"The ability to play is central to our capacity to take risks, to experiment, to think critically, to act rather than react, to differentiate ourselves from our environment, and to make life meaningful." - The Case for Make Believe, by Susan Linn (2008).
No, I haven't morphed into a political savant. Linn's wonderful book on the necessity of preserving and encouraging children to play creatively mentioned the idea of No Child Left Inside. (Clever!) Ever curious, I had to google it.
Among the google results was H.R. 3036: No Child Left Inside Act of 2008. This is legislation that is in the process of being voted upon! It has currently passed in the House of Representatives and is waiting for a vote in the Senate.
Here are some of the highlights of the proposed Act...
"The Congress makes the following findings:
(1) Environmental education is essential for--
(A) enhancing student learning and problem solving skills, especially in science;
(B) creating responsible and engaged citizens; and
(C) producing graduates who are prepared to address the challenges, adjustments, and opportunities that will be present in the life and the workforce of the 21st century due to threats to human health, economical development, biological diversity, and national security arising from environmental stresses.
(2) Studies documenting the increasing indicators of nature-deficit disorder show that time spent out of the classroom for learning during the school day is critical to the intellectual, emotional, and physical health of children and that providing students with quality opportunities to directly experience the natural world can improve students' overall academic performance, self-esteem, personal responsibility, community involvement, personal health (including child obesity issues), and understanding of nature."
(My emphasis. And I had to google "nature-deficit disorder".)
The bill proposes funding for the following...
"Purpose- The purpose of this part is to ensure the academic achievement of students in environmental learning by--
(1) encouraging institutions of higher education to promote the status and stature of the environmental education teaching profession by assuming greater responsibility for improving environmental education teacher training through the establishment of a comprehensive, integrated system of recruiting, training, and advising environmental education teachers; and
(2) encouraging State educational agencies, local educational agencies, elementary schools, and secondary schools to participate in programs that--
(A) improve the environmental content knowledge, skills in teaching about environmental issues, and field-based pedagogical skill base of all teachers;
(B) focus on the development of teacher's environmental knowledge and teaching skills as a career-long process that continuously stimulates teachers' intellectual growth and upgrades teachers' proficiency in teaching about the environment;
(C) develop more rigorous environmental education teacher training curricula that are aligned with challenging State and local academic content standards; or
(D) provide environmental education experiences that utilize outdoor activities and facilities for students to directly experience nature."
(My emphasis. Personally, I'd like to see less emphasis on teacher training, and more emphasis on program development utilizingly local environments and resources.)
Surprisingly, not everyone is in favor of this proposal. The main objections seem to be that time spent fulfilling these environment-oriented objectives would detract from time spent teaching the basics, like reading and math. Oh, and we would be imposing "the Al Gore type of green propaganda on our kids in our schools".
The next generation needs to have an environmental awareness that is rooted in experience, not rhetoric. Children should be encouraged to play outside for a variety of reasons, including the greater intellectual value of the types of creative play that be engaged in outdoors, the need for a healthy level of physical activity to stave off health problems such as obesity, and the benefits of actively exploring the real-world over the fantasy realms of TV or video games. The No Child Left Inside Act may also facilitate those objectives in addition to its stated objectives, which makes it that much more appealing to me.
Maybe it's time to email a couple of Senators...
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
It's All in Your Head
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
What is it that makes you a conservative or a liberal? Most of us tend to think that it is a reflection of our upbringing, values, and/or education. Most of all, we think that we freely choose our political beliefs and affiliations. But perhaps our choice isn't as free as we'd like to think...
I hate it when I can't link to source material and have to settle for second-hand reports, but this was just too interesting to pass up. A recent study in Science reveals a correlation between political attitudes and certain physiological responses that begs the question - Are our political attitudes determined in part by our physiological sensitivity?
