western civilisation is to become independent of that. If you wish, you can be isolated and survive, because society has institutions that provide you with everything that kinsmen used to provide people. And you can turn it off and turn it on when you want to. Functions, like I need legal help, I need protection, and you can shut it off when it is no longer necessary. But if you live in a kinship-dominated society, it is always on. The Yanomamö frequently responded to my question: "Why did you fission into two groups at that site?" by saying something like: "Because there were too many others and we were sick and tired of fighting all the time. Everybody was begging everything I had, I got tired of it".

I have often heard, from my mother who came from a prominent southern American family and from countless others, of the difficulties of being known as "so and so's daughter" or "so and so's niece", rather than being known as an individual. I sort of think this breaking away is a key component of moving into the modern world.

Heartbreaking and disappointing it may be for the (traditional) family, the modern son or daughter knows that there is freedom to be found in this breaking away, and, yes, creating an identity of one's choice. Not to overlook, of course, that modern society has it's own alienating elements, but I would argue it also has alternative supports, as well. The family doesn't vanish entirely. Though I suppose I'd say that the modern dyamic is one that is based on choice rather than obligation. And to me, that is nearly always an improvement.

The pendulum swings as far as trends in thinking. It used to be that primitive societies were considered to consist of savage, uncivilized beasts. Then anthropologists like Franz Boas said "hey, this isn't as backwards as it seems, there are genuine human beings who live here, who have ways and means and systems for living that are very effective and meaningful for them. It's just that their systems are different from ours. We must learn to understand them on their own terms." So that's been the received wisdom for, maybe 75 years. It is a message of respect, which is always needed and welcome. Also, there is the idea that we know not- until you know another society well, we shouldn't cast judgement.

So, I can appreciate that. But I also think that that position ("Don't judge, Don't judge!" ) can lead to some real glossing over and even glorifying of situations that deserve no such regard. I read on someone's blog today (I'm so sorry I can't remember where right now- I'll try to find it) that that's what humans do, is judge. Which is quite different from pre-judge. I thought that was a wonderful distinction, and I think that to not judge is almost a kind of chosen ignorance. It's certainly a superficial way, it's a non-dealing with others. And I am judging primitive, and traditional society, too, to be in many ways a form of social captivity. In every primitive society, we see the strong exert their power over the weak. We see in-groups valued, and out-groups demonized, we see men prioritized over women, and we see social status win out over individual merit. None of these are ideal.

I'm not saying that the group of people who lives in the modern world are inherently better than those who don't, because we're not. This is a crucial distinction to make. I'm also not saying that people don't have the right to dress, worship, to live as they please. For example, I'm not calling for a head scarf ban** (much as I'd like to.)

The advantage of an open, modern society is we can use our ability as humans to talk to work out ideas- rather than repeat the practices of our ancestors from centuries past. (Or often, rather than pick up and re-enact perverted interpretations of what our ancestors didn't do.) We can create new ways of living that come from more carefully thought out decisions, and build better situations for more people*. To me, this comes closer to what actually is ideal.





*I once saw footage of an Iranian woman (this was on 60 Minutes) who was wearing a scarf, ask some guy who was telling her to be even more "modest": "Why is it that you are telling me to cover myself, if it's you with the problem of lust? "

Something from Nothing

How much can I rip off another blogger? Patrick wrote an amazing post about a physics experiment that I found exceptional. Normally a physics experiment is about the last thing I care about, but this one had two special things going for it. First, the accompanying graphic is crazy cool. Secondly, it said this:

A new experiment at Brookhaven using colliding gold ions provides surprising evidence about a fundamental concept in physics: the vacuum. It appears that you can get something from nothing, the vacuum is unstable and new particles can be spontaneously created in empty space. Gack.

caption from Patrick: A side view of one of the first high-energy collisions captured by the Solenoidal Tracker of the STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The initial head-on collision of two gold ions, each consisting of a total of 197 protons and neutrons, occurs at the mid-point of the central tube (running across the image from right to left). The tracks indicate the paths taken by thousands of subatomic particles created in the fireball of energy set free in these collisions. Several layers of detectors, arranged concentrically around the central tube, and encased in a powerful magnet, allow the identification of these particles. (Courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory, STAR collaboration.)


One of the big problems that people have in accepting that there is no God (so far as I've heard) has to do with their reluctance to accept that "something came from nothing." They'll say things like "Yes, well, that teaspoon of matter that contained the entire universe in the milliseconds before the Big Bang- where did that come from? Something can't come from nothing! " I never understood how that explained God, (if something can't come from nothing, how come God can?! ) But anyway, for this reason, among others, I consider this a tremendously exciting and significant breakthrough.

I Think This is Somehow Relevant, Really

Twice today I had people tell me that since I worked in fashion in New York, I surely was constantly surrounded by all sorts of glamourous people. I contrast that vision with my own experience of slogging up and down the back stairs of buildings throughout the garment district. While I do agree anything having to do with magazines and models actually is sort of thrilling and genuinely glamourous, that came about once a year, tops, and mainly I just found myself alone in one of the dirtier sections of Manhattan.

I just got through watching a documentary about one of the greatest dancers of the last century- Ruldolph Nureyev.




I am reminded of a story that the great Diana Vreeland told about him, that somehow seems to fit it here:

A dancer's life must be the most exalting thing in the world-- and the most excruciating. But, to have performed one arc of the arm, one moment of beauty, one something...

I'm not at all keen on going backstage. But the few times I've gone backstage to see Nureyev he's always been wrapped in a dressing gown, sitting with his legs in boiling water and salts.

"You will understand if I don't stand up," he always says.

"Naturally," I always say.

The man is in mortal pain, you understand.... this is what is behind the splendeur---l'autre cote de la medaille. This, I think, is our life, actually.

Well, not my life, actually, but I still love the story.

Hope this Helps Clear Things Up

A while back, I experienced some great frustration with my ability to communicate some of the essential premises of this blog, and, well, my worldview. Sometimes I have had people commenting and we were not understanding each other. Now, I'm thinking that perhaps this confusion stemmed from my (our?) carelessly conflating the term natural selection with nature. I should have made sure to clearly separate the process( of natural selection) from the product (life on earth).

I truly feel now that writing about such an enormous topic is particularly difficult. We're talking about the whole living world, and everything in it! So what happens is, we writers take shortcuts. Not to let myself off the hook, but I'll just say, this is really, really common in this sort of (evolutionary biology) writing. In this case, I fear that in taking shortcuts, we ( I !) might have lost some clarity.

I suppose an analogy is in order. I'm not sure that this is accurate (great, just what we need) but I'm going to blurt it out anyway. I think that natural selection is sort of like the Taliban! In that, it is like an evil overseeing governing force that controls its denizens.

So, I shouldn't say "nature sucks" **. I should say natural selection does! My sincere apologies for not making that distinction clearer.




* Something else that happens is we tend to start talking about natural selection as though it were a living thing, and that it, as a process, has a will. Which of course it doesn't.

Cauldron of Confusion

There was a big news story last week about a book that sifts through various competing theories, and determines that the female orgasm is not an evolved adaptation. Now. This is pretty interesting to me, for many reasons. But mainly, what I've been wondering about is the popular interpretation of such a news story.

On one hand, I'm happy a story about evolutionary adaptiveness is getting some publicity at all. And I personally like the theory- I think that the author's explanation sounds the most reasonable and parsimonious of the various explanations- which is that the female orgasm is a result of co-development of the male and female embryos.

from the NY Times:

"That theory holds that female orgasms are simply artifacts - a byproduct of the parallel development of male and female embryos in the first eight or nine weeks of life.

In that early period, the nerve and tissue pathways are laid down for various reflexes, including the orgasm, Dr. Lloyd said. As development progresses, male hormones saturate the embryo, and sexuality is defined."

But on the other hand, it just feels like this is INEVITABLY going to get used against us. By "us", I mean women, and I mean humanity. Good Lord. I am reminded of when those guys came out with "A Natural History of Rape". Again, on one hand I'm all for talking about evolution, but why write a big popular evolution book on one of the grossest, saddest topics that exists? And this is going out to a public that mostly doesn't even "believe" in evolution. Do ya think the public grasped that, uh, what maybe sometimes natural is not necessarily preferred? Of course not. They just learn to further associate evolution with a general feeling of ickiness, and go back to thinking about how "God loves me".

In the case of the orgasm, I just want to say from the start that the scientist DOES assert that the clitoris is an evolved adaptation. She (the scientist) said that it obviously encouraged women to consider sex fun, and to make women want to have sex and reproduce, thereby increasing the instances of genes getting passed to the next reproducing generation. That female sexual pleasure IS an evolved adaptation is pretty important aspect to remember, even if we decide that the female orgasm is not an adaptation. But I'm predicting that somehow the first part is going to get quickly overlooked.

In this report, the scientist's closing interpretation, (at least as far as the NY Times reported it, I must admit I haven't read the book), had to do with how she hoped that this finding would help women to "stop feeling inadequate.".

Dang. Does she really think that's how this is going to be interpreted? I don't.

I personally don't think that this news story is going to make anyone feel "less inadequate". I don't know what people will think, but I can only imagine that there will be all sorts of unsavory interpretations. Because, first of all, the "naturalistic fallacy' is so alive and well in people's heads these days. People associate what is "natural" with what is proper. The way things are is the way things should be. So, the guys who don't even know what natural selection is probably hear this, and instead of thinking, "Oh, I'm understanding a little more about natural selection, I would like to know more" are probably thinking, " See, I'm the only one who deserves to get off." They probably think that what is natural is beautiful, or right, or proper, and that because it's not an evolved adaptation, therefore women aren't "supposed" to have orgasms, and well, that lets them off the hook, now doesn't it.

I just want to say that there are gobs of liberals who also cling to the notion that what is natural is beautiful, and they will probably deny that this is theory is even true. "Of course women's orgasm's are adapted! They are, because I want them to be!"

Anyway, It's all just a boiling cauldron of confusion. So, instead of speculating what people are thinking about this, I'll do what I prefer to do: declare what people SHOULD be thinking!!! (haha)

First off, I want to give my husband's counter-interpretation : If a woman is not achieving an orgasm, it means her partner should feel inadequate. Because it just means that he's not doing the extra something that's necessary.* Maybe this isn't true for every single case, but our guess is that it's true for most.

But, as always (!), I would like to move this discussion to a bigger picture framework. I think most people, even if they acknowledge the truth of evolution, imagine evolution as a ladder of progress. Again, this is the popular interpretation of the word "evolve"- things change and grow into something better. It's a nice idea. I believe even a certain pre-Darwin view of evolution placed every living being somewhere on a ladder, with, of course, humans at the top of the ladder. We pretty much all have in our heads that humans are the pride of "creation", we are the top rung of the ladder, and we are as close to perfect as one can get, without, like, becoming an angel or something.

However, from a biological perspective, every living thing on earth today is an equal success story. We are all equal, because we all exist. However, since I personally am not planning on having children, my genes are about to fail, and fast. So, again, even though I can can dance the jig and pick out a real nice pair of shoes, I am about to be an abject failure, while the mice inside my walls are going to outdo me in terms of success many times over. And those wretched hagfish 10 miles deep in the sea will probably outlast those mice and even the roaches.

There is no such ladder of success. Oh, would that there were! That would at least fit with all the stories and myths and visions we have of our glorious selves. But this is not so.

