In 1998 I covered a Los Angeles-based conference for Wired.com on the effect of the digital revolution in publishing, music, and art. In the course of a panel discussion at the gathering, the musician and record producer Brian Eno made a statement that’s always stuck with me. Describing the frustrations and difficulties of working with computers, he said—“There’s not enough Africa in them.” In other words, there’s not enough of what is often equated with black culture—cool, beat-driven, intuitive, fluid, non-linear. Computers are all-western and left-brained in their makeup—rigid, hyper-logical, hierarchical, unforgiving. Throw a little Africa into them, as Eno suggested, and it might be the perfect combination of left-brain and right-brain.
What I’ve always found particularly appealing about Barak Obama is the intriguing clash of cultures in both his genes and his upbringing—born of a white mother from the American mid-west and a black father from a small village in Kenya, raised by working-class white grandparents in Hawaii, educated in the Ivy League of the American east, came into his own on the south side of Chicago, possesses a Middle Eastern middle name, but has been a practicing Christian for most of his adult life. While Obama often describes himself as a “mutt,” it actually goes much deeper than that. He’s a racial, cultural, and geographic mash-up, who seems almost a living metaphor of the global era that we now inhabit. He appears equally at home in flip-flops on the back streets of Honolulu, or in a winter coat on the mean streets of Chicago.
And perhaps it’s because of this unusual background that Obama seems adept at bringing together disparate and often warring factions. Science has increasingly come to recognize that the human race contains two often-conflicting hardwired directives—to form cooperative communities/tribes, and to compete for territory and resources (read: “wage war”) with other communities/tribes. That evolutionary survival strategy worked for millennia within the context of small groups existing in close proximity to one another. But biological evolution often lags social evolution. Tribes turned to villages, villages turned to cities, cities turned to states, states turned to countries, and countries have morphed into the now often-cited “global village.” To make matters worse, weapons of mass destruction that were once the exclusive reserve of superpowers are now within conceivable reach of any small group of individuals. It only took $3 box cutters to bring down super skyscrapers in Manhattan, and to nearly destroy the White House or the U.S. Capitol. And it’s a small conceptual leap from there to dirty bombs or briefcase nukes.
In reality, it is such hardwired tribalistic behavior that lies at the heart of almost all current world conflicts. “Secular fundamentalists” and conservative Islamo-phobes often attempt to portray such conflicts as being spawned by the “evils” of a particular religion. But few read a religious text and then decide to engage in an act of terrorism. In fact, things usually occur in the reverse order—a decision is made to engage in terrorism (often spawned by poverty or ethnic/tribal conflict), and then a particular religious text is combed for justification of that act. Obama has long recognized the richness of diverse faith traditions and the pitfalls of religious doctrine taken to extremes. As he wrote in “The Audacity of Hope”—“For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness. However, in her mind, a working knowledge of the world’s great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology.”
Historian Karen Armstrong regularly explores such diversity of human faith in her writings. She reports that during the “Axial Age” (900 BC – 200 BC), an exponential increase in violence/deaths from newly developed iron-age weapons, along with a growing human revulsion to that violence, helped to spawn parallel religious/altruistic philosophies: Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Confucianism and Taoism in China, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. The practice of Yoga is a striking example of this profound shift in human thought. Yoga was originally a term for Aryan warriors in northwest India “yoking-up” their horses in preparation for raids waged against their neighbors. But during the Axial Age, such real-world warriors morphed into “spiritual warriors.” They instead yoked-up the power of their minds—toward introspection and non-violence. In a parallel path of non-violence and mental introspection, the Buddha insisted that his monks send out waves of benevolence to all corners of the earth and to all creatures. And in the book of Leviticus, the Israelites were commanded to treat strangers as one of their own.
According to Armstrong, such a profound paradigm shift in human consciousness didn’t come into widespread practice simply out of a sense of goodness and altruism. It caught on because it worked, ultimately proving to be to the benefit of all. Perhaps there is an important modern-era lesson to be learned from this time, and one that we are only now beginning to recognize. The idea of a global village is no longer just a trite buzz-phrase—as seen by the ever-present danger of loose nukes, the crisis of global warming, and the current economic meltdown that is sweeping the globe.
Due to Barak Obama’s life path, his “global lineage,” and his basic temperament, I felt early on that he was the ideal candidate for this time in our history. Like a second Axial Age, it’s essential that we shift our perspective toward the common global good. We are simply too inextricably bound together to do otherwise. When Obama spoke of the “fierce urgency of now” during the early days of his campaign, I didn’t think for a moment that he was overstating his case. Nor did I see this as hollow campaign rhetoric. My Los Angeles-based brother and his wife walked precincts in Las Vegas during the weeks leading up to the November election. During one such visit, their small group of campaign workers met with Gov. Bill Richardson, who was also campaigning in the state for Obama. Richardson told a fascinating personal anecdote from the televised democratic primary debates. Not expecting to be called upon during a particular debate question, he had been busy preparing notes for the next round of questioning. Suddenly, the reporter asked him his thoughts. As Richardson struggled to recall the thread of the current questioning, he said that Obama whispered to him – “It’s about Hurricane Katrina, tell them your thoughts on the response.” Richardson told the small gathering of Obama campaign workers in Las Vegas that he realized at that moment, this was a very different kind of politician—someone who would actually help a rival during a nationally televised debate.
