Monday, July 9, 2012
Phlogiston, for theToastmasters
This blog is from a speech given at Toastmasters on July 2, 2012. It’s about a substance that never really was -- phlogiston! What was it good for? The phlogiston story illustrates how a wrong idea can lead to a useful concept.
Scientific knowledge begins with working hypotheses, tentative theories, that seem to fit what’s been observed. Between 1650 and 1750 there were two theories of combustion or burning. The first working hypothesis was the phlogiston theory.
The phlogiston theory stated that all combustible substances contained an invisible, odorless, weightless material called phlogiston. During burning, the phlogiston was released. (Picture the phlogiston like a flame.) After combustion, a dephlogisticated substance remained. For instance, when magnesium burned it released the phlogiston it contained to the air and left a dephlogisticated substance, magnesium’s true nature, called the calx. Air could hold only so much phlogiston, which explained why a burning candle extinguished in a closed jar.
It was also noted that a mouse died if left in a closed jar. Rather than attribute the mouse’s death to the loss of its Life Force, the phlogistians understood that the role of air in respiration was to remove phlogiston from the body. More importantly, the phlogistians realized that apparently different phenomena, the process of combustion and the respiration of living organisms, were fundamentally similar because both involved the release of phlogiston.
Joseph Priestley, minister and chemist, was a staunch supporter of the phlogiston theory. As a minister, Priestley helped to found Unitarianism in England. As a chemist, Priestley discovered a gas that kept a candle burning or a mouse alive longer than ordinary air. He named his new gas dephlogisticated air because it could suck up more phlogiston than ordinary air.
The Antiphlogiston theory, the oxygen theory, was the inverse of the phlogiston theory. Instead of phlogiston leaving a burning substance, the oxygen theory stated that a substance in the air, oxygen, combined with the burning substance to form a third substance. In the above example magnesium would combine with oxygen to form magnesium oxide, formerly seen as the calx. Another example, when the carbon in fossil fuels burns, it combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide.
Don’t both the phlogiston theory and the oxygen theory seem plausible? Maybe the phlogiston theory even more so because it doesn’t postulate a third substance, the oxide.
The phlogiston theory had its problems from the get-go. For instance, the calx left after magnesium burned weighed more than the original magnesium. Priestley, who was a better minister than chemist, was the last phlogiston holdout against the Antiphlogistians.
Then other chemists like Lomonosov and Lavoisier started weighing compounds and gases in closed vessels before and after combustion. Something wasn’t right; phlogiston had a negative mass. Of course, something that weighs less than nothing can’t exist. Thus ended the hundred-year reign of the phlogiston theory. The Antiplogistians, the oxygen guys, triumphed. Priestly, ironically, is credited with the discovery of oxygen, the modern name for dephlogisticated air.
In the 21st century, some of us follow Priestley’s religion, but nobody believes in phlogiston anymore. However, the phlogiston theory, although wrong, produced the very important scientific insight I alluded to earlier: that is, combustion and respiration in living organisms were the same process. We now see both as processes combining a substance with oxygen. The idea that respiration in our bodies is not due to a mystic Life Force – it’s just chemistry – paved the way to modern medicine and pharmacy.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Dunbar's Number and Optimum Congregation Size
Even if the sermon was trite, the music banal, and my mind too restless to gain insights during the meditation, connecting with my church community (about 100 people on Sunday mornings) always renewed me. I loved going where I knew everyone, where I was known. Where I knew the minister and the minister knew me.
Then we hired a new young minister who turned out to be a dynamite preacher. Attendance doubled. By the time I welcomed all the new people, there was no time at coffee hour to connect with my old friends. My community had disappeared into the crowd.
There’s a scientific reason for why the tenor of my congregation changed. Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary anthropologist from Oxford, says, “...there is a natural grouping of 150. This is the number of people you can have a relationship with involving trust and obligation – there's some personal history, not just names and faces.” That number, 150, has become known as Dunbar’s number.
The Alban Institute, a consulting, research, publishing, and education firm that focuses on church life, confirms that once attendance surpasses Dunbar’s number, churches lose their family feeling and the governance undergoes a qualitative shift.
According to the Alban Institute, in a Pastoral church congregation of 50-150, the congregation has a sense of family—everyone knows everyone else. Each member can expect personal attention from the pastor. The majority [71%] of all churches in the United States are this size.
Once a church has more than Dunbar’s number of 150 adults and children attending it becomes a Program church. At that point, a qualitative shift occurs and a true organization comes into being. Formal governing, formal communication, formal leadership roles and responsibilities, and explicit procedures become necessary.
As our church expanded into Program size, running the place got more formal and complicated. For instance, committees now had to submit their minutes to the Board which became simultaneously more remote and more powerful. Church work became more talk than action; I felt like Sisyphus rolling that stone uphill forever.
Everyone in the congregation seemed to assume that church growth was a good thing, but Texas minister James Nored says in missionaloutreachnetwork.com blog: “...this growth [>150] will cause a loss of intimacy and knowing everyone who is in the church.”
If people in our church complained, “we’re getting too big,” the staff told them to join a small group, but strong personalities dominate small groups. Besides, joining a group means you have to go to church more than once a week – for Sunday and for the group. Not only that, since small groups are often segregated by age, gender etc, we lose our mixed, intergenerational community.
In a Program church, says the Alban Institute, the minister recruits and leads key lay leaders and staff. This team creates separate programs for children, youth, couples, seniors, and other age and interest groups. The church becomes known for the excellence of its programs.
