World Interfaith Harmony Week

"Recognizing that the moral imperatives of all religions, convictions and beliefs call for peace, tolerance and mutual understanding,

1. Reaffirms that mutual understanding and interreligious dialogue constitute important dimensions of a culture of peace;

2. Proclaims the first week of February every year the World Interfaith Harmony Week between all religions, faiths and beliefs;

3. Encourages all States to support, on a voluntary basis, the spread of the message of interfaith harmony and goodwill in the world’s churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and other places of worship during that week, based on love of God and love of one’s neighbour or on love of the good and love of one’s neighbour, each according to their own religious traditions or convictions; ..." - part of UN General Assembly Resolution 65/5 (my emphasis)

Note that part 3 is actually parsed to include secular humanists. It's a bit ironic that, while some of the registered events worldwide seem to focus on the Children of Abraham commonality in a specific subset of religions, local events (all two of them) during this week are being held in 1) a Unitarian Universalist church, and 2) a public library.

As I am unable to attend either of these events, I've decided to mark this week by finding and reviewing the seven other UN resolutions mentioned in this particular resolution. I'm a bit shocked that the UN General Assembly finds it necessary to repeatedly resolve to promote "a culture of peace and non-violence", and I'm curious as to the language of such resolutions...

Updates to this post after I digest the aforementioned data.

How To Create An Enemy

by Sam Keen

Start with an empty canvas.
Sketch in broad outline the forms of
men, women, and children.

Dip into the unconsciousness well of your own
disowned darkness
with a wide brush and strain the strangers
with the sinister hue of the shadow.

Trace onto the face of the enemy the greed,
hatred, carelessness you dare not claim as
your own.

Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.

Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes,
fears that play through the kaleidoscope of
every infinite heart.

Twist the smile until it forms the downward
arc of cruelty.

Strip flesh from bone until only the
abstract skeleton of death remains.

Exaggerate each feature until man is
metamorphosized into beast, vermin, insect.

Fill in the background with malignant
figures from ancient nightmares - devils,
demons, myrmidons of evil.

When your icon of the enemy is complete
you will be able to kill without guilt,
slaughter without shame.

The thing you destroy will have become
merely an enemy of God, an impediment
to the sacred dialectic of history.

I found this poem at the beginning of Juan Gomez-Jurado's international bestseller The Moses Expedition (2007). Perhaps more moving than the poem itself was the author's plea at the end of the acknowledgments... "Dear reader, I don't want to end this book without requesting a favor. Go back to the beginning of these pages and reread the poem by Sam Keen. Do it until you memorize every word. Teach it to your children; send it to your friends. Please." I trust that neither author will mind that I chose to share their words here.

Viruses of the Mind (Pt I)

"If human beings are capable of both good and evil, what can be done to ensure the realization of their positive potential?"

Any honest blog post has a back-story, and this one is no different. Recent events brought to mind, among other things, an episode of Law and Order: SVU that I had seen recently. The title of the episode was Infected, and the plot revolved around a scientific study that could 'explain' why a young boy shot and killed a man. The 'explanation' is captured in this bit of dialogue: "This study equates gun violence with an infectious disease. Anyone exposed to it is infected."  Today, as I was reading the paper, it occurred to me to wonder if this particular episode hadn't perhaps been 'inspired' by an actual scientific study...

A little googling brought me to a popular press report of just such a study. A lot of googling brought me to a copy of the actual study, published in Science in 2005. [pause for a disparaging glare at those publications that lock valuable knowledge behind pay walls] After measuring 153 other factors, including demographic, temperament, behavioral and family data, the authors concluded simply by saying "[W]e estimate that being exposed to firearm violence approximately doubles the probability that an adolescent will perpetrate serious violence over the 2 subsequent years." The catchiest bit of the idea that had brought me here - that violence could be likened to an infectious disease - didn't show up in the original paper, but rather in comments by the authors to the popular press publication. 

By this point I had scented a potential blog post, but what to say about all of this...? Did this study have any bearing on the recent event that still dominated today's front page? Is the value in the whirling creation and spread of the meme 'violence as contagion'? Where has this meme gone from here? (Follow-up studies, whose existence was hinted at, were hard to find.) Was a digression into memetics appropriate? Should I invoke the secular guru's essay, Viruses of the Mind? And what of a 'cure' for this 'infection'? If "viruses don't win every time", what keeps them from taking over, and how do we transmit that to the infected?

