John G. Messerly's Blog, page 77

Summary of Islam on Human Nature

(This post is my summary of a chapter in a book I often used in university classes: Thirteen Theories of Human Nature[image error], by Stevenson, Haberman, and Wright, Oxford Univ. Press.)

Historical Background

Islam arose in Arabia in the 7th century CE with the visions of the prophet Muhammad. These visions are thought by most Muslims to be divine revelations, and they comprise the text of the Koran. After Muhammad’s death, Islam split into two basic divisions—Sunnis, who held that the Prophet should be succeeded by an individual chosen by tribal elders; and Shi’a, who held that the Prophet should be succeeded by a blood relative.

From the 7th through the 12th century the Muslims acquired vast territories and great wealth, rivaling the extent of the Roman empire. In addition, Islamic civilization made great advances in philosophy, theology, science, medicine, and law. Many believe that Europe helped escape their dark ages bu coming in contact with Islam in Spain in the 12th and 13th centuries. Over the last 500 years or so European military might has allowed them to advance their own empires and dominate the Islamic world. In response, some Muslims favor assimilation with European culture; others favor affirming their Muslim identity.

The Koran’s Relationship to Biblical Literature

The origins of the Koran are mysterious. Islamic tradition maintains that what we today call the Koran was a standard edition produced within a decade or so after Muhammad’s death. This suggests that there may have been other versions of the Koran, but we have no direct evidence of this. The Koran claim to confirm the truth of biblical revelation in many of its passages, but the stories do this in such a way that Muslims began to consider the Koran as replacing the Bible.

Metaphysical Background

The Koran assumes monotheism, and Allah is the word for God. Allah means “the god” and Arab speakers, whether Christian, Jew or Muslim, refer to their God as Allah. Allah is the creator of the  universe who uses prophets like Moses and Jesus to communicate with human beings. Allah alone is due worship, and Allah is one—as compared to the trinitarian Christian God. So Jesus is a prophet to be revered, not a god to be worshipped. (Of course the Christian church didn’t definitively declare Jesus both god and man until the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE.) For the Muslims to worship a prophet would be to diminished Allah.

As an article of faith Muslims believe that Allah is incomparable to anything else, so little can be said about Allah. Nonetheless, Muslims believe that Allah is omniscient, omnibenevolent, etc., although it is difficult to reconcile this with the idea that Allah is beyond word and thought. Thus there are different interpretations as to who or what Allah is, just as Jews and Christians differ on the nature of their conception of the divine.

Theory of Human Nature 

Muslim revere Adam as a prophet while in orthodox Christianity Adam passes along original sin to all humans. For Muslims, Adam and Eve were tempted together by Satan in the garden, but Adam repents and Allah forgives him—-although little is said about Eve. Islamic tradition later pairs Adam with Muhammad as the alpha and omega of history. (Our nature is essentially the nature Allah gave to Adam.)

Diagnosis

A central purpose of the Koran is to serve as a reminder of important forgotten truths. In this way the Koran presents itself as a third revelation after the previous ones in the Old and New Testaments. For the Muslims, Christians mistake the messenger, Jesus, with the message, pious teachings. They have forgotten this, similar to how Adam forgot what Allah had told him. But descendants of Adam must remember their covenant with Allah and their special role as Allah’s representatives—what they call khalifa. Of course people forget all this and evil follows. (The basic human problem is ignoring Allah.)

Prescription 

Muslims consider humans both inclined toward and away from Allah. Turning toward Allah demands an exercise of free will, although Muslims recognize that environment and chance also shape human beings. But Muslims definitively believe Allah loves them, and has a plan for their individual lives. This plan can be discovered by the lessons drawn from the Koran itself. By listening to the word of Allah one is guided toward the truth. (We should listen to Allah’s words contained in the Koran.)

Conclusion

Human nature is complex and in tension: individuals and social environments; unity and diversity within society; evil desires and desires for Allah. To guide us Allah sent prophets and saints to call us to lead lives according to the khalifa ideal.

My Dad’s 100th Birthday

My father was born exactly 100 years ago today on October 8, 1917. In his memory, I reprint a post I wrote on the 25th anniversary of his death.

