ABC News reports on a recent book, "The Bonobo and the Atheist," by Frans de Waal, who argues that other primates have at least the building blocks of morality. De Waal suggests that this proves we had inborn morality first, then came up with the idea of religion and god to make sense of those moral inclinations, rather than vice versa.
Those and other human-like characteristics, that have been clearly documented by other researchers as well, at least show they have some grasp of morality. It doesn't mean they are moral -- especially chimps, which can be very violent -- but they have the "basic building blocks" for morality, de Waal argues.
Chimps, he says, "are ready to kill their rivals. They sometimes kill humans, or bite off their face." So he says he is "reluctant to call a chimpanzee a 'moral being.'"
"There is little evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves," he writes. Yet, "In their behavior, we recognize the same values we pursue ourselves.
"I take these hints of community concern as a sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and we don't need God to explain how we got to where we are today," he writes.
Is this right? That hints of community concern are the basis for our sense of morality? He says that there are instances of primates feeling guilt or shame:
For example, Lody, a bonobo in the Milwaukee County Zoo, bit the hand -- apparently accidentally -- of a veterinarian who was feeding him vitamin pills.
"Hearing a crunching sound, Lody looked up, seemingly surprised, and released the hand minus a digit," de Waals writes.
Days later the vet revisited the zoo and held up her bandaged left hand. Lody looked at the hand and retreated to a distant corner of the enclosure where he held his head down and wrapped his arms around himself, signs of both grief and guilt.
And here's the amazing part. About 15 years later the vet returned to the zoo and was standing among a crowd of visitors when Lody recognized her and rushed over. He tried to see her left hand, which was hidden behind the railing. The vet lifted up her incomplete hand and Lody looked at it, then at the vet's face, then back at the hand again.
Was he showing shame and grief? Or was it fear of a possible reprisal? The ape at least realized he had done something wrong, de Waal argues, showing the seeds of moral behavior.
The chimp "realized he had done something wrong," but was it a moral judgment of "wrongness"? Or do chimps keep score in their society such that if a chimp does something that another chimp doesn't like, there will be retribution. In other words, does it mean that chimps are moral, or that they hold grudges? I actually think this is a more interesting explanation -- that the urge to punish others for perceived infraction (a sense of justice) is very primitive, such that we share this trait with primates. Interesting how humans have not really modified that impulse much, despite evidence that restorative justice is actually more effective both in terms of victim satisfaction and offender accountability than retributive justice.
The articles mentions other primate behaviors, including displays of deep grief and compassion for each other, but as the article states "[w]hen an ape expresses grief or guilt or compassion he is living out the blueprint for survival in a culture that is becoming more complex, and possibly more dangerous." That is, they are not making judgments of moral right or wrong, they are just acknowledging they exist as one individual in a larger society (like the sociopaths willingness to be a team player). From the examples given, primates do seem to have a system of "values," e.g. they do cleverly use orgies to stop wars, but that seems to be a utilitarian assessment (orgies = good and war = bad), not a moral one.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Thoughts = crimes?
Can you be punished for being a sexual sadist without ever having acted upon it? Apparently, yes, at least in Canada. The Star reports the sentencing of an 18 year old who shared his sadistic sexual fantasies with a classmate, then spent the next 77 days in pre-sentence custody and years of probation for it:
This sadist is a handsome, strapping young man, in his neat navy trousers and cardigan, nicely groomed. The observer imagines a teenage girl would be quite chuffed to receive a Facebook overture from so pleasant-seeming a boy. Except this sadist wrote: “I wanna cut ur stomach open and stick my d—k in it.’’
From her end of the online chat, the girl responded blandly: “OK.’’
Sadist: “Break ur legs and (obscenity deleted) on ur face.’’
Girl: “k calm down.’’
That, De Filippis concluded, constituted the bodily harm threat, rejecting the defence’s argument that the Facebook conversation utterances were merely desires, not intended action.
And the girl (eventually) felt threatened, so pretty much that in itself is a crime?