As far as I was concerned, my church was trading community for potentially improved programming. Programming, shmogramming! As I see it, lectures and music are available elsewhere, but community is priceless.
Rather than let our congregations jump the shark and grow beyond Dunbar’s number, let’s do spin off churches. In a church plant, twenty or thirty members agree to take their pledges and their energy to found a satellite congregation. The satellite group can rent a room and use taped sermons from the home church until they get a minister. They have both their own community and the resources of the home congregation. When the satellite church expands to Dunbar’s number, it can spin off again.
Grow the movement, but keep community.
Friday, February 3, 2012
The Better Angels Return in a Sermon
The Better Angels of Our Nature
Good morning! As befits a new year, my sermon this morning emphasizes optimism, not doom and gloom. Even though as David Brooks says, [NYT 11/27/04] only pessimists are regarded as intellectually serious. I want to share with you from a dog trainer and Unitarian Unversalist perspective a wonderful new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker, an evolutionary psychologist at Harvard. This book combines the enjoyment of a sudoku puzzle and a Grisham thriller: the fun of seeing patterns and finding out how the patterns work out. Pinker summarizes his 700 page opus in one sentence: "Violence has declined over long stretches of time, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species' existence."
When I tell people the thesis of the book, most say no, that can’t be and give me one example of modern violence such as turmoil in the Middle East or Africa. However, one event, which could be an outlier, does not a trend make. Besides, we remember recent events, then since they’re easy to remember, we believe these events are more probable. Pinker looks at the long span of human history and counts acts of violence over time. Think of Brother Gregor Mendel who counted his peas and founded modern genetics. Instead of peas, Pinker counts acts of violence per capita of world population. He then graphs them and as you flip through the book the trends all approach zero.
Pinker corroborates Martin Luther King, Jr who used to say, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” King was paraphrasing 19th century abolitionist and Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. The original quote: "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."
Theodore Parker divined the bend toward justice by means of conscience; Pinker proves it with facts and stats. I’m going to emphasize what Pinker calls the humanitarian and rights revolutions; most people find these changes easier to accept than the diminution of violence from war and homicide. Here’s an example of how we can visualize the humanitarian revolution: let’s take a virtual journey to the Benton County courthouse. We’ll see a clock tower, a grand staircase and a green lawn. Is there a debtor’s prison in the basement? Will we see an adulteress stoned? Will we see a witch or heretic being burned at the stake? Will we see devices to publically hurt and kill people such as a whipping post or gallows? Will we see a slave market? An emphatic No! to all of the above. Rather we might see an art show or peaceful protestors. Those are examples we can all observe of the humanitarian and rights revolutions.
We’re going to travel through history following three bumper stickers Pinker cites: LOVE THY NEIGHBOR, SHIT HAPPENS, ALL PERSONS ARE CREATED EQUAL. All of these bumper stickers represent great moral advances, even SHIT HAPPENS. You will see why.
First bumper sticker aphorism: LOVE THY NEIGHBOR. At the Ware lecture during the 2011 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly Karen Armstrong spoke about the Golden Rule and compassion. I quote from her lecture: “Each one of the major faiths . . . has developed its own version of the Golden Rule, never to treat others as you would not like to be treated yourself.”
Armstrong continues, “My favorite Golden Rule story belongs to Hillel, the great Pharisee, who was an older contemporary of Jesus. A pagan came to Hillel one day and promised to convert to Judaism on condition that Hillel could recite the whole of Jewish teaching while he stood on one leg. Hillel stood on one leg and said ‘that which is hateful to you do not to your fellow man. That is the Torah, and everything else is only commentary. Go and study it.’” Our own second Unitarian Universalist principle affirms and promotes justice, equity and compassion in human relations.
But think of what society was like during Biblical times. As Pinker says, “The Bible is one long celebration of violence.” Stoning was prescribed for offenses like adultery that are no longer criminal. Beating children was a virtue. Women were the spoils of war to be raped by the victors. Human sacrifice was on its way out, but slavery and genocide were taken for granted. How remarkable is it that the Golden Rule came out of the society depicted in the Bible!
So what has changed in 2,000 years to bring about a society where we see all as fellow beings, where we are safe from cruel and unusual punishments, and we all have rights?
First, what Pinker calls the Pacification Process took place. As you all know, I’m a dog owner and as a dog owner, there’s nothing in it for me when my dogs fight. So I insist on peace, not because I’m nice, but because I don’t want expensive emergency vet bills. I’m the Queen in charge of both dogs; they don’t get to settle their own disputes via violence. Similarly, when larger entities than clans and tribes developed, the larger entity became the peacekeeper. No more hunter-gatherer raids on neighboring settlements. No more Hatfield-McCoy type feuds. Pinker says as kings took over during medieval times, “Turf battles among knights were a nuisance to the increasingly powerful kings, because regardless of which side prevailed, peasants were killed and productive capacity was destroyed that from the kings’ point of view would be better off stoking their own revenues and armies.” Less violence.
And for the dogs living in my home, it’s in their best interest to curry favor with me with
Sit! Stay! Off the couch! because I dole out all the good stuff like food, walkies, and belly rubs when the dogs do what I want. Such a civilizing process happened during medieval times. Pinker says, “A man’s ticket to fortune no longer consisted of being the biggest baddest knight in the area, but making a pilgrimage to the king’s court and currying favor with him and his entourage. The nobles had to cultivate their manners so as not to offend the king’s minions, and their empathy to understand what they wanted. The manners appropriate for the court came to be called courtly manners or courtesy.” By refraining from gross behaviors like blowing their noses on the tablecloth, people developed self control. The homicide rate in England has declined to about one thirty-fifth of what it was in medieval times. Courtesy leads to less violence.
