David Teachout's Blog, page 17

Tips on verifying facts and ensuring accuracy

Originally posted on The Buttry Diary:
Craig Silverman of Regret the Error is leading a workshop for TBD Community Network members (and staff and anyone else in the Washington area who’s interested) this evening at American University’s School of Communication. As supplemental reading for those attending the workshop, I’m posting this handout updated I developed…

When Persecution Isn’t: The Technological Expansion of Ego

The seeming necessity for bonding within like-minded groups is not simply an affectation of modern society, it is foundational to being human. This selection provides a sense of safety in numbers and relatedly a continuity of experience. While the lone dissenter has attained a certain mythologizing in modern story-telling, human history is far more often […]

Leaving the Church Behind

Originally posted on exhaleinexhile:
Last week, a former congregation member emailed me to see how I was doing after closing down the church where I was the pastor for eight years. In the email, he asked me if I had found a new church to attend; and in my reply, I told him that I…

Moving the Values of Myth: A Reflection on Easter

From moment to moment, our lives can embody any of the multiplicity of purposes that we can identify with. The stories we tell, from socially created myths to benign exaggerations expressed to friends and colleagues, project the particular purpose we want to make front and center. This can be due to a desire to express […]

Being Anti-Religious Gets Us Nowhere

When faced with the question of “Do you believe in God?” the immediate response should be “Which one?” This query goes to the heart of the inherent ego-centrism of the initial question. Let’s face it, the person uttering it is not at all interested in getting into a long and winding philosophical discussion about metaphysics, the nature […]

One Perspective To Bring Them All, And in The Darkness Bind Them

Many have heard of the story of the three blind men faced with an elephant. The first approaches and, touching the tail, declares they have found a broom. The second approaches and, touching a leg, declares they found a large tree. The third approaches and, touching the trunk, declares they’ve found a snake. There are […]

The Wailing of Martyrdom from The Falsely Humble

With all the criticism, protests and political grandstanding going on concerning the “religious freedom” bill recently signed by Governor Pence in Indiana, the focus on how it can be used by businesses to discriminate against the LGBTQ communities makes a broader discussion more difficult. Certainly such discrimination is wrong and should not be enshrined in our legal code, that we are even having to consider such in the 21st century is astronomically insane. People should be curious as to just how business owners are supposed to identify the gays and queers among us. It’s not as if they all wander around looking like they just stepped away from a Gay Pride parade in Vancouver. Indeed, some people who dress as such may not even be LGBTQ. How is one to determine such sin in their midst? Perhaps color-coded cards are in order, or an entire rainbow of bright shiny pins should be ordered. It’s damn difficult to keep the sanctity of your sanctimony when those of such vile-ness look just like…well, you know…people. Clearly we must mark them.

For a fundamentalist religious group who’s apocalyptic mutterings include various iterations of the so-called “mark of the beast,” including paperwork and, keeping with the technology of the day, microchipping, it certainly buries the meter or irony that they come up with the legal framework to mark people as “other” and undeserving of taking part in public business. That very public quality of business makes this detestable. Bigotry when practiced in the privacy of your own home or even through the private giving out of created goods is deserving of moral disgust, but in a country of free-expression and individual liberty such behavior is certainly a person’s proclivity. However, businesses are a public entity, they partake of public goods. From social legal systems to the infrastructure of roads and shipping to the support of the government to enforce contracts, businesses are not synonymous with private individuals, however much someone’s ego may say otherwise. Essentially what Governor Pence and those who support his “show me your papers” law are declaring is that their religious ideology is not merely protected in its expression in the privacy of their own homes, but is protected and enshrined within the public legal framework of American society. They are declaring that the law is or should be the equivalent to their particular religious interpretation. All this because by placing themselves in the public sphere of commerce, therefore opening themselves up to the variations of what the public is individually instantiated as, they want to pick and choose who is worthy of participating in that very public sphere.