“I find that the defendant is a sadist,’’ the judge wrote. “The Facebook conversation reflects his need to cause bodily harm as a source of sexual gratification. He described the violent nature of the acts contemplated and sought the complainant’s submission to his desire. He also said he did not care if she consented.
Well, which is it? That he sought her submission or suggested he didn't care if she wanted it or not? And isn't playing at lack of consent one of the key elements of BDSM? Is there any way to criminally sentence this guy without criminalizing a host of other sexual "deviants"?
“I have no doubt these words were meant to be taken seriously and that they intimidated the complainant. Indeed, I am confident he derived pleasure from the threats themselves.’’
This is a crime in Canada? To proposition someone and have them be intimidated by it? What if someone propositioned the girl for "normal" sex, which she declined? Also a crime? Makes you want to be careful about who you reveal your fantasies to, right?
At that point, the boy says, “I don’t wanna hurt u so bye,” as if warning her off. Yet she won’t let him get away. “Stop — I do have feelings for you … but u can’t force me into s—t … . I’m not like that. I don’t want to lose what we have but if u can’t respect me then … maybe we should just stay friends.’’
***
“If I hurt u, but not badly, are u okay with that?’’ he asks. “Like if cut u? ... Bruise u … I want to cut u.’’
***
“No u can kiss me and u can only slap my a--.’’
It was entirely a “reciprocal’’ conversation, court heard, and the girl laughed when the youth said he’d masturbated over a picture of her.
Close enough to a crime in the eyes of Canada. He gets probation, including a prohibition on certain internet and mobile phone use and restrictions about what he is allowed to read or view (including no "smut"). But also, 50 Shades of Grey is popular and mainstream enough to be made into a movie...
In related "shoot first and ask questions later" news, the NY Times reports that a security guard at the Western Wall in Jerusalem recently shot and killed a Jewish man. For what offense? The man had his hand in his pocket allegedly shouted “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.” The guard shot him multiple times, "apparently suspecting him of being a Palestinian militant about to carry out an attack." Sound like Trayvon Martin? Or how about drone attacks murdering innocent people for saying a few magic words like "jihad" in a mobile phone conversation? People tend to have a quick trigger finger for those whom they believe to be a threat, even if they've done nothing wrong.
In still more Philip K. Dick's Minority Report related news, a recent study suggests that we can identify criminals likely to be recidivists via their brain scans. Wouldn't that be so great to be able to identify evil-doers before they can even get around to committing evil? And yet people are decrying the violations to their own civil liberties from government monitoring (NSA), for similar prophylactic measures. But if people have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about, right? As long as you manage to avoid being labeled something evil like sadist or sociopath (or shouting common religious phrases in public or wearing a hoodie at night or having opposing political beliefs as the party in power, or saying "that's the bomb!" in Afghanistan or standing next to someone that did), you're safe, right? Because we basically have a foolproof method of identifying bad people and punishing them.
I feel like this is somehow relevant:
I feel like this is somehow relevant:
Friday, June 21, 2013
Proper responses to evil
There's an interesting tendency for people to think that evil is something external to them -- other people, other countries, other cultures. When people think they've identified the source of the evil, they tend to be quick to attack, without much thought for either due diligence or due process. For instance, arguably a dominant reason for initial popular support for the Iraq War was latent hostility against Middle Eastern Muslim nations from the 9/11 terrorist attacks (I think perhaps most humorously evidenced by a series of SNL episodes very positively portraying George W. Bush as an avenging cowboy and Dick Cheney bragging about defiling Afghani women -- all to audience cheers). Similarly, does it now seem odd to us that people got so upset over a Muslim community center blocks away from Ground Zero in crowded lower Manhattan? If the presence of evil calls for some sort of response, what should the nature of that response be? Punishment? Rehabilitation? Education? And is that something that should be imposed largely externally, or does the very banality of evil suggest that the best way to fight evil is to start in our own minds. In an interesting contrast for the calls for blood against the alleged Nazi war criminal found in Minnesota, this New York Review of Books article "‘Jews Aren’t Allowed to Use Phones’: Berlin’s Most Unsettling Memorial"describes the Places of Remembrance memorial:
Twenty years ago this month, Berlin-based artists Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock inaugurated their hugely controversial “Places of Remembrance” memorial for a former Jewish district of West Berlin known as the Bavarian Quarter. At the time, Germany had just been reunified, and it was one of the first major efforts to give permanent recognition to the ways the Holocaust reached into daily life in the German capital. The 1991 competition called for a central memorial on the square, but Stih and Schnock instead proposed attaching eighty signs hung on lamp posts throughout the Bavarian Quarter, each one spelling out one of the hundreds of Nazi laws and rules that gradually dehumanized Berlin’s Jewish population.
