White Nationalism as Drug Resistant Bacteria

I want to argue yet again not only is shaming hypocritical and cruel, it's ineffective. Recently, I started to think of the rise of white nationalism as a drug resistant bacteria and shaming as the overused antibiotics that have led to the rise in white nationalism. I saw an Saturday Night Live recently hosted by Aziz Ansari where he asks people to start pretending not to be racist again.



It makes (obliquely?) an interesting point -- did all of the policing of political correctness, enforced by social shaming actually change people's underlying attitudes about race, class, privilege, etc.? Or did it just cause people to be quietly prejudiced and bitter about the shaming attempts?

A character from The Mindy Project recently remarked "Every white person’s greatest fear is being called racist. It’s their equivalent of actual racism." And I have noticed that white people do seem to feel quite oppressed and like they are being unfairly treated by being called racist. For instance, I had a conversation recently with a close family member of an older generation about political correctness and asked him what about it was so upsetting to him. He said that he didn't even believe that people who enforce political correctness even believe in it or care about the people they're allegedly trying to protect. He thinks it's just a way that people put other people down, for the same reason that anybody ever tries to enforce a social hierarchy against someone else -- a selfish desire to feel superior.

I tried to explain that anything can good be used to advance bad purposes (speaking of which, I'm watching the Handmaid's Tale). I just had a conversation with a friend whose non-Mormon husband was raised in a Mormon community -- wasn't invited to any of the block parties, wasn't allowed to go to anyone's houses for sleepovers, no one cared to communicate with his family at all until his mom got sick and they started trying to aggressively proselytize. I'm sure those Mormons felt like they had scriptural support to justify their exclusion.  But I'm also pretty sure it's all reasoning post-hoc, that is they decided how they wanted to act and took otherwise neutral or good principals and twisted them to fit their preconceived notions. It's why so many people hate organized religion (see again the Handmaid's Tale), which is the point I made to my Mormon relative who hates political correctness. In fact, it's a problem that has been specifically addressed many times in addresses by the church leaders to church members, including most recently this reference to my favorite topic of shaming by President Dieter Uchtdorf:

During the Savior’s ministry, the religious leaders of His day disapproved of Jesus spending time with people they had labeled “sinners.”

Perhaps to them it looked like He was tolerating or even condoning sinful behavior. Perhaps they believed that the best way to help sinners repent was by condemning, ridiculing, and shaming them.

Perhaps the current adherents to shaming believe that the best way to get people to change is by condemning, ridiculing, and shaming them. Perhaps the shamers of the world truly believe that they're doing a good thing, rather than doing what my relative believes political correctness police do -- putting others down so that they can feel relatively more superior. Perhaps they choose to intentionally inflict harm on others for the sake of some higher purpose, thinking that the world will be a better place because of it, rather than the obvious natural result of their actions -- increased antagonism, hurt, distrust, pain, hypocrisy, etc. But even if shamers' intentions are to create more positivity and good in the world, it doesn't work (or works so seldom that the aggregate effect is failure). Because even if you are right when you try to correct someone, there's a psychological concept called the "backfire effect" that makes you confronting someone with those facts extremely ineffective -- it most often leads to them becoming further entrenched in their beliefs. Sort of like drug resistant bacteria becoming more beefy in response to increased use of antibiotics. This Oatmeal page has a great explanation with citations to further reading/listening on the backfire effect.

So if shaming doesn't work, is it just cruelty for the sake of being cruel? Is it just twisting otherwise good concepts to advance oneself in a social hierarchy to the detriment of someone else?

Resconstructing ourselves

A reader gives an update on the child with reactive attachment disorder (RAD) who was featured in the documentary, Child of Rage, discussed previously on this blog here. I always avoid using her name, but you can read the details on the link (and it's always a little shocking to me that they used her name in the "documentary" featuring her, a minor, in what seems a pretty exploitative way, showing her actual therapy tapes? How did her parents allow this?).

There is a happy ending! She recovers from the reactive attachment disorder in a big way and becomes a happy and contributing member of society. The link for the update on her life is here. The quick summary is she is a nurse, she seems to still have a good relationship with her family, and she seems like just a normal person living a normal life.

As I was looking for the documentary I stumbled upon some other child mental disorder documentaries that seemed just a little less exploitative, and then finally a clip of a "news" show interviewing a young, attractive teacher that got busted for sexual relations with a 14 year old student. She was saying that it was a mistake and she had done it because of a troubled past, including mental illness, but scrolling through the comments -- every single person continued to vilify her. Out of the millions of views, not a single one would accept her apology, either as being sincere or as her being capable of change or worthy of forgiveness.

I know that the urge to ostracize and shame others runs deep in humanity's evolutionary past, but (and I've said this literally dozens of times before, including the penultimate post) society's willingness to let self-righteous feelings to dominate their rational capacity and/or empathy to continue to persecute people for something that they did or said in the past... I just struggle to understand why it's still such a problem, and one that is rarely discussed as such. As much as you hear about anti-bullying campaigns, there seems to be an unspoken understanding amongst most people that bullying is absolutely ok if the person you're bullying is a bad person. I hear even intelligent people whom I respect defend the shaming and the shameless poor treatment of their fellow humans for real or imagined wrongs. What society does with its social undesirables is basically one step away from tattooing them with their convict number and hounding and persecuting them through the rest of their lives.


But I sometimes think, what if we talked about more examples of recovery and more stories of people being dynamic and capable of change, maybe we could educate the evolutionary impulse a little so it's not so prone to mob mentality and see our fellow humans a little more accurately -- people that weren't really the same person decades ago and won't really be the same decades from now. Like NPR's Invisibilia piece on the myth of the static personality featuring the story of Dan, a rapist turned good guy: "I'm forever going to be a criminal," he says, "which I'm not. I've become a completely different human being at this point." "I have to atone for my crime. But I realize now I'm just paying for someone else's debt. The person who committed the crime no longer exists." How can we adjust the way we deal with people who we don't want to associate with (for whatever reason) so there can still be an appropriate level of accountability or precautionary measures while also more accurately reflecting the dynamic nature of who humans are?

"Maybe we're not thinking right about who we are and what we could be," says Walter Mischel [author of the famed marshmallow study]. "People can use their wonderful brains to think differently about situations," Milgram says. "To reframe them. To reconstruct them. To even reconstruct themselves."