But having won the election is only just the beginning for Obama and his supporters. As Martin Luther King once said, “we’ve got some difficult days ahead.” On November 5, while making a many-hour drive, I tuned-in conservative talk radio, curious as to their take on the election outcome. From the on-air vitriol, it was clear that such conservative commentators couldn’t imagine Obama was for real—that he genuinely believed or meant what he said. So they were desperate to “figure out his game”—how he had pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes. But I never thought he had “a game.” I genuinely believed that he meant what he said—that he believed it was possible to find common ground between disparate groups, and move forward in a way that was beneficial to all.
And such criticisms don’t just come from the right. Conservatives may call him a closet terrorist, but progressives often say that he’s too conservative. And then some blacks say that he’s not black enough, or not black at all. Meanwhile, more than a half-dozen state and federal legal suits have been filed challenging Obama’s “natural born” citizenship. One such suit doesn’t even challenge that he was born in Hawaii, but simply asserts that by having a Kenyan father he was born with “split and competing loyalties,” and is therefore unsuitable for the presidency. But it is this very lineage that I believe makes him particularly suited for the American presidency of this era. While conservative pundits relished referring to him as “Barak Hussein Obama” during the campaign, I read several man-on-the-street viewpoints from the Middle East that expressed optimistic wonder that America would consider electing a man with such a middle name. In so many words, they repeatedly said—“Maybe they don’t dislike us after all if they would consider this man for their president.”
I see the election of Obama as the potential beginning of the end of ages-old, tribally based mindsets that have to give way if we are to survive as a race. Modern brain imaging demonstrates that humans are hardwired to categorize others as “in-group” and “out-group,” and that such assessments occur within milliseconds. But with our higher-brain capacities, we can consciously override such tendencies. And someone like Obama is the perfect leader to facilitate such a shift in perspective—born of white and black parents, with family ties to both America and Africa, and having spent major portions of his life in both a tropical island culture and an urban city setting. It’s no wonder that he throws a monkey wrench into the tribally based thinking of conservative pundits. They can’t easily peg him, and that infuriates them at a visceral level.
I’m also heartened by Obama’s appeal to the younger generation, and his groundbreaking use of the Internet during the campaign. It is always the younger generation that is most adept at breaking free from the past. And the Internet generation is particularly situated to recognize an interconnected world beyond race, tribe, and nationality. Connected from birth by technology, they arguably represent a new global super-tribe. Even my ten-year-old son and his classmates became energized by the election. Obama campaign buttons covered many a backpack at his school, and the student body even held a mock election. (Obama won by a landslide.)
I believe that the era of radical extremism is entering its dying days. In country after country, including our own, such extremism is proving to be a failed proposition, benefiting neither its proponents nor its victims. And I believe that the election of Obama is yet another sign of this transformation—a fundamental shift in human thought and human relations. I only hope that we, and the community of nations, can indeed seize the “fierce urgency” of this moment. It is an opportunity that may not come again for a very long time.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Friday, February 1, 2008
John McCain/Martin Luther King
In the flurry of campaign activity leading up to "Super Tuesday," I was particularly struck by a recent speech given by John McCain to a group of supporters in Florida:
"This is a tough war we're in. It's not going to be over right away. There's going to be other wars. ...I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars." -- John McCain, Polk City, Florida, 1/27/08
The Senator's words alone are chilling enough, but the video somehow makes his statements all the more frightening:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZCISY40qns
Meanwhile, I happened to be in downtown San Francisco with my son during the recent three day weekend honoring Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. We toured the MLK memorial at Yerba Buena Gardens, which features a number of memorable quotes from Dr. King. The one that really struck me was the following:
"Through our scientific genius, we have made this world a neighborhood; now, through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense, we must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
It's clear from their words, that the world views of these two men couldn't be further apart. And in the end, world view amounts to nearly everything. It's what forms us, how we filter information, and how we draw conclusions.
McCain's viewpoint is like that of so many in his political party -- "My way or the highway, you're either with us or against us." It is a perspective of the past, of simplistically defined "evil-doers," of subjugation through might, and of judgmental deities smiling down on the ultimate victor. I am not unsympathetic to McCain's life experiences. Shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, he was beaten and spat upon after parachuting into enemy territory. He spent over five years in a North Vietnamese prison, and was tortured and beaten during much of that time.