Were the arguments being brought forward of this kind, at least there’d be room to admire, and shudder at, the honesty. Alas, no, enshrining discrimination in legal and public practice doesn’t win the support of most others (a testament to the quality of basic human nature). Instead there is continual talk of “religious freedom” being thwarted by government action and the oppression of their meek and pious desire to live out their lives in line with their religious beliefs. The martyrdom complex has never had a greater proponent than fundamentalist Christians in America. Shockingly there are people who buy into this. Let’s take stock for a moment of that so-called oppression.

Christians, of all types, make up 78.4% of the American population. According to one research finding, the religious exemption of taxation amounts to a minimum entitlement package of $71 billion. In the same research it is estimated that religious groups hold over $600 billion worth of property. To give that latter point substance, compare it with the total state property owned by that liberal bastion called New Hampshire. As of 2010, the balance sheet for state-owned property stood at $1.3 billion. That’s right, religious groups in America hold more than 600 times the state-owned property of New Hampshire. Moving beyond money, there’s a de-facto religious test to hold public office, unless someone wants to be so foolish as to think an atheist or Hindu could become president. In fact, polls indicate that of all congressional members, 91.8% are Christian, which is considerably impressive since as was noted previously, only 78.4% of the American populace identifies as such. It would seem that the representative government is anything but. Such representation indicates that Christians in particular, are under no duress except in their own minds.

Why then the protests by the religious majority? This goes to that martyrdom complex mentioned earlier. The basic conservative Christian doctrine (as opposed to the more humanistic liberal theologies of some circles) is one of being set apart from humanity, of being a chosen people set up by their God as an opposing force in a world that is controlled by Satan. Truly, this is not made-up. Conservative, particularly fundamentalist, Christians believe they have been selected out of all of humanity to bear witness and receive the deepest most meaningful secrets of the universe, principally that related to eternal salvation. Variations of the following depend on the theological paradigm a believer adheres to, but the result is still foundational the same; this divine whispering directly into their ear is the work of their Holy Spirit, who through no power of their own, selected them out of all of humanity to be the only ones capable of saying yes to the truth that is shown to them. Let’s be clear here. This would be like having ten sugar-crazed toddlers in a line, giving six of them huge lollipops and then telling the remaining four that you just know that if you had offered the same to them, they’d have said no. I can only imagine the protests and, were they able, the vociferous cursing that would result. If asked how you know, well, the only way to have access to that knowledge is to have been selected and by not being selected, you’ll never be able to understand. If the mind is a bit frazzled by such convoluted thinking, don’t worry, that’s only a further indication that you weren’t worthy.

Here we have it then: a majority of the populace, a majority of political power, and being a chosen few out of the world who have access to the most important knowledge ever in the history of humanity. That this group continually attempts to declare their humility is essentially begging people to be hoodwinked. That this group continues to cry out about their oppressed existence is essentially begging people to ignore reality. Their oppression exists as nothing more than a projection of their self-serving religious ideology which declares them a set-apart people surrounded by Satan’s minions. Incidentally this is why so many can on one hand say they have nothing against gay people, but then in the same breath call them abominations deserving of eternal torture in hell.

We should criticize and condemn the legislation of discrimination coming out of Indiana, but it is not the only state which is currently attempting to pass such laws. To break down such legislation we must acknowledge the ideological separateness that pushes people to create and support those laws and then call it out for what it is: a false humility to hide their attempts to declare who is and who is not worthy of taking part in a world of humanity.

© David Teachout

Generational Criminals: Character or Context?

Kids these days. So goes the refrain of every older generation, going back to the time of Socrates, who lamented about the the “bad manners” of the youth of his day who had “contempt for authority.” Between the deficits of memory and proximity bias (events that occur closer to you are assumed more prevalent), there lies a whole valley of potential judgment. Such judgment winds its way into social policy as those who are able to hold institutional power then attempt to fix the problems they see. Determining the source of declared bad behavior is often based on underlying assumptions concerning the locus of control. Is a person’s bad or even criminal behavior due to being a “bad seed” and therefore of some character defect or are social and familial influences to blame? 

