The Conundrum of Hillary Clinton: an ethical analysis

The Conundrum of Hillary Clinton

By Kirsten Rayhawk

An MBA program ethics analysis due July 30, 2016

 

“Many people talk about doing the right thing, but action is the true measure of character” (Maxwell, 2003, p. 44).

Hillary Rodham Clinton, now usually known as Hillary Clinton, has spent the last year-plus campaigning, with hard work and determination, to get the Democratic Party’s nomination to be their candidate for the office of President of the United States of America.  In the eyes of many people in our nation, both inside and outside of the Democratic Party, she had earned and more than earned the right to not only ask but to expect this from her party, and then to ask the general electorate to elect her to.

Clinton has been active in social change efforts since college, graduating in 1969 and kicking off a long career of questioning and acting decisively to change the received political and cultural assumptions, with focus and determination even in the face of reactionism and frequent failure – getting right to it as first student Wellesley College ever invited to speak at commencement and the last student Wellesley ever allowed to speak after the main commencement speaker (Keith, T. (2016).  She spoke of the hopes and efforts of her fellow youth acting out of “integrity and trust and respect” (Wellesley College, n.d.).  Some of her collegiate sisters (who elected her student body President) are still actively friends with her and did a round of radio interviews on her behalf this spring.

Clinton’s campaign has chosen to describe her social activism and political activity around the heart-strings issue of her work to make life better for all children, in America and then around the world, spending one entire day of the just-ended 2016 Democratic National Convention (Tuesday, July 26) on this topic: tracing her work as a lawyer for the Children’s Fund, for children with disabilities, for racial integration, for federal health care for impoverished children, for her current work with a Black Lives Matter group, Mothers of the Movement (Democratic National Convention, July 26, 2016).  This picture was presented by a parade of people who were friends or admirers, whose lives she had touched – usually directly and usually with personal followup – in a trackable, positive manner.

Significantly, this was the entire programme leading up to the official nomination vote Tuesday evening, in which Hillary Clinton was, in fact, after a strongly contended campaign, declared the Democratic Party’s nominee for President of the United States.

Clinton has worked as a lawyer and as a research scholar to defend children being discriminated against.  She served as First Lady of Arkansas from 1979-1981 and from 1983-1992, including work as chair of the state’s Rural Health Advisory Committee; she served as First Lady of the United States of America from 1995-2001, including chairing work to pass federal health care expansion and memorably representing the nation at the U.N.’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995; and she served as Senator from New York from 2001-2009.  In 2008 she barely lost a bid for her party’s presidential nomination; after Illinois freshman Senator Barack Obama won the election, he invited her to serve as his first-term Secretary of State.

Clinton’s bona fides, interpreted through the lens of people who have seen her hands-on work, her dedication to her chosen issues, her determination and reputedly astonishing work ethic, and her face-to-face care and concern for individuals, seem to vastly justify her nomination this week.  Even detractors often will admit she is experientially qualified to become President of our United States; supporters will assert (and reasonably so) that she is uniquely qualified, and perhaps the most prepared Presidential candidate in history.

There is another side to this picture of an amazing public servant, though.

Ever since she entered the national spotlight as the wife of the charismatic 1992 Democratic nominee for President, there has been a broad thread of negative judgement about her – and at first this was nearly purely sexist.  Unfortunately, that thread is still alive and well, as a jaunt through nearly any current news website’s comment-sections can demonstrate.  It is easy to understand why she and her supporters understand criticism of her to be irrational and reactionary, when from the start the loudest and most consistent criticism has been so.

She was active in her husband’s Executive Branch work during his Presidency (1993-2001) in a way that many people were uncomfortable with.  Unfortunately, she came to public prominence during a time when operative Karl Rove was ascendant in the Republican Party, implementing a strategy of winning back power by being incredibly nasty.   And so she came under additional fire for not only how impractical and wrongheaded her ideas were (to them), but also for legitimately questionable ethical/legal decisions in doing federal work with no officially appointed position and therefore no structural accountability (nor any established guidelines for what could in fact be done behind closed doors), for piggybacking on her husband’s career when she fancied herself a feminist, and any other discredits as could be laid at her feet with any rational cause at all.  Depending on one’s point of view, none, some, or all of these charges held water.

