Critical Thinking in Crisis

American critical thinking is hard to find and completely disappears in the face of a crisis. During the virus scare last spring, two types of info emerged. One, often from the medical professionals, was the calm reasonable kind. It was right to be careful, practice social distancing, wash hands frequently and wear a mask. That message was typically drowned out by the breathless, panicky pandemic warnings seen on the news.

 

We got the daily numbers of cases and deaths. We watched stories of people hoarding Purell, toilet paper and water. During the first week of the 15 days of voluntary lockdown, there were a shortage of coconut water and cellphone videos of fights in grocery stores over paper goods! Even before the disease got to the US, diners shunned Chinese restaurants. Then we were asked to stay in and practice social distancing, but some college students on spring break and others couldn’t be bothered. Today’s fun and freedom took precedence over the possible spread of the disease tomorrow or in a few weeks.

 

On the first Monday that the schools closed to protect students, I went to my local grocery store to pick up a prescription. It was overrun with parents who brought their school-aged children shopping. Did they think a good activity to keep them “isolated” and protected was a family shopping trip?

 

Day 12 brought this from CBS News: “Egg prices triple in 3 weeks amid coronavirus panic shopping.” This wasn’t price gouging; it was a genuine shortage. At the same time the price of regular gasoline dropped to around two dollars a gallon, also a result of supply and demand. Most people were driving much less and, for some reason, stocking up on eggs. Only the first makes logical sense. The CBS headline got it right, calling the run on hand sanitizer, paper products, bottled water and eggs “panic buying.”

 

Politicians and media commentators capitalize on this tendency toward fear and panic, encouraging the same reaction to win elections on one hand or to keep ratings up on the other. It has gotten progressively worse. Manufactured fear quickly turns to anger, then to hatred and to more fear. It makes people easier to control. Thus, politicians count on citizens leaving their brains outside the polling place and voting based on fear and hatred while the media counts on them to be glued to the TV for the next shocking update. Since we fail to remain calm and rational, we no longer receive calm, rational messages.

 

The same kind of "thinking" applies to everyday situations as technology gets more and more sophisticated and the people using it don't. We discover nuclear power and use it for bombs and submarines: but try to use it to produce pollution-free electric power and NO! No one can be serious about climate change and not be a advocate for nuclear power. Chlorine gas is deadly; chlorine in a swimming pool is safe. Nuclear bombs are deadly; nuclear power plants are safe. But the opposition is led by politicians and activists who are either well intentioned and ignorant or who have a financial interest in alternative energy sources. Regardless, they use fear and panic to sell their position, and it works.

 

The internet and cell phones allow rapid communications and information, but they lead to a lack of privacy, more sophisticated scams, cyber-bullying, targeted marketing for legitimate and bogus products, a mindset of finding people guilty before evidence is submitted and without a hearing. This technology which has so many positive applications, is used to incite riots and demonstrations and to spread misinformation and whacko theories.

 

We have more food, and people are overeating. We have more prosperity, and people are going broke. We have more leisure, and people are more stressed. We vote based on fear and hatred. We never calm down to think things through. That’s the America we live in.

Bullying and the Easter Bunny

I found this essay on the website bullies2buddies.com.  It discusses bullying in detail and argues persuasively that anti-bullying legislation is not effective because a government can’t force moral behavior on its citizens; and that our children learn from our behavior about both sides of the relationship, by our response to bullying and by the tacit endorsement of victimhood within our society.  We need to teach, by example, both how to be less offending toward each other and how to be less vulnerable to offensive behavior.  The essay concludes:  “If we are to have any chance of achieving a meaningful reduction in bullying, there is one fact we all need to recognize: There is only one person in the world who can get people to treat you well. And that person is you.”

This is a clear call for increased responsibility.  A bullying interaction requires two parties.  While we try to discourage the bully by education, policies and punishment – so far not very successfully, what role models do we provide for the target of the bully? There is a lot of evidence that victimhood has become more acceptable, even popular in recent years.

 It’s usually easier to react with outrage or offense rather than with a reasoned response.  I have been keeping a folder labeled “Outrage” where I collect examples of such behavior.   This ranges all the way from sexual harassment laws that judge purely on the basis of the offended party’s feelings, disregarding the intent of the offender, to Super Bowl halftime shows that shock viewers into protest.  People in public positions “walk on eggshells” to avoid giving offense.  One opinion columnist was taken to task for using the expression “man up” in an article, accused of insulting a whole gender.  Last year a McDonalds ad was accused of being insensitive to pit bulls by using the simile of petting a stray pit bull to indicate danger.  An anti-Obama political statement on a billboard in Elkhart, IN earned the wrath of 25 people who claimed to be offended.  Iowa passed a law protecting white deer, not for biological reasons, but because of an uproar in the 1980s when a hunter shot one during hunting season.  A man protested the display of a Chinese flag next to an American flag outside a Chinese company’s operation in the Midwest (providing jobs for Americans).  Finally, the Easter bunny, in fact any reference to Easter, has been banned from at least one elementary school to “respect and honor everyone’s differences” and in response to some parents' concerns.