In psychology, theories that support judgment placed on the individual are referred to as “static theories.” “According to this view, each individual has a certain chance to commit crime. Individual differences could be due to personality traits and biological causes and/or to differences in upbringing as predicted by the self-control theory…” (Van de Rakt, Ruiter, De Graaf, & Nieuwbeerta, 2010). The latter self-control theory states that criminal parents lack the proper level of self-control needed to raise their children right and therefore those very kids grow up to commit crimes themselves. Regardless of the form taken, such “static theories” place the proclivity to commit crimes squarely on the backs of the children themselves.

Another set of theories is referred to as “dynamic theories.” These theories note that tendencies to commit crimes change during the course of one’s life, “meaning that life circumstances influence one’s chance of committing crime and that there exists a causal relation between past and future criminal behavior.” The influence of parental criminal behavior in these theories is assumed to last beyond early childhood. 

Undoubtedly some knee-jerk responses are already rearing up, the source of which stemming from personal desire and likely accompanied by personally witnessed stories supporting one or the other. An important point to keep in mind is that where one falls on the spectrum of influence strength will result in tendencies for viewing not just adolescent behavior but adult behavior as well. What can be said of one entails being said of the other, unless the notion is to be promoted that there exist some fundamental difference between the two groups. Whatever can be said about the teen mind, it is still a human one, so while the set of variables may change, the placement of responsibility will not. 

What is it then that ends up being found? The study under consideration here attempted to find out the relative strength for each set of theories, static and dynamic. If the former is correct, the prevalence and time frame of parental criminal behavior should have no influence on whether the child commits a crime later in life. If the latter is correct, there should be a degree of change related to when and how often criminal behavior occurs by the parent(s). 

The findings end up, as is often the case, supporting variations of both sets of theories. Criminal activity generally increases during adolescence, peaking in the early twenties and then decreasing with time, but within this bell curve of criminal behavior there was found to be linkages with when the father committed a crime. “In the year a father is convicted for committing crime (and in subsequent years), the chance his child is also convicted increases.” There is, thankfully, what is referred to as a decay effect in play. In other words, when it concerns the first parental crime, the increase of the child committing a crime decays to half the increase within one year. Unfortunately, with each crime committed, the amount of time that increase takes to decay becomes longer and longer. When a father is convicted for the fifth time, it takes more than six years for the increased chance to return to half of what the potential was originally before the conviction. 

As to why some children are more influenced by their father’s criminal behavior than others, it is still open to investigation. What can’t be removed from discussion is the effect that such behavior has on the proclivity of children to commit crimes. We simply cannot talk as if responsibility is purely the burden of the individual. Were such to be the case, there’d be no connection between a parent’s actions and the child’s own behavior. Given the slope of decay for the influence of a father’s criminal behavior, we have to conclude, however tentatively, that the child’s potential for manifesting their own criminal act is linked. 

Noted previously, adolescents are not a different species from adults, however much it sometimes appears to those of an older generation. If the effect of a primary attachment figure’s behavior can be seen in the adolescent, there is likely a similar effect for other powerful attachment relationships later in life. Such isn’t the scope of the research under review here, but the inference can at least be asked and considered.

What such an understanding does to how we judge the behavior of teens and others is up to each of us. We can continue promoting the notion that “bad seeds” should be punished because they could have chosen to do something else, or we can be more generous in our appreciation for the interconnected life that is each human person. For certain in either case, the consequences in the creation of social policy will effect real lives and reflect not only on those we deem criminals but ourselves as well. 

© David Teachout

Reference:

Van de Rakt, M., Ruiter, S., De Graaf, N. D., & Nieuwbeerta, P. (2010). When does the Apple Fall from the Tree? Static Versus Dynamic Theories Predicting Intergenerational Transmission of Convictions. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 26(3), 371–389. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-009-9089-3

Mental Health As Adaptive Potential

For many, mental health is seen under a binary system of judgment, where one’s mental life is either positive or negative, good or bad. A person is considered “healthy” in that they are able to function in their respective social role without detriment to self or others, or a person is considered “un-healthy” in that they are considered to have some form of illness making it impossible for them to act without causing difficulty for self or others.