But having grown up in the segregated south of the United States, King was also no stranger to violence and oppression. He had seen lynchings, church burnings, and the raw hatred in the eyes of men who poured coffee and food over the heads of southern black diners simply because they had the audacity to sit at a counter labeled "whites only." And yet he came to very different conclusions as to the world's problems. Even though he delivered the above speech over 40 years ago, King clearly recognized the reality of the era that we had already entered into. We no longer live in a world of small and isolated villages, where conflicts can we resolved by throwing spears and swinging swords. We are now interconnected within hours by air, within minutes by nuclear missile, and within milliseconds by the Internet.
The Bush/McCain "war against terror" can never be won until the root cause of such conflicts is addressed. We live in a time where conflicts are being fought with homemade bombs and forty-dollar cell phone triggers, and where skyscrapers are brought down with dime-store box cutters. It's no longer an option to imagine that we can somehow battle others into submission through sheer military might.
Unless we can somehow see beyond the narrow world view of men such as Bush and McCain (and their same ilk on the other side), and find common ground toward common cause, we may truly find ourselves fulfilling King's grim prophecy -- to "perish together as fools." And leave only such pathetic and bellicose videos as our memorial.
"This is a tough war we're in. It's not going to be over right away. There's going to be other wars. ...I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars." -- John McCain, Polk City, Florida, 1/27/08
The Senator's words alone are chilling enough, but the video somehow makes his statements all the more frightening:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZCISY40qns
Meanwhile, I happened to be in downtown San Francisco with my son during the recent three day weekend honoring Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. We toured the MLK memorial at Yerba Buena Gardens, which features a number of memorable quotes from Dr. King. The one that really struck me was the following:
"Through our scientific genius, we have made this world a neighborhood; now, through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense, we must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
It's clear from their words, that the world views of these two men couldn't be further apart. And in the end, world view amounts to nearly everything. It's what forms us, how we filter information, and how we draw conclusions.
McCain's viewpoint is like that of so many in his political party -- "My way or the highway, you're either with us or against us." It is a perspective of the past, of simplistically defined "evil-doers," of subjugation through might, and of judgmental deities smiling down on the ultimate victor. I am not unsympathetic to McCain's life experiences. Shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, he was beaten and spat upon after parachuting into enemy territory. He spent over five years in a North Vietnamese prison, and was tortured and beaten during much of that time.
But having grown up in the segregated south of the United States, King was also no stranger to violence and oppression. He had seen lynchings, church burnings, and the raw hatred in the eyes of men who poured coffee and food over the heads of southern black diners simply because they had the audacity to sit at a counter labeled "whites only." And yet he came to very different conclusions as to the world's problems. Even though he delivered the above speech over 40 years ago, King clearly recognized the reality of the era that we had already entered into. We no longer live in a world of small and isolated villages, where conflicts can we resolved by throwing spears and swinging swords. We are now interconnected within hours by air, within minutes by nuclear missile, and within milliseconds by the Internet.
The Bush/McCain "war against terror" can never be won until the root cause of such conflicts is addressed. We live in a time where conflicts are being fought with homemade bombs and forty-dollar cell phone triggers, and where skyscrapers are brought down with dime-store box cutters. It's no longer an option to imagine that we can somehow battle others into submission through sheer military might.
Unless we can somehow see beyond the narrow world view of men such as Bush and McCain (and their same ilk on the other side), and find common ground toward common cause, we may truly find ourselves fulfilling King's grim prophecy -- to "perish together as fools." And leave only such pathetic and bellicose videos as our memorial.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Gene Genie
The continued fractious nature of the campaigning leading up to the 2008 Presidential election demonstrates once again how divided a country we have become. It’s no longer a matter of political party, or of red states and blue states. There’s now the black candidate, the woman candidate, the minister candidate, the progressive candidate, the populist candidate, the keep-us-safe candidate(s), the fiscal conservative candidate, the father-figure candidate, the commander-in-chief candidate, and several different variations and combinations of the above. Which leads me to further ruminations about tribal bonding and tribal identification…
Through the magic of the Internet, I’ve recently established email contact with several long-forgotten high school classmates. To my amazement, many of these ‘70s-era, post-hippie friends have proven to be quite politically conservative (I’m an admitted liberal).
These email exchanges, the current political season, and a book that I recently read, have all led me to some interesting conclusions. More on that below. But first, a bit about the book…
“The God Gene” is a fascinating work by Dr. Dean Hamer, a Harvard-trained NIH geneticist. In it, Hamer proposes not only that it’s possible to quantitatively place people on a scale of predisposition toward spiritual belief, but also to pinpoint the actual genes that effect this predisposition. Hamer’s book is far removed from such polemics as Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.” “The God Gene” takes a completely neutral stance as to whether God exists, the nature of such a God, or the pros and cons of any and all organized religions. In fact, Hamer’s definition of “spirituality” might be considered by some to be quite far removed from the tenets of any traditional religion.