(The Invisibilia piece oddly excepts sociopaths from this ability to change, assuming the myth of sociopathy to be incurable without questioning it as most do. But baby steps.)

Graduating to every other week therapy

I've never been to summer camp. The closest I got to the experience was sixth grade camp, when as an 11 year old I went up to the mountains (snow! cold!) with all of my classmates for a week. I still have so many vivid memories of it. Everything I know about recognizing constellations I learned there, camp songs, a love/hate relationship to the hot dog, making snow survival shelters (we surely would have died if actually required to live in ours) and what seemed to be the startling amount of trust and freedom I enjoyed in leaving my family and any real responsible adult supervision and running amok in the mountains with a 15 to 1 ratio of camp counselors (barely more than children themselves) to children, and with knives and other sharp tools. Even though it was just a week, I came back from camp a changed person. Not to say that the person I was before was bad or even that I needed to change in that particular way in order to mature. Nor to say that the person I changed into was any less me than the person before. It's hard to describe the sensation, but whatever it was I was ok with it because for whatever reason I still recognized the person I became.

I recently graduated from every week therapy to every other week therapy. The change was precipitated by me reaching and maintaining a certain level of awareness and understanding about myself, other people, and the world. I feel the difference, but I also don't feel that different. I recognize who I am. I just feel more proficient, like if I had always been only a music sight reader and then finally learned how to play by ear, or vice versa. And naturally I understand the world in a more fuller and richer way, simply because now I engage with it in more ways than I did previously. Everyone has a blindspot. That was always my special talent to know growing up. Now I know better my own.

The most interesting development has been my more nuanced view of self. How is it that I am the same person I was as a too-aggressive child, a manipulative teenager, a scheming young adult, a risk-taking 30 something, and now someone who has graduated to every other week therapy. But even odder to realize is that during the periods that I was "truest" to "myself", those were when I was most engaged and satisfied by life, no matter my financial situation or family situation or anything else that may have been weighing me down in the world at large. It turned out it wasn't the fact that I was born/made a sociopath that caused most of my problems. It was actually my ill-informed adaptations to the world that I had picked up along the way that made my heart shrink and blacken. Some of you will understand what I mean and I apologize for not being able to explain better, but it was the societal emphasis and rewards based almost solely on appearances, end results, and bottom lines that created all of the wrong incentives -- versus a focus on the process over the outcome and learning through making mistakes = ok and understanding that society will (and must) adapt to you sometimes, it can't always be you adapting to it, and how to know when is when and what is what. Self-awareness about my sociopathic tendencies didn't make me better, it made me worse as I came to internalize how unpalatable that was in society. That's when my behavior became so aggressive, passive, hollow, desperate, and impotent. That's when I started wearing masks basically all of the time. Sayonara to my sense of self. I may have hurt others a little less but it was accomplished by hurting myself much more. Because I could always fit square pegs into round holes, even if it got a little ugly and I got dirty doing it. And it felt like that was the solution -- that was what was being asked of me as part of my faustian deal to make things go down easier for me, to avoid having to deal with any negativity or fall out based on anyone's disapproval.

But now I wonder, what to say to everyone? How do I respond to people who email me? How can I communicate this adequately to others so that they won't make the same mistake -- won't wait until there are decades of barnacles of garbage encrusting them, until they finally cease being recognizable to themselves, before they realize that who they are is not a problem that needs fixing. I want my little relatives to know this, you all, anyone who also will wonder about the meaning of the lyrics to Landslide or wonder what does it feel like to keep living (and most paradoxically keep changing) after you feel like you've finally discovered who you really are. To know how to resonate with this life, both so maddeningly static and so dynamic. And to learn what one must never, never sacrifice, even just to get by, even if it seems like that is what is being required of you to do. 

The Courage Game

I have historically alternated between trying to understand how I work and trying to understand how the world works or what my place in the world is. When I first started the blog, it was trying to understand myself. After a few years, it went back to the world. After the book was published, it went back to myself again -- this time with the help of an aggressive therapist. Now, I have a sense that I should sort of move on from this simple but comfortable and relatively safe life I have carved out for myself post book publication and trashing much of my previous life. I feel like my gaze has been slowly turning outward, and sometimes in some somewhat dispiriting ways.

This was an interesting video about a 12 year old boy who came out as being gay to his friends. Even in this day in age, that didn't go over well. Probably of most interest to me and people that come here is how he describes how society turned on him, how he reacted to the social ostracization. Starting around 4:20, he talks about how his peers chose to shame him, and how he withdrew as much as he could from society, how he desperately wished he was normal. The most poignant quote from him for me, though, was "I would always want to go to sleep and like never wake up you know because I just didn't want to deal with what like society had come to, and I thought, nothing would ever get better." He eventually stumbles upon a youtube video of an interview openly gay professional lacrosse player from a decade ago, and they strike up a mentorship. At the end, his mentor infers that one day the boy will be able to perform a similar role for other boys in similar circumstances.

I have felt what this little boy has, the feeling that every time you wake up one of the first things you think of is what type of world this is that you are waking up to -- where you don't want to deal with what society has come to. Sometimes I think about other sort of sociopaths that have gone public about their status (oddly only older males?) and how well they seem to be doing. I wonder why things seem more ok for them and their lives than they do for me -- why people don't seem to be as eager to witch hunt or to ostracize or to shame them as they seem to do for me. I could come up with a list of reasons (and some of you may feel the need to tell me why it's my fault), but could anyone of those reasons really explain the drastic difference between one man's and the others? I sort of don't want to believe it, because if I do the world will seem more arbitrary to me, although it may seem less arbitrary to others to want to blame victims, e.g. the rape victim for leading men on or dressing provocatively or putting herself in those situations, or the gay hate crime victim for rubbing it in people's faces. I understand the urge to blame the victim, because if you've never experienced victimization like this, you want to believe that you never will as long as you make all of the "right" choices in life.