In an economic system based on land the only way to get richer was to steal someone else’s, but in an economy based on trading surpluses, your neighbor becomes more valuable to you alive than dead. As commerce grows, so does communication. About 3,000 years ago the Phoenicians invented the alphabet in order to trade between the Egyptians and the Babylonians.
As commerce has grown, so has violence declined. Robert Wright, author of NonZero about the expansion of cooperation through history, says, “Among the many reasons why I think we shouldn’t bomb the Japanese is that they made my minivan.” A thought: globalization leads to peace.
Pinker suggests that the Humanitarian Revolution, when the state became less brutal in enforcing its will, began in 1452 with the invention of the printing press. Literacy spread and by about 1700 the majority of Englishmen could read and write. During that century, the 1700s, philosophers such as Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton formulated the Enlightenment. Basically, the values of the Enlightenment were that reason, not faith or authority, was the supreme arbiter and the well being of all humans was the paramount value.
Sound familiar? Our Unitarian Universalist principles celebrate the well being of all humans when we remember our first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and our second principle, justice, equity, and compassion for all. Our fifth Unitarian Universalist Source states, “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.”
During the 1800s, circulating libraries became widespread, mostly featuring novels. When English majors read novels, they look for imagery, symbolism, metaphors, and verisimilitude. Note $10 word! When unsophisticated people like me read a novel, we identify with the characters and we want to see what happens to them. During the 19th century, Pinker suggests, as people identified with fictional characters, they gained empathy for people different from them. Slavery, judicial torture, cruel and unusual punishments, and debtor’s prisons were all outlawed during the 19th century Humanitarian Revolution. Less violence.
My next bumper sticker aphorism is SHIT HAPPENS. What’s implied in that bumper sticker is natural forces rather than witches or the devil cause bad things to happen. Even if the vet doesn’t know why my dog got sick, it wasn’t because Diana put a spell on him. Which saves Diana from being tortured until she confesses she’s a witch then brutally executed for being a witch. This is what used to happen. Now SHIT just HAPPENS and there’s no blame or punishment. Belief in spells and witches, along with some religious dogmas, are examples of ideologies, statements that can’t be proven with data accessible to all.
How can you tell if a belief is an ideology? The ideology is more important than the people involved. The glorious future justifies current suffering. Scientific statements can be established with data, but the only way to establish an ideological statement is by converting, by force if necessary, those who don’t believe in it.
After the 19th century of advances in toleration and humanitarianism, we had a bad half century, 1900-1950, a half century ruled by romantic counter-enlightenment ideologies that weren’t religious, but secular. Non religious ideologies such as nationalism, honor, and the glorious nature of war fueled World War I. That war, the war to end all wars, put an end to the ideology of the glorious nature of war, but new secular ideologies arose: communism, fascism, and the belief the Jews, rather than witches, did it. World War II was fueled by fascism and communism. Communism fueled famines in Russia and China.
Although in 1950, the eminent historian Arnold Toynbee saw World War II as the penultimate step toward disaster, an obscure physicist named Lewis Fry Richardson “chose statistics over impressions to defy the common impression that global nuclear war was a certainty. More than half a century later we know the eminent historian was wrong and the obscure physicist was right,” says Pinker.
Now to my third bumper sticker aphorism: ALL PERSONS ARE CREATED EQUAL which applies to the Rights Revolution between 1950 - 2012, within the lifetime of many in this room.
The rights of racial and ethnic minorities. In the 1950s, racial segregation was enforced by law and custom, whereas now even mentioning something as mild as that segregation avoided conflict gets a person in trouble. Segregation took much violence to maintain. Remember the deaths of our Unitarian martyrs James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo.
The rights of women. Societies moving away from cultures of manly honor and where women get a better deal tend to be less violent. Males have an incentive to compete for females, whereas females have an incentive to stay away from risks that would orphan their children. Women on the average are the less violent sex; as they gain influence, the societies they live in become less violent. Married men are less violent because they’re invested in their children rather than competing with other males. Then as girl fetuses and infants are allowed to live, unbalanced sex ratios don’t develop.
Societies with a scarcity of women have an excess of poor men [the rich ones get the available women] with nothing to lose who may become thugs, mercenaries and disturb the peace. Although as parents know, two year olds are the most violent age, most violence is committed by fifteen to thirty year old men.
The rights of children. Violence toward children used to be how you taught them; now you can’t hit kids even if they’re driving you crazy.
The rights of gays. Gays are no longer demonized as sick and wrong. Hillary Clinton said in December 2011: “Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” Later that month the United Nations endorsed the rights of gay and transgender persons.
The rights of animals. As well as people, animals are also considered to have rights. In my humble opinion, times weren’t ripe until the mid 90s for Karen Pryor’s technique of no punishment clicker training for dogs. The method had been around since the 1950s, but in an era when children were still being spanked, who cared about “correcting” dogs? Temple Grandin advocates humane slaughter. Even Michael Vicks’ fighting pit bulls aroused sympathy.