***"We took anti-Jewish laws and regulations. On one side we had text, which we took from the regulations but made it snappy and shorter, so people driving or biking by could read them fast. And on the other side we put a picture that illustrated it. [One shows a chalice and on the other side of the sign says, “The baptism of Jews and their conversion to Christianity is unimportant in the question of race.” Another shows a radio and the other side says, “Jews must give up their radios.”]"
***
"Over there you see a sign with a telephone—right next to the post office—and the sign says Jews aren’t allowed to use telephones. Everything was meant to exclude Jews from daily life, from social structures, and to threaten them."
Rather than focus on names, either of victims or perpetrators, they chose to focus on "social and legal structures: how could this ever have happened?" How might it have happened? Step by step. First target a group and blame them for evil actions. They have now become the source of evil. Next depersonalize them. At this point, the masses will accept that not only should these people be punished for their alleged evil actions, but that they are inherently evil and don't deserve to be treated with basic human dignity. If there are laws in place to maintain equal rights and due process, make it clear that those laws do not apply to evil people -- they're a special case which demands special treatment (laws are only made to protect the best of us, after all). The rest is just maintaining the illusion by making sure people never question the original premise of evil. For instance, one of my favorite regulations was against Jewish ownership of pets, and for a very practical reason:
The reason for that is that first the animals had to go and then the owners could be removed. Because if animals would stay in an apartment, they wouldn’t get food, they’d make noise, this would cause a commotion. Maybe the Aryan neighbors wouldn’t care about the Jewish neighbor being deported but they would truly care about a little cat meowing.
But do we really need constant reminders of our own collective and individual capacities for evil? Haven't we moved past all of that?
When we were installing it, suddenly someone opened a window and yelled out: Haut ab, Judenschweine!—“Go away, Jewish pigs!” Our two workers installing the signs with us, they were completely shocked. They had thought the project wasn’t important until then and had been saying, “Come on, everyone knows this, why are you bothering?” They were speechless.
We do need reminders. And in a way that's why I think it's one of the worst times to be a sociopath -- because people have forgotten their own capacity for evil. Perhaps now more than ever people have isolated themselves from ugly aspects of the world. They eat meat raised and slaughtered out of sight, their countries fight wars in countries that they cannot point out on a map, and their sense of morality has never been tested (unless by Milgram or at Stanford), so it's very easy and convenient for them to convince themselves that evil exists outside, not in. In contrast to most people's high estimations of themselves, the straight-talking sociopath must seem like an abomination. And how should one react to an abomination? Track them down and make them suffer? Extradite that 94 year-old man and make him finally pay for his crimes? Because he's the reason that bad things happened, right? People want to believe that the only problem with evil they have is in identifying it and eradicating it in others.
Or course nobody likes to confront their own capacity for evil, and so that's why the artists for the Places of Remembrance (manipulatively) downplayed their proposed plan:
During the process they asked the artists to present their work at a public forum. We showed little drawings, not the real size, which is fifty by seventy centimeters. The drawings were like fine watercolors. They gave the pictures a softness. This was very good because everybody focused on the art. Here, in real life, it looks like brash pop art, but at the presentation it was different. It was of course a trick. You have to be very careful when you present because otherwise you’ll scare people.
It was sneaky enough to work at the time, but people seem even less willing to confront these issues:
I have to say that in 1993 the society was open—kind of not secured. It was right after the Wall had opened. I don’t think we could do it today.