It's the last question that finally brought me back to this blog. Not because I think that I have the answer, but because I want the answer.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

- Max Ehrmann, 1927

This poem was quite popular in the late 60s and early 70s. I only recently discovered it, in a frame at a thrift store.

To The Best of Our Knowledge

"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us." - attributed to Donald Winnicott

"We believe our interpretations of reality intensely, and we want other people to join us in our interpretations to make us feel secure. We believe our interpretations are reality and if we can get enough votes we will prove it."

(For the gentleman we encountered last night.)

As usual, this blog post reflects a combination of things that have crossed my path or been on my mind recently. This post is about, in a word, skepticism. More specifically, it is about the intersection of skepticism and compassion/empathy. And the point I'm trying to make is illustrated in the following (true) story...

Some time ago I found myself in a conversation with an older gentleman during a reception. Having never met this man before, we began with the usual exchanges - where do you live, what do/did you do for a living, etc. Nothing about his responses was out of the range of the perfectly ordinary. But at some point (and I forget what the trigger was) the conversation took a distinct turn. He began to talk about UFOs, and then about shape-shifting aliens that lived among us.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, there are no shape-shifting aliens living among us. Which is to say, I have never met a shape-shifting alien. I have never personally known anyone (other than this gentleman) who had met or believed in the existence of shape-shifting aliens among us. And I had never seen any pictures/videos, etc., that suggested to me that there might be shape-shifting aliens living among us. Granted, I had never gone looking for such evidence, nor had I ever really given the matter much thought.

Curiosity runs strong in me, and this gentleman seemed sincere, though part of me suspected that he might just be waiting to see how long it would take me to call 'Bullshit!'. But it mattered not a whit to me that he be convinced that my view about shape-shifting aliens was the correct view. He seemed to want/need to talk about the topic of UFOs/aliens at some length, and something about me seems to say 'sympathetic/non-judgmental ear', so the conversation continued with a minimal amount of back channeling on my part. An occasional 'Wow' or (my personal favorite) 'I don't know what to do with that' was all that was required to keep him talking, until we were joined by another gentleman who was more insistent upon redirecting the conversation.

Perhaps the point I'm getting at with that story is that, once I was not concerned about establishing agreement about 'the truth' of the topic under discussion, I was free to enjoy (or at least try to understand) this person for who he was. Perhaps the point I'm getting at is that agreement about 'the truth' should not stand in the way of compassion. Perhaps the point I'm getting at is that I find myself experiencing a growing distaste for the sale of 'the truth' to one group of people at the expense of another. Or perhaps it's just a growing distaste for the dogmatic insistence upon one's own particular view of the truth.

Perhaps I'm just acquiring a new appreciation for the phrase "to the best of my knowledge"...

The Good Shepherd (Pt I)

"I am quite aware that it is necessary for the success of any complex undertaking that one man should do the thinking and directing and in general bear the responsibility. But the led must not be compelled, they must be able to choose their leader."

What I wish political elections reminded me of... "He who takes the greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden, that man is King."

What political elections actually remind me of... "All history is only one long story to this effect: Men have struggled for power over their fellow men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others, and might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others."

People are reasonably smart about choosing a leader. In small groups. In real-world settings. In situations where they have seen the options in action.

They will follow the person who is the smartest. Who has the best information and/or can use it the most effectively. Who can communicate to the group what the group needs to know. Who acts for the good of the group.

They do respect the person who takes on the dirty or difficult jobs that no one else wants to do. Who will bear the responsibility of a bad outcome without trying to shift the blame. Who does not have unreasonable expectations of them. Who is not afraid to consult them about what they know.

So why does the process of choosing leaders for much larger groups (e.g., states or nations) deviate so much from these simple yet effective criteria and observations?

That's largely a rhetorical question. I have no intention of trying to summarize the psychology of political elections. I am merely baffled by the discrepancy in how people behave in elections and how they decide to follow/nominate a 'leader' in their immediate circumstances/environment. And since I have a blog wherein I can rant about such things, here are just a few thoughts on leaders and leadership...