But I guess the real answer is that there probably isn't an explanation for who gets victimized and who doesn't, or it's just so complicated. Why does this little boy get ostracized when so many other other young people nowadays have no problem coming out? And if you tried to think about how people would react all of the time to your honest expressions of identity, they would cease to be honest expressions of your identity. And as much as you can try to plan for the right moment and the right way and balance all of the competing interests and variables, everything can go wrong quite easily, like Gettysburg for the South. But in social situations like this, not only is there a large degree of risk and uncertainty and any planned or unplanned social maneuvering like a coming out, there's also a large degree of irrationality.

And I guess that is what I am actually really grateful for, for the opportunity to finally understand what it feels like to go through something a little like this boy did. I understand better now what it must feel like to be an abused spouse, where everything can seem like it's going fine and suddenly for some reason (but really no reason, or no rational reason, or not any reason that could be a reasonable response to the alleged trigger), you are something that is so reviled that you deserve to be treated like human garbage. It reminds me a little of an interview I watched with a youngish black man who had been raised by white parents and never really experienced the worst of racism in his sheltered middle class community until one night he was pulled over by police who proceeded to pull him out of the car, antagonize him, and then beat him to within an inch of his life. There is no rationality to it. There's no predictability to it. Or Sandra Bland. Did she really deserve what she got for not being deferential to the police? That's the reason why? And I know that not all of you will see it this way, but to me it's as ugly to me to hear people try to justify the police officer's behavior as it is for people to justify the homophobic bullying of a little gay boy. And now I can see better how people would just not want to deal with what society has come to. And this is not an indictment, it's just an expression of gratitude that before when I used to feel very little ties to society outside of my close family and friends, I now feel a sort of kinship to everyone else who has had a similar experience. And I don't know. If this is the way the world is going to keep working, at least for the foreseeable future, then I feel a little bit of an obligation to make my life work so that maybe eventually my example can help others who endure similar fates. But it's still a huge struggle for me right now to reconcile myself to this being just how the world works. Maybe that's a good thing too. Maybe eventually there will be enough people bothered by this sort of thing that it will cease to be as socially condoned as it still is. Because I wonder what the world would look like if people got as outraged by senseless shaming as they did senseless killing. In a lot of ways, I think victims of shaming would rather be dead -- that's why the suicide rate is so high among young gaysters, as the video points out. But also what good does the outrage at senseless killing accomplish? Maybe moral outrage of any kind is not the solution that it sometimes seems to be in our moments of deepest frustration with the world.

Disgust (part 2)

Morality has always been a bit of a puzzle to me -- puzzling to figure out how I feel about it and puzzling to figure out how other people feel about it and why it has the power to get them to act the way that they do. One thing that I find so fascinating about empaths is how they will often justify what would otherwise be abhorrent behavior because they feel a particular way about something. Like this recent comment:

I believe that most people are good, but at the same time I am deeply and profoundly sickened by the fact that any cruelty that a normal person can justify to their conscience is acceptable to themselves and society. If you feel disgust towards something, you are justified in speaking against it and calling for its destruction, whether it be a person, animal, or object.

To illustrate how strongly disgust might motivate people to act out against the object of disgust, the other main story the This American Life episode from last post tells the story of a man called Gene who lived in a small town. After his fiancée was brutally murdered by her ex-husband, he seeks solace from her family, only to have them turn against him. Turns out they Googled him and discovered all sorts of disturbing things:

Someone with the user name Calvin asked, does anyone know the last name of Gene, the boyfriend hairstylist? I'm worried, because Gene is making his way down to Florida to meet with Paulette's side of the family. I'm truly fearful that this is not the end of this tragedy.

Someone named Mouth then said, keep that creep away from the children. He is trouble. What would you do if the perv was chasing your grandchildren? Calvin thanked Mouth for the warning.

And then someone who called himself Bugs added, Gene is not a nice guy. He cheated on his first wife. I know Paulette and Gene well, and they were both sickening out in public, kissing all over one another.

It continued on like this. People accused him of every kind of character flaw you could imagine, of getting fired from every job he had, of being a liar, a drunk.

Once the gossip ball started rolling, it didn't stop. People stopped talking to him in his town. He got fired from his job because no one wanted him to serve them. His life in the town was over, so he picked up and moved, but not before he contacted an enterprising lawyer. After over a year of legal battles, the source of the gossip was finally revealed: "they were all the same woman, a woman who had gone to the trouble of making multiple accounts and then having fake conversations between those accounts." Why would she go to all of this trouble? (This is where it becomes really crucial to listen to the show if you get a chance, they have a recording of this woman saying these things):

I don't like the way he looked at the younger girls in staff where we worked together [for three months]. Looking them up and down, lusty look. You know what I'm saying? There's a difference in looking, and there is a difference in (ELONGATING) "looooking."

He's the reason the woman's dead. He is the very reason that woman is dead. He knew how her (EMPHASIS) "husband" was. But yet, he kept doing what he was doing. He'd come in there with her on numerous times. Sit in the corner, and that woman couldn't even eat for him pawing at her, being gross. You know what I'm saying? You don't do stuff like that out in public, for God's sake. People went back and told the ex-husband to get the ex-husband riled up and disturbed enough about it to kill the woman.

And this exchange:

Interviewer: What business is it of yours, though? I mean, it seems like you're making a lot of assumptions.

Woman: Did you not understand or listen to what I said? He brought it upon himself in my opinion.

Interviewer: Are you proud of what you did?

Woman: [SCOFFS] Am I proud of what I did? I'm proud of standing up for what I believe in, for what I know. I'm proud of telling the truth.

Gene ended up getting a legal judgment against for for over $400,000, but he still hasn't seen a penny of it. The good news is that he was able to move back to his hometown -- people had heard about the trial and decided to stop treating him like human trash.

When the book first came out, I was a little surprised at the level of disgust that some people feel towards sociopaths. It wasn't anything as crazy as what people feel for pedophiles, maybe more like what people currently feel towards gay people -- the majority does not, but the ones that do feel pretty strongly about it. I understand why. It seems like an evolutionary advantage to a point, to have extreme group cohesion and oust anybody who doesn't play by the rules. But it has always been a blunt instrument. And the internet plays a funny role in the way people make these sorts of moral judgments:

You could tell somebody something and they'll kind of believe you. But if they see it in writing, they're going to believe it. Once you write it down, it's not gossip anymore. You know, that becomes truth for what people are concerned with.