I'm not saying that humans aren't special, because in many ways we are. We have exponentially expanded powers from other living beings. (Although we mustn' t forget that other species have special powers, too. Other species can see, hear, taste, smell and feel things we are grossly incapable of even knowing exist.) Also, I will say that in evolution, there does seem to be a progession, if you will, from simple to complex, in terms of adaptations. Thats' just the way things go. But that said, nature's tool kit is also limited one, and we see the same adaptations reused again and again. This is why all mammals- including whales! have the same body design-- four limbs with lungs, hearts and hair. That's because descended (not ascended!!) from a common ancestor.

Also, I must add that often what appears to be simple and insignificant is actually much more complex than we are! Look at the legs of this drone-fly, and think of how much more complicated their legs are than our own*:



Anyway, I just want to say that even though we might think that we are the most beautiful perfect creatures around, we can't fly. We can't even walk on a ceiling! (as the does the drone fly!) I suppose that misleading intuition, religion and philosophy all have contributed to this mistaken view that we are the end-all. And I think that that view leads us into trouble. Because the way we see ourselves matters in the world. It matters to how we interact with each other, and it matters how we end up regarding and treating other creatures.

I think the more accurate view is a more humble one. If we listen to the biologists, we'll admit that really, the world is not perfect, and neither are we. This is not because of "sin", but because of what and who we are, inherently, and how we came to be. We may look pretty, but really we are hobbled together bundles of imperfections. "Life is suffering," the Buddhists say. Well, now we sort of know why. We aren't even all that perfectly made to begin with. And we're live in a system (that of natural selection) where might makes right, and the meek hardly inherit much at all. So if we at least can admit all this, then at least we can have an honest view of the world, one where we don't overly exaggerate our own importance and perfection, nor that of our bodies, either.





*I hope I'm not beginning to be a broken record.

*My husband also pointed out that he thinks women's sexuality is much more "interesting" than men's, but I will admit that that view might be a tad subjective.

*Special thanks and credit to an awesome new blog I have just discovered. I'm absolutely ripping him off directly in putting in this picture of bug legs, which was orginally from Micropolitan Museum's website, but it is just too relevant to my discussion to resist. Though this also gives me a chance to link to Patrick's blog, which is quite beautiful, interesting and fun.

* Speaking of who's inadequate, I'm reminded of a roommate I had, years ago, who told me she felt sorry for men. She didn't think men could achieve the heights of exquisite delirium that women could, sexually. Since then I've heard this feeling confirmed by some male friends, as well.

* As I look back at the entire title of Dr. Lloyd's book, I see that it is called "The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution" . Wow. With all the doubt the creationists are casting on our legitimacy these days, I really wish they (aka her publishers) hadn't named it that. It's kind of too sophisticated an argument for the general public, and I don't really mean that to be snobby. Would the creationists ever admit to "bias" within their own ranks? Hell no. When really "bias" is all they've got.

* I hope that in this entire post, it is implicitly apparent that we are, contrary to current pseudoscientific claims, actually not particularly intelligently designed.

*Here's a much more thorough and authoritative account of what I'm talking about as far as "progress" and evolution from the magnificent talkorgins.org:

Evolution is not progress. Populations simply adapt to their current surroundings. They do not necessarily become better in any absolute sense over time. A trait or strategy that is successful at one time may be unsuccessful at another. Paquin and Adams demonstrated this experimentally. They founded a yeast culture and maintained it for many generations. Occasionally, a mutation would arise that allowed its bearer to reproduce better than its contemporaries. These mutant strains would crowd out the formerly dominant strains. Samples of the most successful strains from the culture were taken at a variety of times. In later competition experiments, each strain would outcompete the immediately previously dominant type in a culture. However, some earlier isolates could outcompete strains that arose late in the experiment. Competitive ability of a strain was always better than its previous type, but competitiveness in a general sense was not increasing. Any organism's success depends on the behavior of its contemporaries. For most traits or behaviors there is likely no optimal design or strategy, only contingent ones. Evolution can be like a game of paper/scissors/rock.

What's Going On With Lizzie

Recently, I've felt bad that I've been too distracted and busy recently to post much. And I've been a little afraid I'd lose the few visitors to the site I do get. So, I was amazed and amused to discover (via beloved sitemeter) that my site traffic has actually doubled in the last few days. HAHAHA. This is pretty hilarious. Apparently when you search "Jessica Simpson plastic surgery" or "Teri Hatcher's nose" you get.... Teardrop Souffle. Yes, the site that discusses the deep and powerful implications of natural selection, and declares that the process should be condemned by moral beings also includes a post about turkey neck and ski slope noses, and apparently that post is pret-ty popular (at least by my pitiful standards.)

Anyway, since I'm talking about myself, I'm going to say that I have sort of had a career change recently. I closed my fashion design business a year ago, decided to not pursue more dance costuming as a career two months ago, then a few weeks ago quit my job selling $4,000 jackets to trainwrecks at Chanel. Just last week I moved back into the full time temping arena. I'm trying to get hired as an administrative assistant in the corporate world, in order to earn and save money to pay for a Masters degree in Social Work. (I did admin work for years at Morgan Stanley while I pursued fashion.)

This is all in an effort to answer the question: "How can I be effective in reducing suffering?" (While balancing that goal with finding something I'd be fascinated by and good at.) So, since I am something of an "idea person", to say the least, I think that I think I may want to get the MSW, and then get clinical training as a Family Therapist. A few posts ago", I was asking the question "How can I influence anyone? Why should I expect to?" If I get trained in counseling/ therapy, then that is a way to get trained to deal in ideas that matter. Or at least to learn techniques (based on ideas) that will elicit responses (and ideas) that might help people.

Interestingly (to me at least) I think that the "big picture" lessons of biology lead me to think not in terms of individuals and their problems, but systems and their effects. So, I am curious about getting trained in counseling not just individuals or couples, but parents. I may change my mind, because I'm still in "exploratory mode", but if I care about people, and want to help them, then I care about children. All of us are a part of families, and are influenced by those networks. With adults, I believe the stage largely already been set. If I can get to the parents, and work with them to create a stable internal architecture of safety and freedom within their children, then perhaps I have a chance at some long-term impact. Because the way we raise children affects generations to come.

I recently heard "parenting" described as building a boat that you eventually launch to the sea. I guess rather than build the boat, I'd rather study what makes a strong vessel, and share the (not necessarily intuitive) knowledge with the builders. It surely seems worth a try.

My Thoughts, from Other Places

I was participating for a while in an Evolutionary Psychology forum, before finally giving up yesterday. There is definitely value in discussing ideas with people with whom one disagrees, but if they don't know what natural selection even is, then there's sort of a limit, you know?.

Here is a post that I wrote, that I realized might be worthwhile for me to post on my OWN forum, this very bl*g. Forgive me if I repeat myself (a quality I'm JUST NOW realizing I am prone to.) I do have my defense, which is that if you repeat something, then maybe people will start believing you (it worked for Mr. President...)

Anyway, among other things, this guy kept suggesting that I am going to be an unsuccessful person if I don't have babies like all the red state fundamentalists who I'm supposedly competing against.

I get the feeling that you are conflating "genetic success" with personal success. That's sort of like saying roaches are some of the most successful species. From a biological perspective they are, of course. But I don't think from a human moral perspective they would be. I personally am much more impressed by the success of someone, who, say, is honest, is kind, has a sense of humor, qualities I don't know have been observed in roaches...

There is more to science (and to biology), than natural selection. However, it is the basic foundation of the field that should be well understood before discussing evolution. And, the essential processes of natural selection rely on mechanisms that, from a human moral perspective, should be condemned, rather than applauded. This is a major shift in how we usually think about things, a paradigm shift, but if one allows this to sink in, then everything else falls into place.

Am I saying that any positive acts of kindness, cooperation, altruism just spring out of thin air? No, I'm not, though you might be (or you might say they come from supernatural origins, which is pretty much the same claim.)

We can (and do!) study social systems of other primates to see where what (we humans consider to be) positive virtues originate. So, it's not that we as carriers of "selfish" genes are entirely selfish and awful in every way, because we see in the social systems of other animals that there are the seeds of virtue. In short, these seeds of virtue originate because it is to the genetic advantage of social groups to ultimately stay coherent and get along.

It is these kernels of cooperation that we (if we care about doing what is good and right and smart) should focus on and cultivate, rather than on simply repeating crude versions of "genetic success", which, again even a roach can achieve. We can set the bar a little higher than what insects pull off.

Just because we don't like the fact of natural selection doesn't mean that we should deny that its existence. Besides, the truth will win out, whether now or in 200 years. That's because the ways of natural selection are, in the worlds of distinguished 20th c. biologish George C. Williams, "abysymally stupid." We can be smarter than that. (Although we should have been smarter about all this already.) We obviously can harness the tools of love and education to get over our nasty, brutish heritage.

So, even though natural selection certainly has no prior goals, purpose or direction, perhaps we could say that insights gleaned from biology can, after all, give us some goals! We can (and perhaps should be morally compelled) to recognize the inherent tragedy of the world, and address it by trying to improve on the awful suffering rampant in the world around us. That's what I for one would like to try to do.

Here was a follow up I later wrote, responding to Fred:

from Fred:
"But then that renders your assertion that the essential processes of natural selection rely on mechanisms that, from a human moral perspective, should be condemned, rather than applauded to be somewhat schizophrenic."

Well, I can see how this perspective of mine might seem paradoxical, but not schizophrenic. The reason the entire system is to be condemned is because it's not a good system. There are some specks of positivity, but over all the values that stem from being better than your neighbor at getting your genes into the next generation are essentially, from a human perspective, immoral. It is a system of competition, selfishness, and pain.
Like a wild almond that in its natural state is coated in poisonous cyanide got cultivated into the delicious one we enjoy today, we can, through cultivation- through civilization! concentrate our efforts to create good.

Intelligent Design is a Pseudoscience (and Labels Matter)

Panda's Thumb is one of the most respected evolution blogs around. One thing it focuses on is the fight against the anti-evolutionists. Someone on the site requested that we respond to the Minneapolis Star Tribune's request for our stance on whether Intelligent Design (aka updated creationism) should be taught in schools. Here is a comment I posted to them.

I just wrote up a little something to send to the Star Tribune (as was requested of me a couple of posts ago!) on why I don’t believe Intelligent Design belongs in schools. I don’t usually follow the Evolutionist/ Creationist debate too closely, so forgive me if I’m off-base here, or proposing something already practiced.

In writing the blurb to the newspaper, a term occurred to me to use that I don’t hear nearly often enough in this debate. The Evolutionists, should, again and again, be calling the Intelligent Design proponents what they are: pseudoscientists. I think that repeating this label will go a lot further than all the rational, detailed debate in the world.

(If you are reminded of the events leading to a certain recent election, then you might see my point about how much terminology and framing matter. Repeat the same well-considered label enough times, and your point gets through…)

Even an ill-educated public recognizes that a pseudoscience is to be avoided, and, well, shouldn’t be taught in biology class. They also know the word “pseudoscience”, and will emotionally recoil against it, much more than if something is “not science” (which lacks intuitive force.)

I think we evolutionists have gotten hooked and distracted by the details of the argument, and we are losing sight of the main issue, which is the issue of : Is Intelligent Design science? No, it’s not. Why not? Well, science consists of the scientific method. What does the scientific method consist of? Well, you start with observable phenomena and you come up with a hypothesis, and you test it… and so on. Since ID doesn’t consist of this, it is a pseudoscience.

We really shouldn’t have to stoop so low as to defend the specifics. We’ve got 146 years of modern biology to do that. The issue is, Intelligent Design, like Social Darwinism, like Phrenology, is a pseudoscience, and we need to unite in our efforts to educate the public on this fact. Our task is not to argue about the legitimacy of the findings of our science versus theirs- in fact, doing so has gotten them this far. Instead, we need to simply drive home* the definition of science, and show that their pseudoscience is no such animal.