While the stigma associated with mental illness has dropped considerably over the last few decades, the notion that mental lives can be either healthy or unhealthy has not. At face value, this makes sense. A tool or machine has a particular function, if it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do then it’s considered broken and repair is needed. Washing machines and stoves come under this concept and depending on one’s socio-economic status either repair or replacement is the immediate behavior at hand. The problem of applying such thinking to mental life is more than just a knee-jerk protest of revulsion that “we’re not a machine.” 

Such protests are unhelpful because they’re not fully honest. When the direct comparison between a dryer and a human being is made, we recoil and shout something about a soul or an equivalent, but we often live our every day lives thinking precisely this way, just not so blatantly. Take for instance the very wording of “she’s broken” or “he has a screw loose.” Both are references to a gross mechanism concerning mental life. Take one step outward and begin replacing psychologists with repair-people, spare parts with psychotropic medication and return policies with in-patient treatment centers. The comparisons are not without some faults, as all comparisons are, but consider for a moment how much the internal revulsion and protest to doing so has more to do with the niceties concerning one’s notion of humanity than with any real acknowledgment of the similarities. 

The deeper problem with viewing mental health as a hardware appliance is one of causal relationship. Appliances and tools are designed for particular tasks in particular contexts, they’re singularly focused. This is why so-called “multi-tools” are helpful, they provide multiple options in a single device to meet multiple contexts. Human minds are not focused in a similarly singular way. They’re adaptive bio-environmental interactive organisms. In other words, they exist in mutual manifestation relationships, shifting and changing even as the environment does the same through their interaction. This would be like the flat-head screwdriver touching the phillips-head screw and both the screw and driver molding together until they fit. 

Mental life is not then a round peg seeking a round hole, it’s an adaptive organism, with individualized degrees of changeability. Psychological literature calls this “resilience.” Seeing mental life this way, through the lens of an adaptive relationship, has distinct consequences. 

1. Mental adaptation is contingent upon two reciprocally linked and mutually manifesting organisms: the mind and the environment. Each does not exist in itself precisely the same way without the other. 

2. The extent of adaptability is based on the disposition of the two organisms, e.g. the degree of potential change. Sometimes the environment is so rigid that it does not allow for much variation in being met (prisons and internment camps are examples), whereas at other times a person’s mind is so rigid that even in an environment that allows for great variety in behavior, few of those potentials are able to manifest (brain damage and ideological dogmatism are examples). 

3. Any attempt at intervention will have effects on both organizational perspectives (environment and mind). In other words, a person shifts a mental paradigm, resulting in an increased potential for other behavior to emerge, the behavior happens and the environment shifts according to its own set of potentials. Think of a new level of training, or having returned from a particularly great weekend. Your behavior has shifted and the reactions of those around you have shifted with you according to their own potential, leading to a cascade of changes in the environment. Often these situations are met with the curiously banal pronouncement of “you seem different.”

In any of those consequences is there a hint of brokenness? Of illness? Of needing repair by a prognosticating expert? We don’t like being referred to as machines, but much of the way we deal with our difficulties is precisely through that metaphorical construct. Changing how we look at our mental lives is more than wording, it’s about shifting our view of how we interact with our environments; away from a one-to-one cause/effect relationship to a spectrum-within-spectrum cascading effect relationship. This doesn’t mean removing all drugs, it does mean acknowledging that we do not live our lives alone, not ever. This doesn’t mean removing all psychology professionals, it does mean noting that when we feel stuck the “answer” may be as much in our communities and environment as it is within ourselves.

© David Teachout

Are “Hate Crimes” A Special Form of Action?

With various media outlets claiming a rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric and making questionable linkages between rhetoric and actions, the notion of “hate crimes” has once again come up in social discussion. What makes determining an illegal act as a hate crime for religious identification strongly problematic is the nature of choice involved. Religion, unlike race or sexual preference, is generally considered to be a choice. What are we to make of this expansion for identification of a hate crime? Before expanding on an answer, it’s a good idea to look at the foundational thinking behind creating a special class of crime. Remember, what distinguishes a “hate crime” is not the behavior itself as it is no different than another already illegal act. Rather, the distinction is made upon the degree of intent being notably more powerful than a regular crime, and this due to the special nature of the object of that crime, i.e. the victim(s) involved. 