During this time, possible financial malfeasance regarding real estate and cattle futures during the Clintons’ time in Alabama was dragged up by opposition research, casting early doubts on her ethics as both a lawyer and as a person.  And when, in his first term, her husband was caught in a sexual relationship with a young female White House intern, and rumors of his broader philandering gained credence, their marital relationship was called into question.  Her choices in reacting to the crisis were kept under the media microscope – interestingly, the “feminist” organizations praised her for sticking with her husband (who was politically convenient for them) and conservatives seemed disgusted that she didn’t leave.  She slut-shamed the women implicated in Bill Clinton’s reputed affairs, stretching her feminist credibility.

While Bill was in office, Hillary shilled for non-gay-friendly measures: a “traditional” definition of marriage and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the military.  She shilled for race-specific law enforcement efforts and for loosening the legal controls that had been put on the banking sector as a result of the market crash of 1929.  All of these things “won,” and the latter two deeply and negatively affect many segments of our citizenry still today.

As her husband’s second term was ending, Clinton ran for a Senate seat from New York State, where the family had expediently established residency for that purpose; she was heavily financially and practically supported by both the political establishment and large financial concerns, and won the election to represent the people of a state in which she had never before lived.  She served from 2001-2009.  While in this elected office, she worked for many efforts consistent with her current campaign’s preferred storyline, including creating an acute focus on assisting with recovery from the 9-11 attacks.  But she also supported now-problematic national security items like entry into the Iraq War and the “Patriot Act.”  She supported bailouts for various American industries – particularly the banking sector – that cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and from which we still have not recovered.  On the 2016 campaign trail, she verbally justified the banking bailout and a variety of pro-bank, pro-lending, pro-speculator legislative work by asserting that Wall Street was part of her constituency (some assessments of her success with that constituency can be found at Haberman, M,. & White, B., April 28, 2014).

In 2008, during her last year as a Senator, she ran a determined and occasionally vituperative campaign (sometimes accused of racist implication) for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President, increasing her reputation as a negative political actor who would, as Obama himself said in that campaign, “say anything” to get elected.  This reputation was reinforced by years of flip-flops and determined de-emphasis of her problematic votes.

Obama asked her to be his Secretary of State, and trusted her and other established Democrats to help him select Cabinet members and agency appointees.  During this time many pro-corporate leaders were invited into the Administration, including lawyers and business leaders with ties to various Wall Street firms (Kiely, E., March 1, 2012, is a balanced look at this charge) and agro-giant Monsanto (Sager, J., October 1, 2012).  Most of these were known as at least friendly acquaintances of the Clintons and many had donated to various Clinton campaigns, or to the Clinton Foundation they established after Bill left office.

During this service, Clinton ignored the advice of White House security experts and used Blackberry communication devices; it was also established later that she had a dedicated server built in her house in New York, which was vulnerable to foreign.  A 2016 investigation by the FBI concluded that “there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” (Comey, J. B., July 5, 2016); a State Department investigation is currently in progress.  Also during this service, American military operations in the Middle East had been expected to wind down; instead they are still continuing as Obama ends his second term, and insider articles have frequently included portrayal of Clinton as a hawkish force during her time in the Administration.  As a final offense to the general ideals of her party and the potential good she could have been doing in office, Clinton spent significant time in office advocating for increased fracking both here in America and during deliberate propaganda trips to other nations around the world, even as evidence for vast geological and environmental damage was becoming apparent.

She left office in January of 2013 and embarked upon speaking and fundraising junkets for the Clinton Foundation, often speaking to her traditional donors from Wall Street or other business interests for amounts around $200,000.  None of those transcripts has been released, despite heavy pressure during this Democratic primary season.

She stepped off the board of the Clinton Foundation when she took up her primary campaign and proceeded to rapidly and repeatedly falsify her voting record, her federal-level advocacy record, and the permanence of her Fall-2015 “stances” on many social issues and environmental issues.  And many problematic Foundation donors became major donors to her campaign (Rubin, J., February 18, 2015).