Morality changing according to context

I thought this article defending Twitter outrage was interesting, perhaps largely because I finally understood why people defend mob mentality (short answer, at its best it is one of the few purely democratic versions of social advocacy and activism). First, to his credit, I was heartened to see the author acknowledge how dangerous Twitter mobs can be for even "ordinary" people ("All the while aware that if we get it wrong, at some point Twitter may turn our way, set to destroy. No one is off-limits."). But he argues that this is (1) not unique to Twitter and (2) not a downside, but a feature of the Twitter/Internet mob:

If the ruthlessness on Twitter shocks you, well, it isn’t a ruthlessness only found there. This ruthlessness is everywhere—you may be projecting. Our economy and political system operate on a lack of forgiveness. We bring our children up now with zero-tolerance policies in the schools—can we really be surprised if we and they use them elsewhere? One bad credit report, one bad night at the hospital with a $30,000 bill and no insurance, one firing, one bad book, one bad tweet and you’re gone, consigned to a permanent underclass status forever. No way out. Our president had to make a deal with a few major companies to hire the long-term unemployed because not having a job became the quickest way to never get hired—we’ll see if the companies follow through. If there’s no forgiveness online it’s because there’s no examples of forgiveness anywhere in American life.

Meanwhile, underneath the prevalence of the public apology is a great public wrong. And so we, the public, we want someone to do something. We want the offending column fixed, the black woman comedian hired, the bill to pass, banks to lend safely, clean drinking water, health care, a job, even just a book recommendation we can count on. We want action on whatever it is, and we go to Twitter for it, feed fatigue and all, because there, unlike just about everywhere else, we still get what we’re after.  Twitter, for all the ridiculousness there, is one of the few places where there’s accountability at all for any of this. While it may feel dangerous that no one is above being taken down by Twitter, it also means that in its way, it is the one truly democratic institution left. It may be terrifying that it is the one place you have to be more careful than most, but that is also why, for now, it still matters.

So in the first paragraph he argues that Twitter social shaming is no different than any other ruthlessness we encounter in real life, e.g. become a felon and become politically disenfranchised. But then in the next paragraph he says that Twitter is there so we can actually right these wrongs. And the great thing about Twitter is that "we, the public" decide which wrongs deserve to be righted through social shaming and which we don't care as much about. (Interestingly, that's also how the ancient Romans determined which gladiators lived or died -- following the desires of the mob. Also interestingly, there was a far greater uproar about a racist tweet referencing the AIDS crisis in Africa then there ever were outraged tweets about the AIDS crisis in Africa. Also "we, the public" was also how we oppressed gay people, kept down black people, and hunted communists for decades.)

The problem with this line of thought is that Twitter isn't actually a democracy, primarily because Twitter and all other mobs = unconstrained lawlessness. Democracies abide by rules and procedures, and that goes double for justice systems within democracies. Twitter does not. No one is counting votes. No one is making sure that no one is voting twice or unduly influencing others to vote their conscience. In fact, there is every evidence that people fear the social shaming mob and consequently self-censor and sanitize themselves on Twitter and other social media so as not to become collateral damage (even the author of the original article admitted that he kept himself from tweeting certain things, afraid that "someone would get unreasonably angry at me for it" and argues at the end that he has to be more careful on Twitter than he is in other forums). And what are the rules or procedures for determining who deserves our collective ire? Is it the person without insurance with the large hospital bill? Any more or less so than the woman who tweets racist jokes? The child who has violated the zero tolerance policy at school? Should we forgive one and not the others? Does it depend on if the person without insurance couldn't obtain insurance or if they were just too lazy or cheap to get it themselves? Or if the child came from a disadvantaged background? Or if the racist joke was tongue in cheek? Or if it was made right before a transcontinental flight without Wifi? And how can we make these nuanced determinations in a way that ensures some degree of due process? And is there an Twitter Innocence Project out there exonerating those that have been socially shamed but are more innocent than we originally believed? Or are we pretty sure that mobs never make mistakes? If someone hits economic rockbottom, they could always declare bankruptcy, which disappears after a certain number of years. This and other legal safeguards blunt the ruthlessness of much of life. Are there similar safeguards for people who commit social or political gaffes? Or is that the lowest people can go in our eyes?

I guess I don't quite understand this aspect of the author's pro-Twitter activism position -- is he pro or anti ruthlessness in life/Twitter? And could it be that people are ruthless on Twitter not just because they are honestly attempting to right public wrongs but because they like it and because they can and because they don't have to face the same consequences for their actions that they might normally? And if so, maybe people can understand a little better why I enjoy ruining people (see also feature comment).



Ryan Holiday references the above video:

As Louis CK put it, in our cars we seem to have a different set of values, values that apparently make it OK to be absolutely horrible towards other people. But that’s not the only place. Think about all the angry, vitriolic comments you read on the internet. People do it because they can. Because it’s anonymous and they know they won’t face any real consequences saying awful things to other people. There’s countless situations like this, we change our values because we have tacit permission to be terrible, and because no one will hold us accountable.

We tell ourselves that this is cathartic but it’s really not. Has anyone ever really felt better after punching a pillow? Or does this actually make us more angry? Does yelling really express your frustration or manifest more of it? Do you criticize the person you’re in a relationship with because it’s necessary or because it’s possible? Do you take advantage of people simply because you know you have power over them?

When deprived of these options, what do we do instead? Usually nothing. We ignore the temptation of those impulses. In the best cases, we’re left with feelings that we must address instead of blasting them at other people.

It’s a lesson all of us should consider whenever we lash out, get short, or angry with other people. Are we doing it out of genuine necessity, or are we doing it because in that context, we can? If it’s the latter, let’s question in it. Let’s ask if it’s really something we want to have in our lives and if we’d feel better if the “permission” was magically rescinded.

From Louis CK "I'd like to think I'm a nice person, but I don't know man."

J'Accuse: Twitter justice

As a sort of follow up to yesterday's post that referenced justice and mercy from a religious standpoint, I thought this piece on the Dylan Farrow open letter accusing Woody Allen of molesting her was interesting. Under the title, "The kangaroo court of Twitter is no place to judge Woody Allen":

First off, I don't know if Woody Allen abused his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow and nor do you. I only know what I am inclined to believe and what the reasons are. Those reasons are, in fact, opinions. Some are to do with this particular case, some with the way that victims of abuse are routinely dismissed, some with the way Hollywood operates. Some are to do with the films he makes – the texts themselves – and some with the context: the context in which so many perpetrators walk free. That context is changing.