In this study, the people who reacted more strongly to adverse stimuli also seemed to be the ones who held political views that could be construed as defensive and threat-oriented. The people who exhibited less of a physiological response to the adverse stimuli seemed to be the ones who favored policies that are characterized by openness. This is the kind of finding that, if replicable, is beautiful in its simplicity but scary for its implications. Of course, correlation is not causation, and it's also possible that one's attitudes create a biofeedback loop that modifies future responses to similar stimuli. Or that the correlation is underwritten by another unidentified variable. So take what follows with a grain of salt.
You think that I'm now going to talk about the nature of 'free will' and how, perhaps, it isn't so 'free'. Wrong. My mind went in another direction altogether. When faced with the simple idea that physiological sensitivity may determine how we perceived and evaluate threats, my mind went straight to psychopharmaceuticals, and I'm now entertaining the following questions...
What is the relationship between anti-anxiety drugs and/or antidepressents, and the strength with which these types of political convictions are held? Are political attitudes characterized by a defensive response to 'threat' noticeably weaker when the strength of the physiological response to stimuli has been pharmacologically weakened? How would attitudes or the strength of convictions change over a longer course of psychopharmacological treatment? As we increasingly become the Medication Nation, what changes will we see (or have we already seen) in cultural and political attitudes as a result of our psychopharmocological usage? Are we just a Valium away from voting for more tolerance and less aggression?
That's all way too much to read into a single study, yet alone a quick summary of a single study. But they are interesting questions...
Update: A much more detailed description of this paper can be found here.
What is it that makes you a conservative or a liberal? Most of us tend to think that it is a reflection of our upbringing, values, and/or education. Most of all, we think that we freely choose our political beliefs and affiliations. But perhaps our choice isn't as free as we'd like to think...
I hate it when I can't link to source material and have to settle for second-hand reports, but this was just too interesting to pass up. A recent study in Science reveals a correlation between political attitudes and certain physiological responses that begs the question - Are our political attitudes determined in part by our physiological sensitivity?
In this study, the people who reacted more strongly to adverse stimuli also seemed to be the ones who held political views that could be construed as defensive and threat-oriented. The people who exhibited less of a physiological response to the adverse stimuli seemed to be the ones who favored policies that are characterized by openness. This is the kind of finding that, if replicable, is beautiful in its simplicity but scary for its implications. Of course, correlation is not causation, and it's also possible that one's attitudes create a biofeedback loop that modifies future responses to similar stimuli. Or that the correlation is underwritten by another unidentified variable. So take what follows with a grain of salt.
You think that I'm now going to talk about the nature of 'free will' and how, perhaps, it isn't so 'free'. Wrong. My mind went in another direction altogether. When faced with the simple idea that physiological sensitivity may determine how we perceived and evaluate threats, my mind went straight to psychopharmaceuticals, and I'm now entertaining the following questions...
What is the relationship between anti-anxiety drugs and/or antidepressents, and the strength with which these types of political convictions are held? Are political attitudes characterized by a defensive response to 'threat' noticeably weaker when the strength of the physiological response to stimuli has been pharmacologically weakened? How would attitudes or the strength of convictions change over a longer course of psychopharmacological treatment? As we increasingly become the Medication Nation, what changes will we see (or have we already seen) in cultural and political attitudes as a result of our psychopharmocological usage? Are we just a Valium away from voting for more tolerance and less aggression?
That's all way too much to read into a single study, yet alone a quick summary of a single study. But they are interesting questions...
Update: A much more detailed description of this paper can be found here.
Friday, September 19, 2008
By the Numbers
"If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one ever was truly harmed. Harmed is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance."
Creationism seems to be everywhere these days. It's scares me when people want to blindly follow anything, especially when they are willing to set logic, reason and evidence aside to do it.
In the spirit of 'knowledge is power', I recently attended a talk on creationism by Ronald Numbers, who is a historian of science and an authority on the creationism movement. It was an enormously informative talk about the history of the creationism movement, and Numbers is an engaging speaker, but the key question of 'Why do so many people believe this?' was largely unanswered. (At least it was largely unanswered by the time I had to leave during the Q&A. Parking meter.)