Twenty years ago this month, Berlin-based artists Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock inaugurated their hugely controversial “Places of Remembrance” memorial for a former Jewish district of West Berlin known as the Bavarian Quarter. At the time, Germany had just been reunified, and it was one of the first major efforts to give permanent recognition to the ways the Holocaust reached into daily life in the German capital. The 1991 competition called for a central memorial on the square, but Stih and Schnock instead proposed attaching eighty signs hung on lamp posts throughout the Bavarian Quarter, each one spelling out one of the hundreds of Nazi laws and rules that gradually dehumanized Berlin’s Jewish population.
***"We took anti-Jewish laws and regulations. On one side we had text, which we took from the regulations but made it snappy and shorter, so people driving or biking by could read them fast. And on the other side we put a picture that illustrated it. [One shows a chalice and on the other side of the sign says, “The baptism of Jews and their conversion to Christianity is unimportant in the question of race.” Another shows a radio and the other side says, “Jews must give up their radios.”]"
***
"Over there you see a sign with a telephone—right next to the post office—and the sign says Jews aren’t allowed to use telephones. Everything was meant to exclude Jews from daily life, from social structures, and to threaten them."
Rather than focus on names, either of victims or perpetrators, they chose to focus on "social and legal structures: how could this ever have happened?" How might it have happened? Step by step. First target a group and blame them for evil actions. They have now become the source of evil. Next depersonalize them. At this point, the masses will accept that not only should these people be punished for their alleged evil actions, but that they are inherently evil and don't deserve to be treated with basic human dignity. If there are laws in place to maintain equal rights and due process, make it clear that those laws do not apply to evil people -- they're a special case which demands special treatment (laws are only made to protect the best of us, after all). The rest is just maintaining the illusion by making sure people never question the original premise of evil. For instance, one of my favorite regulations was against Jewish ownership of pets, and for a very practical reason:
The reason for that is that first the animals had to go and then the owners could be removed. Because if animals would stay in an apartment, they wouldn’t get food, they’d make noise, this would cause a commotion. Maybe the Aryan neighbors wouldn’t care about the Jewish neighbor being deported but they would truly care about a little cat meowing.
But do we really need constant reminders of our own collective and individual capacities for evil? Haven't we moved past all of that?
When we were installing it, suddenly someone opened a window and yelled out: Haut ab, Judenschweine!—“Go away, Jewish pigs!” Our two workers installing the signs with us, they were completely shocked. They had thought the project wasn’t important until then and had been saying, “Come on, everyone knows this, why are you bothering?” They were speechless.
We do need reminders. And in a way that's why I think it's one of the worst times to be a sociopath -- because people have forgotten their own capacity for evil. Perhaps now more than ever people have isolated themselves from ugly aspects of the world. They eat meat raised and slaughtered out of sight, their countries fight wars in countries that they cannot point out on a map, and their sense of morality has never been tested (unless by Milgram or at Stanford), so it's very easy and convenient for them to convince themselves that evil exists outside, not in. In contrast to most people's high estimations of themselves, the straight-talking sociopath must seem like an abomination. And how should one react to an abomination? Track them down and make them suffer? Extradite that 94 year-old man and make him finally pay for his crimes? Because he's the reason that bad things happened, right? People want to believe that the only problem with evil they have is in identifying it and eradicating it in others.
Or course nobody likes to confront their own capacity for evil, and so that's why the artists for the Places of Remembrance (manipulatively) downplayed their proposed plan:
During the process they asked the artists to present their work at a public forum. We showed little drawings, not the real size, which is fifty by seventy centimeters. The drawings were like fine watercolors. They gave the pictures a softness. This was very good because everybody focused on the art. Here, in real life, it looks like brash pop art, but at the presentation it was different. It was of course a trick. You have to be very careful when you present because otherwise you’ll scare people.
It was sneaky enough to work at the time, but people seem even less willing to confront these issues:
I have to say that in 1993 the society was open—kind of not secured. It was right after the Wall had opened. I don’t think we could do it today.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Identifying sociopaths (and then what?)
