Have a Correct Halloween

Speaking of tolerance, as I did last time, along comes news of offensive Halloween costumes.  They are not offensive in themselves, but have been declared offensive by various groups of teachers and other authorities.

As we learn here, “From first-graders to college seniors, schools are cracking down on a wide swath of Halloween costumes.”  The list of banned costumes is long and varied.  Anything considered controversial is disallowed.  Some elementary schools have cancelled Halloween in favor of an “orange and black” celebration with no costumes involved.

The schools are walking on eggshells prohibiting any dress that can be considered racist by anyone!  Superhero costumes are discouraged for violence or carrying pretend weapons.  “Tufts University last year threatened investigations by campus police against any student whose costume was deemed offensive, especially if the outfit is thought to be culturally appropriated or ‘relating to tragedy, controversy, or acts of violence.’”  Imagine being detained or arrested for your choice of costume based on one administrator's hypersensitivity!

Halloween is a big holiday.  Last year spending on candy, costumes and decorations was projected to be $9.1 billion in 2017.  But maybe the fun is coming to an end.

The only fun left seems to be trying to guess what is acceptable and what will get you sent home, or worse.  Based on the vague guidelines one writer opined that students are “presumably restricted from dressing up as samurais, hombres, geishas, belly dancers, Vikings, ninjas, rajas, French maids, Bollywood dancers, Rastafarians, Pocahontas, Aladdin, Zorro, or Thor.”  The list goes on.  It reminds me of the story about magician Penn Jillette going to his daughter’s preschool party dressed as a ghost and suddenly realizing he might be mistaken for a Klansman.

“The company HalloweenCostumes.com recently pulled an outfit of Holocaust victim Anne Frank from its website after it was hit with a slew of criticism.”  Personally, I wouldn’t recognize an Anne Frank costume if I saw it, but someone objected.  Clowns are out, because of recent creepy-clown incidents.  A hobo was a favorite years ago, but it could be interpreted as disrespecting the homeless.

Remember from last time:  It’s more acceptable to say, “I’m offended” than to admit, “I’m intolerant,” but it boils down to the same thing.  What one person thinks is cute or funny, can be banned by a single complaint.  What’s worse is that the “injured party” is free to go on social media to try to exact revenge by destroying a reputation or a business or even indirectly calling for violence.

The reaction to this by schools is understandable.  They too are required to guess what a single person might find objectionable and do “everything possible” to avoid it.  (These are the institutions with zero tolerance policies.)

Think of how well off one has to be, how unconcerned with survival, how sheltered from conflict, to let someone else’s choice of a Halloween costume for a day out of the year cause such upset as to drive that person to complain!  But being offended and complaining is the new national pastime.  Some are so needy that they will be offended on behalf of a group they don’t even belong to.  Where is the perspective?  Where does the insanity end?

Compassion and Tolerance (continued)

Last time I wrote about how the terms compassion and tolerance are often used, even in academic circles, without sufficient regard for clear definitions.  It’s the old “I know it when I see it” approach.  I explained how compassion is a tricky concept.  Just seeing someone with difficulty and automatically lending assistance may provide satisfaction to the helper while being a disservice to the one with the problem.

Now I will look at tolerance the same way.  Again, it’s impossible to see into the mind, so the only evidence we have of another’s tolerance is observed behaviors that fit a clear definition.  Tolerance is usually defined as a willingness to tolerate opinions or behaviors one does not necessarily agree with.

Ideally, everyone would be tolerant of any opinion or action that does not cause a direct threat to one’s personal safety and wellbeing.  Let speakers speak on any subject to anyone interested in listening.  Let demonstrators demonstrate peacefully without disrupting the lives of others.  Let people marry anyone they want to.  Let people take the drugs to cure disease or just to feel better, e.g. pain relievers, caffeine, heroin.

The only exception should be for direct responsibility:  parents for children, teachers for students, military leaders for their troops, etc.  But this gets tricky in a couple of ways.  In a society where everyone’s medical costs become everyone else’s responsibility because of insurance, perhaps your health habits should be everyone else’s business.  But in this area we tend to pick and choose.  Smokers are shunned, but to scorn or shame the overweight is seen as rude and insensitive.  Alcohol is acceptable in moderation, but recreational drugs are illegal.