**Another advantage to this approach is that rather than a pitiful public debate that is essentially between adults and toddlers, taking the discussion up a notch means the public gets to hear a lesson on what science is, and how science works. It’s also much easier for the uninitiated to understand.

Do Mere Ideas Matter?

Recently I've been wondering how much big picture thinking even matters. In Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, he talks about proximate and ultimate causes. Recently I've wondered if these "ultimate" explanations of life on earth even matter. Maybe nobody except me cares about these "ultimate" explanations. Or if they do care, then they wouldn't listen to me or to scientists, but to, say, the Pope or James Dobson.

Maybe most adult world views are already created. Of course, I think lots of people's world views are based on ill-informed foundations. And what's more, I think often the shortcomings of these faulty conceptualizations cause more pain than the pain they were originally meant to ameliorate. This tends to really upset me, and I sort of just wish that people could hear, and accept the truth. That's why I just really believe in honesty. Because I think dishonesty ultimately hurts more than helps.

I think the essential process of natural selection, and the cruelty therein, is an example of how the truth can hurt. I think it's why the creationists are so stubbornly resistant to accepting the fact of evolution, because they don't want to believe something so depressing. They prefer the faulty worldviews that their religion is providing for them, and which is providing emotional comfort and inspiration. "God loves me!" What a nice idea. But I think that while it can be a comforting support, ultimately, once you convince yourself that you know what "God" thinks and feels, then a cascade of shaky ideas follow. But since you've got God on your side, then you're armed with a fortitude that actually might get your ideas spread better than legitimate ones!

I guess I'm grappling with the fact that there might be very little I can do about how other people see things. And sometimes, I think (for about one fleeting instant) "they're just ideas", and figure I should give up, and just go be Buddhist.

Or, I think, well, maybe I can't change people's ideas about big picture, "ultimate" explanations and issues, so maybe I should dedicate my life to something practical, like, say, standing on the street corner and pamphletting against factory farming. Though even that practice, (and maybe I'm just making excuses) seems questionable, regarding how much actual animal suffering I could diminish.

Or, maybe I should get trained in family systems therapy, and be a social worker. That way I could help families meet their own needs, and perhaps more importantly, the needs of their children, to help reduce sadness and tragedy in generations to come! "Truth be told", that's actually what I see happening.

But then I think of Descartes. As any regular reader knows, I loathe Descartes. Why should I care about some guy from several hundred years ago? I loathe him because of his influence on our thoughts regarding ultimate explanations, the ultimate order of things.

So, once again, we see an example of bad ideas tripping us up for centuries. AGh!!! So, this leads me to believe that ideas can, and do matter. It just depends on whether there is a platform for those ideas to be heard, and if they come in a form that people hear, and if they are repeated enough so that the ideas sink in. If I only I could figure out what that form and platform are. Oh, well, who am I to expect anybody to listen to me, anyway?

Like He Said! (Whoever "He" Is...)

I came across a marvelous comment from somewhere* on Panda's Thumb website (which I cannot seem to find again). The commenter was responding to a post about some good news: the post-er had been deeply impressed by the excellent, critical student response to an "Intelligent Design" seminar put on by a university Christian group. This response to that post really encapsulates my feelings about why science teaching and awareness is so important, and why it feels so dangerous to let it slip away:

The smart and uniformly anti-pseudoscience answers from the student body is not only a testament to them, but to their professors. It is heartening to see that despite the highly abstract and detail-oriented nature of teaching science, all of that knowledge is distilled into healthy skepticism and rational thinking. Without even having any formal education on “tautological arguments” or “methodological naturalism”, the well-taught student innately recognises a logical argument when they hear one. I tip my hat to the professors who train responsible, curious and rationally skeptical scientists.

I tip my hat, too. Not that I have one, though it's springtime, and I'm about to have a lovely straw one I could use for this purpose....

Now that I have this mystery commenter backing me up, I guess I don't have to delete some former posts now. Also, I think this comment explains why I (irresponsibly, I admit) tend to conflate (in my head, and apparently in my blogging) the terms "rational" with "scientist" with "non-believer" with "left-wing" with "correct" with "excellent" with "awesome"...


*For the life of me I don't understand why all bl*gs aren't organized with everything on one scrollable page. To me, navigating other people's bl*gs is frustrating and not inviting. Unless I'm not getting something, you have to just click on one of a only a few posts on the side bar. So odd. I don't understand why I'm the only one who likes everything all together.

Honesty Might Set Me Free

Well, I personally feel like I've gotten better at focusing my little Teardrop Souffle blog on its original intended purpose- a platform to integrate thinking about science into thinking about life. In fact, I've made so much progress that there are several posts from the past that I'm now tempted to delete! Those posts just don't represent me very well these days. But I've decided to keep them, and give you an update (see, we're always trying to learn around here...)

For example, in one post I wrote about how because people are so inherently religious, maybe politicians should just throw folks a bone, and use religion as a tool to get good ideas across. But now, I really disagree with myself. I think that really, what is needed is for people to realize that you can have a profoundly moral worldview without relying on God! I think that it is deeply important for this distinction to get made. You can have moral compunction without religiousness! In fact, you might have more! And now that I'm getting older, I really want to try to stand up for who I am, in this regard.

You know, in my real life, with both my family and at my job at Chanel, I am closeted. Why? Well, it's very difficult to "come out" as a non-believer. Especially when so many people call out "God" for emotional comfort and inspiration. Telling a religious person that you're not one of them feels like turning on the lights in the movie theatre. This isn't just about me, it's about them, and "us" together. That's the nature of religion, and of faith. So, in order to stand up and say something, you sort of have to break the illusion that "we're all in this together". I think it's probably a learned skill to know how to do this sensitively, and bravely.

I didn't ever even question my closeted persona until the last few months. (And really, I should credit the Brights for pointing out the significance of this struggle.) But now, I see at my workplace such illogical, unhelpful reliance on God, and in greater society, I see our country losing so many hard fought advances, again based on really, really poor reasoning (or lack of reasoning, rather.) And now, these attacks are encroaching on even the proper teaching of science, which will only lead to more bad, unreasoned illogical thinking. So I am realizing that I really shouldn't continue to hide who I am. Honestly, I really feel like the future of our wonderful civilization is threatened, and it could be avoided if the citizens of this country were better educated! So, I might as well try to be an example of someone who can be caring and also a non-believer-- someone who has some "alternative" points of view that can be pretty difficult to argue with.

I really think there is a deep problem in the public perception of atheists, (or "a bright" to be more positive,) left wing people, John Kerry, etc. I think that the problem the public has with rational thinking is that it feels emotionless to them. On the other hand, the problem I have with religion is that the emotional underpinnings prohibit rational thought! And it's rational thought that sets us free. I really mean that.*

But the thing is, I have tremendous emotion, and concern for the world. But I think this would be surprising to so many red state voters, who have gotten so many portrayals of, say, a New Yorker fashion lover as, oh wow, where to start?-- "latte drinking", "volvo driving", "NY Times reading", "elite", "limousine liberal", "selfish", "childless", "anti-family", "freedom hating", etc. etc. ETC. All of these names we get called seem to indicate a belief that we are unmoored- without connections to what, they feel, truly matters. Wouldn't they be surprised to hear my lengthy thoughts on how much I believe in love, unselfishness, humility, two parent stable homes, marital fidelity, community involvement for children, sympathy, charity, etc. etc. etc.? How I really believe the teachings of Jesus are the among the most beautiful ever, but that doesn't mean that he was the son of God. (It also doesn't mean that the world didn't have grace, love and forgiveness before he lived.)

I am vulnerable to such caricature because well, first of all the Republicans inventing it are slimy hagfish who have entire think tanks dedicated to manipulating the public. But secondly, perhaps these caricatures wouldn't fit into the public's brains so easily if liberals hadn't left a hole in terms of... how do we feel? What do we believe in? And I don't mean "I believe in civil liberties!" because that has ab-solute-ly no gut reaction value. I mean we have to talk in the language that stirs hearts, in emotional terms.

By the way, I know a lot of people have been talking about/bl*gging about this recently. I think it's a really important topic, and that's why I'm joining the chorus.

I've been reading a website called Siris that is written by someone who is (I gather) a Catholic philosopher, with extraordinarily classical tastes (you'll find posts in Latin, for god's sake!) who has lots of integrity. He is obviously a very educated person, and I am learning lots from visiting his site. For one thing, even though in some (many?) ways he is perhaps "left-leaning" his site (and, I take it, his worldview) is absolutely at the other end of the spectrum as mine is, regarding what we focus on (he on the history of human thought and belief, me on contemporary scientific findings).

So, on his blog, you will find earnest discussions on whether or not an atheist could ever achieve the upper echelons of morality that someone who believes in God does. My point here is that even very educated, sophisticated people argue about, and question, whether we can have morality without a "moral authority" (ie. God).

I personally think it's more likely that we find more advanced morality withOUT God, because people seem to invariably create self-serving conclusions when God is on their side. Also, in my opinion, we have truth on our side. Meaning, we don't have to put up with pesky questions like "if God is good, why is the inherent design of the universe so tragic?" But for this discussion, that's a little bit neither here nor there.

Because whether we leftists like it to explicitly admit or not, morality matters*. And we have to include this in the conversation, because our country is getting taken over by people who like to think of little else. And we have to figure out how to teach it* to our children, actively. And whereas it is correctly unconstitutional to mix church and state, we actually should bring up issues of love and unselfishness, which are compelling to almost all human beings, and, without God or any other supernatural explanation, mix those values with critical thinking and rationality.




*By morality, I don't mean obvious things like "Don't be mean!" I'm talking about growing into more and more advanced notions and feelings of love, empathy, compassion, living for more than just yourself, and honesty, honesty, honesty.

* When I say this, I think something that might help could be to "show, not tell". Meaning, rather than to make claims about moral this, moral that, we could try to show attributes of humility, sensitivity, and compassion, as we express our rational points of view. Perhaps easier said than done, of course. But I do believe this is possible. I think I myself have improved a LOT since, say, election time, when I could barely speak to a Republican voter about George Bush without losing my mind.

** I see, again and again, that the short term fixes that "feel right" in the moment really mess us up in the long term. I saw two examples of that tonight at work: one was Iris describing to me why she voted for Bush- she had a better feel about him. She didn't just "didn't trust" Kerry, it was "something in his face", he seemed "weak" (even though she would pretty much admit to countless awful policy decisions of Bush's, when when went to the effort of going through them together.) So, it might "feel right" to her to base decisions on such criteria as the feeling she gets from Kerry's face, but it's certainly ruining our country. Then another was when Oscar excused his own "bastard" character by saying " I can't help it, I'm a Scorpio". Suddenly astrology doesn't seem like such harmless fun. Of course, self-serving excuses come in countless shapes and forms, but these two had no absolutely idea of the shortcomings of their claims. They still don't.

*I realize that in this post, I'm mixing up terms that really should stay separate. Those being: atheist, rational thinker, logical thinker, liberal, left wing, scientist, educated... the list goes on. I probably should straighten this out but I'm going to leave it for now.

What Can We Learn from Animals?

More from the Robert Trivers interview. This is very relevant and hopefully helpful in shedding light on one of the reasons animal studies give us a bigger, more accurate understanding the how and why the world works as it does.

In your book Social Evolution you describe social differences between seals breeding on land or on ice, different sex-ratio's between ants that do or don't 'hold slaves', and many other examples from the animal kingdom. Why should studying these phenomena be relevant to social scientists who are interested in human behaviour?