I’ll close with one more reason why the world is becoming less violent. Despite what you see on television, people are getting smarter. In 1984 James Flynn discovered that IQ test companies were renorming the scores. Later generations given the same questions as earlier generations got more of them correct. The eponymous Flynn Effect has been found in 30 countries for over 100 years. The biggest gains weren’t in math or vocabulary, but in the items that tap abstract reasoning, the ability to think in “what if?” terms. This ability is similar to being able to put oneself in someone else’s shoes that is, expand the circle of moral consideration and live the Golden Rule. Smart people understand that a world without violence is better for all and can figure out how to get there.
In conclusion, I quote again from Pinker’s book. “[The nostalgic] claim our ancestors did not have to worry about muggings, school shootings, terrorist attacks, holocausts, world wars, killing fields, napalm, gulags, and nuclear annihilation. Surely no Boeing 747, no antibiotic, no iPod is worth the suffering that modern societies and their technologies can wreak. . .[But] unsentimental history and statistical literacy can change our view of modernity. For they show that nostalgia for a peaceable past is the biggest delusion of all. . .On top of all the benefits modernity has brought us in health, experience, and knowledge, we can add its role in the reduction of violence. . .Today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species' existence." The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. May it be so.
Good morning! As befits a new year, my sermon this morning emphasizes optimism, not doom and gloom. Even though as David Brooks says, [NYT 11/27/04] only pessimists are regarded as intellectually serious. I want to share with you from a dog trainer and Unitarian Unversalist perspective a wonderful new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker, an evolutionary psychologist at Harvard. This book combines the enjoyment of a sudoku puzzle and a Grisham thriller: the fun of seeing patterns and finding out how the patterns work out. Pinker summarizes his 700 page opus in one sentence: "Violence has declined over long stretches of time, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species' existence."
When I tell people the thesis of the book, most say no, that can’t be and give me one example of modern violence such as turmoil in the Middle East or Africa. However, one event, which could be an outlier, does not a trend make. Besides, we remember recent events, then since they’re easy to remember, we believe these events are more probable. Pinker looks at the long span of human history and counts acts of violence over time. Think of Brother Gregor Mendel who counted his peas and founded modern genetics. Instead of peas, Pinker counts acts of violence per capita of world population. He then graphs them and as you flip through the book the trends all approach zero.
Pinker corroborates Martin Luther King, Jr who used to say, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” King was paraphrasing 19th century abolitionist and Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. The original quote: "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."
Theodore Parker divined the bend toward justice by means of conscience; Pinker proves it with facts and stats. I’m going to emphasize what Pinker calls the humanitarian and rights revolutions; most people find these changes easier to accept than the diminution of violence from war and homicide. Here’s an example of how we can visualize the humanitarian revolution: let’s take a virtual journey to the Benton County courthouse. We’ll see a clock tower, a grand staircase and a green lawn. Is there a debtor’s prison in the basement? Will we see an adulteress stoned? Will we see a witch or heretic being burned at the stake? Will we see devices to publically hurt and kill people such as a whipping post or gallows? Will we see a slave market? An emphatic No! to all of the above. Rather we might see an art show or peaceful protestors. Those are examples we can all observe of the humanitarian and rights revolutions.
We’re going to travel through history following three bumper stickers Pinker cites: LOVE THY NEIGHBOR, SHIT HAPPENS, ALL PERSONS ARE CREATED EQUAL. All of these bumper stickers represent great moral advances, even SHIT HAPPENS. You will see why.
First bumper sticker aphorism: LOVE THY NEIGHBOR. At the Ware lecture during the 2011 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly Karen Armstrong spoke about the Golden Rule and compassion. I quote from her lecture: “Each one of the major faiths . . . has developed its own version of the Golden Rule, never to treat others as you would not like to be treated yourself.”
Armstrong continues, “My favorite Golden Rule story belongs to Hillel, the great Pharisee, who was an older contemporary of Jesus. A pagan came to Hillel one day and promised to convert to Judaism on condition that Hillel could recite the whole of Jewish teaching while he stood on one leg. Hillel stood on one leg and said ‘that which is hateful to you do not to your fellow man. That is the Torah, and everything else is only commentary. Go and study it.’” Our own second Unitarian Universalist principle affirms and promotes justice, equity and compassion in human relations.
But think of what society was like during Biblical times. As Pinker says, “The Bible is one long celebration of violence.” Stoning was prescribed for offenses like adultery that are no longer criminal. Beating children was a virtue. Women were the spoils of war to be raped by the victors. Human sacrifice was on its way out, but slavery and genocide were taken for granted. How remarkable is it that the Golden Rule came out of the society depicted in the Bible!
So what has changed in 2,000 years to bring about a society where we see all as fellow beings, where we are safe from cruel and unusual punishments, and we all have rights?
First, what Pinker calls the Pacification Process took place. As you all know, I’m a dog owner and as a dog owner, there’s nothing in it for me when my dogs fight. So I insist on peace, not because I’m nice, but because I don’t want expensive emergency vet bills. I’m the Queen in charge of both dogs; they don’t get to settle their own disputes via violence. Similarly, when larger entities than clans and tribes developed, the larger entity became the peacekeeper. No more hunter-gatherer raids on neighboring settlements. No more Hatfield-McCoy type feuds. Pinker says as kings took over during medieval times, “Turf battles among knights were a nuisance to the increasingly powerful kings, because regardless of which side prevailed, peasants were killed and productive capacity was destroyed that from the kings’ point of view would be better off stoking their own revenues and armies.” Less violence.