Also, for Christians, Jews and even Muslims there is that pesky chapter in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel where the Lord orders everyone to step in to keep your neighbor from sinning or you will suffer the same punishment.  It concludes in Chapter 3, verse 21:  “But if you do warn the righteous person not to sin and they do not sin, they will surely live because they took warning, and you will have saved yourself.”  Based on that premise, some opposed to same-sex marriage, for example, are not haters at all.  They genuinely care about the salvation of others and themselves.  (I warned it would get tricky.)

It seems tolerance must be narrowed down to make any sense.  A reasonable starting place is the current commotion over freedom of speech where college students and others on both political extremes heckle, shout down and even riot to keep speakers from delivering their message.  It’s a safe bet that these people have not been inspired by reading Ezekiel nor are they doing it out of concern about their health insurance premiums.  Instead they seem to feel that allowing contrary opinions is immoral, dangerous, or offensive.  They imply by their actions that everyone else is too stupid or ignorant to resist the lure of a faulty or insidious argument, so they must step in to silence the messenger.  Apparently, the alternative of answering ideas with ideas is passé.  The default becomes shouting accusations of being evil – either fascist or communist.  If anyone needs an example of a critical thinking disaster, this is it.

A more passive way to shut people up is to claim their opinions are offensive.  It’s more acceptable to say, “I’m offended” than to admit, “I’m intolerant,” but it boils down to the same thing.

If we can’t even agree on something as basic as freedom of speech, that tolerance we all seem to cherish ends up in practice being tolerance only for what we deem appropriate.  We have little tolerance for those intolerant people who don’t agree.

When concepts like compassion and tolerance are promoted as worthy goals, people tend to nod in agreement.  Deeper thought shows that the two are not as straightforward as they appear.  There is a lot of room for discussion and many instances for honest disagreement.  When clearly defined, compassion and tolerance are probably good things, but both require a degree of moderation and a less cavalier acceptance of vague, unexamined notions.

Whenever we try to peer into the minds of others to find compassion or tolerance, or for that matter, economic understanding, discipline, responsibility, critical thinking, and perspective, the only way to get there is through observation and interpretation of behavior based on clear definitions or examples.  That is why I have posted 670 (and counting) explanations and examples to foster agreement about what we are looking for in the five key dimensions and the dangerous consequences of not finding it.

Compassion and Tolerance

One of the purposes (or maybe just a side effect) of my writing is to inspire readers to investigate or to think about the world in a slightly different way.  The entry last week about mindfulness and focus seems to have done the trick in at least one case.

I received an email with several embedded links and the conclusion:  “It is interesting that longer and deeper thinking tends to lead people to more compassionate and tolerant approaches.”  I dug deeper and began to think that ideas like this that we take for granted are not so simple.

The words compassion and tolerance have become very popular.  At least a couple research organizations are on a campaign to convince as many as possible that these two mental attitudes will combine to yield a more successful future for the world.  We need more, and mindfulness training for adults and children may be the key.

I am inclined to ask:  How do we measure compassion and tolerance, and more important, what are they?

Whenever I see words like more or better, I believe some measurement must be involved.  Finding metrics for mental activity can be deceptive.  Self-reporting is always suspect.  One way to identify compassion is to observe some behavior and label it compassionate, but such classification is impossible without a clear definition.  Someone must define what behaviors demonstrate compassion.  How do we know it when we see it?  As researchers report more positive brain scans on compassionate people, they still must have a definition that distinguishes compassion from other traits.  The same goes for tolerance.

The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education operating at Stanford says, “Compassion unfolds in response to suffering,” recognizing it, feeling empathy and concern, which “motivates us to take action, and help relieve that suffering.”  They promote compassion by saying, “With compassion, our empathy for the suffering of others can give rise to altruism – bringing immediate and long-term happiness and tranquillity [sic] to our lives.”  (But technically, if we are motivated to do it by the good feelings it gives us, that’s hardly altruism.)  A simple dictionary definition of compassion is concern for the suffering of others.  But, since no one can go into people’s head and actually see it, they must infer this concern from observing behavior – she did or said this or that, therefore, she is compassionate.  Then they can observe and classify the brain scans.