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) set up a technically legal but deeply misleading and unethical money-laundering scheme called the Hillary Victory Fund (HVF) late in 2015 that allowed Clinton’s major donors to donate the federally allowed amount several times over by donating to certain state Democratic committees which had agreed to send the money to the HVF for the primary, with the expectation that the DNC would help them out with money from national donors (which has not materialized).  It was revealed by a recent Wikileaks release that the Democratic National Committee unethically considered sabotaging her rival, Bernie Sanders’, campaign, which there had been on-the-ground evidence of since at least February.  And although there is not yet a paper trail found, the statistical anomalies between the exit polls and the voting results – only for the Democrats and nearly exclusively benefitting Clinton in the final vote count – are at levels statistically unsupportable; in past elections in other nations, America, the UN, and other concerned parties have called out nations for dirty elections in this situation.  (The Republican Party polls aligned cleanly with their results this year.)

And yet when the DNC emails were released two days before the Democratic convention, and party leaders forced DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to step down, Clinton reached out almost immediately (and even more insulting the convention, the day before the convention officially convened) and invited Wasserman-Schultz, implicated beyond doubt in pressuring the primary process, to be the honorary Chair of her Presidential campaign!

During the primary season Clinton spent significant time obfuscating or lying outright about what she had and hadn’t said in her past public life, in service to the current electoral cycle, but activists consistently dug up countering footage and posted it on the internet.  Clinton’s speech accepting the official nomination of her party reflected many beautiful ideas, many of which were part of Sanders’ stump speech but not hers mere weeks before – renewable energy development, a focus on jobs creation, making sure “Wall Street” never again tanks “Main Street,” funding for public college education, a further push for universal health care.  She celebrated Black Lives Matter and the real service law enforcement officers do for the nation, and she celebrated LGBTQ gains, not acknowledging a checkered political past in those areas.

I have never liked Hillary Clinton.  She flip-flopped and said whatever was convenient from day one on the national stage, and the only two things she has remained consistent on at the national level are abortion and increased government health care.  She was hawkish, favored banks and chemical agriculture, and cultivated financial and arguably quid-pro-quo relationships with Wall Street and banking concerns and perhaps foreign governments.

She is smart and strong and amazing – and that only, in my mind, made her all the more dangerous to leave near the reins of power (as long as she remains so deeply compromised).

What Tuesday night finally communicated to me was why and how she, her family, her support teams, many of the people she’s had a direct interaction with, and her citizen fans around the nation (some of whom are my good friends) could see her in a positive light.  I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to understand this until I ‘got’ it.

The problem now, though, which will continue to vastly handicap her success as a leader and her legacy as a human being, is that it is not clear that she nor any of her supporters ‘get’ that the other side of the story, the side they are so fond of claiming the Right Wing invented to smear Clinton, the side that is the only side I and many other people watching the national dramas unfold could see all these years, is actually also true and valid.

She really has lied.  Flip-flopped.  Pushed militarism. Supported policies that wore away at our rights (Patriot Act), our economy (bank bailouts), our security (Iraq War, favors granted to some foreign powers, insecure email server), and our global environment (fracking, chemical-focus agriculture).  She shows a capacity for denial and an avoidance of taking responsibility that many Americans can’t imagine, since she is clearly so intelligent, isn’t purposeful dissembling.

I hypothesize that she and the people around her know and understand the real good that she has worked for and achieved.  I hypothesize this is the work of her heart, and how she understands her “success” and her effectiveness and goodness as a political actor.

I hypothesize that she does not understand how her high-end political actions actively injure and long-term doom the heart-work she achieves on the ground.  I hypothesize that she sees the high-end policy work and the (probable) collusion as merely ways to fund, and fund generously, her “real” work.

I finally understand why people can love her, why she can be confident in herself.  And I am willing to believe, in fact I find I do believe despite 20 years of seeing only the opposite, that she really does have a good heart.

If she and her people could take a step back and, first, see, and, second, admit to themselves, the big picture, I think she is very capable of aligning future big-picture decisions with her heart vision of what is good and true.  She needs to align all of her actions to her heart-instincts.  In order to be believed for what looks like yet another adoption of convenient things to say only in order to get elected, she probably needs to come clean about the real and significant errors she has made her service to our country, and she probably needs to overtly apologize.

Coming clean about the damages she has done – to America, to America’s poor, to the world, to the world’s poor, to herself, and to America’s ability to trust our most powerful politicians – would take enormous courage in the buzzsaw world of politics.  However, doing so would give millions of Americans who currently consider her someone who cannot be trusted a reason to view her in a new light.  This would increase her chances of being elected and being supported by the nation.