In order to gauge a given subject’s predisposition toward spiritual belief, Hamer uses a “self-transcendence scale” developed by Dr. Robert Cloninger, a Psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis. Cloninger’s scale is simple but elegant, comprised of three distinct but related components--“self-forgetfulness” (the ability to lose oneself in an activity and “get into the zone”), “transpersonal identification” (a feeling of connectedness to the universe and everything in it), and “mysticism” (the sense that not everything can be explained by science and materialist logic). And sure enough, Hamer did find a statistically significant correlation between a particular gene that controls certain monoamine neurotransmitters, and one’s score on Cloninger’s self-transcendence scale.
As a result of reading “The God Gene,” and then recent email exchanges with former classmates, I've come to suspect that, in the same way people can be placed on a scale of spiritual predisposition, they perhaps can also be placed on a scale of tribal predisposition. I find that the political conservatives I know exhibit a number of common and easily identifiable behavioral traits. They regularly make statements like: "We're the greatest country on earth," “God bestows a special blessing on America,” and "The terrorists want to destroy our free way of life." And they summarily reject any sense of nuance or evidence to the contrary in terms of such beliefs. It's clearly not an entirely logical process.
It's occurred to me that such tendencies lie at the heart of conservative political belief--a sense of “special” separateness, of being drawn to "exclusive" business and social organizations (such as Rotary and fraternities), a xenophobic sense of others as existing outside of their realm (immigrants, Socialists, Muslims, "liberals," "intellectuals," etc.), and feeling regularly threatened by such outsiders.
Meanwhile, liberalism tends toward an almost antithetical belief set--emphasizing "leveling the playing field," inclusiveness, diversity, tolerance, etc. These differences in mindset are so clearly defined that it’s often an easy matter to deduce one’s political persuasion merely by reading bumper stickers on a car. An American flag sticker typically means: conservative. A sticker picturing the earth as a whole typically means: liberal. A sticker picturing a specific religious symbol usually means: conservative. A sticker picturing all religious symbols placed alongside one another usually means: liberal. A sticker stating “God bless America,” typically means: conservative. A sticker stating “God bless us all, no exceptions,” typically means: liberal. And so on.
This led me to ponder whether there might be actual genes that dictate such tribalistic tendencies. Such leanings would seem to offer clear survival benefits during more primitive times--depending upon a given culture's environmental resources, social organization, and external threats. If such a gene/genes existed, one might hypothesize that political liberals would score low on such a tribalistic scale, and that political conservatives would score higher.
If eventually proven true, it might be interesting to explore such a set of genes in terms of different nationalities. On average, would those in a country such as Sweden, which has an image of non-aggressiveness and low-key nationalism, score lower on such a tribalism scale in relation to a country like the U.S.? And how might this scale play-out in countries such as those in the Middle East, which seem perpetually fractured by tribal and regional infighting? Certainly such tendencies, in a hostile desert environment with limited physical resources, would have offered clear survival benefits in more ancient times.
I increasingly realize that such hard-wired tribalistic tendencies seem to be a real phenomenon among the people I meet--how strongly they identify with their country, their workplace, their city, their former university, their race, or even their favorite sports team. Whether correlation amounts to causality, and whether such causality could be pinned down at the genetic level, remains to be seen. But it’s certainly a fascinating prospect. Obviously, such lines of investigation would be highly controversial--the possibility that one might predict political affiliation via a mere cheek swab. And certainly there is more to complex human behavior than mere genetics. But it's still interesting to engage in such conjecture.
It might further be argued that feeling “one with the universe," as in Cloninger's scale, is in-part related to feeling "one with humanity"--which is the antithesis of a powerful tribal identification. Which could indicate a subtle interplay/connection between spiritual and tribal-bonding tendencies.
Interestingly, Cloninger and Hamer found that a high “spirituality” score does not always entirely correlate with real-world religious affiliation. In other words, those with strong spiritual predispositions do not always attend church, and those who attend church do not always have a particularly strong spiritual predisposition. Which makes perfect sense. Such affiliations can be powerfully influenced by family and community. And in a similar vein, I suspect that a tendency toward tribalistic attachment might also have many possible real-world manifestations--depending upon one's upbringing and background. In other words, someone with a powerful sense of tribal identification, if brought up in an ultra-liberal environment, might just as easily manifest that tendency in terms of a narrow and rigid identification with hyper-liberalism. I know many people like this in the Bay Area, who are really just the flipside of heartland Republican fundamentalists. They're often just as strongly identified with their belief set, just as intransigent in these beliefs, and just as intolerant of those lying outside of that realm.
Through the magic of the Internet, I’ve recently established email contact with several long-forgotten high school classmates. To my amazement, many of these ‘70s-era, post-hippie friends have proven to be quite politically conservative (I’m an admitted liberal).