This was an interesting post from author of Liars and Outliers, Bruce Schneier, about the identification of sociopaths. He first quotes Scott Adams (Dilbert comic author) predicting the future identification of "sociopaths and terrorists":
My hypothesis is that science will someday be able to identify sociopaths and terrorists by their patterns of Facebook and Internet use. I'll bet normal people interact with Facebook in ways that sociopaths and terrorists couldn't duplicate.
Anyone can post fake photos and acquire lots of friends who are actually acquaintances. But I'll bet there are so many patterns and tendencies of "normal" use on Facebook that a terrorist wouldn't be able to successfully fake it.
Adams says that the reason that it would work is the same reason that fraud detection programs work: "[C]rooks don't know there is a normal pattern and so they don't know when they violate it. I think the same would be true for Facebook. There must be dozens of normal Facebook patterns that sociopaths and terrorists wouldn't know about, and therefore couldn't fake." This does not seem implausible, and is one of several reasons why I think that remaining completely anonymous and undetectable is not going to work for the rising generation of sociopaths.
Schneier has another criticism:
Okay, but so what? Imagine you had such an amazingly accurate test...then what? Do we investigate those who test positive, even though there's no suspicion that they've actually done anything? Do we follow them around? Subject them to additional screening at airports? Throw them in jail because we know the streets will be safer because of it? Do we want to live in a Minority Report world?
The problem isn't just that such a system is wrong, it's that the mathematics of testing makes this sort of thing pretty ineffective in practice. It's called the "base rate fallacy." Suppose you have a test that's 90% accurate in identifying both sociopaths and non-sociopaths. If you assume that 4% of people are sociopaths, then the chance of someone who tests positive actually being a sociopath is 26%. (For every thousand people tested, 90% of the 40 sociopaths will test positive, but so will 10% of the 960 non-sociopaths.) You have postulate a test with an amazing 99% accuracy -- only a 1% false positive rate -- even to have an 80% chance of someone testing positive actually being a sociopath.
He ends with this thought: "Many authors have written stories about thoughtcrime. Who has written about genecrime?"
The comments are also really worth reading for their intelligence and insight. For instance, there was this comment:
First you'll need a useful definition of "sociopath" that is not, for practical purposes, equivalent to "non-conformist" or "adherent to a religion not on the approved list", etc.
Followed by this comment:
You may underestimate the ability to create tautological tests. If you define a sociopath as someone who fails the sociopathy test, then the sociopathy test is 100% accurate in identifying sociopaths.
That's all well and good, until people begin to think that an attribute thus defined is useful for anything.
My hypothesis is that science will someday be able to identify sociopaths and terrorists by their patterns of Facebook and Internet use. I'll bet normal people interact with Facebook in ways that sociopaths and terrorists couldn't duplicate.
Anyone can post fake photos and acquire lots of friends who are actually acquaintances. But I'll bet there are so many patterns and tendencies of "normal" use on Facebook that a terrorist wouldn't be able to successfully fake it.
Adams says that the reason that it would work is the same reason that fraud detection programs work: "[C]rooks don't know there is a normal pattern and so they don't know when they violate it. I think the same would be true for Facebook. There must be dozens of normal Facebook patterns that sociopaths and terrorists wouldn't know about, and therefore couldn't fake." This does not seem implausible, and is one of several reasons why I think that remaining completely anonymous and undetectable is not going to work for the rising generation of sociopaths.
Schneier has another criticism:
Okay, but so what? Imagine you had such an amazingly accurate test...then what? Do we investigate those who test positive, even though there's no suspicion that they've actually done anything? Do we follow them around? Subject them to additional screening at airports? Throw them in jail because we know the streets will be safer because of it? Do we want to live in a Minority Report world?