I think she could save her historical legacy, become a morally integrated person of honor and integrity, and, with her smarts and determination and savvy, possibly become one of our legendary Presidents, if she can see and face the whole picture.

If she and her people choose the easier-feeling, more comfortable path, and refuse to consider that all those millions of people who see Clinton primarily as a liar might actually be thinking humans basing their negative reaction on historical facts, Clinton will, if elected in November, be at best a deeply compromised President and at worst a very efficient destructive force for our nation.

“Action is the true measure of character.”

References

• Comey, J. B. (July 5, 2016). Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system. FBI. Retrieved July 30, 2016, from https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system
• Democratic National Convention (July 26, 2016).  Mothers of the Movement at DNC 2016.  Retrieved July 30, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWF_9CYI9fc
• Haberman, M,. & White, B. (April 28, 2014).  Wall St. Republicans' dark secret. Politico.com.  Retrieved July 30, 2016, from http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/wall-street-republicans-hillary-clinton-2016-106070
• Keith, T. (July 28, 2016).  Taking on a U.S. Senator as a student propelled Clinton into the spotlight.  NPR Morning Edition.  Retrieved July 30, 2016, from http://www.npr.org/2016/07/28/486799201/taking-on-a-u-s-senator-as-a-student-propelled-clinton-into-the-spotlight
• Kiely, E. (March 1, 2012).  Obama White House ‘full of Wall Street executives’? factcheck.org. Retrieved July 30, 2016, from http://www.factcheck.org/2012/02/obama-white-house-full-of-wall-street-executives/
• Maxwell, J. C. (2003).  Ethics 101: What every leader needs to know. New York, NY: Center Street.
• Rubin, J. (February 18, 2015). Foreign donations to foundation raise major ethical questions for Hillary Clinton.  Retrieved July 30, 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/02/18/foreign-donations-to-hillary-clintons-foundation-raise-major-ethical-questions/
• Sager, J. (October 1, 2012). No matter who wins the presidential election Monsanto benefits. theprogressivecynic.com. Retrieved July 30, 2016, from https://theprogressivecynic.com/2012/11/05/no-matter-who-wins-the-2012-presidential-election-monsanto-benefits/
• Wellesley College (n.d.). Hillary D. Rodham's 1969 student commencement speech. Retrieved July 30, 2016, from http://www.wellesley.edu/events/commencement/archives/1969commencement/studentspeech

Publishing this under the "you can publish the link to this but you have to keep the original link and authorship credit" copyright.

science credentials, science thinking, and vaccines

Following the asterixes is some material that happened in a conversation on a friend's Facebook page, during a remarkably respectful conversation about a purported coverup by the CDC of some statistically significant correlation between vaccines and autism rates in a couple of sub-populations.

As most people who know me probably know, I was open to questioning the AMA/CDC line on just about everything because my upbringing with Old Boys Skool doctors was ... less than confidence-building.  And then I got pregnant.  And then, even on the gentler vaccine schedule I was trying to meet the CDC halfway with, my four month old had a grande mal seizure 12 hours after receiving two vaccines.

And I'm realllllllly tired of *anyone* dismissing the anti-vaccine citizens as "anti-science."  Because, while I am sure there are some that are proudly "anti-science," most parents I know that have struggled with this decision understand "science" and agree with "science" and made their decisions (usually not one simple decision, and there is usually ongoing evaluation of new information and one's own historical thinking) based on science and/or statistics.

And at the 'end' of the facebook convo, when people were agreeing to disagree for now, one of the CDC-or-bust participants used the knee-jerk, nail-in-the-coffin phrase "fear-mongering anti-science conspiracy theories."  And that was not a respectful standing down.  And I stood right back up.

But here's the thing.  I've have the vaccine-people-aren't-raving-lunatics interaction before.  This time I think I came through with extra clarity.  But I made it a point to *unapologetically* credit myself.  Because too often lately, I've been seeing people who lean on "you have no degree" or "you have no job in the field" and that's SUCH. COMPLETE. BULLSHIT.

Actually, I'm gonna go find a different interaction with a different friend and append that after this.

But here is the first one, and I challenge readers to consider how comfortable they are with(/how uncomfortable it makes them to read) me being reasonably in-the-face about my intellectual qualifications.  Because, as a woman in America, being in-your-face competent is generally considered bitchy (even without being "better than you," which is stupid to assume about anyone, and actually is bitchy/jerk'y).  It was *really* uncomfortable to put it that plainly, and the only reason I could is because I was conscious that my discomfort was probably a cultural artifact and it was probably healthy to stand forth and state truth.