Presented here is a brief note against this special delineation and then another brief note in support of doing so. The intent here is not to be exhaustive, simply to offer the basic rationale concerning both sides of the issue. Written as it was during school, the nature of the writing is of a more academic tone than other entries found on this site. 

“Hate” Crimes Should Not Be Different

Crime is an action predicated on the definition which society has established declaring particular behaviors as being detrimental to the well-being of person(s), such that the consequences of said behavior can be punishable in a way commensurate with the damage done, including but not limited to fines and imprisonment. The direct relationship between criminal behavior and punishment is the means by which justice is determined; as behavior is seen to, as in all other aspects of existence, have specific consequences. Much as a person intrinsically knows that eating vast amounts of sweets will result in tooth decay and weight gain, or a child crossing a busy street without supervision knows they will be scolded and perhaps spanked, so the person committing a crime intrinsically knows that there are specific consequences involved in the commitment of such behavior. This punishment rests upon the principle of individuality that resides at the core of the judicial system (Wrightsman et al, 2006), in so much as the actual perpetrator of specific actions will receive a more severe punishment than bystanders or those deemed to have perhaps had an influence on the person. Individual autonomy in decision making and the concomitant understanding that the only clear means of ascertaining context is through identification of particular behavior result in the conclusion that behavior stands alone as being bound entirely within the framework of an individual’s choice.

To include in the mix of judicial understanding the nebulous notion of bias or prejudice, specifically as it relates to crude social distinctions like race and gender identity is to remove from discussion any means of establishing a rational relationship between behavior and consequent punishment (Sullaway, 2004). The law is interested simply in the proper procedural allocution of consequence requiring that crime is seen in the concrete terms of specific behavior. The inclusion of emotional states, which “hate” crime delineation demands, makes behavior less about cause-effect relationships and more about the uncertain inner workings of the person. Law cannot dwell in uncertainty else the notion of justice being blind becomes saturated by subjectivity.

Hate Crimes are a Special Class of Crime

The punishment of intent or motivation is bound within the notion of retributive justice, where no behavior is without motivational basis within the perpetrator. Determining intention is not merely the goal of law but a primary assumption, found within the jurisprudential principle of “innocent till proven guilty” (Wrightsman et al, 2006). Behavior does not exist without an intender, an actor on the social stage deliberating upon said action. The principle previously noted serves as a reminder that while behaviors are identified as criminal, the determination of a relational connection of those behaviors with a particular person is synonymous with determining intent. In other words, no behavior is done without mental intent and thus the law is interested in the so-called subjective states of the internal world of the person. 

Hate crimes focus on this determination of intent where it is determined that the crime/behavior is specifically concerned with the motivation of causing harm/distress to a social group incapable of removing themselves from the locus upon which specific intent is built. While crime itself is an action motivated by the intent to deprive property or right from an individual and thus applies to all human beings, when the locus of intent is built upon race, gender, sexual identity, aspects of human existence that are self-identifying and outside individual control, the perpetrator has not simply committed a crime against humanity in general but against a specific identifying feature of humanity. The motivating factor, as in crime general, is to cause a specific future goal to occur, i.e. the harm/distress of the person; is here conflated with intent (Sullaway, 2004) to harm a specifically identifiable person, of which their identifiable characteristic exists not by choice. Just as in the determination of the degree of murder, where intent is associated with a greater degree, so a hate crime identifies those crimes isolating a specific group as somehow being determined by the perpetrator as deserving of particular focus.  

© David Teachout

References:

Sullaway, M. (2004). Psychological Perspectives on Hate Crime Laws. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 10(3), 250-292. doi:10.1037/1076-8971.10.3.250

Wrightsman, L. S., Greene, E., Nietzel, M.T., & Fortune, W.H. (2006).  Psychology and the legal system (6th ed.).  Belmont, CA:  Wadsworth Thomson Learning.