But here’s where it gets tricky.  When others are suffering, is it always wise or proper to step in and “take action, and help relieve that suffering”?  Is that always the best solution?  Sometimes suffering is the result of bad luck or natural disaster or birth defect, but sometimes suffering is the direct result of the action or inaction of the individual.

Behavior has consequences.  The purpose of those consequences is to encourage or discourage similar behavior.  In bowling, the feedback comes from the number of pins knocked down.  If you get a strike, try to do the same thing again.  If you get a gutter ball, make a change.  A coach can work with the bowler on technique and equipment as long as the bowler is dedicated to improving.  If the bowler is not interested and expects the coach to do the bowling for him, the consequences have failed; any lesson is lost.  If the bowler decides on a course of action that results in him being unable to roll the ball, no coaching will help.

Likewise in life, immoderate compassion, the taking action to relieve the suffering when the suffering is self-inflicted, crosses the line from aiding to enabling.  Yet so many people are motivated by that “happiness and tranquility” that it brings to our lives and fail to see the long term damage it does to others and to society.

Parents who give in to a child’s every desire or step in to solve every problem are not being compassionate, even as they believe they are recognizing suffering and taking action to relieve it.  They are robbing the child of valuable lessons on how to survive as an unselfish, responsible grownup.  Likewise a society that steps in to assist all adults who appear to be suffering regardless of the source of the suffering are, in some cases, negating the consequences (lessons) of poor decisions, encouraging a continuation of that behavior and possibly contaminating others.

Bad things happen when we get carried away by our emotions and our caring but are still rewarded by those feelings of happiness and tranquility.  It’s called unintended consequences. Compassion requires care as well as caring.

And what of tolerance:  The willingness to tolerate opinions or behaviors one does not necessarily agree with?  This too is difficult and will be taken up next time.

Signs of The Times

Thomas Jefferson has been roundly criticized recently for being a slaveholder.  Sometimes the implication is that we should discount everything he said and wrote because of this failing.  When you think about it, though, Thomas Jefferson was a very intelligent and educated man.  He wrote the Declaration of Independence and was the President who grew the country substantially through the Louisiana Purchase.  He had expertise in surveying, mathematics, horticulture, mechanics and architecture.  Even compared to other historical figures, he was very impressive.

So what would make someone with that kind of talent and credentials decide that owning slaves was acceptable?  For almost 300 years there had been virtually no slavery in all of Western Europe.  While he was president, England and France were in the process of legally banning slavery.  What was he thinking?  Perhaps he was just following the prevailing values and beliefs of the society he lived in.  His behavior was acceptable for his place and time.  Perhaps before we judge Jefferson too harshly, we should look at what is acceptable in our place and time that future generations will find shocking or shameful.  What are we not seeing?  The trend toward complacency is pretty clear just by looking at how often people accept actions based on good intentions or questionable science without considering the human cost.

In 1972 the use of DDT was banned primarily due to negative publicity from the book Silent Spring, by Rachael Carson.  This source and several others argue that the action resulted in 50 million deaths over 30 years by depriving people, primarily those living in Africa, of the option to use the insecticide prudently to control mosquitos.  Three years before the ban, the director of the World Health Organization (WHO) stated confidently:

“DDT is so safe that no symptoms have been observed among the 130,000 spraymen or the 535 million inhabitants of sprayed houses [over the past 29 years of its existence]. No toxicity was observed in the wildlife of the countries participating in the malaria campaign. Therefore WHO has no grounds to abandon this chemical which has saved millions of lives, the discontinuation of which would result in thousands of human deaths and millions of illnesses. It has served at least 2 billion people in the world without costing a single human life by poisoning from DDT. The discontinuation of the use of DDT would be a disaster to world health.”

Nevertheless they banned it, and to this day few are horrified.

