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.

Wanted: A New National Anthem

The New National Anthem Committee is accepting applications. The current anthem has several flaws that must be addressed.

First, it is very difficult to sing. Second, the only verse that is usually sung is far too long. This becomes obvious by the fact the fans at sporting events get bored and restless, unable to maintain an attitude of respect and reverence toward the flag and country all the way to the end, whooping and hollering well before the last note has sounded. Starting criteria will be: easier to sing and shorter.

The current anthem is also objectionable for other reasons. One passage in the third verse, a verse most Americans didn’t even know existed until a controversy arose a few years ago, is by one interpretation objectionable and does not reflect twenty-first century values. (Note that this interpretation did not reflect twentieth century values when the anthem was adopted either, but general ignorance of its existence rendered the issue moot for over 80 years.)

The lyrics are about a war, sometimes called the second war for American independence. But the subject of war, any war, can be offensive to some.

Furthermore, the author, also a lawyer, had a mixed background. Francis Scott Key was a slave owner, but freed some of his slaves in the 1830s, paying one ex-slave as his farm foreman. He publicly criticized slavery and gave free legal representation to some slaves seeking freedom, but he also represented owners of runaway slaves.

When submitting a possible replacement anthem, this is important to remember. It is no longer acceptable to have wrong values and reform or to make a mistake and apologize. Every accusation of wrongdoing is tantamount to guilt in the court of public opinion with no statute of limitations. Mistakes or misstatements 30, 50 or 200 years ago have the same force as if they had happened yesterday. There is no forgiveness, so the work of any author submitted will be judged first by the purity of the author’s actions and reputation.

Finally and needless to say, the inclusion of the word “God” will lead to objections and immediate disqualification. Also, the use of words like “Free” and “Brave” are discouraged, as they are anathema to a society nearly devoid of responsibility, where the first instinct is to “sue the bastards,” or at least find someone else to blame for the slightest problem. Offense, supposed injury and victimhood get attention and sympathy; whereas personal responsibility, which used to be considered heroic based on previous American values and culture, is discouraged. Free and brave don't reflect the ethos of the time.

In short, avoid trying to be aspirational lest it be branded as being unrealistic and unrepresentative.

Send submissions to the New National Anthem Committee. Include email address and street address, the latter in case the Committee finds anything in the submission offensive or  objectionable in any way so that next time we are in your neighborhood we can vandalize your property and call it exercising our free-speech rights to protest.

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

Baader-Meinhof is the name given to the phenomenon of a thing you've just noticed, heard of or experienced “suddenly cropping up constantly from different sources.” A common example is when a person becomes interested in buying a particular brand of car. Suddenly she begins to notice them everywhere. Or a friend mentions a popular song and later it comes up two or three more times in a short period. Also known as frequency illusion or recency illusion, it could be the result of a new awareness or a subconscious reaction to new information causing the brain to become selectively attentive.

Lately many news stories seem to follow the same theme. It wouldn’t be surprising for the entire society to be feeling a sense of this phenomenon and reacting to it. Are examples really more common or just more noticed?

Take for example, the recent story of the female TV reporter covering a fun run in Savannah, GA. The Huffington Post reports that one of the runners, a man wearing a hat and sunglasses, “smacked her backside as he ran past.” The offender “has been banned from future races after a video of the incident went viral.”

Then slapping became groping in this and several other stories: “Runner who groped reporter identified as local youth minister. Instead of a slap, CBS and others began to use the term grope in an effort perhaps to increase outrage.

The New York Post referred to him as the “pervy” jogger and a “creep.” 

In the wonderful world of new technology, technology that carries with it as many disadvantages as benefits allowing, for example, bullying to be raised to a new level of viciousness and relentlessness or one thoughtless comment to incite protests, boycotts and job losses, this grew from a localized incident of bad judgment into a national example of the prevalence of sexual harassment. 

This incident has created another celebrity victim: “It’s not playful. He hurt me both physically and emotionally.” The perpetrator, pervy jogger, creep, groper was given a national platform to apologize not only to the victim, but “to her family, her friends and her co-workers,” saying, “It was an awful act and an awful mistake.”

He’s lost his volunteer position and faced nationwide pillorying to his character and reputation based on a single misjudgment. Had it remained a local issue, he might have been charged with a misdemeanor. Instead he is another offender in the records of the Me-Too movement where examples are “suddenly cropping up constantly from different sources.”

What if a woman runner had done the same to a male reporter? I have met several women over the years who would have thought it both playful and funny. But that doesn’t fit the mold. It’s not confirmation bias or Baader-Meinhof. We are not sensitized to it. It wouldn’t have gone viral. 

And then, there was this story from the Business Insider, although ABC, the New York Times and the Washington Post as well as many other news organizations covered it. “West Point and the Naval Academy are investigating students giving hand gesture tied to white supremacy during Army-Navy broadcast.”