It is very important what the form of the argument is linking other creatures to humans. One thing we are trying to do is understand general theories that apply to our own species but also apply to other species, and it is often easier to test the general theory in some other species than in our own. That often makes studying distantly related creatures valuable to understanding ourselves, not because we act like them, not because we necessarily share any behaviours in common, but because we are both subject to the same principles. And to test and refine the principles themselves, it is valuable to get away from humans.

Now he talks about working out issues of parent-offspring conflict. The popular (unexamined, uneducated) view most of us have is that parents and offspring work together, for the good of both. It is assummed that their goals are the same. It turns out that inevitably, there are pulls and conflicts- the offspring will want as much of the parent's resources as can be had, which can be a conflict for the parent. The conflict emerges because even though the parent shares 50% of her genes with the child, and they inevitably share 100% of genes with themselves.

To give you an example, when I first worked on parent-offspring conflict, Richard Alexander said: "Well and good. There is parent-offspring conflict in theory. But if you go to nature you will find that the parent always wins. The outcome is always exactly what the parent wants". Now for our own species, no way to measure the relevant parameters sufficiently precisely so as to test that notion. The cost of an additional day of nursing an offspring? Very hard to measure. The benefit of a given day of nursing to the offspring? Difficult to measure. Remember cost and benefit must be expressed in terms of reproductive success. However, you could go to those ants you were mentioning, and you could prove back in the seventies that regarding some parameters in an ant nest, the offspring wins, and the mother loses. Now you cannot generalize from that result to say: "Oh well, in humans the offspring always wins". Nonsense! In ants the mother is facing tens of thousands of daughters simultaneously. But the demonstration that offspring are capable of expressing their own interests counter to their parent's best interests destroyed a certain line of reasoning regarding the general principle.

Unconsciousness and Deception

I have made lots of progress in the last week, reaching out into the broader evolutionarily thinking world out there. Here is a fascinating interview from Robert Trivers, the guy who figured out Reciprocal Altruism (a theory that I now appreciate much more than I did before.) I'm just now becoming aware that he's one of the Most Influential. Here is a fascinating excerpt regarding his current work, from a really special interview.

I intend to throw myself full time into deceit and self-deception now. It's a topic that I've been conscious of in an evolutionary way for at least 30 years... And I don't want [my writing on this topic] to be just for an academic crowd, because the topic is everywhere. It's in every human being's life, and anybody who's half conscious is aware of it in others and themselves. One cannot read the newspaper without being conscious of the importance of deceit and self-deception in national and international affairs.

The particular sub-area that I'm interested in developing myself has to do with the structure of the mind in terms of biased information flow between the conscious and the unconscious, and the very peculiar and counter-intuitive fact that humans in a variety of situations misrepresent reality to the conscious mind while keeping in the unconscious either a fully accurate, or in any case more accurate, view of that which they misrepresent to the conscious mind.

Damn!

That seems so counter-intuitive that it begs explanation. You would have thought that after natural selection ground away for four billion years and produced these eyeballs capable of such subtlety—color, motion-detection, the details of granularity that we see—you would have perfected the organs for interpretation of reality such that they wouldn't systematically distort the information once it reaches you. That seems like a strange way to design a railroad.

The function of this area of self-deception is intimately connected to deception of others. If you are trying to see through me right now, and if I'm lying about something you actually care about, what you see first, to speak loosely, is my conscious mind and its behavioral effects. You can get some sense of my mood or my affect. The quality of voice might give you stress while trying to deceive you. It is much harder for you to figure out what my unconscious is up to. You have to make a study of my behavior, such as a spouse will do, much to your dismay at times.

One simple logic is that we hide things in our unconscious precisely to hide them better from other people, so the key interaction driving this is deception....

Well, No, Actually

I think that THINKING (as well as writing) about evolution is really hard. If we're to, you know, get it right.

How we Make Decisions

I realized after I posted the most recent post that I sort of went off on a tangent about rational thinking. I don't know that it was justified, though, and I hope it didn't distract from my other points. I suppose the issue of rationality and humans has been on my mind recently! Then again, questioning the assumptions of human rationality seems to me to be at the heart of evolutionary thinking.

Then Daniel tells me about an article from one of his nursing journals* that discusses a study of how people make decisions. (The article was discussing the factors that contribute to the decisions families make regarding end-of-life care for their loved ones. ) So, I sort of can't resist including this:

Research has discovered that decision makers often demonstrate less insight into their own behavior than might be expected.

Kahneman and Tversky clearly demonstrated that individuals do not conform to the laws of probability theory when making decisions. Instead, individuals make decisions on the basis of personal strategies and judgments, often with consistent biases. Kahneman and Tversky discovered that judgments made when individuals are uncertain of future events consistently are based on three heuristic rules leading to biases: a) representativeness, b) availability, and c) anchoring. Representativeness occurs when a decision is made according to stereotypical information. New, unfamiliar information is ignored in favor of things that are familiar from past knowledge or experience. According to the availability heuristic, individuals are likely to judge or assess frequency or probability by the ease with which instances or occurrences can be recalled. Recent occurrences are more likely to be readily available than earlier ones. Thus, individuals make decisions on the basis of information that is most readily retrievable, such as anecdotal information from significant others rather than available statistical information. When using the thrid heuristic, anchoring, people make judgments by starting with an initial value that is adjusted to yield the final answer. The initial value, the anchor, often serves to distort estimates. These simplifying heuristcis can result in reasonable judgments and decisions or can lead to distorted or erroneous ones.

A logical-empirical (L-E) model of decision making is largely based on facts and inferences and is often referred to as rational decision making. A normative-affective (N-A) model asserts that decision makers draw on value commitments adn emotional involvement, not information or reason. Normative-affective factors shape the information gathered, the ways it is processed, the inferences that are drawn, the options under consideration, and those that are finally chosen. Internalized moral values and emotions about certain things fully inform choice or decision making in many instances.

Okay, we knew this, but it's still nice to hear. Well, no, it's sort of sad to hear, but somehow reassuring to have one's observations confirmed.





*"Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing", Mar/April 2005

**Daniel started his new job as a Hospice Nurse Practioner yesterday! He makes home visits to the sick and dying, mainly elderly cancer patients. His new job is a promotion for him at a new agency. In fact, the position was created for him! He has worked toward this day for about 9 years. We are very proud and happy.

If it Walks Like a Duck and Quacks like a Duck...

Recent comments have been very helpful in letting me know how I should not take my thoughts for granted, and that I need to be very careful in spelling them out very clearly and slowly. These comments are extremely helpful to let me know what people's world views are! I appreciate this lots. I also really appreciate that people are reading and trying to sincerely respond to what I'm writing about.

A few posts ago, I wrote that thinking about the implications of evolutionary biology is hard. Well, since I wrote that, I've been regretting it. I actually don't think that the thinking about it is hard - fascinating is more like it. I think that writing about it is hard - for all of us! Because it's such a big topic! Also, each reader has already formed their world view based on other premises. Even if the reader has accepted the fact of evolution, very seldom has the implications of that fact made any impact on said reader's worldview(s). (Hence the purpose of Teardrop Souffle!) So, in my opinion, there is still much "unlearning" to do. I blame this need to "unlearn" more on society- academic and religious teachings in particular- than on the individual. Because the foundations of our culture- of Western Philosophy, as well as essentially all religions- create an insufficient framework for understanding the world. Darwinism comes much closer to helping us understand that which is is rational and true.

I believe it is because of the faulty frameworks of our educational/ cultural/ religious heritage that I am hearing things like "Because humans have a relationship with technology, we're not necessarily subject to the non-moral laws of nature." One reader said this, and another said he essentially agreed. Yet to my mind's eye, this statement (and I mean this completely respectfully, I genuinely am learning from and appreciate this comment) is an utter non-sequitor.

I am thinking that that this writer is bringing up technology/tools to begin with because tool use is a traditional demarcation line for what separates us from the animals. Yet this, like essentially every claim of what separates us from the animals, has since been challenged. Jane Goodall, in the 60's, observed chimpanzees fashioning twigs to fish for termites, and immediately realized that tool use is yet one more conceit of uniqueness that humanity must relinquish. No, a fishing twig is not the space shuttle, but it's a rudimentary tool, showing that the differences in tool use between ourselves and other animals are on a continuum.

Perhaps I'm wrong, maybe that commenter means something else. But regardless, a relationship with technology seems to me to have nothing to do with anything.

Another commenter said that he feels that it's impossible to draw a line between the brutality of an seal being mauled to death and a corn field being chopped down. Again, all due respect, but this position is insanity to me. Absolutely without reason.

What gives humans our morality in my opinion, is the capacity to be aware of the suffering of others. (Again, we see the rudiments of this capacity in other animals.) We are capable of understanding (and in fact it should be blazingly clear, and I think it is) that a seal can and does suffer physical pain and emotional torment that a corn stalk doesn't! What's the difference? The seal has a central nervous system. It's that simple. That's why we don't care if you see a farmer harvesting the corn crop, and we do care if you actually see a baby seal being mauled to death. (We generally shield ourselves from such horrors, and it is impressive that that reader did allow the horror to affect him. It is through experiencing the horror that we allow ourselves to feel sympathy, rather than shutting it out and shrugging it off.)

I think that the reason that person who claimed he stopped being vegetarian because "it's impossible to draw a line" between a baby seal and an ear of corn didn't stop for his asserted reason. I think he stopped because he wanted to eat meat.

This brings me to back to the concept of rationality (or lack thereof) in humans. Part of the significance of evolutionary thinking is to become aware that though we consider our species to be a rational one, this is a quality that is only rarely, fleetingly observed. We see that often, in a very clear and repeating pattern, our claims of rationality have actually the same self-serving origins. Perhaps you will say, well, we have the capacity for rationality. Well, I will say, so do dogs. (A dog can think "if I want this, I need to do this.")

The notion that humans are uniquely rational stems from the revolutionarily poisonous influence of Cartesian philosophy. I wrote a post a while back discussing problems with Descartes thinking, but I think I need to expand on it--try to make it more persuasive rather than just a rant. But, I will say that his view of animals was that they are machines. And this view is absolutely inaccurate, both a) intuitively and b) biologically. And guess what! This inaccurate claim was based on no real evidence! It was (at least in part) based on his ideological wishes to be blessed and approved of by the Church. And please the church he did, by claiming the supremacy and uniqueness of humans. And look! It worked for him. And even though his thinking is as clear as dirt, he's still influencing us today.

So, I do wish that humans actually were rational more often. I love rationality. But sadly, as a species, we don't achieve it very often. If we were rational, we would admit that humans share a common ancestor with other species. We would recognize that other mammals consist of hearts, lungs, blood, testosterone and amino acids, just like us. We would see that if our central nervous system is what is responsible for our sensing pain, and other animals have central nervous systems, then... they feel pain*. Likewise, when we see other animals howling in pain to the exact same stimuli as would make us howl in pain, it is absolutely less than rational to claim that the animals pain* is somehow insignificant, meaningless, or outside our circle of morals**.



* There's a medical saying: " When you hear hoof steps, think horses, not unicorns."

*In fact, because they don't have the mitigating effects of language, and are perhaps more dependent on finely tuned senses and feelings, it easily could be argued that they feel pain MORE acutely than we do..

** Even if we humans are uniquely ________(fill in the blank), it makes no sense to say that because animals don't have _______, then they are undeserving of our morality.

*** Pretty soon, I hope to lay out the essence of my argument, in an orderly fashion. Perhaps that will help me to be more clear.