When the custody battle between Farrow and Allen took place in 1992, social media was not around. Right now online, especially on Twitter, many people are absolutely certain that Allen is guilty. Just as they are absolutely certain that Amanda Knox is guilty, just as they will be absolutely certain that what I am saying here is wrong. There is not a lot of nuance in Hashtag Justice. There is a hashtag #IBelieveDylanFarrow.

I hesitate (just slightly) to write again about social shaming as an increasingly prevalent method of enacting mob justice. But I thought this case provided an opportunity to share a parallel example of a legal point of view -- the infamous Dreyfus Affaire, in which a French Jewish artillery officer was railroaded by a corrupt justice system because people were so certain he was guilty of his alleged crime (espionage). Evidence was falsified and secret court proceedings were held to accommodate the feelings of the masses. As Emile Zola argued in his own open letter to a newspaper, "J'accuse":

“Above all beware of this line of the reasoning . . . : ‘It is possible that Dreyfus was convicted illegally, but it was justly done; that is enough.’ . . . It is a serious error. . . . See to it that the supremacy of the law is undisputed, and through the law rid our hearts of this respect for reasons of state that is absurd in a democracy.”

What Zola is describing is the very definition of a kangaroo court -- picking an outcome, and then coming up with a procedure that will guarantee this outcome. Zola was arguing against this method of justice because we will almost never be able to determine "the truth" with absolute certainty. Since we will almost never know (or agree) about who should be punished, why, and how much, our only hope is to ensure that we follow fair procedures for determining guilt. In the United States this idea is enshrined in the Due Process clause of the Constitution, which guarantees that nobody shall be deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of the law. There is no constitutional guarantee that the justice system accurately identify wrongdoers or uniformly dispense justice for the simple reason that it would be impossible to do so. But we are seeing a resurgence of the idea that mob justice can be real justice. This is why the Dreyfus Affaire is perhaps more relevant now than ever. As Adam Gopnik argues in his review of Louis Begley's, “Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters”:

It showed that a huge number of Europeans, in a time largely smiling and prosperous, liked engaging in raw, animal religious hatred, and only felt fully alive when they did. Hatred and bigotry were not a vestige of the superstitious past but a living fire—just what comes, and burns, naturally. 

Sound familiar? It reminded me of this comment from yesterday's post:

It's important to delineate sociopathic impulses and "emotional overload". Sociopathic impulses have a basis on having a lack of emotional barriers (ie. regret, grief, and remorse) which would typically inhibit/prevent fulfilling the impulse. Emotional overload have a basis on overwhelming rational barriers (ie. logic, situational awareness).

So I understand why sociopaths can be scary -- we don't have any of the emotional barriers. But empaths can be scary too, especially when their emotional sense of right and wrong overwhelms rational barriers.

What the Grinch Teaches us About Good, Evil, and the Possibility of Change

I love the Grinch story/movies. For those that haven't experienced them, the Grinch is a bad guy (or tragically misunderstood?) who has a turnaround and his heart grows three sizes. How does it grow three sizes? It wasn't because he was shamed.

I got some pushback on my dislike of shaming as an enforcement method in the recent post "6 Surprising Findings About Good and Evil." (Some people found the scientific findings so surprising, they flat out disagreed with them.) People did not like my suggestion that we stop using gossip and public shaming as blunt instrument enforcement mechanisms for ensuring conformity of moral and social behavioral standards. And this was even before the Justine Sacco fiasco, where a Sarah Silverman style joke was the impetus for people who had never given half a thought to the AIDS crisis in Africa to judge her worthy of the equivalent of public social stoning.  One person's criticism: "Your solutions are always based on the whole world changing, but not you. . . . This is the self-delusional part of your diagnosis that has to change in order for you to see a change in how the world accepts you." I think the gist of that comment is that people could simply avoid being shamed by always acting properly (or that social change is not possible or not desirable in this instance?).

The problem is that no one behaves properly all of the time. Whether it is a tasteless joke, or a deeply held belief that is politically unpopular, every single person has done, said, or thought something that, if widely publicized, could ruin them. So often these people who have been shunned by society are not necessarily better or worse overall than most people, they are largely just unlucky (or have too much integrity to change their values due to the pressures of the crowd?). And for that lack of luck (or abundance of virtue however misguided we believe their virtue is?), we collectively destroy them. And I think this is wasteful, unnecessary, and suggests that people must really enjoy shaming to do it as often as they do because that seems to be the major benefit.

I think ruining people's life over one thing they did is generally a bad idea because people are dynamic -- they change their beliefs and their loyalties and their values many times over their lifetime. Think of the violent criminal who mentors and assists his fellow prisoners while incarcerated or the Grinch whose heart grows three sizes. Society is also dynamic -- an idea that was once politically unpopular becomes the norm and vice versa. You may think you're very right in the moral judgments and punishments you invoke against strangers, but so do the people who publicly stone people for otherwise consensual adultery. I'm not saying that society is wrong or needs to change to accommodate me. I'm just saying, these are some of the easy and not even original to me critiques of the prevalent and severely effective blunt instrument that is social shaming to ensure compliance of social norms. Furthermore, as I previously posted, shaming doesn't work how people would like it to. If someone shamed you, would you change your heart or just try to stay more under the radar? There is actually evidence that restorative justice is actually more effective than retributive justice (like shaming and the subsequent social fallout), both in terms of victim satisfaction and offender accountability. For instance, wasn't it because the Grinch was the recipient of restorative justice (allowing him fully back into society after he brought back the Christmas he had stolen) that he was able to change his heart? Or do we no longer give people the benefit of the doubt or even acknowledge that they have the power to change? Maybe we would have preferred for the Grinch to live his life in isolation in his cave, forever shunned from polite society?

I guess it's easier for me to see the negative aspects of shaming than the positive because I have seen so many people in my life make radical changes -- it's why I don't hate my parents for things that happened in my childhood and why I have an appreciation for the redemptive power of spirituality and religion in people's lives. 