Because no conversation can reach healthy solutions if people with pertinent skills and knowledge are being prejudicially dismissed by the power structure.

I have re-ordered my comments to hit the item that concerns me the most first.  I added (x) numbering if anyone cares to reconstruct the original order.  You can tell I was terribly (in the serious, not snotty, sense) serious because not even once in three long passages did I use an emoticon ... .

And the thing of it is, although this was a huge mental/emotional exercise, coming back and reading it a couple of days later, I was *still* stinting myself.  But I think it was an appropriate level, as [the appearance of bashing people on the head] is not conducive to [them listening to your content].

I just had no patience with being discounted.  I'm soooooo damnably tired of that.

*        *        *

(2)  When I had my first child I was working in a respected AMA-affiliated medical statistical analysis office and getting very high reviews; at one point they sent me as the office representative to learn a new analytical methodology and bring it back to present to the office. My degree is neither in statistics nor a science field, because I didn't enjoy them enough to choose those fields, but I am highly competent in both types of thinking with a broad knowledge base in science. And, although this is less true now, I used to attract and seek likeminded science-competent people.

It is due to science and statistics that I left the medical system for my children's births. Awareness of science and statistics, and the general interest monied medical establishment has in stretching the scientific truth in the direction that keeps their expertise "trusted" (it is not like the medical truth hasn't been vastly stretched before) made me aware of the potential pitfalls in vaccine statistical presentations ... and cautious enough, because of the genetic predisposition, to alter the recommended schedule even with Baby1. Actual medical/scientific malfeasance by my damn doctors, which only was corrected in terms of the CDCs publishable stats because I (1) chose to, (2) understood how to, and (3) was personally strong enough to fight the pressure, put pox on what little trust of the CDCs stats I was trying to preserve "for the good of society." A person, and probably especially a woman (as most are still taught to question themselves instead of the Authority, especially when it comes to mothering), who was less capable than I was, would probably not have gotten that grande mal seizure into the records (much less the "extra fussiness, fevers," or etc that the CDC form claims parents and doctors are supposed to report for 14 days after each vaccination, but I know noone who does).

(1)  [Name], please recognize that although there are certainly anti-science theories that are the source of some anti-vaccine decisions, it is the case that most people I know who have questioned, avoided, or altered the CDC's vaccination schedule for their children did so based on research into biological processes / data collection practices ... questions triggered by the anecdotal freakouts? Yes. Unthinking or uneducated or merely reactively fearful? No. It is not fair to the debate, nationally nor interpersonally, to allow yourself to "other" the people who have dissented by tossing the entire lot into a psychological category you feel comfortable dismissing as intellectually valid.

This reactionism is like when Rosie O'Donnell came out as gay and all the anti-gay people were like, "See? She has batshit crazy political opinions and is a bitch! Lesbians are maladjusted and horrible! We have to ignore them and make sure all the kids growing up know they are morally wrong in every bit of their thinking!" (If you didn't know any reactionary social conservatives at that time, trust me: it was ugly.)

The decision to avoid or alter the vaccination schedule can be, and is at least often, quite scientific indeed. Even if there are those who decide based on things not within the current sphere of science (and therefore not currently scientifically justifiable, whether or not they might someday prove accurate, about which I make no assertions -- as a scientist should reasonably state, unless something has been reasonably disproven, and even then there should be acknowledged awareness that revolutions in knowledge and discovery happen).

The inconvenient requirement for honesty and accuracy in medical assertions -- enough honesty and accuracy that *in fact* only the non-scientific thinkers can still question the presented conclusions, and your prejudice can be reasonably justified -- is firmly in the interest of society as a whole. We *are* fighting for the best health of our nation and humanity (not just our children and our children's children), or we wouldn't have engaged in making ourselves hated and despised by (what I assume is) the majority.