Dr. Williams Interview Excerpts

Hooray! I found a G.C. Williams interview I hadn't seen in years. This is from a marvelous website called Speak, Darwinists! Here are some highlights (particularly the last couple of philosophical/ religious questions):

There are all sorts of wonderful adaptations, yet you write that natural selection never designs new machinery. Why did you write this?

Because there is nothing in natural selection that looks ahead and plans ahead. All it can do is make use of variation that is present. Some things work better than others, and the ones that work better are the ones that tend to be preserved. And this is always preserved in relation to immediate circumstances, never preserved in order to facilitate anything in the future.

You also wrote that every organism shows features that are functionally arbitrary or even maladaptive.

The human body is just full of illustrations of what are really either arbitrary or in many cases quite unfortunate legacies from prior history. For instance our respiratory system. Way back half a billion years ago at least, some early vertebrate didn't have a respiratory system, but it had a digestive system, that had at the front end a way of taking in water, and running it through a filter. That machinery turned out to be easily modified to facilitate respiration, to arrange some special mechanisms for exchanging gasses with the environment when the organism got big enough that it actually needed that. Ever since then all descendent vertebrates have had the forward end of the digestive system and the forward end of the respiratory system very much involved with each other. This manifests itself in the human body with a crossing of the two systems in the throat. So there can be, and frequently are, traffic problems there, the extreme being that you choke to death because you are trying to eat something. If you could re-design it, you would have completely separated systems, or they would be connected in a way that doesn't require a crossing of the two systems.

Another seemingly maladaptive phenomenon: Why would a vital organ like the human male testis be outside the body, where it is quite vulnerable?

For some reason, sperm development has to be at a lower temperature than that of the rest of the body. This is accomplished by the somewhat external scrotal structure. This certainly is vulnerable, and I think an indication of this is that whenever mammals reproduce seasonally, and don't need to be producing sperm for much of the year, the testicles are retracted into the body, and only go into the scrotum during the breeding season.

But this sounds like an excuse: We don't know why testicles are outside the body, so it must be temperature.

Oh no, I think it quite obviously is temperature, because any time the testicular temperature is abnormally elevated, for instance by a high fever, sterility or defective sperm results.

Still, I think this sounds like making the theory irrefutable.

Well, if you are talking about the general theory, it is not refutable by any one study. No single observation like this is going to make users of some major theoretical set of ideas abandon these ideas. What does happen is that you use evolutionary theory to make certain predictions, and check on those predictions. More often than not they turn out not to work. So you go back to the drawing board and try something else. You don't find the wrong ones being published in biological journals.

But aren't people justified in saying: Hey, there is a conspiracy going on of biologists who don't publish anything that is unfavorable to evolutionary theory?

The same bias affects engineers. They calculate that if they did something a certain way they would produce a better engine. They do it and try it out, and it turns out not to be better at all. So they go back and try something else. These are not things that get published in the engineering journals. It is only the improvements that get published. So I think evolutionary theory works the same way: Use it to generate expectations, and then check on them. If the expectations turn out as expected, then you have made a discovery which may in fact be something important.

Darwin based his theory on generalisations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances. These are basic premises that can be checked directly.

I found in your work several references to Buddhism; do you have a special liking of Buddhism?

My readings on this sort of things is extremely limited, but as a doctrine I think Buddhism is more compatible with the spirit of scientific inquiry then what you get in the Old Testament. I think it is because of the explicit recognition in Buddhism that things are not naturally good. There is a lot of pain and suffering in the world, and that is because that's the way the world is. And the way to overcome this is to live a certain way and have certain attitudes of to some extent resignation; well, resignation in the sense of don't let it bother you, don't be disappointed and discouraged when bad things happen. This as opposed to some Christian and Jewish traditions, in which everything is for the best to some extent, because it is God's will that things be this way. And if they don't seem right, well that is because we don't really understand. The Book of Job for instance, where no matter how many evils befall, you accept them and really don't admit that they are evil because they must have come from God. And opposing what God does is something that is stupid because God is so powerful. The absence of rebellion against God has nothing to do with God being good or wise or anything like that, but strictly because God is powerful, and you don't fight something when you are so much weaker than that which you would fight. I think the Book of Job is a really sick piece of literature in that respect.

But didn't the conception of a powerful God enable Christians and Muslims to conquer large parts of the world? I never heard of victorious Buddhist armies. Buddhists seem so peaceful and introvert.

There is an outstanding example: Genghis Khan was a Buddhist. But I think you can always find an excuse for armed robbery or whatever it is, if you figure that the people you are robbing are undeserving and that you and your companions are the good guys; and you are good because God is on your side. Anybody can do that, and they always do.

My Hero

Regarding the understanding to be found in the processes of natural selection, "I am convinced it is the light and the way."
-George C. Williams

The Essential Plea

This statement, by George C. Williams, is the essense of my belief system, and what I write about in Teardrop Souffle. It is, in my view, a profound statement, if we allow it to be:

With what other than condemnation is a person with any moral sense supposed to respond to a system in which the ultimate purpose in life is to be better than your neighbor at getting genes into the future generations, in which those successful genes provide the message that instructs the development of the next generation, in which that message is always "exploit your environment, including your friends and relatives, so as to maximize our (genes') success," in which the closest thing to a golden rule is "don't cheat, unless it is likely to provide a net benefit"?

Darkness Beneath the Beauty

More from G.C. Williams' The Pony Fish's Glow:

considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson

A forest or a coral reef under a blue sky and bright sunshine gives an impression of tranquillity and harmony, but the impression disappears when details are examined. Look at one of those trees in the forest. Almost certainly you will find that it is afflicted with pests and diseases and is under frequent attack by browsers such as deer or howler monkeys. The same can be said of those monkeys. Casual examination of their skins may show the ravages of fleas or ticks or fungi. The live in constant danger from attacks by jaguars and other predators. The story of the forest or coral reef is a tale of relentless arms races, misery, and slaughter.

Back to the tree. It may be producing seeds--hundreds, or perhaps many thousands, at each seasonal episode of reproduction. The tree will ultimately die and be replaced, perhaps by another individual tree like itself. But what of that astronomical number of seeds that our tree produced? Tennyson lamented odds of one in fifty, but that would be utopian compared to the prospects for the seeds of one lartge tree. Think of all those potential trees that must be listed among life's failures. This is numerically a rather extreme example. The monkey is extreme in the other direction, because a substantial proportion of baby monkeys may survive to adulthood, but even here, the failures outnumber the successes.

I want to warn you that this next excerpt is, if you let it in, deeply sad and pointedly tragic. But I am not just being macabre when I write about these awful things. I think a lot of us tend to think that the world would be fine, if people would just act right. But I think the problems go deeper.

Infanticide... is not a social pathology found only in abnormal circumstances. It is prevalent today in diverse human cultures, including some that we might not think of as primitive; it is widespread in a large proportion of the animal kingdom; and it is entirely to be expected from what we know of evolution. These assertions are abundantly documented in the technical literature of anthropology and biology, and infanticide is just one small detail of a monstrous picture. Mountains of data on parasitism and predation (including cannibalism) in nature could be amassed to document the enormity of the pain and mayhem that arise from adaptations produced by natural selection. For one example of parasitism, try the heart-wrenching dealth of Little Echo from meningitis as detailed by Thomas Mann in Doctor Faustus. In this chapter I will confine myself to the specific example of infanticide described by the California anthropologist Sarah Hrdy.

She studied a poplulation of monkeys, Hanuman langurs, in northern India. Their mating system is what biologists call harem polygyny: dominant males have exclusive sexual access to a group of adult femailes, as long as they can keep other males away. Sooner or later, a stronger male usurps the harem and the defeated one must join the ranks of celibate outcasts.

(so, already, we see it's a tragic system)

The new male shows his love for his new wives by trying to kill their unweaned infants.

When my brother saw our pet gerbil eating his newborn babies, for years I never could fathom the horror. Why? Why? Why? I still find it sort of unfathomable, but now we have an explanation:

For each successful killing, a mother soon stops lactating and goes into estrous. The death of her infant converts her more quickly from a potential to an actual resource for the male's reproduction. This is why infanticide is adaptive for the male.

His murderous efforts do not always succeed. The females are often sisters or other close relatives and may share a genetic interest in the survival of a threatened baby. So the mother may have help in defending her offspring. Unfortunately the male is much bigger and stronger and often does succeed. Deprived of her nursing baby, a female soon starts ovulating.

Brace yourself:

She accepts the sexual advances of her baby's murderer, and he becomes the father of her next child.

Well, this is enough for now. I am writing about these awful things in order to reiterate that "things are not as we believe." Meaning, I think most of us have a glorified view of nature. A lot of people think that the only thing wrong with this world is human beings. Believe me, I think there's plenty wrong with human beings, too, but I think that believing the rest of nature is a perfect, elegant system (which is what I was taught in both Sunday School and 5th grade Science class) is not right, either..

It's not all tragedy, though. It mostly is, but not entirely! I do have some more hopeful reports from my favorite primatologist/ writer, Frans de Waal coming soon. (One experiment in particular I can't wait to write about).

Difficult Even for the Best of Us

This is from the guy who started it all for me, the great George C. Williams:

The moral unacceptability of natural selection is not just a conclusion to be asserted or accepted, but one to be thought about. The British literary giant George Bernard Shaw thought about it, and responded with: "when its whole signifcance dawns on you, your heart sinks into a heap of sand within you."

And that is true. That is how I feel. Still, though, you want a literary giant to continue on, and say something even more true. Williams' chapter from "The Pony Fish's Glow" titled "Philosophical Implications" is always both thrilling and disappointing to me, for the same reason. It is great, but you want it to be even greater. But amazingly, Dr. Williams addresses having the same feeling:

Earlier in this chapter I criticized E.O.Wilson for what I felt to be inadequacies in his use of the theory of natural selection to understand human nature and the current human condition. Now that I have tried my hand at the same job, I am less inclined to be critical. It is an immensely challenging task...

(this is from the guy who successfully "killed off" the erroneous concept of group selection, prompted a "gene-centric" focus on evolution and basically influenced biology for decades to come)

...that no one can hope to bring to anything like a finish.

(Has anyone aside from Dr. Williams even started??? Hardly!)

We can only try, and must. Natural selection is a process of pervasive importance in the biological world, which includes our own species, and on which that species is utterly dependent. Progress in evolutionary biology and its applications is perhaps most obviously relevant to medicaland environmental issues, but there is no aspect of human life for which an understanding of evolution is not a vital necessity.

So, I'm just saying that writing about the philisophical implications of evolutionary biology is HARD. It's very hard to get right. Even for Dr. Williams.

I really, really wish that we had 146 years of good Darwinian philosophical interpretation (ie. not pseudoscientific) under our belts. But instead, the lay public is dismissive or scared of evolution, and the actual scientists have to be focused on their work in their own particular fields. But as for big picture integration of Darwinian perspectives into our personal world views - where we came from, how we understand our place in the universe, what our morality should be based on, given our new, changed understandings of the world, etc. - this kind of thinking doesn't seem to be happening very much, but I deeply wish it were.

From The Onion

COGDELL, GA : The Cogdell School Board banned the teaching of the controversial "Theory Of Math" in its schools Monday. "We are simply not confident of this mysterious process by which numbers turn, as if by magic, into other numbers," board member Gus Reese said. "Those mathematicians are free to believe 3 times 4 equals 12, but that dun [sic] give them the right to force it on our children." Under the new ruling, all math textbooks will carry a disclaimer noting that math is only one of many valid theories of number-manipulation.

- Georgia School Board Bans 'Theory Of Math'



The Onion is a satirical website.