These email exchanges, the current political season, and a book that I recently read, have all led me to some interesting conclusions. More on that below. But first, a bit about the book…
“The God Gene” is a fascinating work by Dr. Dean Hamer, a Harvard-trained NIH geneticist. In it, Hamer proposes not only that it’s possible to quantitatively place people on a scale of predisposition toward spiritual belief, but also to pinpoint the actual genes that effect this predisposition. Hamer’s book is far removed from such polemics as Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.” “The God Gene” takes a completely neutral stance as to whether God exists, the nature of such a God, or the pros and cons of any and all organized religions. In fact, Hamer’s definition of “spirituality” might be considered by some to be quite far removed from the tenets of any traditional religion.
In order to gauge a given subject’s predisposition toward spiritual belief, Hamer uses a “self-transcendence scale” developed by Dr. Robert Cloninger, a Psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis. Cloninger’s scale is simple but elegant, comprised of three distinct but related components--“self-forgetfulness” (the ability to lose oneself in an activity and “get into the zone”), “transpersonal identification” (a feeling of connectedness to the universe and everything in it), and “mysticism” (the sense that not everything can be explained by science and materialist logic). And sure enough, Hamer did find a statistically significant correlation between a particular gene that controls certain monoamine neurotransmitters, and one’s score on Cloninger’s self-transcendence scale.
As a result of reading “The God Gene,” and then recent email exchanges with former classmates, I've come to suspect that, in the same way people can be placed on a scale of spiritual predisposition, they perhaps can also be placed on a scale of tribal predisposition. I find that the political conservatives I know exhibit a number of common and easily identifiable behavioral traits. They regularly make statements like: "We're the greatest country on earth," “God bestows a special blessing on America,” and "The terrorists want to destroy our free way of life." And they summarily reject any sense of nuance or evidence to the contrary in terms of such beliefs. It's clearly not an entirely logical process.
It's occurred to me that such tendencies lie at the heart of conservative political belief--a sense of “special” separateness, of being drawn to "exclusive" business and social organizations (such as Rotary and fraternities), a xenophobic sense of others as existing outside of their realm (immigrants, Socialists, Muslims, "liberals," "intellectuals," etc.), and feeling regularly threatened by such outsiders.
Meanwhile, liberalism tends toward an almost antithetical belief set--emphasizing "leveling the playing field," inclusiveness, diversity, tolerance, etc. These differences in mindset are so clearly defined that it’s often an easy matter to deduce one’s political persuasion merely by reading bumper stickers on a car. An American flag sticker typically means: conservative. A sticker picturing the earth as a whole typically means: liberal. A sticker picturing a specific religious symbol usually means: conservative. A sticker picturing all religious symbols placed alongside one another usually means: liberal. A sticker stating “God bless America,” typically means: conservative. A sticker stating “God bless us all, no exceptions,” typically means: liberal. And so on.
This led me to ponder whether there might be actual genes that dictate such tribalistic tendencies. Such leanings would seem to offer clear survival benefits during more primitive times--depending upon a given culture's environmental resources, social organization, and external threats. If such a gene/genes existed, one might hypothesize that political liberals would score low on such a tribalistic scale, and that political conservatives would score higher.
If eventually proven true, it might be interesting to explore such a set of genes in terms of different nationalities. On average, would those in a country such as Sweden, which has an image of non-aggressiveness and low-key nationalism, score lower on such a tribalism scale in relation to a country like the U.S.? And how might this scale play-out in countries such as those in the Middle East, which seem perpetually fractured by tribal and regional infighting? Certainly such tendencies, in a hostile desert environment with limited physical resources, would have offered clear survival benefits in more ancient times.
I increasingly realize that such hard-wired tribalistic tendencies seem to be a real phenomenon among the people I meet--how strongly they identify with their country, their workplace, their city, their former university, their race, or even their favorite sports team. Whether correlation amounts to causality, and whether such causality could be pinned down at the genetic level, remains to be seen. But it’s certainly a fascinating prospect. Obviously, such lines of investigation would be highly controversial--the possibility that one might predict political affiliation via a mere cheek swab. And certainly there is more to complex human behavior than mere genetics. But it's still interesting to engage in such conjecture.
It might further be argued that feeling “one with the universe," as in Cloninger's scale, is in-part related to feeling "one with humanity"--which is the antithesis of a powerful tribal identification. Which could indicate a subtle interplay/connection between spiritual and tribal-bonding tendencies.