(3)  What I want is for vaccine safety stats to be accurate in both collection (this is the major gap as far as I can see) and analysis (with probable vast underreporting, it is unlikely even someone who wanted to cover up "bad" stats needs to inaccurately report what little they collect), and for a clear scientific explanation of which parts of the immune system the vaccines trigger and which parts they don't to become part of the common understanding. As a scientific thinker, raised by and among scientific thinkers, with a mind respected by every science professional who has ever worked with me in school or professionally, I HATE not being able to rationally trust the CDC on this. It is enormously frustrating that logic and ethical scientific concern will not allow me to trust what should be a proudly scientific institution (including one that corrects itself with alacrity and publicly, but without shame -- we all make mistakes -- for accidental or even prejudicial errors, in order to maintain public trust, and corrects itself with deep apologies when and if it discovers malfeasance has led to publishing misinformation).

I am sorry that this is so long, but it is really quite important to the entire set of discussion that noone discount someone else based on their conclusions -- the thinking that got someone to an end with which someone is uncomfortable is not legitimately dismissable by the force of that discomfort.

*        *        *

(There was a bit after that, but this part qualifies as "my blog" rather than "the particular argument.")

(Following, as an addendum, was actually a mental precursor to the above.  It is me reacting to a friend who did specifically complain about people citing "science" who weren't professionals.  This friend is all-out on blogs etc and so I feel confident quoting his half of the convo, although it's the content I'm getting at and so I've removed names for now.

*        *        *

HIS FACEBOOK POST:  i appreciate science too, but claiming that your argument is 'science' (as opposed to my own) is one way to turn me off on the rest of what you have to say. (unless you are actually paid to be a real scientist.)

ME:  Problem is, a lot of people are paid to do science but don't actually hold the necessary truths to be self-evident.

HIM:  that makes them scientists, no?

HIM:  Science, like Patriotism, is the last vestige of a scoundrel...

ME:  Nope, it makes them science professionals, maybe. Scientists remember things like what a theory is (it's a best-we-can-right-now), and accept -- nay, and the best rejoice for the awesomeness of science! -- when their beliefs turn out to be disproved by new science work. Science is about hanging loose, because the next thing that happens might alter or disprove "your" thing.

HIM:  'science professionals'... means 'i'm in it for the paycheck'.. like making boxes or writing bail bonds... its not science at that point,

ME (continuing):  For sure, though, there are peeps who cite "science!" and expect the rest of the world to keel over dead from the irrefutability of their assertion. Sometimes it's reasonable science, sometimes not so much. And people's reactions in either case are usually in line with whatever they already believed, and remarkably little to do with the validity of the science asserted.

Did you see the "scientific study" a few weeks ago about Bible kids being less able to identify what is and isn't actually possible in stories at age 6? Seriously. The methodology was decent if one ignores basic child development, but the assumptions were prejudiced and (between ignoring standard awareness of young human animals and being prejudiced) the conclusions ended up nearly completely useless. Annnnnnd ... several of my anti-religious friends posted it to Facebook like it proved something besides "kids tend to believe the adults in charge of them, at age 6."  :-P.

HIM:  i didnt see that.

ME (responding to his previous 'paycheck' comment):  yes -- that is what I meant. Although you have to add the cache' that "science" currently gives to a professional

ME (about the 6 year olds):  'twas a frustrating case of could have been interesting science gone boring/stupid/anti-useful : P

ME (paycheck again):  The computer industry has some of this problem as well ... there are now millions of people out there who can write code (program the computers, in olde tyme speak ;-) ), but there aren't that many who actually understand how to do it well (right) or make sure to do it well. It used to be that only the folks who really found it fascinating would get involved, which cut down on the idiot noise level. Science is terribly important now, and industrially is a huge source of jobs and GDP and suchlike, but there are too many people with a "science" degree but who don't think in a way that keeps their work scientifically healthy (if they are allowed to consider doing so in the first place by their money-focussed, stock-value-aware employers, right?). It's frustrating.

ME:  Do you want the link to the kids/Bible article? It's pretty much what I said, but snarkier against all the ridiculously irresponsible parents who teach their kids the bible ...

HIM:  i'm not a science type... but i think science is supposed to be boring unless you are of the science type.

HIM:  minutae doesnt inspire me.

ME:  ;-) and yet the details are often where the holes in one's assumptions are exposed ...

It is nice when a scientist happens who also can handle media well, so the inherent excitement science-minded people feel can be transmitted, some, to everyone :-)

*        *        *

(at this point it was 2:24am and the conversation ended)

and here is the article about how credulous 6 year olds are, which apparently was worth trumpeting about, and how prejudiced the researchers were, which they, of course, completely missed ...)