• A leader should fill a recognized need of the group. A group may need direction in completing a task, or they may need a representative voice, but they should have a clearly defined need before seeking a leader to fill that need. A leader should also be clear about the needs that s/he has been called to fill, and how s/he will go about filling those needs. The absence of a need should mean the absence of a leader.
• A potential leader should be assessed on his/her merits alone, not in comparison to 'the other guy'. Nothing is so dispiriting to the group psyche as feeling like you have only chosen 'the lesser of two evils'. Nothing (to me) embodies the antithesis of leadership so much as a potential leader who will encourage any perception of 'I'm not as bad as...'.
• Leadership is a burden that should be borne gracefully, not a title that should be sought desperately. Leadership should be a situation-specific response, not a coveted status. Nothing makes a leader so useless to his/her group as his/her own self-interest in preserving the status of 'leader'.

I've cast my votes in this election already, but not without thinking a great many thoughts in line with those stated above...

The Second-Class Employee

"Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world."

"The company also expects to use 150 to 250 seasonal, or "casual," employees who would do the same work as regular, full-time employees but for less pay and no benefits." (q)

Welcome New Employee,

We are pleased to have you on board as a [casual/seasonal/temporary] worker here at Company X. If you've been reading the newspapers lately, you'll have noticed that positions like yours are becoming an increasingly-popular way for companies to cut labor costs. Of course, you're probably just happy to have a job at this point, but let me spell out a few things for you about your new position...

The most important thing is, of course, that you are expendable. You were hired to fill a need, but that you will also be the first to go once that need has been met, regardless of how well you perform and/or how poorly the permanent employees perform in comparison to you.

You will have no benefits. This is the primary difference between you and a permanent employee. We don't want to incur the additional expense of your health insurance and your paid time-off. Voila! To avoid this expense, all we have to do is lay you off every now and then.

Because you are expendable, it will be assumed by everyone that eventually you will no longer be here. We will act accordingly and not invest too much effort in getting to know you. Also, the fact that you make less money and have no benefits makes us uncomfortable and reminds us just how close we might be to losing our jobs/benefits. So be prepared to only socialize with those sharing your status.

There's a good chance that we permanent employees sold you out to save our own jobs, but no gratitude will be forthcoming. We'll mostly just assume that you are stupid for agreeing to do this job for less pay and no benefits.

You will have to work harder than a permanent employee to be perceived as valuable. Since you aren't going to be here that long, we aren't going to invest a lot of time or effort in your training, so you'd better catch on quickly, and don't ever let us see you slacking.

Insecurity is your new companion. Really. You have to keep in mind that this job will soon end, and you should be thinking about what you're going to do after this. We also reserve the right to move up your end date at will, according to our needs.

Good news! We might keep you on longer than we said we would. Nothing about your status changes though, so don't get comfortable. (It'll be up to you to notice if we are violating any labor laws by having you as a de facto permanent/full-time employee without compensating you as such.)

Perhaps the most valuable piece of advice we can give you is this - It is not in your interest to help us improve our processes. Any such improvements will only result in us no longer needing your services that much sooner.

Like we said before, you're probably just happy to have a job - any job - right now. This isn't the kind of job you take out of anything except need/desperation. We know this, and frankly, it doesn't raise our opinion of you. Expect us to act accordingly. But do keep showing up to work with a smile on your face!

We can't tell you how restructuring our labor force to include [casual/seasonal/temporary] workers is not contributing to the development and perpetuation of a caste-system in the American labor force. We can tell you that 1) we will realize substantial savings in our labor costs, and 2) we will be reluctant to let those savings go once we can no longer plead this as a necessity of 'the economy'. Ironically, the continuous flux of you [casual/seasonal/temporary] workers in and out of the work force might actually contribute to a much slower economic recovery. But that's not really our problem.

Any psychological problems you might be having as a result of your second-class status can be directed to our Employee Assistance Hotline. But we advise that you try not to dwell on the inequalities. After all, doing a job well is its own reward!

Welcome Aboard!

Your New Employer