The problem isn't just that such a system is wrong, it's that the mathematics of testing makes this sort of thing pretty ineffective in practice. It's called the "base rate fallacy." Suppose you have a test that's 90% accurate in identifying both sociopaths and non-sociopaths. If you assume that 4% of people are sociopaths, then the chance of someone who tests positive actually being a sociopath is 26%. (For every thousand people tested, 90% of the 40 sociopaths will test positive, but so will 10% of the 960 non-sociopaths.) You have postulate a test with an amazing 99% accuracy -- only a 1% false positive rate -- even to have an 80% chance of someone testing positive actually being a sociopath.
He ends with this thought: "Many authors have written stories about thoughtcrime. Who has written about genecrime?"
The comments are also really worth reading for their intelligence and insight. For instance, there was this comment:
First you'll need a useful definition of "sociopath" that is not, for practical purposes, equivalent to "non-conformist" or "adherent to a religion not on the approved list", etc.
Followed by this comment:
You may underestimate the ability to create tautological tests. If you define a sociopath as someone who fails the sociopathy test, then the sociopathy test is 100% accurate in identifying sociopaths.
That's all well and good, until people begin to think that an attribute thus defined is useful for anything.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Parent to a sociopath (part 2)
While I was watching We Need to Talk About Kevin, I thought several times about Andrew Solomon's book Far From the Tree, in which he writes about outlier children (i.e. children who are quite different from their parents, e.g. deafness, dwarfism, disability, genius, criminality, etc.). He discusses the difficulties that such children present to their parents, who have hoped to see their own unfulfilled promise attained vicariously through the lives of their children, and the great disappointment that can accompany the realization that their child is not who they imagined he would be (via Brain Pickings):
In the subconscious fantasies that make conception look so alluring, it is often ourselves that we would like to see live forever, not someone with a personality of his own. Having anticipated the onward march of our selfish genes, many of us are unprepared for children who present unfamiliar needs. Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger, and the more alien the stranger, the stronger the whiff of negativity. We depend on the guarantee in our children’s faces that we will not die. Children whose defining quality annihilates that fantasy of immortality are a particular insult; we must love them for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do. Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination. … [But] our children are not us: they carry throwback genes and recessive traits and are subject right from the start to environmental stimuli beyond our control.
The most directly applicable We Need to Talk About Kevin quote:
Having exceptional children exaggerates parental tendencies; those who would be bad parents become awful parents, but those who would be good parents often become extraordinary.
Solomon also looks at the unique struggles of children who are born to parents that do not share the same defining traits. He first identifies the distinction between vertical identities, those we inherit from our parents like ethnicity or religion, and horizontal identities:
Often, however, someone has an inherent or acquired trait that is foreign to his or her parents and must therefore acquire identity from a peer group. This is a horizontal identity. Such horizontal identities may reflect recessive genes, random mutations, prenatal influences, or values and preferences that a child does not share with his progenitors. Being gay is a horizontal identity; most gay kids are born to straight parents, and while their sexuality is not determined by their peers, they learn gay identity by observing and participating in a subculture outside the family. Physical disability tends to be horizontal, as does genius. Psychopathy, too, is often horizontal; most criminals are not raised by mobsters and must invent their own treachery. So are conditions such as autism and intellectual disability.
(A quick note, I think the reference to psychopaths is hilariously demonizing, especially given Solomon's great care to withhold normative judgments of "bad" or "good" for the other outlier characteristics he discusses. To illustrate, imagine if he had used a similar negatively slanted statement for gay horizontal identity "most kids are born to straight parents, so must invent their own perversion.")
Solomon, who actually is gay with straight parents (but apparently feels that he did not invent his own perversion, unlike sociopaths), came up with his theory on vertical and horizontal identity when he noticed that he shared common identity issues with deaf children of hearing parents:
I had been startled to note my common ground with the Deaf, and now I was identifying with a dwarf; I wondered who else was out there waiting to join our gladsome throng. I thought that if gayness, an identity, could grow out of homosexuality, an illness, and Deafness, an identity, could grow out of deafness, an illness, and if dwarfism as an identity could emerge from an apparent disability, then there must be many other categories in this awkward interstitial territory. It was a radicalizing insight. Having always imagined myself in a fairly slim minority, I suddenly saw that I was in a vast company. Difference unites us. While each of these experiences can isolate those who are affected, together they compose an aggregate of millions whose struggles connect them profoundly. The exceptional is ubiquitous; to be entirely typical is the rare and lonely state.