Benjamin Edward Messerly, (1917-1989) was born in north St. Louis and dropped out of Hadley technical school at age 15 to help his family during the depression. He took a job at a small Kroger grocery floor sweeping floors. He soon became a butcher, which was his profession for almost 50 years. He was a fine baseball player and golfer, playing baseball at a high amateur level. He was also a single handicap at golf through his early 50s, despite only playing about once a week. He learned to love golf while caddying to help his family during the depression.

He served in the Navy in WWII and came home in January 1946 to his family in the suburb of St. Louis where I grew up. He only had an eighth grade education, but he read constantly and was well versed in the politics of the day. He was especially fond of the American President Harry Truman. I suppose a plainspoken Missourian without much formal education—and who promoted a national health care system—was a perfect fit for my dad.

Objectively, I suppose my father was better than some and worse than others—although I’d bet he was better than most. But the thing to remember about parents is that they don’t have to be exceptional, just good enough. And he was. Most importantly he instilled in me a passion for knowledge. I always accompanied him to his nightly work at our church, where we talked constantly about politics, history, and religion. I thought he was so smart arguing theology and politics with the priests and his fellow parishioners. Due to the many hours of discussions with him as a young boy, I came to love intelligent conversation.

I can still remember him telling me that I was inquisitive, in response to my constant questioning at the dinner table when I was 9 or 10 years old. Not knowing what the word meant, I asked. After he had explained its meaning to me I asked if it was good to be inquisitive. He answered in the affirmative. Years later the dedication to my master’s thesis read: “To my dad, who approved of my being inquisitive.”

He was especially fond of saying that great people do what they think is right and ignore what others think about them. I’m not exactly sure what he meant—I think he liked that President Truman fired General MacArthur—but I interpreted this to mean that I should seek the truth and then act on the truth discovered. And while he didn’t agree with most of my conclusions—I vehemently rejected his Catholicism and nationalism—he accepted me nonetheless. Perhaps he wished he had not unleashed such questioning, but I’d like to think he would be proud of me nonetheless. I even think he might have agreed with many of the things I came to believe had he been fortunate enough to receive the fine education that I did.

My dad was a good man, who taught me and loved me. Words are so ineffectual, but I thank him. I loved you dad.

Your son, John Gerard

Summary of Seneca, “On the Shortness of Life”

 Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65)

(This is one of my most popular articles with almost 70,000 views. It originally appeared in this blog on March 5, 2015. I’m reposting it because I’ve been writing about aging lately.)

As they age wise persons often lose interest in the inessential. The Stoic philosopher 

Seneca touched on a similar theme in his piece, On the Shortness of Life:

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.

Seneca believed that if we use our lives properly they are long enough. Unfortunately, we often squander our time, mistakenly believing that we have plenty in reserve. We distract ourselves and we don’t immerse ourselves in the present, living for a future that may never come. At the end of our lives, even if we have lived long, we may not have lived wisely. We may have been obsessed with achievement and ambition rather than with living.

It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return.

To care for our time is to care for ourselves because how we spend our time is how we spend our lives. Our time is the most precious thing we have, and someday we’ll have no more of it.

Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

There is much to recommend in Seneca, but I have always liked one particular piece of his advice. He says that we should seek the counsel of good mentors as substitutes for deficiencies in our education or upbringing. He makes this point in a moving passage:

We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be. There are households of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their property too. Nor will this property need to be guarded meanly or grudgingly: the more it is shared out, the greater it will become.

We can all learn much from Buddha, Seneca, Epictetus and other sages. From Seneca I have learned to be mindful, live now, and keep good company. What wonderful advice from a Stoic sage.

Here’s a brief video about Stoicism in general. Its pretty good, but I disagree about its interpretation of the Stoics view of hope. The Stoics weren’t pessimists, they were realists. (In the next few days we’ll cover the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and a few days later we’ll cover Admiral James Stockdale on how the thoughts of Epictetus may have saved his life. Also there is an audiobook of On the Shortness of Life.)

Movie Review of “Life Itself”- The Life and Death of Roger Ebert

I recently watched the movie of film critic Roger Ebert’s illness and death, Life Itself[image error]. It is one of the most moving depictions of the end of a well-lived lives that I have ever watched.

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I first encounted Ebert arguing about movies with his partner Gene Siskel in the 1970s. I enjoyed their sophisticated banter about movies. Ebert was a superb prose stylist who really loved literature. (I have written about him previously on this blog.)