Reasons to be upset or offended seem endless, but create a serious problem by inhibiting the free exchange of ideas and opinions.  This is the main problem with political correctness.  There are instances of college professors expressing personal opinions on Muslims and homosexuals leading to student protests and calls for their resignation.  In 2005 at Harvard, Lawrence Summers, who later served as an advisor in the Obama administration, expressed an opinion that men were better than women in math and science due in part to “innate differences” between the sexes.  This was met, not with contrary evidence or reasoned discussion, but with protests and demands for his resignation.  Even if these people are dead wrong, attempts to invalidate their arguments are overwhelmed by the need to silence them through personal attacks.  Outrage trumps reasoned disagreement every time.

Indeed bullying is a problem we hear about nearly every day.  Some call it epidemic.  Is it really worse than ever because of the internet and smart phones, or can at least part of the increase in reported incidents be attributed to the fact that Americans are less inclined to take care of themselves, turning to authorities and policies to protect them from hurt feelings?  Our behaviors as a society popularize and glorify the ability to claim victimhood, to claim offense and demand an apology.  Isn’t it reasonable to assume that this widespread modeling of victimhood and encouraging people to define themselves as victims undermine their ability to cope with adversity and make them more sensitive to slights and insults, actually exacerbating the problem?

Now some people may think it is insensitive even to raise the notion that bullying is a two-way street and that some responsibility must lie in the reaction of the target to the bully.  I hope such people would take the time to develop and defend a well-reasoned counter-argument rather than use their outrage and offense to suppress an uncomfortable idea by attacking the messenger.

Irony

One definition of irony from Dictionary.com is "an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected."  You recognize it by critical thinking, and get a feeling of surprise that something isn’t quite right.

I got that very feeling last week when I came across a civil rights lawsuit against the Encinitas Union School District near San Diego.  A brief outline of the case is that last summer the school district received a $533,000 grant to incorporate yoga practice into their physical education program in the elementary schools.  The grantor foundation would provide teachers for 60 of the 100 required weekly physical education minutes with the intent of promoting the "gospel" of Ashtanga (the eight-limb path) yoga.  Some parents were upset that the program seemed to mix stretching exercises with religion, or at least a philosophy based on Eastern religions of Hinduism or Buddhism.

I can understand the parents' concern of confusing young children by teaching what seems to be religious thought in public schools.  Those who were concerned enough to withdraw their children from these classes were not provided an alternative, so the kids were not receiving the required hours of physical education. 

This all makes sense to me, so far, but let me take a slight educational detour.  The first subpart of the very first limb of Ashtanga is called ahimsa in Sanskrit.  It means not harming, and provides the philosophical background for vegetarian practices and non-violence (a la Ghandi) among other things.  There is a common Sanskrit chant associated with Ashtanga yoga, “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu” which basically wishes peace and serenity to all creatures. 

With that background we move to the parents' final objection, found at the bottom of page 16 of the filing:  “Several children who opted out of the EUSD program have been teased, harassed, and bullied by children who participate in the Ashtanga yoga classes.”  If this is true and it is the yoga-trained kids who are being mean to their classmates, the teachers are failing to pass along the very yoga philosophy that the parents are objecting to.  That’s what struck me as ironic.

Bullying

Bullying is getting so much attention on the news lately – almost as if this generation invented it.  Even the President had some comments on the issue.  True, there have been some reported suicides due to the peer pressure and harassment; and there are faster means of distributing misinformation, threats and insults, so the problem seems worse, but is it really?  And if it is, could it be another consequence of our societal behavior?

The truth is, bullying has been around for ages.  It’s not a recent invention.  It was dealt with in the past by parents and teachers.  Generally they worked as a team, rather than the parent automatically siding with the child.  They had more tools at their disposal for punishing miscreants and the person being picked on was encouraged to ignore or resist before adults became involved.  Still, children felt bad and had their feelings hurt and some people today carry psychological scars from being singled out or picked on.  Were there suicides?  Perhaps, but they were not broadcast nationwide as they are today, so we don’t know.  I do know that when I was picked on in school, President Eisenhower was too busy building an interstate highway system and fighting the cold war to worry about it.

Bullying is about power.  Part of that power comes from being bigger and stronger (and insecure).  Part of that power comes from parents and teachers who are too busy or distracted to supervise the children, too hamstrung by rules and regulations to take appropriate action, or too irresponsible to care.  Part of the power comes from the way other students cowardly keep the ball rolling after the bullying starts, believing, much like their parents that being “cool” and “in” is a top priority (see blog dated 10/17).  Part of that power comes from the person being bullied who has been brought up in a society where victimhood has been popularized, used by various advocates to gain a platform at the expense of their constituency.

In a society that promotes celebrating diversity, students who are different (and aren’t we all?) should be made to feel special and not inferior.  Unfortunately the institutional definition of diversity continues to be restricted, mostly not recognizing different talents and relevant experiences.

If bullying is becoming a bigger problem, it is very possible that the cause is largely related to societal failures in responsibility and our lack of perspective passed along to our children.