Interestingly, Cloninger and Hamer found that a high “spirituality” score does not always entirely correlate with real-world religious affiliation. In other words, those with strong spiritual predispositions do not always attend church, and those who attend church do not always have a particularly strong spiritual predisposition. Which makes perfect sense. Such affiliations can be powerfully influenced by family and community. And in a similar vein, I suspect that a tendency toward tribalistic attachment might also have many possible real-world manifestations--depending upon one's upbringing and background. In other words, someone with a powerful sense of tribal identification, if brought up in an ultra-liberal environment, might just as easily manifest that tendency in terms of a narrow and rigid identification with hyper-liberalism. I know many people like this in the Bay Area, who are really just the flipside of heartland Republican fundamentalists. They're often just as strongly identified with their belief set, just as intransigent in these beliefs, and just as intolerant of those lying outside of that realm.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Walls and Bridges
In a previous entry, I explored the many global conflicts that seem due to tribalistic bonding--and how such bondings particularly manifest in the face of perceived danger. The more I ponder this phenomenon, the more pervasive (and destructive) it seems to be. A newspaper article last week, detailed how Shiites and Sunnis in the more war-torn areas of Iraq have increasingly segregated into discrete neighborhoods--uprooting families, neighbors, businesses, and friends that had peacefully co-existed for decades before.
Now, portions of Kenya are in the throes of similar ethnic strife. The aftermath of a disputed presidential election, with violent clashes between the Luo and Kikuyu tribes, has led to the death of hundreds, and the displacement of over 250,000. To quote a Los Angeles Times article--“All over Kenya, people are packing up and leaving their houses, perhaps forever, in the aftermath of tribal violence triggered by the country's disputed presidential election. Friendships are disintegrating, borders are being drawn, and markets where people once shopped together are no-go zones for one tribe or another. Saturday, under the protection of paramilitary police, people shuttled from one side to another, carrying furniture, bedding, bags and pots as they steadily divided themselves by tribe. On one side of the bridge, in the Ghetto, no Luos can live. On the other, in a place called Mathare North, no Kikuyus. They couldn't have gone about the task more efficiently had the government decreed it. ‘Across there we cannot cross. A Kikuyu will never cross into that area. There is a border there,’ said Margaret Wawira Wanjiru, 30, from the Ghetto.”
Across the globe, we find such walls and borders being erected. The Israelis are building a wall to supposedly protect themselves from the Palestinians. American conservatives want to build a wall to supposedly protect us from Mexicans. And now the Kenyans are drawing similar borders and barriers. But they simply won’t work. The building of walls is no longer a viable means of dealing with our problems. We’re all too inter-connected. We have to somehow start thinking in terms of bridges.
Already, those who seek to find an “Islamo-facism” link to any world conflict are uncovering tenuous connections between the minority Muslims in Kenya and one of the contested Presidential candidates. And now further connections are being drawn in terms of Barak Obama having met with this candidate several years back. The reverberations of tribal bonding are spreading outward from the original conflict, like ripples in a pond, breeding animosity in its wake.
Those who assert that “religion poisons everything” (at least, any religion other than their own), regularly claim that religious conflict lies at the root of everything from the mistreatment of women, to wars, to genocides. But from simply reading the daily headlines, the clear fact of the matter is that the real poison lies within us all, and will not be purged until we can somehow see beyond primitive tendencies that once served a vital role in our survival, but which now threaten that very survival.
I’m reminded of the character, General Jack D. Ripper, in “Dr. Strangelove,” the brilliant political satire film made by Stanley Kubrick in the 60s. General Ripper, after ordering a rogue nuclear first-strike on the Soviet Union, details to a military colleague his theory that the Russians were trying to poison the U.S. via the fluoridation of water--thereby “sapping our precious bodily fluids.” “…I first became aware of it during the physical act of love,” states Ripper. “Luckily, I was able to interpret these feelings correctly.”
We humans like to think that we’re far more logical and rational than we really are. In reality, as with the Ripper character, we often think something first, and then look for a rationalization for those feelings.
As the bumper sticker on my car says--“Don’t Believe Everything You Think.”
Now, portions of Kenya are in the throes of similar ethnic strife. The aftermath of a disputed presidential election, with violent clashes between the Luo and Kikuyu tribes, has led to the death of hundreds, and the displacement of over 250,000. To quote a Los Angeles Times article--“All over Kenya, people are packing up and leaving their houses, perhaps forever, in the aftermath of tribal violence triggered by the country's disputed presidential election. Friendships are disintegrating, borders are being drawn, and markets where people once shopped together are no-go zones for one tribe or another. Saturday, under the protection of paramilitary police, people shuttled from one side to another, carrying furniture, bedding, bags and pots as they steadily divided themselves by tribe. On one side of the bridge, in the Ghetto, no Luos can live. On the other, in a place called Mathare North, no Kikuyus. They couldn't have gone about the task more efficiently had the government decreed it. ‘Across there we cannot cross. A Kikuyu will never cross into that area. There is a border there,’ said Margaret Wawira Wanjiru, 30, from the Ghetto.”