The arguments against creationism have been well-chronicled elsewhere, and the fight to keep creation 'science' out of the classroom has many strong and able proponents. So why am I talking about it? Because I think that there is a larger problem here that also needs to be addressed. Numbers made a comment after his talk that some teachers of evolution may be using an appeal to authority, rather than a discriminating look at the evidence, as their argument for evolution. I don't know how true that statement is, and it is not my intention to question any teacher's merits, but his comment reminded me though of one of my standard rants about needed education reform. We don't do enough to teach critical reasoning skills. I base this statement on the several years I spent teaching critical reasoning skills and logical analysis to college graduates/near-graduates, as well as classroom teaching of undergraduates.
These are the skills that should be the foundation of a higher education, and yet it's possible to matriculate with an undergraduate degree without a single credit of rhetoric or logic classes. If these skills were a prerequisite for attending an institution of higher learning, that might be one thing. (They're not.) If we could have the reasonable expectation that a student would automatically acquire these skills as a by-product of the process of his/her higher education, then perhaps this wouldn't be an issue.
Why are we surprised that so many educated people hold to views (such as a belief in creationism) that critical reasoning should call into question? Is it any more of a surprise that uneducated people are preyed upon with arguments that are so ludicrous that many in academia are hard-pressed to recognize the level of the problem that these arguments represent? Perhaps because the people thinking about these issues are often the least likely to fall prey to them, it can become difficult to imagine how any person can accept such an argument.
But I digress. How important is critical thinking, and how do students emerge from their education ill-equipped to evaluate the world around them? I'll give you this story to think about... As a new instructor in a department and university that shall rename unnamed, it fell to me to teach the unpopular class 'Experimental Research Methods'. I love the logical analysis involved in designing and evaluating experiments, so this was no hardship for me. But I took an enormous amount of flack for refusing to use multiple-choice tests in this class. Apparently multiple-choice tests were the standard M.O. for this class. As nobody really wanted to teach the class and nobody really wanted to take it, multiple-choice tests were probably an easy way out for everyone. I required that the students be able to articulate their reasoning in their own words. Not a popular choice... (sigh)
I personally think we should do more to teach critical thinking skills in high school, if not before. I think that teaching a child or young adult to actively engage the world with his/her mind is one of the most important aspects of education. It is an important component of raising our overall societal level of awareness, and it's becoming an increasingly more necessary skill as our world becomes increasingly more complex. 'Yes, sir' responses to authority are not an acceptable substitute for knowing when and how to ask 'Why?'.
But don't take my word for it. ;)
Creationism seems to be everywhere these days. It's scares me when people want to blindly follow anything, especially when they are willing to set logic, reason and evidence aside to do it.
In the spirit of 'knowledge is power', I recently attended a talk on creationism by Ronald Numbers, who is a historian of science and an authority on the creationism movement. It was an enormously informative talk about the history of the creationism movement, and Numbers is an engaging speaker, but the key question of 'Why do so many people believe this?' was largely unanswered. (At least it was largely unanswered by the time I had to leave during the Q&A. Parking meter.)
The arguments against creationism have been well-chronicled elsewhere, and the fight to keep creation 'science' out of the classroom has many strong and able proponents. So why am I talking about it? Because I think that there is a larger problem here that also needs to be addressed. Numbers made a comment after his talk that some teachers of evolution may be using an appeal to authority, rather than a discriminating look at the evidence, as their argument for evolution. I don't know how true that statement is, and it is not my intention to question any teacher's merits, but his comment reminded me though of one of my standard rants about needed education reform. We don't do enough to teach critical reasoning skills. I base this statement on the several years I spent teaching critical reasoning skills and logical analysis to college graduates/near-graduates, as well as classroom teaching of undergraduates.