A warning though. The movie is not for the faint of heart. Ebert wants us to know what death is really like. I was edified by watching the film.

Review of Harold Evan’s: “Do I Make Myself Clear? Why Writing Well Matters”

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“words are the only things that last forever; they are more durable than the eternal hills.”

~ William Hazlitt

Sir Harold Evans shares his exquisite prose with us in his new book, Do I Make Myself Clear: Why Writing Well Matters[image error]. Evans is the former editor of The Sunday Times and The Times of London. He holds the British Gold Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism, and in 2001 his peers voted him the all-time greatest British newspaper editor. He was knighted in 2004.

Evans begins by reminding us that in his classic, “Politics and the English Language” Orwell argued that bad English corrupts thought and vice versa. Yet today things are even worse. “For all its benefits, the digital era Orwell never glimpsed has had unfortunate effects, not the least making it easier to obliterate the English language by carpet-bombing us with the bloated extravaganzas of marketing mumbo-jumbo. Words have consequences.”(3)

We live in a fog created by slovenly language that is unclear, or even designed to mislead and confuse. In response Evans writes a polemic against the current state of our language, and the malfeasance that often accompanies it.

Fog everywhere. Fog online and in print, fog exhaled in television studios where time is anyway to short for truth. Fog in the Wall Street executive streets. Fog in the regulating agencies … Fog in the evasions in Flint, Michigan, while its citizens drank poisoned water … Fog in pressure groups that camouflage their real purpose with euphemism; fog from vested interest groups aping the language of science to muddy the truth about climate change … Fog in the U.S. Supreme Court, where five judges … sanctified secret bribery as freedom of speech. But never come there fog too thick, never come there mud and mire too deep … as to withstand the clean invigorating wind of a sound English sentence. (4,5)

(I hope Evans is right that language can defeat the lies, but I’m skeptical. I’m reminded of this quote, attributed to various people, “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” I’m not sure that most people even recognize good sentences or good reasoning. Hence the proliferation of bad thinking. Yet, as Pascal put it, “All our dignity consists, then, in thought. This is the basis on which we must raise ourselves … Let us make it our task, then, to think well: here is the principle of morality.”)

What Evans has in mind is noble language like Churchill’s “We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down,” or LIncoln’s “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” or Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream,” or Orwell’s “Political langauge … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Nowhere is the degradation of language and the lies that accompany it more destructive than in politics. The Presidential election of 2016 took these tendencies to new heights. “Fake news, entirely fabricated to generate clicks and income for the fabricators, was tweeted and fed into Facebook without correction. Judgment fled to brutish beasts and men lost their reason. I’d argue that the maelstrom of mendacity makes it all the more imperative that the truth be clearly expressed.” (15)

(I don’t think the expression of truth is enough, since so many live in false information bubbles that tether them to misinformation, and prevent the truth from creeping in. There are also many psychological impediments to good thinking and cognitive biases that inhibit people from changing their minds. You can tell people about the truth of climate change, evolution, or Trump’s lies and malfeasance, but that’s hardly ever sufficient.)

Regarding politics, Evans argues that anger with, and lack of trust of, political leadership and institutions can partially be traced to the degradation of language. He also believes that the opaqueness of written and spoken English is one cause of the substitution of fanatical emotion for quality reasoning. Consider this gem from a Trump rally:

We have to stop illegal immigration. We have to do it. [Cheers and applause] We have to do it. Have to do it. [Audience: USA! USA! USA1] And when I hears some of the people that I am running against, including the Democrats. We have to build a wall, folks. We have to build a wall. And a wall works. All you have to do is go to Israel and say is your wall working? Walls work. (16)

But clear speaking and thinking and writing is hard, as any good thinker or writer can tell you. Good writing demands rethinking and rewriting, as Evans tells us. Grammar functions to aid clarity, but we should bend the grammatical rules for the sake of clarity. The point of a sentence is to convey information, and if it does that clearly then it is succesful. Such considerations lead to the aim of the book: “to give you the tools so you can finish the job, first by describing the tools and then by applying them to lengths of knotty prose. (29)

It is hard to do justice to the plethora of suggestions Evans offers. He is obviously one of the world’s foremost editors, and I find his advice on writing to be extraordinarily helpful. (I wish he had the time to edit my posts!) His advice includes: short sentences are generally clearer than longer ones; use the active voice; be specific; ration adjectives and adverbs; give concrete examples; cut the fat; be organized; don’t bore; and make every word count.