These are not new, unique, hateful hand signals. “Students from West Point and the Naval Academy were seen giving the ‘OK’ sign…during a pregame show.” A hand sign that has been used for almost 2000 years to mean OK (or something similar) was, as of three months ago, “added to the Anti-Defamation League's online database of hate symbols used by white supremacists and other far-right extremists.” I guess if they use it, it’s now off limits to everyone else. 

Talk about tyranny of the minority! According to a site called The Wrap, “White power groups are still decidedly on the fringes of society, especially compared to the prevalence of religious groups that preach positivity and acceptance.” And contrary to popular sentiment, the Southern Poverty Law Center lists fewer hate groups today than in 2013. But when hand signs at a football pregame make the news, the issue comes up again. There has to be an investigation into the intentions of these students.

Who is looking for and reporting hand signs on TV? Who thinks a local incident of acting like a complete jerk warrants national attention? Is life so easy or so boring in America that we have to search for problems, go out looking for reasons to be offended and upset? Do we have no perspective?

The Haters are Coming!

Mostly I watch CBS This Morning to get examples of how they report the news apparently without ever thinking about it.  It requires us to think more about some of the stuff they miss, but is that really fair?  They present news as if it were facts, but so often the numbers don’t add up without any explanation.

The latest was a couple of weeks ago in the headlines segment.  They showed a graphic on the screen with two “facts.”  The number of hate groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was up in 2016.  The total was 917 compared to 892, an increase of 25.  It said the number of anti-Muslim hate groups almost tripled from 34 to 101.  Obviously, the total increase of 25 with the anti-Muslim groups increasing by 67, leaves some 42 groups unaccounted for.  They must have stopped hating or changed their focus or just given up and gone home.

No comment on this discrepancy from CBS, they just moved on to interview the next celebrity or get the opinion of a fellow journalist about the political state of the country.

So I went to the source hoping to find an explanation and more important to discover what exactly a hate group is.

It’s a long, detailed report, but my first discovery was that the SPLC can’t add either.  Near the top of another page they show a graph with the number of hate groups counted since 1999.  The total climbed steadily from that point until it in 2011 at 1018.  Then it declined for three years before heading back up in 2015 and 2016.  But in the full report they state, “the [antigovernment patriot] groups had skyrocketed from a low of 149 in 2008 to a high of 1,360 in 2012, in large part as a reaction to the November 2008 election of Barack Obama.”  How could there be 1,360 such groups in 2012 when (according to their own graph) there were only 1007 hate groups in total?  (In another example:  On one page they have a graphic showing how to learn more about the 663 patriot groups in 2016, but the link opens to a page showing only 623.)  The numbers still don't make sense.

As shown in the quotation above, they attribute the rise in hate groups during the last administration to opposition to Obama, but they attribute the rise over the last two years to hate groups being emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric.  As they put it, “Without a doubt, Trump appealed to garden-variety racists, xenophobes, religious bigots and misogynists — people not necessarily in any hate or related kind of group, but who still were antagonistic toward multiculturalism.”  But that refers to individuals and the subject of the study is groups, so there is no reason for the opinion to appear in the report.  (Since they described most hate groups as “right wing,” it is not hard to detect a strong political bias.)

But what exactly is a hate group? The SPLC definition says:  “All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”  Groups that fit this definition are truly deplorable.  And to their credit the SPLC includes Black separatists, who “typically oppose integration and racial intermarriage” and endorse “separate institutions or even a separate nation” for African-Americans.  They tend to be "strongly anti-white and anti-Semitic."  Also to the SPLC’s credit is the apparently painstaking job of tracking and spotlighting these hate groups, though their choices are sometimes puzzling.

For example based on the definition, what justifies the inclusion of some anti-government patriot groups?  They declare that listing these groups on their "does not imply that the groups themselves advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, or are racist.”  But the government itself is not an entire class of people with immutable characteristics.  Just being anti-government doesn't even   fit their own definition! Libertarians and some Republicans call for less government interference in our lives without being recognized as hate groups.  And this “patriot” category comprises over two-thirds of the total of groups on the list.

Conclusions:  How much credibility can we give to a list where 2/3 of those on it may or may not fit the criteria and the numbers simply don't add up?  A quick review raises doubts and questions about the report and its motives.  It’s probably good to keep an eye on hate groups, especially those intent on letting their hate manifest itself in illegal acts.  But if “hating” the government is also to be included, a more objective list should include any group ready to condone intimidation or vandalism to silence political points of view different from their own.

More on Those "Haters"

Several weeks ago I mentioned how everyone loves to accuse opponents of being haters.  When someone opposes something or denies “rights” they are automatically labeled.  Not only is this opposite of the spirit of the behavioral model, where we address the actions and not the person, it is also often far from accurate and certainly not constructive.