Across the globe, we find such walls and borders being erected. The Israelis are building a wall to supposedly protect themselves from the Palestinians. American conservatives want to build a wall to supposedly protect us from Mexicans. And now the Kenyans are drawing similar borders and barriers. But they simply won’t work. The building of walls is no longer a viable means of dealing with our problems. We’re all too inter-connected. We have to somehow start thinking in terms of bridges.
Already, those who seek to find an “Islamo-facism” link to any world conflict are uncovering tenuous connections between the minority Muslims in Kenya and one of the contested Presidential candidates. And now further connections are being drawn in terms of Barak Obama having met with this candidate several years back. The reverberations of tribal bonding are spreading outward from the original conflict, like ripples in a pond, breeding animosity in its wake.
Those who assert that “religion poisons everything” (at least, any religion other than their own), regularly claim that religious conflict lies at the root of everything from the mistreatment of women, to wars, to genocides. But from simply reading the daily headlines, the clear fact of the matter is that the real poison lies within us all, and will not be purged until we can somehow see beyond primitive tendencies that once served a vital role in our survival, but which now threaten that very survival.
I’m reminded of the character, General Jack D. Ripper, in “Dr. Strangelove,” the brilliant political satire film made by Stanley Kubrick in the 60s. General Ripper, after ordering a rogue nuclear first-strike on the Soviet Union, details to a military colleague his theory that the Russians were trying to poison the U.S. via the fluoridation of water--thereby “sapping our precious bodily fluids.” “…I first became aware of it during the physical act of love,” states Ripper. “Luckily, I was able to interpret these feelings correctly.”
We humans like to think that we’re far more logical and rational than we really are. In reality, as with the Ripper character, we often think something first, and then look for a rationalization for those feelings.
As the bumper sticker on my car says--“Don’t Believe Everything You Think.”
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Ask the Ants
I regularly trade email with friends who are either atheists or political conservatives. Invariably, the topic of religion comes up, often within the context of the supposedly negative influence it has had over the span of human history. Of course this supposed negative influence spans all religions for the atheists, and any other religion but that of the speaker for the political conservatives.
I often point out that the major genocides of human history--the Holocaust, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Rwanda, and the current conflict in Iraq (between the Sunnis and Shiites)--have had little to do with religion, and almost everything to do with ethnic/tribal hatred. Religion merely becomes a tool used to justify more deep-seated feelings rooted in tribalism. From a big-picture perspective, it’s little different from two ant colonies being placed in sudden unfamiliar proximity. We humans just have more complex and higher-brained rationalizations for our actions. As I point out to these email buddies, the warring factions of the Middle East were at one another’s throats long before Mohammed ever entered that cave in the mountains. In fact, for quite some time, Islam brought a period of relative order and peace to these factions.
Such tribalistic tendencies are hard-wired into us, and particularly manifest themselves when people feel threatened. I honestly think that 9/11 played a major role in hyper-polarizing America along religious and party lines. When feeling threatened, we’re programmed to bond with those we perceive as like-minded, in the same way that fish form schools in the face of a predator. A recent San Francisco Chronicle article detailed how Sunnis and Shiites have increasingly segregated into discrete neighborhoods--something that never existed before we destabilized their country.
But such tribalistic bonding is increasingly antithetical to life in the modern era. We’re all in this together. Yet, with the extremely slow pace of human evolution, we often can’t see that fact. Or perhaps we see it intellectually, but not in our hearts. Whether it’s global warming, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, or AIDS, what affects one group now affects them all. But when threatened or scared, we ceaselessly fall into the same hard-wired trap of wanting to “stick with our homies”--whether that means Republicans, Democrats, Muslims, Christians, gun owners, progressives, Shiites, Sunnis, progressives, Greens, or what have you. In the animal kingdom, such tribal associations are much more clearly and simply defined--mainly by species and geography. But with the greater complexity of the human pre-frontal cortex, such associations become an ever-evolving, ever-shifting sand.
And most modern day religions do little to alleviate this crisis of perspective. They’re as mired in exclusivity and tribalistic bonding as any other group. Each purports to be the true path, while damning anyone on the outside of the tribe to eternal hell fire. It’s no small wonder that “Jedi” is now an officially reported religion on the U.K. census. It’s as if such movies as “The Golden Compass,” “Star Wars,” and “The Matrix” are offering more meaningful and fulfilling spiritual mythologies than actual organized religions.
I’ve been particularly intrigued by the recent popularity of “The Golden Compass” and “Narnia.” Each presents a prophesized young person entering into a winter world of talking animals, a wicked and dissembling “ice queen,” and warring tribes battling for the salvation of the “special world.” But the sad thing to me is that, in one saga, traditional religion is presented as the force of ultimate good, and in the other, it’s presented as the force of ultimate evil. When viewed side-by-side, each mythology falls into the same trap of purporting to offer ultimate truth, while demonizing any “non-believers” of that truth. I personally tend to prefer the less dogmatic and “spiritual” message of Compass. But it still saddens me to see both movies polarizing real-world factions against one another, with each determined to denounce the other film as heresy.