The multiple examples of editing bad writing are instructive, but I found his examples of good contemporary prose particularly instructive, especially a piece by David Foster Wallace in Rolling Stone about John McCain and the captivity he endured as a prisoner of war. (McCain, along with Senator Susan Collins and Senator Lisa Murkowski, recently saved health-care for millions of Americans and undermined the Republicans plan to let more people die and get for more tax cuts for the rich.)

Evans knows that it isn’t easy to counter the language that is intent on deceiving and confusing. But this project is important because: “The fog that envelops English is not just a question of good taste, style, and aesthetics. It is a moral issue.” (347) That is what he has tries to make clear in the book, and I believe he succeeds. Lack of clarity in language along with outright lies serve a common purpose—to deceive people in order to control them and thereby solidify the place of those in power. But as we all know if we think about it, civilization is based on the assumption that people tell the truth.

Shelley: “To A Skylark”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded as one the best and most influential lyric poets in the English language. Shelley wasn’t famous during his lifetime, but recognition of his poetry grew steadily after his death. He drowned in a storm on the Gulf of Spezia in his sailing boat, just before his 30th birthday.

Long ago as an undergraduate, I took a class in the Romantic poets, and memorized these few lines from “To a Skylark.” I don’t necessarily agree with them but they demonstrate, as does the rest of the poem, Shelley’s command of the language.

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

We surely live in the past and future, and our joy is always tinged with sadness. But I disagree that the evil is necessary for good—a common claim. That claim exemplifies the idea of an adaptive preference. Since we can’t have our preference for unmitigated joy, we claim to prefer hate, pride, fear, and tears. But if we could rid of ourselves of those things, I think we would. Still, maybe I’m wrong. We do learn much from suffering. But then again, maybe what we learn is that suffering is not good and should be vanquished.

Review of Aaron James’ “Surfing with Sartre”

Aaron James’ new book, Surfing with Sartre: An Aquatic Inquiry into a Life of Meaning, addresses major questions in philosophy from his unique perspective as both a philosophy professor and former surfer. James argues that the surfer mentality offers a unique perspective on philosophical issues like: knowledge, freedom, happiness, society, nature and the meaning of life. Why? In the introduction James says:

Surfers often have a certain natural lightness about being, about the meaning of their personal existence. Those more at sea existentially can certainly appreciate the surfer’s good fortune. And it is hard to dislike people so thoroughly enthralled by living … Surely most of us could learn to live lighter, by sliding over life’s problems. [image error](4)

 One of his salient themes is that “what the surfer knows suggests that we should … get used to an even more leisurely, surfer-friendly style of capitalism, in which we all work, but a lot less …” (5) In fact this is an ethical imperative for work “as we now practice it emits gases … that are steadily warming the planet. So … as long as we do something less consumptive of ecological resources than working … we contribute to society by making the climate change problem a little less terrible … ” (6-7) Leisure activities are thus “a new model of civic virtue. The real troublemaker is the workaholic, whose labor-intensive striving makes the problem of global warming worse …” (8)

And these are issues of profound ethical importance because:

If climate science is even roughly correct … would it be morally okay for us to further enrich ourselves in work, without limitations, if many billions of living or future people are thereby put at grave risk of profound injury? Or are we obliged to adapt? (8)

Would it really be so hard to work less, and enjoy life more? (As Europeans generally do.) While it is true that most of us derive our sense of self from our work, it doesn’t have to be that way. The Protestant work ethic nurtured capitalism, but now we should reject it and use our time more productively than for wholesale destruction of the ecosystem. This is the main point of the book, that the surfer mentality is “on the right side of history.” (9) We must adapt our lifestyles to a changing planet.