6 Surprising Findings About Good and Evil

From Mother Jones, moral psychologist Joshua Greene and author of the recent book "Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them", presents "6 Surprising Scientific Findings About Good and Evil". Some of the more salient points for this audience:

• According to Greene, while we have innate dispositions to care for one another, they're ultimately limited and work best among smallish clans of people who trust and know each other.
• "We have gut reactions that make us cooperative," Greene says. Indeed, he adds, "If you force people to stop and think, then they're less likely to be cooperative."
•  We also keep tabs and enforce norms through punishment; in Moral Tribes, Greene suggests that a primary way that we do so is through gossip. He cites the anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found that two-thirds of human conversations involve chattering about other people, including spreading word of who's behaving well and who's behaving badly. Thus do we impose serious costs on those who commit anti-social behavior.
• [J]ust as we're naturally inclined to be cooperative within our own group, we're also inclined to distrust other groups (or worse). "In-group favoritism and ethnocentrism are human universals," writes Greene. What that means is that once you leave the setting of a small group and start dealing with multiple groups, there's a reversal of field in morality. Suddenly, you can't trust your emotions or gut settings any longer. "When it comes to us versus them, with different groups that have different feelings about things like gay marriage, or Obamacare, or Israelies versus Palestinians, our gut reactions are the source of the problem," says Greene.

His conclusion:

Based on many experiments with Public Goods Games, trolleys, and other scenarios, Greene has come to the conclusion that we can only trust gut-level morality to do so much. Uncomfortable scenarios like the footbridge dilemma notwithstanding, he believes that something like utilitarianism, which he defines as "maximize happiness impartially," is the only moral approach that can work with a vast, complex world comprised of many different groups of people.

But to get there, Greene says, requires the moral version of a gut override on the part of humanity—a shift to "manual mode," as he puts it.
***
To be more moral, then, Greene believes that we must first grasp the limits of the moral instincts that come naturally to us. That's hard to do, but he thinks it gets collectively easier.

Maybe one of the quickest way we can do that is to stop using gossip (i.e. public shaming) as a blunt instrument enforcement mechanism for misplaced social (not really even moral) enforcement (see also Duck Dynasty scandal).

Public shaming

I have mentioned before that I'm not a fan of the primitive and all too prevalent act of public shaming. I think it is a cheap shot, and an excuse to antagonize someone under some delusional guise of being pro-social? I'm not sure why people do it (why put forth the effort? why be the crusader at a cost to you and the target and a benefit to... anyone? do we really think the shamed person is going to change their behavior or retaliate in kind because they've always assumed they're in the right as well?). The thing about public shaming is that it's now so much more effective than it ever has been before, with the ability to reach tens of thousands and millions via social media whether you're shaming them for being gay or for wearing a tasteless Halloween costume. It's called leverage, and it's made shaming more effective than ever. Too effective? Or maybe the strength of the shaming mechanism will finally make people re-evaluate it as an appropriate behavior to engage in, or at least something that they are not only morally justified in doing but morally obligated to do?

The latest shamefest was an attempt by a producer of the television show The Bachelor to shame a fellow passenger for complaining to airplane personnel about delays on Thanksgiving. He accomplished the shaming of "Diane" in various increasingly antagonistic ways, narrated in real time on his Twitter account, chronicled here. The quick summary is that he kept sending or delivering her notes, sometimes accompanied by alcohol, at first under the guise of being nice but with the suggestion that perhaps if she was busy drinking alcohol, than she would shut her mouth. She sends him back a note saying that he was being inappropriate and to show compassion he responds:

He keeps antagonizing her, she eventually slaps him, then he gallantly refused to press charges, but gives her a note saying that he has been tweeting the whole thing "Look me up online. Read every tweet. Read every response. And maybe next time you'll be nice to people who are just trying to help."

Elan justified his behavior on his Tumblr account:

And it’s OUR job to tell every Diane to shut up. 

It’s OUR duty to put the Diane’s of the world in their place.

We need to REMIND them about the way of things.

We outnumber them. 

He's just a man on an important mission that not only justifies his behavior, it compels it.

Mob mentality: Halloween costume version

Apparently someone dressed up as a Boston Marathon bombing victim for Halloween so deserves to die or at the very least be cast from the warm arms of humanity, is the latest story. Here's one person's (saner?) reaction to the torch and pitchfork approach:

Alicia Lynch received death threats almost immediately. She had people circulating her home address and promising to send her a “special delivery”; digging up compromising pictures of her; threatening her parents. She of course had her job contacted and within 48 hours was fired, despite the fact that she’d worn the costume to her office. She apologized over and over again on Twitter and begged for the abuse to stop, but it didn’t. Some tweeted about the need to keep “bullying” her, others to “make sure she fries”. It was unimaginable venom, unforgivable hatred, and unconscionable vengeance all directed at somebody who wore a stupid fucking Halloween costume. It happened quickly and mercilessly. This poor, dumb girl never knew what hit her.

Jesus Christ.
***
There are those among us who believe they’re owed satisfaction at the slightest hint of an offense — even if that offense is only taken on behalf of others — and that see no irony in responding with disproportionately despicable actions to actions they see as despicable. The ferocious mob, confident in its moral authority and secure in its numbers and relative anonymity, will not be denied and cannot be stopped. Its wrath is meant not only as punishment for this insult but as a warning to others who might consider one day making a joke it doesn’t approve of; wearing an outfit it doesn’t like; doing a supposedly hurtful thing that can only be dealt with through hurt administered on a vast and crushing scale.

Maybe the most telling and singularly unsettling reaction fired in Alicia Lynch’s direction came toward the end of the feeding frenzy and was offered as a show of “mercy.”

“As a Bostonian, I forgive you. I am glad that you have not killed yourself, and I seriously hope you learned your lesson.” — @TheTwidster

Oh, I’m sure she has learned her lesson. As have we all. But here’s the thing, pal: It wasn’t your lesson to teach. And it was never your forgiveness to offer. You’re not special. You’re just one more asshole who jumped on the outrage bandwagon rather than shrugging off the behavior of a nobody you’ve never met and never will and getting on with your fucking life.