These are the skills that should be the foundation of a higher education, and yet it's possible to matriculate with an undergraduate degree without a single credit of rhetoric or logic classes. If these skills were a prerequisite for attending an institution of higher learning, that might be one thing. (They're not.) If we could have the reasonable expectation that a student would automatically acquire these skills as a by-product of the process of his/her higher education, then perhaps this wouldn't be an issue.
Why are we surprised that so many educated people hold to views (such as a belief in creationism) that critical reasoning should call into question? Is it any more of a surprise that uneducated people are preyed upon with arguments that are so ludicrous that many in academia are hard-pressed to recognize the level of the problem that these arguments represent? Perhaps because the people thinking about these issues are often the least likely to fall prey to them, it can become difficult to imagine how any person can accept such an argument.
But I digress. How important is critical thinking, and how do students emerge from their education ill-equipped to evaluate the world around them? I'll give you this story to think about... As a new instructor in a department and university that shall rename unnamed, it fell to me to teach the unpopular class 'Experimental Research Methods'. I love the logical analysis involved in designing and evaluating experiments, so this was no hardship for me. But I took an enormous amount of flack for refusing to use multiple-choice tests in this class. Apparently multiple-choice tests were the standard M.O. for this class. As nobody really wanted to teach the class and nobody really wanted to take it, multiple-choice tests were probably an easy way out for everyone. I required that the students be able to articulate their reasoning in their own words. Not a popular choice... (sigh)
I personally think we should do more to teach critical thinking skills in high school, if not before. I think that teaching a child or young adult to actively engage the world with his/her mind is one of the most important aspects of education. It is an important component of raising our overall societal level of awareness, and it's becoming an increasingly more necessary skill as our world becomes increasingly more complex. 'Yes, sir' responses to authority are not an acceptable substitute for knowing when and how to ask 'Why?'.
But don't take my word for it. ;)
Sunday, September 14, 2008
An Hour on Liberty and Political Power
"The probation of the flesh has many purposes, but none greater than learning to use power righteously, and none more difficult or more dangerous or beset with as many traps and snares for the soul. He must learn to stay his hand, never to trespass on another's agency, no matter how much wiser he may believe his vision to be or how much greater his own light. He may see the path far ahead and every precipice that hovers on the lip of the abyss, every morass that would suck a man into its bowels and consume him utterly. He may plead and teach, exhort and implore, yet he must not rob another of his right to choose for himself, good or ill."
This quote reminds me of many things...
A parent who wants her child to excel in school, go to college, select the 'right' major, and make smart life choices.
A protester who wants to impose her moral values upon a distressed woman.
A country that wants to 'help' another country to become a democracy, via strategic application of force.
It also got me thinking about all the ways in which free will is impinged upon by the philosophies of the two major political parties. Granted, to not impinge upon free will at all would result in anarchy, but what happens if we try to build a political philosophy from scratch, based on the premise that power should be minimally applied by a governing body, and then those in power should act from the desire to maximize individual freedoms? Oh, that's what happens.
[Brief Aside: I normally fall into the category of persons who can reasonably be called 'politically ignorant'. This scares me, as I think politics shouldn't be something you think about once a year or, heaven forbid, every four years. I hate thinking in sound bytes, and I am equally disgusted with being talked to in sound bytes. Unfortunately, I often use this disgust as a way to write-off politics as a deeply-flawed endeavor in which I can hope to have next-to-no impact and am therefore justified in largely ignoring. In a perfect world, I would find the impetus and drive to become politically aware and active, starting at a local level. I'm currently reading, and am inspired by, The Audacity of Hope. (The preceding statement should not in any way be construed as endorsement of a particular person, ticket, or party.) In a less-than-perfect world though, I'll devote an hour to writing a blog post about a particular topic and hopefully educating myself a little in the process.]