And for the dogs living in my home, it’s in their best interest to curry favor with me with
Sit! Stay! Off the couch! because I dole out all the good stuff like food, walkies, and belly rubs when the dogs do what I want. Such a civilizing process happened during medieval times. Pinker says, “A man’s ticket to fortune no longer consisted of being the biggest baddest knight in the area, but making a pilgrimage to the king’s court and currying favor with him and his entourage. The nobles had to cultivate their manners so as not to offend the king’s minions, and their empathy to understand what they wanted. The manners appropriate for the court came to be called courtly manners or courtesy.” By refraining from gross behaviors like blowing their noses on the tablecloth, people developed self control. The homicide rate in England has declined to about one thirty-fifth of what it was in medieval times. Courtesy leads to less violence.
In an economic system based on land the only way to get richer was to steal someone else’s, but in an economy based on trading surpluses, your neighbor becomes more valuable to you alive than dead. As commerce grows, so does communication. About 3,000 years ago the Phoenicians invented the alphabet in order to trade between the Egyptians and the Babylonians.
As commerce has grown, so has violence declined. Robert Wright, author of NonZero about the expansion of cooperation through history, says, “Among the many reasons why I think we shouldn’t bomb the Japanese is that they made my minivan.” A thought: globalization leads to peace.
Pinker suggests that the Humanitarian Revolution, when the state became less brutal in enforcing its will, began in 1452 with the invention of the printing press. Literacy spread and by about 1700 the majority of Englishmen could read and write. During that century, the 1700s, philosophers such as Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton formulated the Enlightenment. Basically, the values of the Enlightenment were that reason, not faith or authority, was the supreme arbiter and the well being of all humans was the paramount value.
Sound familiar? Our Unitarian Universalist principles celebrate the well being of all humans when we remember our first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and our second principle, justice, equity, and compassion for all. Our fifth Unitarian Universalist Source states, “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.”
During the 1800s, circulating libraries became widespread, mostly featuring novels. When English majors read novels, they look for imagery, symbolism, metaphors, and verisimilitude. Note $10 word! When unsophisticated people like me read a novel, we identify with the characters and we want to see what happens to them. During the 19th century, Pinker suggests, as people identified with fictional characters, they gained empathy for people different from them. Slavery, judicial torture, cruel and unusual punishments, and debtor’s prisons were all outlawed during the 19th century Humanitarian Revolution. Less violence.
My next bumper sticker aphorism is SHIT HAPPENS. What’s implied in that bumper sticker is natural forces rather than witches or the devil cause bad things to happen. Even if the vet doesn’t know why my dog got sick, it wasn’t because Diana put a spell on him. Which saves Diana from being tortured until she confesses she’s a witch then brutally executed for being a witch. This is what used to happen. Now SHIT just HAPPENS and there’s no blame or punishment. Belief in spells and witches, along with some religious dogmas, are examples of ideologies, statements that can’t be proven with data accessible to all.
How can you tell if a belief is an ideology? The ideology is more important than the people involved. The glorious future justifies current suffering. Scientific statements can be established with data, but the only way to establish an ideological statement is by converting, by force if necessary, those who don’t believe in it.
After the 19th century of advances in toleration and humanitarianism, we had a bad half century, 1900-1950, a half century ruled by romantic counter-enlightenment ideologies that weren’t religious, but secular. Non religious ideologies such as nationalism, honor, and the glorious nature of war fueled World War I. That war, the war to end all wars, put an end to the ideology of the glorious nature of war, but new secular ideologies arose: communism, fascism, and the belief the Jews, rather than witches, did it. World War II was fueled by fascism and communism. Communism fueled famines in Russia and China.
Although in 1950, the eminent historian Arnold Toynbee saw World War II as the penultimate step toward disaster, an obscure physicist named Lewis Fry Richardson “chose statistics over impressions to defy the common impression that global nuclear war was a certainty. More than half a century later we know the eminent historian was wrong and the obscure physicist was right,” says Pinker.
Now to my third bumper sticker aphorism: ALL PERSONS ARE CREATED EQUAL which applies to the Rights Revolution between 1950 - 2012, within the lifetime of many in this room.
The rights of racial and ethnic minorities. In the 1950s, racial segregation was enforced by law and custom, whereas now even mentioning something as mild as that segregation avoided conflict gets a person in trouble. Segregation took much violence to maintain. Remember the deaths of our Unitarian martyrs James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo.
The rights of women. Societies moving away from cultures of manly honor and where women get a better deal tend to be less violent. Males have an incentive to compete for females, whereas females have an incentive to stay away from risks that would orphan their children. Women on the average are the less violent sex; as they gain influence, the societies they live in become less violent. Married men are less violent because they’re invested in their children rather than competing with other males. Then as girl fetuses and infants are allowed to live, unbalanced sex ratios don’t develop.
Societies with a scarcity of women have an excess of poor men [the rich ones get the available women] with nothing to lose who may become thugs, mercenaries and disturb the peace. Although as parents know, two year olds are the most violent age, most violence is committed by fifteen to thirty year old men.
The rights of children. Violence toward children used to be how you taught them; now you can’t hit kids even if they’re driving you crazy.
The rights of gays. Gays are no longer demonized as sick and wrong. Hillary Clinton said in December 2011: “Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” Later that month the United Nations endorsed the rights of gay and transgender persons.
The rights of animals. As well as people, animals are also considered to have rights. In my humble opinion, times weren’t ripe until the mid 90s for Karen Pryor’s technique of no punishment clicker training for dogs. The method had been around since the 1950s, but in an era when children were still being spanked, who cared about “correcting” dogs? Temple Grandin advocates humane slaughter. Even Michael Vicks’ fighting pit bulls aroused sympathy.