The book devotes most of its pages to the surfer mentality’s insights regarding philosophical problems, using Sartrean philosophy as its foil. Key insights include: 1) that being in the moment can replace the comfort found in work and material possessions; 2) that we should reject hard determinism, and freely choose the surfer mentality; 3) that intense pleasure and self-transcendence can be experienced from being in the flow; and 4) that a hyper competitive society destroys humanity, and nature. This leads James to state:

In a more leisurely capitalism, we’d have a less competitive way of life. We’d all work, but a lot less, and we’d spend more of our time getting attuned, living from love, practicing for its own sake, and transcending status preoccupation for a happier contentment. (288)

The book’s epilogue addresses how its insights relate to the question of life’s meaning. He begins by changing the question: “What are the meanings, plural, of life. If that’s the question … then we just enumerate the many different ways life can have meaning … Friendship. Worthy projects. Creative activity. Music. Surfing. Nice parties. Or whatever … ” (292) James then proceeds to reject that there must be one meaning that explains all these multiple meanings. So for James the meaning of life “can be nothing more than the various ways life is meaningful to us …” (292) The hard part is choosing from the many ways that life can be meaningful.

Of course this analysis ignores the question of the meaning of the cosmos itself. But even if we could discover such a meaning—say the super meaning was to enjoy an eternal feast in heaven—then we should just ask about the meaning of that. And maybe we wouldn’t like such a long party! But independent of our answer to the meaning of the universe, James’ point is that there is plenty of meaning right here and that should be enough for us.

Still James admits that many people won’t be satisfied because they want to be “part of something bigger ….” (293) Here he recommends that we just add that meaning to our list, and connect our daily activity with that meaning. The point is that “being part of a collective enterprise could never be more than one source of meaning among many on a long list … So our list of meanings can grow longer … to cover big parts of history.” (295) In fact, writes James, “… many of our activities would come to seem much less important to us if we came to know that an asteroid would destroy the planet soon after our death.” (298) So being part of history is an important part of meaning in our lives.

All this connects James back to where he began—the destruction of the biosphere.

We living people are enjoying the carbon-based prosperity party. And thought we’ll be dead before our emissions completely befoul the global ecology, if we don’t take rather dramatic steps to control their production, our story will be one of having indulged in the feast and skipped out on the check, without paying our bit, let alone helping with the dishes.

This really would not be cool. It would be a gross human failure, or, if you will, a great stain, or sin. (299)

Capitalism has brought amazing things, yet it induces the motives of self-interest that contribute to the destruction of the planet. So should we continue to enjoy the party and despoil the environment, or live a more leisurely, happier lifestyle? The sun’s light and heat brought us a planet teeming with life, but we now trap its heat in our atmosphere. Will we continue to bury our heads in the sands, or will we make a heroic effort to change things and save the world for future generations? Better people will the latter. Let’s hope they do.

Review of “Exile Nation: The Plastic People”

I have recently watched the documentary: Exile Nation: The Plastic People. It is about U.S. deportees in Tijuana who struggle to survive a cartel war zone, and who live in cardboard boxes and sewer pipes, in an ever-expanding underworld of exiles. Most of the deportees have lived in the US since childhood, have extended families in the US, have no relatives in Mexico, and speak no Spanish. Many have waited for citizenship for years but multiple roadblocks block that path. Many of these deportees do the migrant farm work without which Americans wouldn’t enjoy low prices for their food. Here is the trailer for “Exile Nation.”

I encourage my readers to watch this moving film and, if possible, work for solutions to human degradation in the US and elsewhere.

Summary of 10 Stages of Genocide (and the USA today)

“Ten Stages of Genocide” was a document developed by Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, a professor at the University of Mary Washington. Stanton has served as the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and now leads Genocide Watch, a non-profit organization dedicated to the fight against genocide. (“Ten Stages of Genocide” was originally written in 1996 as the “Eight Stages of Genocide,” and revised in 2013.)

“Ten Stages of Genocide” is a formula for how a society can engage in genocide. Genocide cannot be committed by an individual or small group; rather, it takes the cooperation of a large number of people and the state. The genocidal process starts with prejudice that continues to grow. By knowing the stages of genocide, citizens are better equipped to identify the warning signs and stop the process from continuing.1

Stanton notes that:

Genocide is a process that develops in ten stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The process is not linear. Stages may occur simultaneously. Logically, later stages must be preceded by earlier stages.  But all stages continue to operate throughout the process.2

Reflections on Where We Stand in America Today

The USA certainly committed genocide on the Native Americans and came close to doing so to African-Americans. Let’s look at where we stand on each stage in America today regarding various groups.