*        *        *

Oh ho ho!  That article is no longer linked on my friend's page!  I wonder if the publishers took it down or whether he did.  I think it was NYT, I'm pretty sure the study was in Chicago ... it also might have been the WSJ ...

Well, crap, because my commentary was a good one.  Let me see if I stored it someplace, or can at least search the article ...

Sigh.  Nope, gone forever.  Essentially, though, the researchers tried to take stock of what kids would believe and then consider what they had been taught ... and then discredited the bible-exposed kids as thinkers because they had learned from their grownups in exactly the same way every 6 year old does, and the researchers were themselves prejudiced against not-currently-explicable-by-standard-issue-science occurrences.  As I stated there, as a person who grew up with highest-caliber scientific and mathematical thinkers AND high-level miracle work, this differentiation into "false" and "true" is not valid (and believe me, living with what the world yells and yells and yells is a dichotomy was not fun to grow up with and is still a pain often enough in my middle age), and their conclusions were psychologically self-serving rather than scientifically bounded (there was no sense of 'perhaps' or 'we suspect' or even 'according to broad scientific consensus' ... just, 'these kids are better at discerning what is actually possible than those kids.'  Which of course leads to kids who can't think outside the box even *if* one ignores the possibility of miracles.

Altogether quite irritating :P.

Ironically, I did just find an article from the WSJ that captures, from essentially the same (maybe actually the same?) data and metholodogy, a different angle on the mind-closing/open-thinking piece ... http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703344704574610002061841322

(And wow is there some disturbing stuff about 6 year olds and credulity on the internet -- because of course this is a major question in some very upsetting court cases :-(.  So, be careful if you go searching it as well.)

.

on the Hobby Lobby decision: two alternative lenses and two additional thoughts

Granted that the decision itself is apparently preposterously non-specific, and from what I have read I am totally willing to believe it opens the courts and the law to all of the "religious exemptions" that are now being asserted (jokingly and seriously).  I have (so far) two basic alternative angles (not fully explicated, just *directions* of perception) from which to consider this decision.  (I am partially in favor of and partially against it myself, probably in a non-resolvable way, and so have been working on sorting out what it is I'm thinking/reacting to.)

1) It's an interesting question whether the right to physical autonomy or the right to autonomy of the mind (decision making and immediately derivable action or refusal to act) is in fact a more definitive human right ... perhaps particularly because there is clearly, when one gets down to brass tacks, no such thing as physical autonomy (probably there is no such thing as true autonomy of the mind either, but it is somewhat easier to ignore or theorize away psychological/emotional interdependence). 

I think a lot of the same people who are screaming foul right now would usually argue (and have historically argued) for the right of mind as *the primary* human right -- certainly until recently most of the moral choices now being espoused were not considered any kind of legally or even intellectually defensible in the first place: "opening minds" to conceptualizing a different moral basis and to making real concrete choices based on those changed intellectual constructions was a primary goal.  Certainly the nation's founders were pretty hot to trot about freedom of thought (including religious beliefs or lack thereof).  It's my impression that just about all revolutions-toward-liberty, worldwide, start with the right to have and express non-establishment *thought* ... and physical expression is a derivation of that right, once acquired (so, it is secondary).

From this point of view, the decision of the court might be leaning toward protecting the more fundamental human right as established in American legal (and social) thought, however fundamental a right to bodily autonomy is (and the latter is definitely not a universally agreed upon "truth," whether among women regarding childbearing or among men regarding other sacrifices of body/life for others, even just in America ... if we open to other cultures, indigenous or invasive, the possible variations increase).

I do note that such a prioritization of rights, even if historically and/or philosophically justified, does not imply that the specifics of the decision are necessarily reasonable, even if they are logically derived (I am under the impression they are at least logically derived -- but one can logically derive many things from any social assertion; Naziism is one logical social descendant of Romanticism).  But the fundamental *direction* of the majority is, I think, less screamingly indefensible than many people are currently busy asserting.