Pieta

Here is a lovely analogy from the Dawkins lecture:

For every successful [DNA] message that has reached the present, countless failures have fallen away like the chippings on a sculptor's floor. That's what Darwinian natural selection means.

I like this analogy because I know it is almost as difficult to believe that all living things are descended from single celled organisms as it is that Pieta came from a single piece of marble. But unlike the creationists doubting the scientists, we don't doubt art historians when they tell us about the works' origins. We see Pieta and feel amazed.

Pieta, originally uploaded by Lizzetta.

However, I do want to remind my readers that unlike a human sculptor, nature's sculptor, that being natural selection, doesn't have an intent from the start. Every living being on the earth today is indeed an elite, representative of millions of years of survival success, but that doesn't mean that evolution has any goals, any ideals, any sense of progress or achievement whatsoever, outside of passing genes to the next reproducing generation.

Hijacked Wonder

I have a sneaking suspicion that even though I put a link up and heartily recommended a great Richard Dawkins lecture, my reader(s) probably did not rush to read it. However, I myself found it so valuable that I am excerpting a couple of bits, for my readers here, in the hopes that it will stick in your mind as it has mine.

One bit in particular has proven quite helpful. Recently I found myself listening to one of my ever-impressive co-workers talk about how even though he's really a skeptic, he is pretty much persuaded by the claims of John Edward, (the guy who does a T.V. program where he "Crosses Over" and talks to the dead family members of his audience.) I heard myself trying to tell Ralph what Dawkins is saying here:

I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which drives the best of true science, and it is an appetite which true science is best qualified to satisfy. Perhaps it is this appetite that underlies the ratings success of the paranormalists.

I believe that astrologers, for instance, are playing on -- misusing, abusing -- our sense of wonder. I mean when they hijack the constellations, and employ sub-poetic language like the moon moving into the fifth house of Aquarius. Real astronomy is the rightful proprietor of the stars and their wonder. Astrology gets in the way, even subverts and debauches the wonder.

(By the way, I have barely met a single co-worker who hasn't told me their "sign" within moments of first meeting me ...)

Who'd go back to astrology when they've sampled the real thing -- astronomy, Yeats's "starry ways", his "lonely, majestical multitude"? The same lovely poem encourages us to "Remember the wisdom out of the old days"...

It's often said that people 'need' something more in their lives than just the material world. There is a gap that must be filled. People need to feel a sense of purpose. Well, not a BAD purpose would be to find out what is already here, in the material world, before concluding that you need something more. How much more do you want? Just study what is, and you'll find that it already is far more uplifting than anything you could imagine needing.


You don't have to be a scientist -- you don't have to play the bunsen burner -- in order to understand enough science to overtake your imagined need and fill that fancied gap. Science needs to be released from the lab into the culture.

So, the big thing that this is making me think about is: if people don't get taught science, (which they don't), then they will, INEVITABLY, fill up their minds with some replacement! And there is no shortage of individuals ready to help them, either.

He would've made the worst vice-president.

Good Point

History suggests that we had very little hope until the social institutions of science arose. Before science there was no apparent cumulative process in the accuracy of human belief systems. After science, everything changed....

Secret

Truth be told, I actually have a soft spot for Maison Margiela (yes, whose work I ridiculed two posts ago). I mean, it's fun to make fun of, but there's poetry to be found*! I kind of think it's AWESOME that there are clothes being produced with that much subtlety, story, ridiculousness.... And to me, there actually is sense to be made of them.

It's funny, I am partial to clothing, though. Experimental, arty as it is, I think if I saw something like that hanging on a wall, I would find it worthless. I think that for me, that someone is meant to actually wear the garment makes it inherently more significant and interesting.

I just hope to god Mr. Margiela has a sense of humor. One never can be so sure, though.


*I'm sorry I don't have pictures to post here. I dont' really know how to do that except in a couple of limited ways. What's more, I think they might be copyrighted. But you can see some of his clothes here.

*Geoffrey Miller thinks the difficult restrictions inherent to actual poetry (you know, rhyme, iambic pentameter...) indicates that it is a system of handicaps, as well! Again, the beauty derives from the inherent challenge, the essential difficulty...

Now, I'd like to Ask My Dear Readers...

All two one of you, were you familiar already with the Handicap Principle I just discussed in my last post? I beg for your comment...

You Knew I'd Bring this Back to Fashion Eventually, Right?

I realized in reading my last post that I probably took some short cuts. So, in this post I'm going to flesh out the ideas of sexual selection, particularly what is interesting to me about it.

Usually when sexual selection is discussed, the peacock's tail is mentioned. What's obvious about a peacock's tail is of course that it is so magnificent and colorful. Yet if you think about a wild animal displaying a big ostentatious tail, it becomes clear that this ornament could actually be a liability. It is "expensive" to produce (physiologically speaking) and also the bright colors would seem to attract predators. What's more, a tail that big and cumbersome is terribly difficult to maintain in its splendid perfection.

So how and why does the peacock have its tail? ? Well, it becomes apparent that it is just these absurd difficulties that make it so desirable (to the potential mates the peahens.) It is these expensive difficulties that are the ways to show how well-nourished, and free from disease he his. In fact, he's so healthy he can flaunt this dangerous excess!

And it is exactly because it is conspicuous (to predators and competing males) and excessive that it is a wonderful indicator of fitness. Because it is very difficult to cheat about displays of fitness, with this kind of "handicapping" going on.

So, there you have it. The absurdity of the thing is why it is there. And guess what. We see this handicapping principle throughout the animal kingdom (and I would say, that includes humans as well.) Now, I know that we should be a little careful when we select which lessons we apply to humans from the animal kingdom. But this is just too compelling to let go.

I usually find myself thinking that my working in fashion (that's what I came to New York to pursue) is completely separate from my interest in Evolutionary Biology. But do you know, last night I found myself showing a white lambskin (ugh) Chanel handbag to a customer. It was perfectly, flawlessly white, and $1695. And obviously, that little number can get RUINED the second it hits the New York street. And so you tell the customer "Yes, that's the luxury of it." Which of course they already are aware. It is precisely because it is so fragile that it works as a status item. (By the way, the sales staff was talking tonight about how those white bags are THE hottest sellers right now and how they wish we'd ordered a hundred of them.)

The same is true for expensive, trendy clothing. It is precisely BECAUSE the clothes will be out of style next season that they are so desirable now. Because it shows off all sorts of things- how "current and in the know" you are, how you can afford to spend on this sort of wasteful display, and also, (and this is an interesting one to) that you care to spend your money in that way- you are a person who cares about looking (take your pick:) sexy, beautiful, unusual, rich, fun-loving what have you. And if everyone could do it, then it would no longer set you apart.

There is even the anti-status status, where people want to wear Chanel, but don't want blaring logos all over it. And yes, maybe they want a beautifully made designer garment from a prestigious historic couture house. There is that. But there is also certainly the idea that people want to wear a designer that is recognizable as that designer, sans logo. It's an even subtler form of snobbery, for the more inside insiders.

There is another designer, Martin Margiela, who takes the anti-status status even further. He doesn't have any logo, no branding at all to his company. He refuses to be interviewed or photographed. And his labels are sewn using white thread at the four corners of the label, with the thread showing through on the outside of the garment. (I am thinking there is not even a lable on the inside- can't remember, though.). A lot of the clothes might look something like a belted burlap sack, and that's when it is especially thrilling to spot the little white threads on the back. "Wow," you think, "That lady spent a couple of thousand dollars on that feedbag over there, just so that like, three people today would recognize that it's from Margiela. Damn."

Music, Rock Stars and Sexual Selection

Here is a list that shows some differences between natural selection and sexual selection. By the way, sexual selection appeared in Origin of Species"- it was a part of Darwin's original magnificent package (but god, in light of this post's topic, perhaps I should use a different noun).

Natural Selction:
• Utilitarian, functional
• Solves a problem
• Sensible
• Economical
• Fixed
• Constructive
• Dull

Sexual Selection:
• Showy, elaborate
• Impresses an audience
• Whimsical
• Wasteful
• Changeable
• Destructive
• Exciting

I think this list might show why I am excited to talk about sexual selection (ie it's a lot more fun than natural selection).

Not to keep bringing up the same writer all the time, but I was watching Stephen Pinker on Meaning of life.tv the other day. And he, like nearly every scientist these days, again referred to natural selection as the sole mechanism that moves evolution. (oddly omitting sexual selection.) Maybe he meant to tacitly includsexual selection inside N.S. But, then he sited the example of music as something that can't be explained by natural selection. But to me, it seems pretty clear that it might at least partly be connected to sexual selection.

But if you watch a single Beatles, Duran Duran, Bon Jovi or Van Halen documentary, you will observe countless teenage girls FAINTING, I mean taken away by paramedics. They are hyperventilating with overwhelmed emotion, so much they do wish to mate with, (or nearly so) the exciting, showy, elaborately-costumed, audience impressing males on stage. You can almost see the sexual selection at work. I mean, these girls are overcome. They can't stand it, they feel so much for these gorgeous, wastefully displaying musicians. I don't know how unique the rock star experience is in human history (and I don't like to speculate TOO much about the E.E.A., anyway), but there is SOME intoxicating combination of music with status that makes rock stars outrageously successful in getting laid. I mean, you've heard the stories. You know, several in one night, and hundreds more girls trying to get in. And if there's this much sexual success, something special (in evolution terms) is going on. Because obviously, getting laid a lot = getting your genes passed on= selection success.

I really love to read rock biographies for this reason. I don't like the Rolling Stones' music, but a book about their personal lives was one of the most fascinating things I've ever read.






(Ernst Mayr says something kind of cool about how biologists return to Darwin again and again, because he is usually the clearest and most correct of evolution theorists. What a guy.)

Positive Attributes Selected for? Could it Really Be?

Scientists were asked "What do you believe to be true, even though you can't prove it?" Here was an answer I liked.

The "rotten-to-the-core" assumption about human nature espoused so widely in the social sciences and the humanities is wrong. This premise has its origins in the religious dogma of original sin and was dragged into the secular twentieth century by Freud, reinforced by two world wars, the Great Depression, the cold war, and genocides too numerous to list. The premise holds that virtue, nobility, meaning, and positive human motivation generally are reducible to, parasitic upon, and compensations for what is really authentic about human nature: selfishness, greed, indifference, corruption and savagery. The only reason that I am sitting in front of this computer typing away rather than running out to rape and kill is that I am "compensated," zipped up, and successfully defending myself against these fundamental underlying impulses.

In spite of its widespread acceptance in the religious and academic world, there is not a shred of evidence, not an iota of data, which compels us to believe that nobility and virtue are somehow derived from negative motivation.

[Well, that's interesting. I never entirely convinced by reciprical altruism theories, particularly to explain the kindness that can occasionally (haha) be found in humans.]

On the contrary, I believe that evolution has favored both positive and negative traits, and many niches have selected for morality, co-operation, altruism, and goodness, just as many have also selected for murder, theft, self-seeking, and terrorism.

More plausible than the rotten-to-the-core theory of human nature is the dual aspect theory that the strengths and the virtues are just as basic to human nature as the negative traits: that negative motivation and emotion have been selected for by zero-sum-game survival struggles, while virtue and positive emotion have been selected for by positive sum game sexual selection. These two overarching systems sit side by side in our central nervous system ready to be activated by privation and thwarting, on the one hand, or by abundance and the prospect of success, on the other.
- Martin E.P. Seligman
Psychologist, University of Pennsylvania, Author, Authentic Happiness

Hmmm. Well, as far as human beings go, the goal of abundance, (not stopping at merely enough) in my view, usually has some greed and deception attached to it, but that's just me. Overall, though, there's something I like about this idea (that positive traits could be selected for) that I think can be useful.