But back to what I was saying... A party that advocates individual responsibility, and opposes unnecessary impingement upon free will?! How did I not know about this? How do I know nothing about the Libertarian Party beyond what I believe that I can infer from a word that sounds remarkably like 'liberty'? How have I made it through four presidential elections with no more than a passing awareness of any third, fourth or fifth political party? My knowledge of third parties is appalling.
Googling various words (such as 'effectiveness') in combination with 'Libertarian Party' shows that the Libertarian Party has reached the point where some people want to reform it in order to appeal to larger percentage of voters. Its collective history is also available in wiki format. My predilection for comparative analysis though met with less-than-satisfying google results.
Believe it or not, my hour on this topic is up. I guess I spent more time reading than writing. And while I am by no means now a confirmed Libertarian, I think I have resolved to try to find an active Libertarian with whom to strike up a conversation...
This quote reminds me of many things...
A parent who wants her child to excel in school, go to college, select the 'right' major, and make smart life choices.
A protester who wants to impose her moral values upon a distressed woman.
A country that wants to 'help' another country to become a democracy, via strategic application of force.
It also got me thinking about all the ways in which free will is impinged upon by the philosophies of the two major political parties. Granted, to not impinge upon free will at all would result in anarchy, but what happens if we try to build a political philosophy from scratch, based on the premise that power should be minimally applied by a governing body, and then those in power should act from the desire to maximize individual freedoms? Oh, that's what happens.
[Brief Aside: I normally fall into the category of persons who can reasonably be called 'politically ignorant'. This scares me, as I think politics shouldn't be something you think about once a year or, heaven forbid, every four years. I hate thinking in sound bytes, and I am equally disgusted with being talked to in sound bytes. Unfortunately, I often use this disgust as a way to write-off politics as a deeply-flawed endeavor in which I can hope to have next-to-no impact and am therefore justified in largely ignoring. In a perfect world, I would find the impetus and drive to become politically aware and active, starting at a local level. I'm currently reading, and am inspired by, The Audacity of Hope. (The preceding statement should not in any way be construed as endorsement of a particular person, ticket, or party.) In a less-than-perfect world though, I'll devote an hour to writing a blog post about a particular topic and hopefully educating myself a little in the process.]
But back to what I was saying... A party that advocates individual responsibility, and opposes unnecessary impingement upon free will?! How did I not know about this? How do I know nothing about the Libertarian Party beyond what I believe that I can infer from a word that sounds remarkably like 'liberty'? How have I made it through four presidential elections with no more than a passing awareness of any third, fourth or fifth political party? My knowledge of third parties is appalling.
Googling various words (such as 'effectiveness') in combination with 'Libertarian Party' shows that the Libertarian Party has reached the point where some people want to reform it in order to appeal to larger percentage of voters. Its collective history is also available in wiki format. My predilection for comparative analysis though met with less-than-satisfying google results.
Believe it or not, my hour on this topic is up. I guess I spent more time reading than writing. And while I am by no means now a confirmed Libertarian, I think I have resolved to try to find an active Libertarian with whom to strike up a conversation...
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
I Don't Believe in Atheists
"To be a utopian, to live for the creation of a fantastic and unreal world, was to live in no place, to remove oneself from reality. It is only by building an ethic based on reality, one that takes into account the dangers and limits of the human situation, that we can begin to adjust our behavior to cope with social, environmental and political problems." - I Don't Believe in Atheists, by Chris Hedges (2008), p.11.
Given our recent discussions on this topic, you'll understand why I was intrigued when I noticed this book at the library last week.
Chris Hedges is a seminary graduate-turned-foreign correspondent who writes about his reactions to the ideas of prominent atheists such as Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins. As I have not read the majority of the work that he references, I can't comment on how accurately or poorly he represents the authors' ideas. The premise of his book is that the brand of atheism these thinkers espouse represents a mindset that is just as fundamentalist as one finds in extreme forms of religion.