I’ll close with one more reason why the world is becoming less violent. Despite what you see on television, people are getting smarter. In 1984 James Flynn discovered that IQ test companies were renorming the scores. Later generations given the same questions as earlier generations got more of them correct. The eponymous Flynn Effect has been found in 30 countries for over 100 years. The biggest gains weren’t in math or vocabulary, but in the items that tap abstract reasoning, the ability to think in “what if?” terms. This ability is similar to being able to put oneself in someone else’s shoes that is, expand the circle of moral consideration and live the Golden Rule. Smart people understand that a world without violence is better for all and can figure out how to get there.
In conclusion, I quote again from Pinker’s book. “[The nostalgic] claim our ancestors did not have to worry about muggings, school shootings, terrorist attacks, holocausts, world wars, killing fields, napalm, gulags, and nuclear annihilation. Surely no Boeing 747, no antibiotic, no iPod is worth the suffering that modern societies and their technologies can wreak. . .[But] unsentimental history and statistical literacy can change our view of modernity. For they show that nostalgia for a peaceable past is the biggest delusion of all. . .On top of all the benefits modernity has brought us in health, experience, and knowledge, we can add its role in the reduction of violence. . .Today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species' existence." The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. May it be so.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Please Don't Make Me Check In!
When it’s time to check in at church meetings, I cringe. Every time I’m put into such a position of such forced intimacy, I feel as though I’m being asked to rip off a piece of skin and feed it to the group. Contrary to Joys and Sorrows, where only those willing share, everyone is expected to share something at the check-ins.
The idea that the check-in ritual is valuable at all meetings has taken on the force of dogma. In an article “Check-In, Check-Out” in The Systems Thinker, May 1994, Fred Kofman articulates the popular view of check-ins: “The basic meeting ‘check-in’ gives each participant a turn to briefly share what is happening in ‘their world’—what they are thinking, feeling, and wanting at that moment— [and] have it acknowledged by the group, which allows them to ‘set it aside,’ so that they can be more fully present at the current meeting and not distracted by everything else.”
Let’s examine the assumptions. Do they always apply? Kofman states checking in “. . . gives each participant a turn to share . . . ” which assumes each participant is eager to tell the others “what is happening in their world.” This first questionable assumption implies that psychologically healthy people want to share their feelings even in business meetings. As I see it, fellow committee members aren’t strangers or enemies, but they’re not therapists or intimate friends, either. They’re friendly acquaintances, not people to whom you would reveal you’re on the verge of a breakup. Besides, checking in encourages oversharing. “If it’s about me, it must be interesting.” What’s happened to discretion, healthy boundaries, privacy? It embarrasses me to go on a tour of someone’s colon.
“Have it acknowledged by the group” is the second questionable assumption. Is a group murmur an acknowledgment? I often wonder if group members are focusing on the speakers or figuring out what they’re planning to share? And will the group share what I say with the rest of the congregation? It’s claimed there is confidentiality in church meetings, but to be safe I only say things in groups that I don’t mind the whole congregation knowing.
Kofman’s third premise is the hydraulic theory of emotion, the concept that emotions expressed are emotions dissipated, implied in the phrase, “which allows them to ‘set it aside.’” Psychologist and author Martin Seligman explains in Authentic Happiness, “Freud and all his descendants. . . [see] . . .emotions as forces inside a system closed by an impermeable membrane, like a balloon. If you do not allow yourself to express an emotion, it will squeeze its way out at some other point, usually as an undesirable symptom.”
Contrary to the hydraulic theory of emotion, research on anger and depression (cited by Seligman) has shown expressing a feeling reinforces the feeling. Going over an issue over and over again digs a rut in the mind. In dog training, we don’t let the dog rehearse behaviors we don’t like before we train an alternate behavior. We keep food off the coffee table until we have trained the dog to reliably “leave it.” As well as to do business, maybe people come to a meeting in order to distract themselves from something they’re ruminating on. Having to dredge it up for the group defeats that purpose.
“So that they can be fully present at the meeting.” Get real. People have just reminded themselves of what was bothering them, thus making it even harder to be “not distracted,” otherwise known as paying attention. Whether or not I mention my mother’s death, I’m not going to forget she just died.
Another supposed benefit of check-ins is learning to listen with empathy. However, people have no time to tell their full story. How can the group be truly empathetic to a fragment? Suggestions about policies can be a lot more controversial, therefore more challenging to hear, than feelings. Why couldn’t we practice listening by attending to other people’s ideas about the business of the meeting? At least talking about the meeting’s business could get something done, which is why we dragged ourselves out to the meeting in the first place.
Sometimes I do have something on my mind, something I don’t want to talk about. I cope with the pressure to share by dredging up something innocuous such as the morning’s pleasant walk with my dog, but lying about what’s really on my mind makes me uncomfortable. Moreover, trivial news defeats the purpose of check-ins, making the whole exercise a waste of time.
But wait, I just learned I have the Ebola virus, may I share?
Monday, October 17, 2011
Better Angels, Part 3
Looking at the decline of violence on a more recent time scale, Rebecca Solnit says in Hope in the Dark that when she was born in 1961 there weren’t even words for things like domestic violence, hate crimes, homophobia, or sexual harassment. I was a young adult then and that stuff was just called life.