By the way, I really love that he is actually talking about sexual selection. Something I've been thinking about lately is how odd it is that evolutionary biology experts tend to talk only in terms of natural selection. They don't even mention sexual selection! My best guess/hope is that "sexual selection" is considered a subset of "natural selection". I hope so, because sexual selection is very,very important, and if we forget about it, we are warping our understanding of selection pressures.

I will go so far as to say that I think natural selection barely applies to humans anymore, and I don't think it has for a long time.

Most moral codes around the globe insist that society helps every born baby survive. I know there are TONS of exceptions, but still. Modern hygiene, modern medicine, cities and civilization- these have happily superceded lots of the effects of that terrible force.

But, to focus on sexual selection as a positive force, where we pick what we're attracted to, rather than merely what helps us survive-- well, now we're getting somewhere! I think I'll continue this thread in my next post(s).

"Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder"

I found the transcript of a great lecture by Richard Dawkins where he discusses and elaborates the exact same themes as I do in my next-to-most-recent-post. Though of course he does it much more eloquently, with more and far-reaching and satisfactory explanations and implications than I provide. My English friend Lee (aka "Teacup") says Dawkins (who is also English) is a dick, and maybe he is, but his lecture is really good. I get the feeling he's more visible over there than he is here. Anyway, I wholeheartedly recommend reading the entire lecture! Please, please!

from the speech:

"Far from being over-confident, many scientists believe that science advances only by disproof of its hypotheses. Konrad Lorenz said he hoped to disprove at least one of his own hypotheses every day before breakfast. That was absurd, especially coming from the grand old man of the science of ethology, but it is true that scientists, more than others, impress their peers by admitting their mistakes.

A formative influence on my undergraduate self was the response of a respected elder statesmen of the Oxford Zoology Department when an American visitor had just publicly disproved his favourite theory. The old man strode to the front of the lecture hall, shook the American warmly by the hand and declared in ringing, emotional tones: "My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years." And we clapped our hands red. Can you imagine a Government Minister being cheered in the House of Commons for a similar admission? "Resign, Resign" is a much more likely response!"

Skeletons

chimp ape-human ape, originally uploaded by Lizzetta.

I took this at the the Natural History Museum. On the right is a human, on the left is, I believe, a chimpanzee. I know that it's another great ape. I love this picture.

The More You Know, the More You Know How Much You Don't Know, Right?

"When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a long history ; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, in the same way as any great mechanical invention is the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen ; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting - I speak from experience - does the study of natural history become!"

        - Charles Darwin, "The Origin of Species"

I really don't have any idea how the ship and its sails work. Nor a lightbulb, cd player, or microwave. I mean, not really. I do think that these standard household items are amazing. It is so crazy that I can watch a lady standing and talking on a television screen when she is not in front of me, but in, say, L.A. Crazy! But that doesn't mean that I start getting bleary eyed about the beautiful mystery of the TV., and start praying and singing hymns about it. But sometimes people seem to have a funny view about liking to not know more about the world in scientific ways, and prefer to stay in the dark.

It's not only religious people who seem to have this divide in their heads. I think a lot of people seem to feel like something about science cuts them off from the mysteries of the world. In fact, when I told a new friend, an absolutely unreligious person, all about my pet interest of evolutionary biology, his response was, "yes, but, what about, you know, life's rich tapestry."

This stuck in my mind ever since. It's BECAUSE I'm so curious about life's rich tapestry that I am talking about all this!

I think it's the doctor who is more aware of how extraordinarily complicated the human body is than those of us who just know it from the looks of it, and how we personally feel. Because the doctor has their own feelings AND the educated perspective. I think the natives know how complicated their own culture is, much more so than the tourists who visit for three days. The more you know, the more you realize how much there is to know. And if I were the sort who cared about physics of force and locomotion and navigation, then I imagine the more I learned about how a ship works, the more I'd want to know. The more I'd be aware that a ship is MORE THAN something that the wind blows into the sails of and just goes.

And no, I don't care about the physics of wind, but I do care about life-- people and animals. So, I pursue this interest. And the more I read, the more overwhelmed by how much I haven't read.

Rather than reducing everything into really simplistic terms, I really think scientific gives us an awareness of how much we DON'T know. In fact, there's a cliche at every research conclusion: "More research needs to be done..." In an interview with Robert Wright, the great biologist John Maynard Smith said that he would call himself an atheist, but "I don't like being sure about anything", so he he says agnostic. To me, that uncertainty is the essence of scientific thinking, (one for me to remember and learn from) that is the exact opposite of the popular conception of science tying up all the bows. (although that sounds cute, too. haha.)

I will say that I sometimes read Evolutionary Psychology, (remember, I dont' really like that field) where they are telling us in very authoritative and specific terms about why people are as they are, and that it often has an effect that reduces rather than enhances our understanding and curiosity.

So, sometimes it seems to me that almost a definition of "good science" is that it does open our minds to new possibilities, new questions, rather than close them off with answered questions. Good science should be a platform, certainly not a pit, shouldn't it? I guess that's why they call it scientific "inquiry". (Oh, I just realized that!)

Professor Lizzie? Lord, no!

Sometimes I suspect I've been sort of tiptoeing around the main issues that I'd like to cover in Teardrop Souffle. But in some ways I'm not exactly sure how to proceed. I read a chastening post by Mixing Memory last week where he's talking about all the stupid shit people talk about on weblogs. He suggests that if we are going to talk about science, we shouldn't even read popular science books, only peer-reviewed journals. Well, there goes my hobby. Needless to say, this peer review journal reading just ain't gonna happen. On the other hand, I can appreciate his point about how the findings of studies get mangled as they are popularly interpreted. He does say that if you must read the popular science books, at least read people who are actually of the field they are writing in. (I think that usually DO do that, but I'm not quite sure.) But Chris from Mixing Memory is a cognitive psychologist who even disapproves of the preminent cognitive psychologist writer out there-- Steven Pinker. Dr. Pinker is about as well-credentialed as an academic can be. I mean to say, Dr. Pinker is no Maureen Dowd (eg. ABSOLUTELY UNQUALIFIED and UNCREDENTIALED FOR ANYTHING) But my point is that Chris thinks even Dr. Pinker, with all his academic authority, gets a lot wrong. (And I guess I do too, particularly at the end of "The Blank Slate" in his interpretations -as often happens in the last chapter of ambitious books). But I still recommend him, where Chris absolutely doesn't. (and Chris is of his field.)

I can appreciate Chris' frustration. (And, full disclosure, I will always have a soft spot for Dr. Pinker because I saw him on a panel discussing and defending Biology and Darwin versus the psychoanalysts and Freud, and it was great.)

Chris did leave up comments to his post that were sort of saying (as I was thinking as I read his post) that these are weblogs, not research papers, and often meant to be an emotional response to the world by amateurs. One person said something I really, really appreciate, which is that nature makes lots of mistakes as it evolves, and we will too, but we should keep writing anyway.

But all in all, his post reminded me that I'M NOT A SCIENCE PROFESSOR. And, you know, I don't really want to be one.

So I'm left in sort of a funny postion. Because in Teardrop Souffle, I'd like to discuss ideas I read (or have read) about, and that I think are amazing. But I am not quite sure what my role is in telling you these very ideas.

So, we'lll see. I am writing this post on the cusp of finishing a 500 page book (well, nearly 700 pages if you include the \ references) by Sarah Hrdy called "Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How they Shape the Human Species". Perhaps I'll organize my discussions by way of the books I read. I don't know, we'll see.

But, just to make this post worthwhile, I want to quote Dr. Hrdy, regarding "Darwin's dangerous idea, the evolutionary theory that philosopher Daniel Dennett has termed "universal acid" because

'it cuts so deeply into human conceits about our place in the universe.'"

Ahhhhh. This sentence distills what I, little ole me, find so amazing and essential about evolutionary biology. Because for all our flaws, as scientists, as writers, as readers, to learn about hte field is still mind-expanding and exhilarating, and IMPORTANT. In fact, I think that's where I shall begin my next lesson musings.

Lives of Quiet Desperation

Daniel and I visited my hometown, Macon, Georgia over the weekend, and my brother told us some amazing stories about what goes on down there. Mainly the stories had to do with sordid tales of rampant drug use, wife-swapping, and booty calls. It kind of blew my mind. Lest this sound too titillating, I want to say right off that these people all have children. I mean, it just seems like everyone there grows up, goes to expensive "white flight" private schools, then to the state college, cheers the Georgia Bulldogs and vomits a lot as a fraternity member, and then settles right back where they grew up. The men pursue careers they hate, because they want to make money. The women marry men they don't like, because he will make money. The status quo is so pervasive that even the gay ones marry. And, OF COURSE, all of them reproduce immediately. They have 2.8 children, move 35 minutes away from their jobs, and maintain enormous treeless lawns with gargantuan multiple garages. And pretty soon, they start screwing people they are not married to, and start getting betrayed and divorced. Oh, all the while, doing tons of cocaine, voting Republican, and wondering why they are so deliriously bored with their lives.

Daniel and I were floored, as were Katie (aka "K.T.") and Jeff, who are a very sweet Macon couple who were hearing about all this with us. Actually, they did know about it some, but perhaps not to the extent that Brother did. (My brother somehow seems to keep up with everything that happens in his town.) Katie and Jeff had, however, heard about a trophy wife who screwed a crack addict who was also married, and the affair got found out and the crack addict (who had been selling his possessions, such as his $30,000 watch to buy his drugs) committed suicide, leaving three beautiful children behind.

It is so, so weird and sad to me. Apparently the older men who could never get dates when they were young start making more money, and so they become attractive to hot 25 year olds, who want the money, who they start screwing. The wives start losing their looks around age 30-35, and so start becoming more and more desperate, and dependent on plastic surgery. (So again, the look of fake- the grapefruit boobs in particular, becomes its own sort of normal.) Though, I guess the women do get half the money if they divorce, which is perhaps why they married a rich guy to begin with.

I want to emphasize that actually, I'm not describing everyone in Macon- these people are the elite! They are the supposedly upstanding citizens of the community. I even knew of some of them. And they are living lives of extramarital sex, drugs, and debauchery that is exactly the kind of thing for which they condemn America's poor. The hypocrisy is astonishing. Because these people have children, and their families get broken up as a result of their actions. As Katie pointed out, it's one thing if it's just between you and your spouse, it's when you have children that it gets particularly disgusting.

Maybe this isn't fair, but I kept on associating these personal problems- this endless dissatisfaction, this sense-deprivation and destructive response to it, with the urban design issues (or lack thereof) of Macon. My brother lives down there to try to bring culture and interest and excitement to downtown. He's on about 600 "Revitalize Macon!" boards. Yet despite the admirable efforts and some exciting successes, the sprawl grows every minute. As we drove into town, I just saw miles upon miles of chain restaurants and gas stations. What's more, apparently Macon is verging on bankruptcy.

Yet, this scenario is certainly not limited to only Macon. Oh, would that it were. In fact, I imagine that, wherever you are, you readily recognize the dynamic I'm describing. And ultimately, what is most striking to me has to do with how universally animalistic it all feels. There is no love or education in these circles, it's status they're looking for. Because ultimately, that's what looks and money end up meaning. It's a competition for the resources. For women, they're using their looks to compete for money. And men are using their money to compete for women with looks. And both of those translate to STATUS. Status, status, status. Which is the lifelong quest of a hierarchical primate. So, Dear Reader, if you would like to know why I hate nature, and why I wish with all my being that we could get over it, picture a pudgy, geeky 45 year old man with a skinny, grapefruit-boobied 25 year old mother of three on his knee, and perhaps you, too, will share my pain.