Ironically, modern science has increasingly demonstrated how erroneous any sense of ethnic or religious exclusivity really is. Data from the Human Genome Project has demonstrated how little we actually differ from one another, and has shown that diverse ethnicities are often more closely related than anyone could have imagined. Meanwhile, modern brain imaging has shown the commonality of transcendent states achieved by devotees of diverse religions and faiths.
We need to somehow see beyond the visceral hard-wired reactions of our more primitive past--viewing them in the same way that we would a reflexive pulling away from a hot object. It may or may not present a real danger. And what feels hot at first-touch, could actually prove to be cold. When such reflexive animosities overtake us, either individually or collectively, we need to see them for what they are--an instinct, which once served a vital role in our survival, but which now threatens that very survival. It’s time to let go of our biological past, and start thinking with our higher-brains…and with our hearts.
I often point out that the major genocides of human history--the Holocaust, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Rwanda, and the current conflict in Iraq (between the Sunnis and Shiites)--have had little to do with religion, and almost everything to do with ethnic/tribal hatred. Religion merely becomes a tool used to justify more deep-seated feelings rooted in tribalism. From a big-picture perspective, it’s little different from two ant colonies being placed in sudden unfamiliar proximity. We humans just have more complex and higher-brained rationalizations for our actions. As I point out to these email buddies, the warring factions of the Middle East were at one another’s throats long before Mohammed ever entered that cave in the mountains. In fact, for quite some time, Islam brought a period of relative order and peace to these factions.
Such tribalistic tendencies are hard-wired into us, and particularly manifest themselves when people feel threatened. I honestly think that 9/11 played a major role in hyper-polarizing America along religious and party lines. When feeling threatened, we’re programmed to bond with those we perceive as like-minded, in the same way that fish form schools in the face of a predator. A recent San Francisco Chronicle article detailed how Sunnis and Shiites have increasingly segregated into discrete neighborhoods--something that never existed before we destabilized their country.
But such tribalistic bonding is increasingly antithetical to life in the modern era. We’re all in this together. Yet, with the extremely slow pace of human evolution, we often can’t see that fact. Or perhaps we see it intellectually, but not in our hearts. Whether it’s global warming, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, or AIDS, what affects one group now affects them all. But when threatened or scared, we ceaselessly fall into the same hard-wired trap of wanting to “stick with our homies”--whether that means Republicans, Democrats, Muslims, Christians, gun owners, progressives, Shiites, Sunnis, progressives, Greens, or what have you. In the animal kingdom, such tribal associations are much more clearly and simply defined--mainly by species and geography. But with the greater complexity of the human pre-frontal cortex, such associations become an ever-evolving, ever-shifting sand.
And most modern day religions do little to alleviate this crisis of perspective. They’re as mired in exclusivity and tribalistic bonding as any other group. Each purports to be the true path, while damning anyone on the outside of the tribe to eternal hell fire. It’s no small wonder that “Jedi” is now an officially reported religion on the U.K. census. It’s as if such movies as “The Golden Compass,” “Star Wars,” and “The Matrix” are offering more meaningful and fulfilling spiritual mythologies than actual organized religions.
I’ve been particularly intrigued by the recent popularity of “The Golden Compass” and “Narnia.” Each presents a prophesized young person entering into a winter world of talking animals, a wicked and dissembling “ice queen,” and warring tribes battling for the salvation of the “special world.” But the sad thing to me is that, in one saga, traditional religion is presented as the force of ultimate good, and in the other, it’s presented as the force of ultimate evil. When viewed side-by-side, each mythology falls into the same trap of purporting to offer ultimate truth, while demonizing any “non-believers” of that truth. I personally tend to prefer the less dogmatic and “spiritual” message of Compass. But it still saddens me to see both movies polarizing real-world factions against one another, with each determined to denounce the other film as heresy.
Ironically, modern science has increasingly demonstrated how erroneous any sense of ethnic or religious exclusivity really is. Data from the Human Genome Project has demonstrated how little we actually differ from one another, and has shown that diverse ethnicities are often more closely related than anyone could have imagined. Meanwhile, modern brain imaging has shown the commonality of transcendent states achieved by devotees of diverse religions and faiths.
We need to somehow see beyond the visceral hard-wired reactions of our more primitive past--viewing them in the same way that we would a reflexive pulling away from a hot object. It may or may not present a real danger. And what feels hot at first-touch, could actually prove to be cold. When such reflexive animosities overtake us, either individually or collectively, we need to see them for what they are--an instinct, which once served a vital role in our survival, but which now threatens that very survival. It’s time to let go of our biological past, and start thinking with our higher-brains…and with our hearts.
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