Back in the 40s and 50s, gays and lesbians were considered sick and wrong so it was OK to persecute them. People with brown or black skin were considered subhuman so it was OK to punish them for being uppity. My mother’s pediatrician told her to throw cold water on me when I cried, child abuse today. When I got my first dog in the mid eighties, collar jerk “corrections” was how you trained dogs. In the 90s and 00s, Karen Pryor brought no-punishment clicker training to dog training and Temple Grandin advocated for humane slaughter of livestock animals.
Why the change to less violence? Pinker says there are four reasons: 1. With the rise of modern states, police forces keep the peace. The state has a monopoly on violence, vastly reducing violence between individuals. 2. Life used to be cheap. People led short and painful lives, so it was no big deal to inflict pain and death on someone. 3. It benefits both parties to trade with neighbors instead of fighting them. Robert Wright says in Non Zero we now have developed “expanding networks of reciprocity.” 4. More empathy for people who are not like us because we can identify with them through journalism, memoir, film, and realistic fiction. By now, because of the previous three factors we can actually practice the compassion inherent in all faiths, which include some form of the Golden Rule.
In conclusion, I am proud to have contributed in a small way to the diminution of violence. I’ve published a couple of short memoirs, generating empathy for people who’ve had experiences like mine. I’m a clicker trainer for dogs, a system that uses only rewards to modify animals’ behavior.
King's often repeated statement, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice" was his summation of 19th century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, who, in "Of Justice and the Conscience" (1853) asserted: "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."
Parker divined the bend towards justice by conscience; Pinker proved it with statistics. We humans still have a ways to go; our standards rise faster than our actions, but I have hope by the next millennium, violence will have become what people used to do to each other.
Back in the 40s and 50s, gays and lesbians were considered sick and wrong so it was OK to persecute them. People with brown or black skin were considered subhuman so it was OK to punish them for being uppity. My mother’s pediatrician told her to throw cold water on me when I cried, child abuse today. When I got my first dog in the mid eighties, collar jerk “corrections” was how you trained dogs. In the 90s and 00s, Karen Pryor brought no-punishment clicker training to dog training and Temple Grandin advocated for humane slaughter of livestock animals.
Why the change to less violence? Pinker says there are four reasons: 1. With the rise of modern states, police forces keep the peace. The state has a monopoly on violence, vastly reducing violence between individuals. 2. Life used to be cheap. People led short and painful lives, so it was no big deal to inflict pain and death on someone. 3. It benefits both parties to trade with neighbors instead of fighting them. Robert Wright says in Non Zero we now have developed “expanding networks of reciprocity.” 4. More empathy for people who are not like us because we can identify with them through journalism, memoir, film, and realistic fiction. By now, because of the previous three factors we can actually practice the compassion inherent in all faiths, which include some form of the Golden Rule.
In conclusion, I am proud to have contributed in a small way to the diminution of violence. I’ve published a couple of short memoirs, generating empathy for people who’ve had experiences like mine. I’m a clicker trainer for dogs, a system that uses only rewards to modify animals’ behavior.
King's often repeated statement, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice" was his summation of 19th century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, who, in "Of Justice and the Conscience" (1853) asserted: "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."
Parker divined the bend towards justice by conscience; Pinker proved it with statistics. We humans still have a ways to go; our standards rise faster than our actions, but I have hope by the next millennium, violence will have become what people used to do to each other.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Better Angels, Part 2
I’ve noticed this decline in violence in my reading. Jared Diamond says in Guns, Germs, and Steel, “In traditional [hunter-gatherer] New Guinea society, if a New Guinean happened to encounter an unfamiliar New Guinean while both were away from their respective villages, the two engaged in a long discussion of their relatives, in an attempt to establish some relationship and hence some reason why the two should not attempt to kill each other.” Now, if civility doesn’t arbitrate a dispute the police will.
The Hebrew Bible, a book recounting the history of a nomadic tribe transitioning to agriculture, features human sacrifice, slavery, and execution by stoning to death. The New Testament pastoral society still had stonings, with the Romans having added crucifixion. As Pinker says, The Bible is one long celebration of violence.” Given this violent society, how remarkable is it that the Bible tells us to practice compassion to all. The Prophet Micah said what is required is to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” The Rabbi Jesus showed a despised Samaritan as an example of how to be a neighbor. Jesus told us to practice the Golden Rule, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Karen Armstrong spoke about the Golden Rule and compassion during the Ware lecture at the 2011 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I quote from her lecture: “Each one of the major faiths, I discovered, has at its core the ethic of compassion. Every single one of them has developed its own version of the Golden Rule, never to treat others as you would not like to be treated yourself, and has said that this is the test of spirituality; that it is this which takes us beyond the prism of ego and selfishness and greed, that enables us to enter into our best selves and into the presence of what some have called God, others Nirvana, Brahmin or Dao.
“The first person, as far as I know, to enunciate the golden rule was Confucius some 500 years before Christ. Never treat others, says Confucius, as you would not like to be treated yourself.
“My favorite Golden Rule story belongs to Hillel, the great Pharisee, who was an older contemporary of Jesus. And it said that a pagan came to Hillel one day and promised to convert to Judaism on condition that Hillel could recite the whole of Jewish teaching while he stood on one leg. And Hillel stood on one leg and said that which is hateful to you do not to your fellow man. That is the Torah, and everything else is only commentary. Go and study it.”