I have noticed (and mention in the book) that there has been a lot of push back on labeling people, particularly the pathologizing of more than half the population. How could it possibly be that fewer people in the population are normal than abnormal?! But which seems more plausible -- that we are all cookie cutter neurologically the same? Or that we are all on a bell curve of myriad different human traits, our particular blend making us both completely unique (we actually are neurologically all special snowflakes, it turns out) and yet share identifiable traits in common across the entire swath of humanity. And that's a good thing. Charles Darwin remarked on the great variety of the human species:
As the great botanist Bichat long ago said, if everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characteristics in our women a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.
Despite the many advantages of diversity, many families (and society) tend to treat horizontal identities as disorders that we would hope to eventually eliminate from the species:
In modern America, it is sometimes hard to be Asian or Jewish or female, yet no one suggests that Asians, Jews, or women would be foolish not to become white Christian men if they could. Many vertical identities make people uncomfortable, and yet we do not attempt to homogenize them. The disadvantages of being gay are arguably no greater than those of such vertical identities, but most parents have long sought to turn their gay children straight. … Labeling a child’s mind as diseased — whether with autism, intellectual disabilities, or transgenderism — may reflect the discomfort that mind gives parents more than any discomfort it causes their child.
(Is Solomon correct here? I think there are actually a lot of people who think that white Christian men are superior to other races/genders/religions, gay people are an abomination, autistic and disabled people are a drain to scarce social resources (same for sociopaths), etc. And perhaps their beliefs are not wrong, or at least it would depend on what measuring stick and set of values you use to judge.)
But I don't think it's the labels that are harmful, necessarily. Indeed, labels can be a boon to all outsiders forming their own horizontal identities. Rather, the problem seems to be the xenophobic system of enforcing social norms that encourages expressions of repulsion and shaming at what is too foreign to be relatable, whether it is feelings of disgust regarding gay people (especially gay people who do not feel the need to hide or tone down their "gayness"), the practices of other cultures (especially things that our own western culture has outgrown, like arranged marriages and modest clothing for women), or the backwards beliefs of religious "cults" (whereas our own religious beliefs are seen as perfectly plausible and normal).
Finally, Solomon describes what eventually happens to the mother in We Need to Talk About Kevin (and a hopeful statement for all parents of sociopathic children):
To look deep into your child’s eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood’s self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon. It is astonishing how often such mutuality has been realized — how frequently parents who had supposed that they couldn’t care for an exceptional child discover that they can. The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. There is more imagination in the world than one might think.
In the subconscious fantasies that make conception look so alluring, it is often ourselves that we would like to see live forever, not someone with a personality of his own. Having anticipated the onward march of our selfish genes, many of us are unprepared for children who present unfamiliar needs. Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger, and the more alien the stranger, the stronger the whiff of negativity. We depend on the guarantee in our children’s faces that we will not die. Children whose defining quality annihilates that fantasy of immortality are a particular insult; we must love them for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do. Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination. … [But] our children are not us: they carry throwback genes and recessive traits and are subject right from the start to environmental stimuli beyond our control.
The most directly applicable We Need to Talk About Kevin quote:
Having exceptional children exaggerates parental tendencies; those who would be bad parents become awful parents, but those who would be good parents often become extraordinary.
Solomon also looks at the unique struggles of children who are born to parents that do not share the same defining traits. He first identifies the distinction between vertical identities, those we inherit from our parents like ethnicity or religion, and horizontal identities:
Often, however, someone has an inherent or acquired trait that is foreign to his or her parents and must therefore acquire identity from a peer group. This is a horizontal identity. Such horizontal identities may reflect recessive genes, random mutations, prenatal influences, or values and preferences that a child does not share with his progenitors. Being gay is a horizontal identity; most gay kids are born to straight parents, and while their sexuality is not determined by their peers, they learn gay identity by observing and participating in a subculture outside the family. Physical disability tends to be horizontal, as does genius. Psychopathy, too, is often horizontal; most criminals are not raised by mobsters and must invent their own treachery. So are conditions such as autism and intellectual disability.