I wonder, why is it that sociopaths are immune to moral outrage? Perhaps because we don't believe that our emotional reactions equate to TRUTH/GOD'S CALL TO VENGEANCE (remember when people were so worked up at the idea of miscegenation or desegregation? Is it because we think way fewer things are moral issues than most people (Tasteless Halloween costumes? Is this a breach of morality, or just thoughtless? Even if it was a moral issue, do we call up your average murderer and threaten to kill them? What makes her the special target of people's vigilanteism and public shaming?) Certainly sociopaths have much less invested in social norms than the average person. And isn't this what this boils down to? Someone has violated a social norm, so they no longer deserve to live? Empaths -- you are scary mothers when you get all emotionally riled up about something. But I guess they had it coming, right? 

What is evil?

People ask me a lot about evil, as if I'm some sort of expert. I tell them that I don't have any special insight into evil, or even a sense of its definition. But I'm curious too, and I like that people are asking the question. What is evil? So asks the co-hosts on this podcast from the "Kitchen Shrinks".  They're a little silly and a lot redundant, but it's an interesting topic. Highlights (largely paraphrased) include:

• Starts with a discussion of Zimbardo and Stanford prison experiment
• "You put anybody in the situation where they are to control others -- you give them the role of authoritarian -- and all of us might be influenced to act in an aggressive way towards those prisoners given the same circumstances."
• The first thing that anyone thinks when they hear about someone doing something terrible is -- that's not like me. They're a bad person, I'm a good person. There's something inherently wrong with them, about them particularly and their lack of a soul that makes them evil or different from me. The whole idea that the role is critical (not that there are just some people that are evil), was new -- that you could put a "good" person in the right circumstances and have them act in evil ways was groundbreaking.
• If I can say that it's those people and them, not by me. What is disquieting is if I was in the same situation, would I be compelled to do evil as well? It's not as simple as there are some bad people or evil people, it's that all of us can act evilly in the right circumstances.
• Milgram discussion starts around 11:30. "We could create murderers under the right circumstances." "Milgram was shocked and even quite troubled by the experiment."
• "If you want to essentially be someone who does not engage in troubling behaviors, watch your environment. Watch for the things that push or pull you to do certain things. Become more aware of what the situation is asking you to do." To do that, you have to humble yourself enough to admit that you are capable of doing something bad to someone else. "Admit that we're all capable of doing evil things."
• Discussion of how the "exit costs" are high for bucking social norms, even when the social norm is something "bad" like college pranks. One host discussed how the mob mentality can make someone lose track of who they are because "it would have been to expensive socially to say no."
• "Would you want to be held accountable for every behavior you ever did?"
• When someone else does something wrong its their disposition, when you did something wrong it's your situation.
• How to get someone to do something evil? (1) Authority figure (2) Dehumanize the victim by making them a "thing," perhaps by giving them a label like "witch" (Paul Deen?) (3) Diffuse responsibility, e.g. by trying to detach oneself from actions by just fulfilling a role or being anonymous.
• Zimbardo "Evil begins at 15 volts" when you first start, when you let the camel get its nose under the tent. The tendency to act in an evil way happens in little increments.
• "These human beings, we're going to call them terrorists, we're going to change the language. They're not people anymore, they're evil." "That's not a human being, that's a threat."

They also have a feature on sociopath vs. psychopath.

Outcasts in literature: Housekeeping

[On the unsettling appearance of transients, whose very presence suggested to a small town's inhabitants that there was a different, better way to live than to eke out an existence in normal society.]

So every wanderer whose presence suggested it might be as well to drift, or it could not matter much, was met with something that seemed at first sight a moral reaction, since morality is a check upon the strongest temptations. And these strangers were fed on the stoop, and sometimes warmed at the stove, in a spirit that seemed at first sight pity or charity, since pity and charity may be at root an attempt to propitiate the dark powers that have not touched us yet. When one of these lives ended within the town jurisdiction, the preacher could be relied upon to say "This unfortunate," as if an anonymous grave were somehow deeper than a grave with a name above it. So the transients wandered through Fingerbone like ghosts, terrifying as ghosts are because they were not very different form us. And so it was important to the town to believe that I should be rescued, and that rescue was possible.

-- Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

Outrageous behavior

I can lose my temper sometimes. When I do, it can flip me from normal, even easy going, into someone possessed by a murderous rage. It's not hotheaded, it's coldhearted. It's also predictable, to an extent. Like everyone, it happens more when I am tired, frustrated, or distracted. Through the use of sleeping medications, I force myself to sleep more than my body naturally wants to, partly to keep a more level head when I am actually awake. I also try to avoid situations in which someone may unpredictably provoke me, typically strangers who don't know me or my triggers, and I am careful to schedule in a lot of downtime and alone time in which to decompress. I've gotten so good at this, it's been a while since my last rage attack. And all of the recent ones have been while I am traveling, when I am most likely to be forced to deal with strangers.

The most predictable aspect of these rages, though, is when someone "calls" me on something that I have done "wrong" when I feel like I have done nothing that would warrant their disapproval. I get angry at the flight attendant who tells me to turn off my electronic device, the metro worker who tells me to not use a particular set of stairs, etc. I know why, I feel like it is underhanded, that they are trying to force me to follow a particular set of rules that I think don't acknowledge, for whatever reason.

The particular set of rules, I realized, are called "social exchange rules." From a Wall Street Journal article about why folks throw temper tantrums when these rules are broken (try Googling the title "Big Explosions, Small Reasons" to get past the subscriber only):

Researchers at Duke University, in a yet-to-be-published study, looked for explanations of why people melt down over small things. Their findings suggest we are reacting to a perceived violation of an unwritten yet fundamental rule. It's the old, childhood wail: "It's not fair!"

Researchers call these unwritten laws of behavior "social exchange rules." We're not supposed to be rude or inconsiderate; we are supposed to be polite, fair, honest and caring. Don't cut in line. Drive safely. Clean up after yourself.

"We can't have successful interactions in relationships, mutually beneficial to both people involved, if one person violates these rules," says Mark Leary, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke and lead author of the study. "And we can't have a beneficial society if we can't trust each other not to lie, not to be unethical, not to watch out for our general well-being."