Consider how people ordinarily act toward people they hate.  Do they see the object of their hatred making mistakes and try to step in to correct those mistakes, or do they rejoice at the fact that those they hate are making mistakes and will face the consequences in the future?  The logical answer is the latter.  They want to see the people they hate fail.  

If you see a loved one smoking or abusing drugs, you try to help them quit, knowing that what they are doing now will likely catch up to them in the long run.  That opposition is not an act of hatred.  Although the constant nagging may not seem like love to the person with the problem, it’s not inspired by hate; it’s just the wrong approach.  Likewise, parents tell their children to wait until they’ve eaten their meal before having dessert because they love them and want them to stay healthy.  They deny their children the opportunity to make the mistakes and develop bad habits.  Certainly they are not cooperating with their children’s wishes, but their motive is not hateful.

This logic easily applies to family and friends, but what of strangers?  Strangely enough, some people believe that God has ordered them to take this busybody approach to the decisions of others.  Find in the Old Testament, Book of Ezekiel, for example:  “When I say to the wicked, ‘You wicked, you must die,’ and you do not speak up to warn the wicked about their ways, they shall die in their sins, but I will hold you responsible for their blood.  If, however, you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, but they do not, then they shall die in their sins, but you shall save your life.”  (So, some actions of interference or denial may be cases of doing one's duty or trying to avoid future punishment rather than of hate.)

Think about the people who protest, like those outside abortion clinics or those who oppose same-sex marriage or Occupy Wall Street.  No question some of these people are filled with hate, but I would guess it is not a majority.  Most of these people think they are doing the right thing.  They take their stance based on their values or their understanding of how the world works (or should work).  They are trying to make things better and prevent other people from making mistakes that they will pay for in this life or the next.  This can hardly be considered hateful.

Before jumping to the conclusion about motives, or accepting the opinions of others about motives of an individual or a group, it’s important to think about the situation carefully.  Opposition does not usually spring from hating.

That’s why the behavioral model demands that we deal with behavior only.  Attribution of any motive is unacceptable and a waste of time.  We don’t fire an employee for a bad attitude; we fire an employee because, after numerous attempts to correct the situation, he failed to behave as required.  It makes no sense to try to attribute the failure to attitude or any other personal attribute.  The behavior is unacceptable.

Likewise, if we dismiss political or personal disagreements by assigning motives or labels, we are wasting time and have not moved forward in resolving the disagreement.  Of course, in today’s society it seems that the only resolution sought is one of bullying the opposition into submission with personal attacks and accusations – I win, you lose, problem solved!  But the real problem remains.  That’s why without the behavioral model America will continue it’s downward slide.

Various Observations

With cameras on nearly every street corner, both those set up by the government and those by private companies for security and the ones in almost every cell phone, we are seeing both on the news and on line more and more pictures of natural disasters, car crashes, embarrassing moments, and just about everything else.  The only subject that there doesn’t seem to be a rash of pictures is UFOs.  A number of years ago reports were much more common, and several books promoted evidence that we are not alone.  Now there seems to be very little serious reference to ETs.  Maybe everyone knows they would be expected to back up their stories with a few fairly high-resolution pictures.

A recent radio ad told me that I should buy gold, because the price had come down to levels not seen since 2007 and before that 2000.  These may not be the exact dates, but the gist of it was to buy gold while it was again very affordable.  I was expected to react quickly because the last two times the price went up from here.  Another interpretation, though, could be that the last two times after going up, it also came back down to where it is now.  Was this ad telling me that it was a good time to buy gold or just the best time to climb on board “the gold roller coaster” as it continues to go up and down?

Would smearing black stuff under my eyes make me a better driver by cutting down the glare?  This thought struck me as I saw a close-up on TV of a football player coming off the field.  Is this eye black effective or just superstition?  A few sources tell me of limited studies that show “the eye grease made of beeswax, paraffin, and carbon does in fact reduce glare and improve contrast sensitivity,” but “anti-glare stickers and petroleum jelly have no impact.”  Does that minimal improvement in contrast sensitivity improve performance?  No evidence is available.  Tennis players must react to fast-moving balls in sunlight or under bright, artificial lighting, but they don’t paint their faces.  Even so, as superstitious as many professional athletes (and their fans) are, there is little chance of the practice changing soon.

Is everyone a hater?  There is another one of those simple internet posters going around on Facebook and other sites with a long list of all the people the Republicans are accused of hating:  the poor, Muslims, women, blacks, etc.  On the other side the left is accused of hating and trying to destroy America and the Constitution.  The behavioral model as presented here asks, even requires, everyone to rise above this, drop the name-calling and general accusations by dealing exclusively with behavior.  But the name-calling won’t stop until the general public, the voters, you and I, adopt and start living out the behavioral model and demand that it does.  That’s why I present a couple examples every week, to try to teach Americans that there is a better way, a real solution.