Otherworldliness

It turns out I misinterpreted a comment by the sole commenter to Teardrop Souffle who I don't know, thereby probably scaring him away permanently. He asked me to discuss religion as Faith in the Unknowable. Sadly, I'm not sure I have a whole lot to offer, but I feel like I owe him a try, since I distorted his comment before.

Maybe my friend Teacup has something to contribute. He mentioned a while back reading a History of Religion book, where they talk about historic conceptualizations of God, and that many centuries ago, that God was considered That Which is Unknowable. And Teacup said that's probably what he believes himself.

I am reminded of my Anthropology of Religion class, where we were flat out told some of the universal purposes of religion. I remember 3 of them:

1)To provide an explanation of the world around us.

2)To enhance the bonds of community.

3)To achieve ecstatic, otherworldly states.

I think that perhaps the sense of excitement and awe invoked by "the unknowable" might somehow relate to religion via purpose 3.

I myself think that feelings of ecstacy, escape, fantasy, otherworldiness are wonderful, and to be valued and pursued. However, I think they should be seen in surface terms of what they are for how we enjoy them, and not meaningful for understanding our lives--ie. to provide an explanation of the world around us. (For that, start with Darwin...*) In fact, I think this is where most people misstep. I think that one of the reason for bad personal mental frameworks, ill-formed world views, is that peoples' tendencies toward the supernatural and otherworldliness (or perhaps self-delusion!) gets mixed in with their ways of interpreting their lives. I think it should stay pretty separate. The experience of escape (daydreams) and entertainment, such as Us Weekly magazine or horoscopes, or even touching, special entertainment such as respect-worthy film, dance, and art, should not influence one's worldview to the point of how we intellectually understand our life.

I really agree with Susan Sontag's famous exhortation to "wallow in the surface of art." I BELIEVE that's from her essay "Against Interpretation." I'm so tired now, I hope this is worth posting, but I think she's with me on this one.

*I'm not planning on having children, but if I were, I'd of course start with evolution, and natural and sexual selection as my foundation and explanation of the world around us.

Fat, Dumb and Happy: Who, Me?

Last night I heard my manager (I work in high-end retail) Maya tell me for about 2 hours about what a great thinker she is. Although she's studying Quality Control, she really should go into Marketing because for a Marketing class last semester, she came up with such a great idea: marketing Black and Decker toolkits for women. I did eventually tell her that the idea is already on the market, but I commended her originality color scheme- not Pepto Bismol pink, but green and yellow. Wow, Maya! She also confided to me that she was incredibly forward thinking as an 18 year old. She found an old paper she wrote when she was in college, where she proposed a line of women's clothing designed for larger sizes. And that was 18 years ago!! (She is 36.) Again, I did gently point out that that idea had been around for longer than 18 years. Then she told me "No, I mean, this was different. I mean, I'm saying, this is before big designers had special lines for larger women." (Which is not true even today- there are no special plus-size lines from anyone considered "Designer" (Chanel, Armani, Calvin...) - and Maya is the assistant manager of the Designer floor! And then she said, I swear to God, she said: "No, I mean, this would be, like, pants, jackets, sweaters". What???

I had another co-worker, Oscar, tell me how whenever he travels to Europe, he is so popular that the hotel staff is amazed. "What makes you so irrestible, Oscar?," I inquire. "I don't know, I'm just one of those people that everyone really always want to be around. "

After I spend time with someone like Maya, I ask myself, "Is this supreme and unending pleasure with oneself a coping mechanism for inadequacy, or is she really this ignorant?"

Interestingly, I'm always asking myself the same question about Republicans: Delusion or ignorance? Malice?! By the way, I will remind you that althoguh we are in New York, where I think something like 80% of the population votes Democrat, nearly everyone at work is Republican.

As for Oscar, maybe everyone IS dying to be near him. I suspect not, though. I myself stay away as much as I can.

I am reminded of a couple of studies. One was clipped from American Vogue when I myself was 18. It had to do with how some researchers concluded that mental health, rather than consisting of facing "reality" head on, actually appears to DEPEND on a great deal of self-delusion and overly positive self-evaluations. Good Lord. What's more, those who scored the highest in terms of self-deception scored the lowest on tests of depression!!!

Isn't that something.

I am also reminded of a New Yorker article several years ago. It mentioned a test where surgeons who had been recently fired (I didn't know such a thing existed) and surgeons who were considered tops in their field were asked the same question. That question was: have you made any mistakes recently?* And wouldn't you know it: the recently fired pretty much invariably said "No. " And often they started talking about how someone else had screwed them over. Then, the researchers asked the world-class surgeons the same question, "Have you made any mistakes recently?" And they'd pretty much invariably answer: "all the time". "God, just this morning....". And they'd be upset about it. And they would think about it.

These two studies seem sort of contradictory, because I might have thought that you'd need to be in excellent mental health to be a surgeon, and the surgeons appear to be so self-critical, not self-delusional. Some moments I can reconcile the two, but usually not.

As for me, I will admit that when I listen to myself sometimes, I will hear a delusional and aspirational quality to my own thinking. For example, when I came up with a signature detail for my coat designs of a little tiny coin purse to go on the sleeve, I really believed that that was going to be the thing that "put me on the map". (Uh, it didn't.) Funny thing is, it is at times like this when I am most motivated and happpiest!

But as someone who believes in dwelling in and around so-called truth, not fantasy, I've got to say there might be a little bit of a conflict here.

About Me

One of my husband's names for me is Princess of Discretion. Because, uh, privacy and discretions don't come so easily for me. So, if you'd like to know more about the secret life of Lizzie, I'm happy to oblige! Here are a couple of links for you:

My modern dance costume website
My personal photos

God is Not So Great

In an earlier post, I talk about how we can be assured that there is no God, because the design and mechanisms of nature aren't even any good- they're a deplorable tragedy. (I was DELIGHTED to see the NY Times Magazine publish an article about this very point on Sunday. Called "Unintelligent Design"- I'd never seen this pointed out in mainstream media before!) Anyway, House of Trash rightfully corrected me to say that rather than deny God, what I really should have said is that "God is not good". Which was an excellent point I should have been more clear about to begin with (and was the way George C. Williams framed his original argument). But I wasn't really familiar with any religion that DIDN'T claim "God is Great!" (Allah Akbar!) so I didn't make that clear.

Then, later, I wrote about how I don't understand how I could love the Jews so much, when they have such a ridiculous religion! WELL! I think I have since learned a little.

Here goes. I actually DON'T think the Jews even think that God is good! I think they maybe think God can be good sometimes, but is mainly pretty arbitrary and even cruel. It was Jesus who brought "the Good News"- certainly not Moses. So, I think that this leads me to believe that I actually agree MORE with the Jewish idea of God. (Though, of course I actually think that, even worse than simply "arbitrary", the forces of the universe add up to "Tragedy" is faaar more often than even on "Good" in this world, and if you don't believe me, read about what a common practice infanticide is, in countless species, including our own. Think of war, famine, think of how if you're a woman who gets brutally raped, and people find out about it, in some places you're likely to get rejected and divorced for being "unfaithful". Oh, and maybe stoned to death. Think about how most people in this world don't have a telephone, but somehow are still watching reruns of "Friends". With little blips of exceptions here and there, life is a bowl of heartbreak, toil, pain, longing, uncertainty and tragedy, and in the past it was only worse. And if it's not that tragic for you, you are LUCKY!!! (and/or blessedly oblivious.)

Anyway. It seems like many/most Jews barely even believe in God, anyway! I think the feeling is probably: "God is unknowable, but we have our rabbis who have argued about justice and morality and what humans should do." And whereas a lot of those conclusions are bunk, you also sometimes you end up with extraordinarily sophisticated views on justice and morality. You know, it's often Jews (like Daniel's father) who are very religious themselves, who argue that religion should stay out of schools! (a very impressive, very sophisticated viewpoint.) The Jews are the ones who will argue that " we must to preserve the hate groups' freedom to speak out against...the Jews!" I mean, my god. This is not an easy position to get to. It is very advanced. I mean, I even have a hard time letting go of the Death Penalty, and they were over that a long time ago (weren't they? ) But, why should we show it's not right to kill a person, by .... killing a person?

As for the meaningless texts of the Torah ("we must spill the blood of the ox"), absurd rituals (can't decide which night Passover falls on? Have it both nights!), all that. Well. I think that the rituals themselves probably don't even matter- all that matters is that the ties of the family and the community get strengthened, and for some reason pointless communal ritual and sacrifice seems quite effective for that.

Post Script:

I think that there in obeying these "ridiculous" laws, the value might be in the practicing of humility. "We know not, so we follow You", so to speak. A story: When I was selling clothes at Chanel, an orthodox Jewish woman fell in love with a long coat that she felt would be perfect to wear to her son's wedding. She had searched internationally for just the right thing, and she had found it in this beautiful jacket. She was all ready to purchase it, and happened to check the label, and noticed that the fiber content included a blend of wool and linen. Her heart sank- it was forbidden by God that she wear such a fiber combination. She asked her mother, in frustration "What is the point? Why is this forbidden?" and her mother replied "There is no point." Although there might have been historical/political reasons why this rule originally emerged, I think the idea is that following God's (arbitrary-seeming) law can be an exercise in faith. "Doing as told" might be used to show to humility to God, not in spite of the absurdity, but because of the absurdity. Incidentally, this is probably an excellent example of Zahavi's Handicap principle, which could also be called "the principle of costly authentication". Richard Dawkins discusses this at length in A Devil's Chaplain.

I love Mixing Memory

I have gotten pretty overwhelmed by the "blogosphere" recently, to the point where I try to tune it out. (Time sink!) But, Mixing Memory writes about things that actually change how I see things! (Precious!) Here are a couple of amazing posts I found:

The Lazy Brain
This post about unconsciousness, (and the comments, too) is soo interesting to me. Especially the part about learning. I am reminded of life drawing class, where the lesson is always to not think. Don't think, don't think. Just draw. (Oh, and also, right off the bat he complains about Descartes and other philosophers, so how can I not love the guy?)

Karl Rove the Feminist Bankteller
He's talking about Lakoff and framing, but he's actually a cognitive psychologist himself, and knows what he's talking about (but isn't lifeless like so many of the academics.)

God, now I'm going to his current posts and I see I have about 100 pages to read on some of my favorite topics - maybe even more recommendable than the couple I mentioned above. Oh, it's overwhelming, and I really should be teaching myself to sew costumes.

What do Catholic Priests and Michael Jackson NOT have in common?

Nothing!!

That's right- because they're in the exact same situation. They both live utterly cloistered lives, apart from the publics they serve (well, apart except for when they molest children). They both live lives devoted to spectacle and performance, replete with impressive costuming.

Neither has been allowed/ encouraged to grow up (be married, have mutually respectful, equal, adult relationships). And apparently they each are alone in universes where they are rarely, if ever, held accountable for their actions!

I dedicate this post to my husband, who is really glad he's not a child molester.


P.S. I realize this post is a little self indulgent and, uh, off topic...

Meaning of Life TV

I discovered a rEALLy fascinating website, called Meaning of Life.tv The guy who did it is Robert Wright (author of The Moral Animal), and he basically goes around and talks to big wigs in the field of evolutionary whatever, and asks them questions. I've never seen anything like this on the internet, and I think it's a really great idea, and he does a really great job. I think he's a little more interested in ideas like "greater purpose" and "meaning", (hence the name of the site) than I am, (ie, at all), as well as questions we have few answers on (eg. consciousness), but it's kind of excellent. I must remember to return more often!