1. Classification – The “us vs. them” mentality is everywhere–conservatives vs. liberals; evangelicals vs. secularists; whites vs. African-Americans, Hispanics; Native Americans; Asian Americans; rural vs urban; etc. SUCH CLASSIFICATION OCCURS IN THE USA, AND IS INCREASING WITH THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

2. Symbolization – Certain groups–especially African-Americans, Native Americans and Hispanics—are forced to identify themselves with papers to document residency, with identification to vote and get proper ID, etc. SUCH SYMBOLIZATION OCCURS IN THE USA, AND IS INCREASING WITH THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

3. Discrimination – Discrimination against certain groups, especially the above ones plus the LGBTQ community, is rampant. SUCH DISCRIMINATION OCCURS IN THE USA, AND IS INCREASING WITH THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

4. Dehumanization – This certainly occurs regarding the above groups. Hate propaganda and speech is ubiquitous, even in media consumed by millions. SUCH DEHUMANIZATION OCCURS IN THE USA, AND IS INCREASING WITH THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

5. Organization – State backed police brutality and an increasingly biased Department of Justice, especially against the above groups, is well-known in the USA. Militias motivated by hate are on the rise. SUCH ORGANIZATION OCCURS IN THE USA, AND IS INCREASING WITH THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

6. Polarization – Right wing media broadcasts anger, outrage, and hate. SUCH POLARIZATION OCCURS IN THE USA, AND IS INCREASING WITH THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

LAST FOUR STAGES HAVE NOT BEEN REACHED IN THE USA.

7.  PREPARATION: Official action to remove/relocate people. SUCH PREPARATION OCCURS TO A LIMITED EXTENT, MOSTLY REGARDING HISPANICS AND AFRICAN-AMERICANS, BUT IS INCREASING WITH THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

8. PERSECUTION: Murders, theft of property, segregation into ghettos.  SUCH PREPARATION OCCURS TO A LIMITED EXTENT MOSTLY REGARDING HISPANICS AND AFRICAN-AMERICANS , BUT IS INCREASING WITH THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

9. EXTERMINATION: THIS STAGE HAS NOT BEEN REACHED.

10. DENIAL: THIS STAGE HAS NOT BEEN REACHED.

Reflections on Where We Are Going in the USA 

I have written previously about the possibility of civil war in America today. As for the presence of hate speech directed toward certain groups—especially African-Americans, Hispanics; Native Americans;  Asian-Americans; LGBTQ persons and women—the trends are ominous.

There is no way to predict where this will lead. Perhaps we are going through an especially ugly phase brought about by technology’s impact on employment, maybe we are just experiencing a particularly bad political moment, or maybe we haven’t learned how to be proper gatekeepers of the new media landscape which allows individuals to think in protective bubbles of disinformation and lies.

But hate, anger, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies have gone mainstream, especially with the rise of right-wing media over the last twenty years, a situation exacerbated by the Trump administration. Let’s hope this is a passing phase, for it is a dangerous one. The anger, hatred, and division sown by right-wing fanatics, along with their attack on expertise, science, education, tolerance, and the liberal values that help humans escape the Dark Ages, is taking its toll. And a society divorced from science and truth, from tolerance, justice, and fairness, is not a place where humans will flourish.

For more detail, here are some quotes from Stanton’s document:

1. CLASSIFICATION:

“All cultures have categories to distinguish people into “us and them” by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality … The main preventive measure at this early stage is to develop universalistic institutions that transcend ethnic or racial divisions, that actively promote tolerance and understanding, and that promote classifications that transcend the divisions … This search for common ground is vital to early prevention of genocide.”

2. SYMBOLIZATION:

“We give names or other symbols to the classifications … and apply the symbols to members of groups … When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups … To combat symbolization, hate symbols can be legally forbidden (swastikas) as can hate speech. Group marking … can be outlawed … The problem is that legal limitations will fail if unsupported by popular cultural enforcement …”

3. DISCRIMINATION:

“A dominant group uses law, custom, and political power to deny the rights of other groups. The powerless group may not be accorded full civil rights or even citizenship … Prevention against discrimination means full political empowerment and citizenship rights for all groups in a society. Discrimination on the basis of nationality, ethnicity, race or religion should be outlawed …”

4. DEHUMANIZATION:

“One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder. At this stage, hate propaganda in print and on hate radios is used to vilify the victim group … Local and international leaders should condemn the use of hate speech and make it culturally unacceptable … Hate radio stations should be shut down, and hate propaganda banned. Hate crimes and atrocities should be promptly punished.”

