Two right wings

A report published yesterday by the Pew Institute states that their survey showed that 62% of conservative/evangelical Christians in the US approved torture of Islamic militants in order to get information. This compares to less than 50% approval by the general population. We might expect that evangelical Christians would be less tolerant of torture and mistreatment and more accepting of others and their differences. Instead, it seems that we find the opposite. How can we make sense of this?

Christian religions teach tolerance but conservative Christians appear to have little tolerance. This is not peculiar to conservative Christians. Nany religions (including Islam) profess tolerance while their followers frequently behave with intolerance. Their behaviors are not congruent with their professed beliefs. This conflict in values can occur because intolerance is a general characteristic of all groups, regardless of the values they profess.

Intolerance results from the anxiety provoked by the threat of change in values due to exposure to conflicting values. In recent years exposure to other values has been provided by the ubiquitous electronic media. The more rigid the values, the more intolerant its followers are. Exposure to tolerant, humanist values frightens extremists because of this vulnerability. Radical Islam began being faced with an onslaught of exposure to Western cultural values, values totally different from the traditional radical Islamist position. We showered the world with television, with products, with commercials, with travel and tourists destroying isolation and separation. Intolerance can only thrive when it is sheltered from alternative values. The extremist Islamists such as the Taliban saw their young people being seduced by new images and ideas.

As the radical Islamists saw their values and beliefs being undermined by our liberal and multicultural ones, they became more anxious and ultimately angry. The "9-11" attack, like the many smaller ones before it, were not intended to destroy us. Instead, their attempt was intended to polarize us against "them" and to unify the Muslim world in a last ditch attempt to protect their toppling power and religious structures. They wanted then and they want now to provoke a religious war, which they see as their only chance to preserve their power and religious ideals.

What group in the West is most threatened by Muslim attacks? Just what you would expect: those people, religious or not, who are most intolerant and threatened by different beliefs, just like the Taliban. Our religious right was not directly threatened by Muslim beliefs; they hardly knew that Islam existed. So the Taliban (as a type) had to bring the conflict to them, which they have done by the kinds of terrorist acts which most oppose our tolerant beliefs. They behead people, they stone women, they torture prisoners, AND they release videos showing this. Why publicize these atrocities? Precisely because they will provoke the most reaction from the extremists among us. It is the very unreasonableness of their behavior that garners our attention. Like watching a magician, we see what we are meant to see.

The more they can encourage the West to polarize against them, the more able they will be to get support from the Islamist moderates. While their behaviors are repugnant to most of the Islamist moderates, that doesn't matter in the long run, because the Islamist extremists believe that as the holy war becomes more immanent, the moderates will finally pull together with the extemists. The Taliban hopes the moderates will line up behind them at last.

Religion has ultimately little to do with this. It is our tolerance and acceptance of others they cannot bear, not our religious beliefs. The beliefs of the majority of the Western world includes loving our neighbors, tolerance, returning good for evil, and so on. As we become more frightened and angered by the Taliban, we move away from our beliefs into attitudes and values that mirror theirs. Ironically we become more like those we fight.

Perhaps we should just give them more television sets and more media machines.

Showing remorse or guilt

It's not enough to acknowledge error or fault and to correct it. That should be enough but it doesn't seem to be. When I was a small child and had done something wrong, I remember my grandmother turning to my mother and saying, "Well, at least he has the grace to be sorry".

I'm also remembering how I dealt with such issues with my own children, many years ago. I had learned that being sorry was not enough, that the expression of regret or remorse was frequently a "cop-out" that stood in place of actually changing one's behavior. But while being "sorry" isn't enough, neither is just changing one's behavior, which ought to be enough in a rational world.

Judges come down hard on offenders who don't show remorse. As adults, when harmed by someone's behavior, we need to hear from them that not only will they change their behavior, they feel badly about what they have done. We seem to need both parts.

It's easy to see what the rational plan for behavioral change does for us. So why do we need so much to hear the expression of regret? It occurs to me that from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology, we NEED to hear regret or remorse from the young ones. Their ability to feel and show remorse signals us that they have genuinely internalized the "rules" and their importance, that they are not simply opportunists who have been caught, but people just like us, with the "right" rules.

A child of 6 who shows no remorse for bad actions is potentially a danger to us all. We fear the presence in our midst of a "psychopath", one who, to us sheep, is like a wolf, one who does NOT adhere to our group values and boundaries. When someone breaks a rule AND IS SORRY, we are reassured that they are not psychopaths. Judges look for exactly the same thing. Our little tribes cannot tolerate a psychopath within our group; they present a danger against which we have little protection.

What my grandmother probably meant was that when she was convinced I genuinely felt regret for my mistake, she was greatly reassured that my heart was "in the right place", that I had indeed internalized the values of our little tribe and did not present a danger to our survival.

When people don't express the "proper emotions", we become uneasy at the prospect that they may not share important human boundaries and values; the unease we feel goes directly to survival issues.

Photography as fine art

I've been an ardent amateur since I was 16. I've sold a few prints, but that only makes me a sort-of semi-pro. I've read a zillion magazines and books on photography and seen and taken another zillion photos. Okay, maybe not a zillion. More like bazillion.

What is it that makes a photograph one you would want to put on the wall in your living room where you could see it every day? Of course, the same question applies to any kind of art. Just being technically good or well-composed isn't enough. And clearly there is one's personal taste, which is probably predominant as a factor. But many that make the magazines and the books, while beautiful, are not enough to sustain one's attention over a longer period of time. I find myself paging through the books and magazines, thinking, "That one's nice/interesting/attractive", but rarely seeing one I would put over my mantel even if someone gave it to me for free.

With the advent of computer-chip controlled cameras, anybody can take a technically well-exposed picture. Technical skill was once a major part of professional photography, but not any more. What can capture and hold the interest in any picture?

How many perfectly photographed pictures of the Grand Canyon do you want? It's clear that simply photographing (however perfectly) any tourist attraction is of little interest, now that it's relatively easy to see them, and the number of good photos of interesting places and things is huge.

I find pictures that I really like and would hang on my walls proudly. Some of them are of people; some are of unusual scenes which can give real objects an abstract design quality. A picture of moss on a tree might make it. I don't know how to define what it is that I'm looking for. I hate to fall back on the old cliche about "not knowing anything about art, but I know what I like". Yet the cliche is true in the sense that if you have to know about something to appreciate its beauty, it's not that great. Knowledge can add to your appreciation but can't turn a mediocre photo into a great one.

Sometimes I think there needs to be a quality of mystery in the picture. Not a puzzle, but rather a sense that the art or photo goes somewhere and does something beyond the frame, a sense of deeper connection than is on the surface.

If anyone has an opinion about this subject, particularly if you have photos to illustrate your point, please contact me. Maybe we can post some on this blog and debate them a little.