Armstrong says we see formulations of the Golden Rule in all three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. “Love the stranger, love the foreign, says Leviticus. Love your enemies, said Jesus. Reach out to all tribes and nations, says the prophet Muhammad.” Our own second Unitarian Universalist principle affirms and promotes justice, equity and compassion in human relations.
The Hebrew Bible, a book recounting the history of a nomadic tribe transitioning to agriculture, features human sacrifice, slavery, and execution by stoning to death. The New Testament pastoral society still had stonings, with the Romans having added crucifixion. As Pinker says, The Bible is one long celebration of violence.” Given this violent society, how remarkable is it that the Bible tells us to practice compassion to all. The Prophet Micah said what is required is to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” The Rabbi Jesus showed a despised Samaritan as an example of how to be a neighbor. Jesus told us to practice the Golden Rule, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Karen Armstrong spoke about the Golden Rule and compassion during the Ware lecture at the 2011 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I quote from her lecture: “Each one of the major faiths, I discovered, has at its core the ethic of compassion. Every single one of them has developed its own version of the Golden Rule, never to treat others as you would not like to be treated yourself, and has said that this is the test of spirituality; that it is this which takes us beyond the prism of ego and selfishness and greed, that enables us to enter into our best selves and into the presence of what some have called God, others Nirvana, Brahmin or Dao.
“The first person, as far as I know, to enunciate the golden rule was Confucius some 500 years before Christ. Never treat others, says Confucius, as you would not like to be treated yourself.
“My favorite Golden Rule story belongs to Hillel, the great Pharisee, who was an older contemporary of Jesus. And it said that a pagan came to Hillel one day and promised to convert to Judaism on condition that Hillel could recite the whole of Jewish teaching while he stood on one leg. And Hillel stood on one leg and said that which is hateful to you do not to your fellow man. That is the Torah, and everything else is only commentary. Go and study it.”
Armstrong says we see formulations of the Golden Rule in all three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. “Love the stranger, love the foreign, says Leviticus. Love your enemies, said Jesus. Reach out to all tribes and nations, says the prophet Muhammad.” Our own second Unitarian Universalist principle affirms and promotes justice, equity and compassion in human relations.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
The Better Angels of Our Nature
“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” Fuzzy idealism? Steven Pinker in his new book The Better Angels of Our Nature has stats and graphs to prove Martin Luther King’s statement is true. Pinker’s key points: first, our perception that we live in extremely violent times, second, the actual fact that there is less violence between individuals than ever before in human history, and finally the reasons why violence has declined. I rejoice; there is hope for us humans.
Most people, living in an age of terrorism, would say we live in extremely violent times. Why do we have this perception of living in violent times? First, because we remember events that happened more recently, such as the slaughter of 76 people in Norway in July 2011. But only historians recall much about the Hundred Years War from 1337-1453, when the population of France shrank by about one-half.
Second, we have better reporting that extends world wide. Associated Press staff are better reporters than medieval monks. Third, our standards rise faster than our accomplishments. We get upset over executing tens of murderers in Texas by lethal injection, forgetting the millions who were burned at the stake. Fourth, it’s fashionable to romanticize non western European cultures; we don’t want to denigrate aboriginal peoples by calling them barbaric savages. (Note that the words “barbaric” and “savage” connote cruelty which we will see is a property of pre-state societies.) However, it’s not the people, it’s how they treat each other we’re opposing. Finally, no activist ever recruited volunteers or collected money by saying things are getting better.
But the facts say we have become less violent. Homicide used to be how we settled differences. The murder rate was forty times greater in medieval Europe than present day. Torture was routine to get confessions and you always got a confession even if you didn’t get the truth. Mutilation, as well as corporal punishments like flogging, stocks, and the pillory were standard punishments for infractions that today would only warrant a fine. Many more crimes were punishable by gruesome means of execution. Slavery with its concomitant violence was a labor saving device. Cruelty to animals and children was how you taught them something. Yes, 100 million people died in the two world wars of the 20th century, but if the same proportion died as die in hunter gatherer wars, we would have lost two billion people, twenty times as many.
Most people, living in an age of terrorism, would say we live in extremely violent times. Why do we have this perception of living in violent times? First, because we remember events that happened more recently, such as the slaughter of 76 people in Norway in July 2011. But only historians recall much about the Hundred Years War from 1337-1453, when the population of France shrank by about one-half.
Second, we have better reporting that extends world wide. Associated Press staff are better reporters than medieval monks. Third, our standards rise faster than our accomplishments. We get upset over executing tens of murderers in Texas by lethal injection, forgetting the millions who were burned at the stake. Fourth, it’s fashionable to romanticize non western European cultures; we don’t want to denigrate aboriginal peoples by calling them barbaric savages. (Note that the words “barbaric” and “savage” connote cruelty which we will see is a property of pre-state societies.) However, it’s not the people, it’s how they treat each other we’re opposing. Finally, no activist ever recruited volunteers or collected money by saying things are getting better.
But the facts say we have become less violent. Homicide used to be how we settled differences. The murder rate was forty times greater in medieval Europe than present day. Torture was routine to get confessions and you always got a confession even if you didn’t get the truth. Mutilation, as well as corporal punishments like flogging, stocks, and the pillory were standard punishments for infractions that today would only warrant a fine. Many more crimes were punishable by gruesome means of execution. Slavery with its concomitant violence was a labor saving device. Cruelty to animals and children was how you taught them something. Yes, 100 million people died in the two world wars of the 20th century, but if the same proportion died as die in hunter gatherer wars, we would have lost two billion people, twenty times as many.
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