(A quick note, I think the reference to psychopaths is hilariously demonizing, especially given Solomon's great care to withhold normative judgments of "bad" or "good" for the other outlier characteristics he discusses. To illustrate, imagine if he had used a similar negatively slanted statement for gay horizontal identity "most kids are born to straight parents, so must invent their own perversion.")
Solomon, who actually is gay with straight parents (but apparently feels that he did not invent his own perversion, unlike sociopaths), came up with his theory on vertical and horizontal identity when he noticed that he shared common identity issues with deaf children of hearing parents:
I had been startled to note my common ground with the Deaf, and now I was identifying with a dwarf; I wondered who else was out there waiting to join our gladsome throng. I thought that if gayness, an identity, could grow out of homosexuality, an illness, and Deafness, an identity, could grow out of deafness, an illness, and if dwarfism as an identity could emerge from an apparent disability, then there must be many other categories in this awkward interstitial territory. It was a radicalizing insight. Having always imagined myself in a fairly slim minority, I suddenly saw that I was in a vast company. Difference unites us. While each of these experiences can isolate those who are affected, together they compose an aggregate of millions whose struggles connect them profoundly. The exceptional is ubiquitous; to be entirely typical is the rare and lonely state.
I have noticed (and mention in the book) that there has been a lot of push back on labeling people, particularly the pathologizing of more than half the population. How could it possibly be that fewer people in the population are normal than abnormal?! But which seems more plausible -- that we are all cookie cutter neurologically the same? Or that we are all on a bell curve of myriad different human traits, our particular blend making us both completely unique (we actually are neurologically all special snowflakes, it turns out) and yet share identifiable traits in common across the entire swath of humanity. And that's a good thing. Charles Darwin remarked on the great variety of the human species:
As the great botanist Bichat long ago said, if everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characteristics in our women a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.
Despite the many advantages of diversity, many families (and society) tend to treat horizontal identities as disorders that we would hope to eventually eliminate from the species:
In modern America, it is sometimes hard to be Asian or Jewish or female, yet no one suggests that Asians, Jews, or women would be foolish not to become white Christian men if they could. Many vertical identities make people uncomfortable, and yet we do not attempt to homogenize them. The disadvantages of being gay are arguably no greater than those of such vertical identities, but most parents have long sought to turn their gay children straight. … Labeling a child’s mind as diseased — whether with autism, intellectual disabilities, or transgenderism — may reflect the discomfort that mind gives parents more than any discomfort it causes their child.
(Is Solomon correct here? I think there are actually a lot of people who think that white Christian men are superior to other races/genders/religions, gay people are an abomination, autistic and disabled people are a drain to scarce social resources (same for sociopaths), etc. And perhaps their beliefs are not wrong, or at least it would depend on what measuring stick and set of values you use to judge.)
But I don't think it's the labels that are harmful, necessarily. Indeed, labels can be a boon to all outsiders forming their own horizontal identities. Rather, the problem seems to be the xenophobic system of enforcing social norms that encourages expressions of repulsion and shaming at what is too foreign to be relatable, whether it is feelings of disgust regarding gay people (especially gay people who do not feel the need to hide or tone down their "gayness"), the practices of other cultures (especially things that our own western culture has outgrown, like arranged marriages and modest clothing for women), or the backwards beliefs of religious "cults" (whereas our own religious beliefs are seen as perfectly plausible and normal).
Finally, Solomon describes what eventually happens to the mother in We Need to Talk About Kevin (and a hopeful statement for all parents of sociopathic children):
To look deep into your child’s eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood’s self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon. It is astonishing how often such mutuality has been realized — how frequently parents who had supposed that they couldn’t care for an exceptional child discover that they can. The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. There is more imagination in the world than one might think.
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