Hedges refers many times to statements made by atheists about the evils of religion. He counters these with examples of secular evil. The point seems to be that evil is everywhere, and that secular misuse of science and reason is just as capable of producing evil as misguided religious idealism. The problem, he argues, is when we get caught up in defining the 'other' as the evil in this world. "Those who externalize evil and seek to eradicate this evil lose touch with their own humanity and the humanity of others." (p. 154)
The arguments he invokes reminded me of another quote, which I had been saving for a post titled 'The Essence of Compassion'. (If you will permit me this short digression...)
"You think the world can be scrubbed clean. It's not dirty. You want evil destroyed. Can you show me where evil is? Point it out. I am curious. I've not been able to find it in all these years."
The point being, if one wishes to rid the world of evil, one must first find it. Do we define a person as 'evil'? Or just the act that s/he performs? What of all the antecedent events that led that person to commit that act?
Is a person 'evil' when they lack what we perceive to be a 'normal' moral compass or conscience? If so, and we wish to eradicate the evil and ensure that it never happens again, are we to look to the sources of learning by which this person acquired knowledge about morality? Are we to look to genetics or biology for a defect? As certain types of genetic expression can be modified by environment, are we ever justified in declaring someone 'evil' beyond our capacity to rehabilitate?
Is a person 'evil' when they act with the intent to cause harm? Or does it depend on whether this person is acting from need (such as self-defense or survival) or desire? Is intention where we can find and eradicate evil? If so, how much previous experience must also be excised in order to ensure that this person never intends to perform the same act in the future? If past experience gives rise to malicious intent and/or lack of restrain in performing such an act, then what responsibility, if any, do the people who gave rise to this person's past experiences have for this evil?
Is an idea 'evil'? Is it evil only if it has been twisted to a perverse meaning or intent? If so, how then do we define those who knowingly transmit a flawed idea? How do we draw the lines when it comes to victims and perpetrators of flawed ideologies? What responsibility does the individual bear for examining what he or she was taught? Who bears the responsibility for teaching him or her to think critically?
These argument are not intended as a defense of 'evil'. Rather, they are intended to illustrate the shortcomings of declaring any person, organization, or ideology to be 'evil'. Focusing on defining something or someone as 'evil' misses too much of the complexity of interactions that gave rise to the particular behavior or idea that we see as 'evil'. Such a chain ultimately ends up right back in our own laps, and worse still, defining the other as 'evil' allows us to remain blind to our own expression of the same instincts, impulses, fears, and shortcomings.
The capacity for 'evil' is in all of us. All of us would make war, under the right circumstances. All of us would kill, if sufficiently threatened or to protect a loved one or if taught to do so. It doesn't even take a real threat to permit decent people to become capable of evil. This is part of the human condition.
I have no answer for this problem, but one suggestion... When you can see how another person has come to do what they have done, and when you can see how you could have come to that place too if your circumstances had been different, then you can act from compassion instead of fear. Fear will cause you to strike out, where compassion can stay your hand.
(End of not-so-short digression.)
Hedges argues that "knowledge is not wisdom" and that having knowledge alone still isolates us from the "deeper truths of life." These are the truths, he argues, that reach us via literary and artistic expression, and the appreciation of something greater than ourselves. Ultimately though, we value these things because they tell us something about ourselves - that we are finite, that we have limitations, that we are not alone in our pain or our joy. Religion also serves as one way in which man seeks answers to his questions about who and what he is. Hedges seems to argue that we need religion to give us a sense of the transcendent, and to remind us of our common humanity. I think we really only need empathy in order to appreciate our common humanity.
And as for the transcendent... Perhaps Hedges' quote from Reinhold Niebuhr sheds light there.
"Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history, therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own. Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness."
Given our recent discussions on this topic, you'll understand why I was intrigued when I noticed this book at the library last week.
Chris Hedges is a seminary graduate-turned-foreign correspondent who writes about his reactions to the ideas of prominent atheists such as Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins. As I have not read the majority of the work that he references, I can't comment on how accurately or poorly he represents the authors' ideas. The premise of his book is that the brand of atheism these thinkers espouse represents a mindset that is just as fundamentalist as one finds in extreme forms of religion.