What makes my losses of temper different, I wondered. Am I the same as these people? I behave civilized, even charmingly. I say please and thank you, wait my turn in line, etc., but largely because this is the best way to get what I want. These are some of the most obvious social rules, whether kept or broken, so I am sure to be seen as a rule follower particularly for these little niceties.

No, when I lose my temper, it's not because I feel like someone has not held up their end of a social bargain, it is because I have been reminded about how powerless I am. The flight attendant has power over me. I try to pretend that we are equals and I could ruin her if I wanted to, but ultimately she could get me kicked off a flight and I would have no recourse. The metro worker looked like God's mistake, but he also has a certain sort of power over me, power to tell me where I can walk and where I can't or else he'll call security. I hate feeling like someone has power over me, hate it so much that I will almost always try to flip the power dynamic in whatever way I can. And apparently get really angry about it when I'm reminded how many people have control over me in countless ways in my daily life. I don't know, it was interesting seeing how the reasons I lose my temper are both similar and different from the way that other people lose their temper. And now I know better how to provoke people (or not) when I choose.

Shaming (part 2)

I have written before about shaming here and here.  A reader responded with this email:

This is the malignant narcissist again.

I'm exploring the shame/sociopathy thing. I thought you might have some thoughts on it.

I was hungry and tired as I shopped at a big-box discount store. There was just one counter open. I wanted to check out. There weren't any customers in line. Then I saw two fat women pull up with their cart to the counter, ahead of me. They were starting to unload. It was clear it would take a long time for them to put the contents of their cart on the belt. I decided that I just didn't want to wait.

The belt was quite long - there was a 10 foot gap between the women unloading their stuff and the clerk. Rather than wait behind them or ask them if I could go ahead, I impulsively ran up to the cashier (10 feet ahead of the fat women) and handed her my stuff. She started to ring me up.

After a few seconds, the women behind me figured out what had happened. They wound up taking their stuff off the belt and moving to another clerk (also fat). They complained to themselves and the clerk about my behavior. As I heard them talking, I started to feel a bit ashamed.

As I left, one of the women I'd bothered said, "thanks for the chivalry."  I said to her, "you're welcome."  I was feeling nasty. Perhaps in the future I'll take a tip from you and giver someone like her a rage-filled glare.

When it was all over, I was a bit shocked at how selfishly I'd behaved. But then I realized, I didn't feel any guilt. I still don't - I don't figure that I did anything wrong. I didn't want to wait behind the hippos as they unloaded their stuff.

 If I'd done something illegal, they'd have called the police. If I'd done something against the rules of the store, the store personnel would have done something - but they did nothing. In the end, all that happened was that I was rude and some fatties got some ruffled feathers. I've broken laws in public before. Sometimes people say something to me about them. When that happens, I tell them that if they don't like it, they should call the police. In the same vein, if the women don't like what I'm doing, they should call the police or talk to the store management.

Later I reflected on things. My action was a bit unfortunate. Perhaps I should feel some guilt about the action (I don't). I do feel a bit like a bad person - but only because they called me on it. Had they not noticed, had they been blind or had I been anonymous, I just wouldn't have cared.

I figure this case is an example of why people assume sociopaths are a danger to society. If everyone acted the way I do, our civilization would fall apart.


I responded: I am usually am not full of rage unless I feel like I have been attempting to comply with the strictures of good social behavior and people still give me a hard time about things.

I very much identify with this thought that if you weren't called on it, you wouldn't feel badly at all.  Although I am starting to wonder more and more if neurotypicals also identify with this feeling and it's not unique to the "dark triad".  Shall we publish it and see what they say?

Gloves come off

I know nothing about hockey, but apparently you must take off your gloves to fight. When the gloves come off in boxing, that means that things are going to get ugly, hence the origin of the phrase "gloves come off." If it is the same in hockey, it seems unusual that officials would promote that sort of violence, or at least more than they already do by routinely allowing fights to proceed uninhibited.

I sort of like the hockey rule. I feel that there is something more honorable about fighting with the gloves off than with them on. You're not pretending. You're not hiding behind something or somebody else. The way I feel about things is that if you have a problem with me, let's go at it. I can play dirty and you can play dirty, but don't try to kid yourself or anyone else that you don't want to, that you are just doing your job, or whatever else. Don't hide behind your badge. If you think you need to take out the trash and that includes me, then okay, but don't later pretend that you've never gotten dirty. That's what I really can't stand about the guilt trips or the public shaming. Let's just both agree to disagree and get on with it because you can take me down in a fair fight, or you can cheap shot me to death, but even if I don't have the time or the inclination to play enforcer with you, some other crusader will, and I know for a fact that you will eventually get yours.

Shaming

I have become increasingly disenchanted with humanity, particularly these last few months. I think it may have something to do with being sick for a long time and never really catching up. It also may have something to do with the amount of traveling I have had to do, particularly international flights with immigration and customs checks.

The other day I had just boarded a plane and was trying to get an email sent before we took off. It was such a small plane that there was only a minute between when we were asked to shut off any electronics* and enforcement. After the announcement, I finished the sentence I was on and pressed send, but the connection was bad and I couldn't tell whether it had sent or not. I attempted to resend. At this point, I could have hidden the phone while the phone searched for a connection, but i decided to be honest about it and do it within plain sight. Halfway through attempting to resend, the flight attendant reprimanded me for not having turned the phone off already, trying to shame me in front of the other passengers. I quickly got very angry. My friend says "it's when you are trying to be legit and people still chastise you that you get the most irate." True. He also said that the flight attendant would probably not have been so angry if I had actually attempted to hide the phone, instead of blatantly and openly defying the order. Maybe also true. But I controlled my anger well, only giving the flight attendant chilling death glares. I think I must have creeped her out sufficiently, though, because I looked up a few times in the flight and saw her staring at me with a look of bewilderment and fear.

This incident was not a big deal, but it did remind me that I don't respond well at all to shaming attempts. I don't know why people would ever use them (particularly with people like me around) or over something so small as mobile phone etiquette. I always think -- poor phone etiquette is the least of your worries with me, guy. I think if people had to choose only one thing to worry about, there are many other things that should be prioritized, including the wisdom of sleeping with one eye open.

I'm sure there was originally some evolutionary impetus for shame and shaming, but can it really still be applicable? Effective? Safe?


*is there a legitimate reason for this rule?