Over thirty years later the limited use of DDT is again allowed, but caution is advised.  In 2006 a Scientific American article stated:  “Malaria is one of the world's most deadly diseases, each year killing about 880,000 people, mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Health Organization.”  This total lack of perspective – the ban-it-preall approach – cost millions of lives, but this same thinking is being applied to other products today without consideration for the long-term unintended consequences.

Look at the number of people who, without any more information than tweets, posts, the word of neighbors and other reinforcement from their ideological echo chambers, cringe at the mention of the herbicide Roundup.  Likewise, look at how it seems acceptable for millions of Africans to starve as long as we protect the environment from the spread of GMO grain and corn, primarily for political, not scientific reasons. 

Let's not be too quick to criticize.  What we support today or have in the recent past may be seen by our grandchildren as both immoral and racist.  But we fall into that same trap as our forebears when we greet each new scary headline with “OMG,” and rush to repost to spread the word hoping others will also become adamant about these conspiracy theories and irrational fear.  In many cases, this non-critical thinking reaction has dangerous consequences.

Do people really honor Jefferson because he was a slaveholder or despite the fact that he was.  It's not a matter of ignoring the fact, but of putting them in the perspective of the time period.  Before we judge the choices of figures of the past too harshly, we should consider how critics in the distant future will paint our behavior with the same broad brush, condemning us for following the trends of our times without thinking things through.

Yoga vs. Smartphones

Sometimes it’s fun to compare and contrast two things that don’t even appear to be closely related.  Consider yoga and smartphones.

Although many practitioners view yoga as merely a set of good stretching exercises, a good yoga teacher will strongly emphasize the psychological aspects:  focus on your breathing and try to avoid (or dismiss) mental distractions.  Yoga is also associated with mindfulness, which is again a form of mental focus: paying attention to what you are doing, whether it be walking or eating.  Mindfulness is moving the focus “off the mat” into daily living.

As we focus in yoga we also become aware of outside thoughts that creep into the mind.  Recognize and acknowledge those thoughts whether they be hopes, worries, regrets or whatever.  This skill helps return to the mental focus at the time, but it also is useful in being otherwise conscious of gut reactions to try to slow down and contain those reactions long enough for critical thinking to kick in.

Smartphones on the other hand often do just the opposite, but it goes beyond the distraction of continual nagging ringtones, chirping and vibration or of pulling out the phone to check it 80 times a day on average.  This Wall Street Journal article paints a far scarier picture.  Studies show how the phone can affect the owner’s concentration and performance, even when it is in an apparently passive mode.

Research over the last few years suggests that as our brains depend more and more on technology our intellect weakens.  Two studies found the beeping or buzzing affects owner’s focus and performance “whether they check the phone or not.  Sometime just hearing the phone signaling but being unable to answer it can cause a spike in blood pressure spikes and other negative physical reactions.

A more worrisome example involved a test of 520 undergraduate students in two areas:  available cognitive capacity (related to ability to focus) and problem solving. “Some of the students were asked to place their phones in front of them on their desks; others were told to stow their phones in their pockets or handbags; still others were required to leave their phones in a different room.”  They found that the farther away the students were from their phones, the better they did; although none reported that the phone was consciously a distraction.  (The same dynamic shows up in some college classrooms where those who bring their phone to class generally earn a lower grade.)

But the two are similar in other ways.  Yoga and mindfulness have in some ways become a fad.  As I wrote back in August, the mindfulness-like exercise of walking in the woods is becoming a moneymaking venture for some who label it forest bathing, which apparently requires a trained leader.  Just last week a reader sent me another ad for a similar activity offered by a parks and rec department in Connecticut: hiking yoga for only $25 per session.  Brown University warns:  “Dependable scientific evidence has lagged worrisomely behind the rapid and widespread adoption of mindfulness and meditation for pursuing an array of mental and physical wellness goals.”   Many of the claims are based on hype.

Likewise smartphones are promoted with a great deal of hype.  The newest model is superior to anything on the market and to all competitors.  People will stand in line to trade in perfectly good phones just to be on the cutting edge.

Both smartphones and yoga may also have something of an addictive quality.  As long as two-and-a-half years ago Pew research already had a category of smartphone dependent.  Maybe yoga can help with the smartphone problem, or maybe it would be a case of trading one addiction for another.