Hedges refers many times to statements made by atheists about the evils of religion. He counters these with examples of secular evil. The point seems to be that evil is everywhere, and that secular misuse of science and reason is just as capable of producing evil as misguided religious idealism. The problem, he argues, is when we get caught up in defining the 'other' as the evil in this world. "Those who externalize evil and seek to eradicate this evil lose touch with their own humanity and the humanity of others." (p. 154)
The arguments he invokes reminded me of another quote, which I had been saving for a post titled 'The Essence of Compassion'. (If you will permit me this short digression...)
"You think the world can be scrubbed clean. It's not dirty. You want evil destroyed. Can you show me where evil is? Point it out. I am curious. I've not been able to find it in all these years."
The point being, if one wishes to rid the world of evil, one must first find it. Do we define a person as 'evil'? Or just the act that s/he performs? What of all the antecedent events that led that person to commit that act?
Is a person 'evil' when they lack what we perceive to be a 'normal' moral compass or conscience? If so, and we wish to eradicate the evil and ensure that it never happens again, are we to look to the sources of learning by which this person acquired knowledge about morality? Are we to look to genetics or biology for a defect? As certain types of genetic expression can be modified by environment, are we ever justified in declaring someone 'evil' beyond our capacity to rehabilitate?
Is a person 'evil' when they act with the intent to cause harm? Or does it depend on whether this person is acting from need (such as self-defense or survival) or desire? Is intention where we can find and eradicate evil? If so, how much previous experience must also be excised in order to ensure that this person never intends to perform the same act in the future? If past experience gives rise to malicious intent and/or lack of restrain in performing such an act, then what responsibility, if any, do the people who gave rise to this person's past experiences have for this evil?
Is an idea 'evil'? Is it evil only if it has been twisted to a perverse meaning or intent? If so, how then do we define those who knowingly transmit a flawed idea? How do we draw the lines when it comes to victims and perpetrators of flawed ideologies? What responsibility does the individual bear for examining what he or she was taught? Who bears the responsibility for teaching him or her to think critically?
These argument are not intended as a defense of 'evil'. Rather, they are intended to illustrate the shortcomings of declaring any person, organization, or ideology to be 'evil'. Focusing on defining something or someone as 'evil' misses too much of the complexity of interactions that gave rise to the particular behavior or idea that we see as 'evil'. Such a chain ultimately ends up right back in our own laps, and worse still, defining the other as 'evil' allows us to remain blind to our own expression of the same instincts, impulses, fears, and shortcomings.
The capacity for 'evil' is in all of us. All of us would make war, under the right circumstances. All of us would kill, if sufficiently threatened or to protect a loved one or if taught to do so. It doesn't even take a real threat to permit decent people to become capable of evil. This is part of the human condition.
I have no answer for this problem, but one suggestion... When you can see how another person has come to do what they have done, and when you can see how you could have come to that place too if your circumstances had been different, then you can act from compassion instead of fear. Fear will cause you to strike out, where compassion can stay your hand.
(End of not-so-short digression.)
Hedges argues that "knowledge is not wisdom" and that having knowledge alone still isolates us from the "deeper truths of life." These are the truths, he argues, that reach us via literary and artistic expression, and the appreciation of something greater than ourselves. Ultimately though, we value these things because they tell us something about ourselves - that we are finite, that we have limitations, that we are not alone in our pain or our joy. Religion also serves as one way in which man seeks answers to his questions about who and what he is. Hedges seems to argue that we need religion to give us a sense of the transcendent, and to remind us of our common humanity. I think we really only need empathy in order to appreciate our common humanity.
And as for the transcendent... Perhaps Hedges' quote from Reinhold Niebuhr sheds light there.
"Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history, therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own. Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness."
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