5. ORGANIZATION:

Genocide is always organized, usually by the state, often using militias to provide deniability of state responsibility … Sometimes organization is informal … or decentralized … Special army units or militias are often trained and armed. Plans are made for genocidal killings. To combat this stage, membership in these militias should be outlawed.”

6. POLARIZATION:

“Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda … Extremist terrorism targets moderates, intimidating and silencing the center … Prevention may mean security protection for moderate leaders or assistance to human rights groups.”

7.  PREPARATION:

“National or perpetrator group leaders plan the “Final Solution”… They often use euphemisms to cloak their intentions, such as referring to their goals as “ethnic cleansing,” “purification,” or “counter-terrorism.” They build armies, buy weapons and train their troops and militias. They indoctrinate the populace with fear of the victim group.  Leaders often claim that “if we don’t kill them, they will kill us.”

8. PERSECUTION:

“Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. In state sponsored genocide, members of victim groups may be forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is often expropriated. Sometimes they are even segregated into ghettos, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved.  Genocidal massacres begin.”

9. EXTERMINATION:

Extermination begins, and quickly becomes the mass killing legally called “genocide.” It is “extermination” to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human. When it is sponsored by the state, the armed forces often work with militias to do the killing. Sometimes the genocide results in revenge killings by groups against each other, creating the downward whirlpool-like cycle of bilateral genocide …”

10. DENIAL:

“is the final stage that lasts throughout and always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes, and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile. There they remain with impunity, like Pol Pot or Idi Amin, unless they are captured and a tribunal is established to try them.”

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from the Genocide Education Process
from “The Ten Stages of Genocide.“

Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer and Trump

In my last post I discussed Eric Hoffer‘s 1951 classic: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements[image error]. Naturally the question arises as to the similarities between Trump supporters in the USA and Hoffer’s true believers.

There is a lot to be said here, but I’ll just mention a few similarities. Certainly Trump supporters have responded to his diatribes against Mexicans, women, politicians, “loser” opposing candidates, and reporters who ask him good questions. His followers share his love of authoritarianism, as well as his view that immigrants, people with darker skins, and women have stolen their jobs. (Even though the evidence that immigrants are a boom to the economy is overwhelming.) Moreover, his followers have no regard for the truth, science, education, expertise, or knowledge. And they loathe the present and want to return to the past. All of the above are characteristics of Hoffer’s true believers.

Trump supporters are mostly white, native-born American males who do not have college degrees, and are economically in the lower middle class rather than among the poorest. In short, they are very much like Hoffer himself (except for the fact that they aren’t erudite like Hoffer.) But Hoffer knew that “undesirables” weren’t the enemy:

That revelation occurred in 1934, when as a transient fruit-and-vegetable picker he was swept up and placed in the El Centro camp at the edge of the southern California desert near the Mexican border, and for the first time had to co-exist with 200 other men. Prior to that, he considered himself “just a human being, neither good nor bad, and on the whole, harmless,” but after a month at El Centro he realized he belonged to “a certain type of humanity, the undesirables.”

Some were lame, some were foreign-born, some were tramps, some were much darker-skinned than the rest but, he concluded, all were the same as the “undesirables” who for generations had fled from Europe and Asia and became American pioneers, the people who for 300 years had built our farms and roads and cities and institutions.

Throughout the rest of his life, Eric Hoffer continued to venerate and celebrate the “undesirables” as America’s real founding fathers.

But what I can say is the Trumpsters are true believers. No matter what he does, no matter how unfit and unqualified, no matter how coarse and file, no matter how angry and vindictive, no matter how insecure and deviant, no matter his connections with Russia or the mafia, no matter his bankruptcy and money laundering, no matter that he doesn’t care about his followers interests, no matter how horrific of a human being he is … they still believe. Most of them always will.

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A few other articles using Hoffer’s insights to analyze Trumpism and Trumpsters.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-amer...

https://philosophynow.org/issues/34/T...

https://politicsmeanspolitics.com/eri...

http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-...

https://townhall.com/columnists/paulg...

https://blog.ayjay.org/eric-hoffer-on...