2) Second major alternative lens: There is some sort of fundamental difference I haven't gotten quite formalized yet between "my religion objects to non-human blood transfusions because I sincerely believe makes a human into something unable to attain heaven" and "my religion objects to abortion because I sincerely believe it actively kills in real earth-time an individual, living human" ... this doesn't necessarily make Monday's Hobby Lobby decision legally sensible, but it's not reasonable to compare debt forgiveness, or pig blood derivatives, to "I refuse to participate in active murder or even potentially active murder, particularly of an innocent and dependent human."  That's really a very different level of moral concern than "I think you are hurting yourself" or "I think you should be less meanspirited" or "I don't like how you think children should be raised."  The only "joke" I've seen so far that might approach the seriousness of the concern is about Christian Scientists denying medical treatment to their children (another area where there is *no* correct legal answer, although I recognize that people who have not experienced medical miracles would perceive it as a clean-cut legal decision to make).

Anyhow, our nation has a very spotty record of being actually logical about human rights, even on the occasions where we've at least manged good-sounding rhetoric; I doubt we will suddenly start being perfectly logical today (if it's even possible), and I doubt that there is an answer that will work for both sides in this division because we think and work from quite different moral priorities (individual "freedom" is a verrrry sketchy "absolute," and many cultures don't value it highly -- America is an extreme case sociologically, as has recently, and fascinatingly, become the in-thing to scientifically and statistically assess). 

I do believe abortion murders a human being (and the most innocent, most defenseless type of human being), and it is a real and concrete problem for me that anyone can be coerced into being party to financing it (yes, including "contraceptive" methods that probably aren't but might be abortifacient).  I'm also pretty damn horrified that we can't solve hunger and environmental destruction, not even in our own country(!), that we watch foreigners die as if they aren't extensions of (and measures of) our own humanity, and that people watch demeaning (to both sexes) pornography.  I am human-centric enough to consider human life a particular kind of sacred, and all of these forms of dehumanization are, to me, different facets of disrespect of the sanctity of human life.  I can't be surprised that a nation that is largely OK with migrant workers taking their chances with weather, farm equipment, and pesticides in order to justify cheap food prices for the convenience of citizens is not interested in considering a zygote as a human individual that deserves protections of any sort (and, yes, I am extremely offended that many who scream about the rights of a zygote are somehow OK with non-citizens being abused, poisoned, and starved ... talk about "arbitrary"!).

There are no yes/no, "simple" answers to any of these, and there are many partially right, partially messed-up answers.

I can't be against a decision that allows people like me to not support abortions in any preventable way.  I celebrate the concept that there would be a large, even an extreme, degree of freedom-of-conscience around this issue (as I also celebrate conscientious objection to military service and some other related things).  But I'm not at all sure I'm "for" Monday's decision either.  I wish that the justices had been clearer about why this line was somehow legally pertinent, and what they then assert the lower boundary should be on the now-allowed exemptions.  My sense is that the life/death issue'ness of it affected the outcome of the deliberations ... and I haven't heard that they captured any such thing in the ruling.  I wonder if they know themselves why it came down this way -- or if maybe they do in fact realize and consider it the Right Thing to blow open the doors of religious exemption just as much as most commentators think they have done.

So, yeah.  I don't have a lot of conclusions there, but two lenses that might cast a different color on the paths to the decision.

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As a side note, I don't think most pro-choice people are conscious that, at 40+ years, most people who are for one reason or another against abortion have spent the vast majority (or all) of our lives on the losing side of this question (and many years on the minority side, although I know the first 10 or 15 years were transitional and the last few years have been hotly argued by different statisticians).  The victim(/oppressed minority) storyline was fundamental to energizing the "right to abortion" fighters, ironically similarly to the odd psychological construct many Bible Christians live within, that conservative Christianity is a heroic minority viewpoint in America (self-fulfilling prophecy?)  ... so it's not like most pro-lifers/anti-abortion activists haven't confronted the questions of the defensibility of, or the potentially incorrect nature of, our belief(s).  It's not like many of us haven't dealt with the baby-or-abortion decision ourselves (I have) or with friends (that too).

While there are definitely admit-no-doubt pro-lifers, I don't think they are anywhere near the majority, and I don't think any of the Supreme Court Justices are among them, especially nowadays when one has to be both extremely politically savvy and very, very legally literate to even get nominated to the SCOTUS.  If your reaction to Monday's decision was any version of "they weren't thinking well," you probably need to examine your reactive psychological assumptions for interpretive reasonableness.

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Eden Organics has apparently filed for an exemption.

I am interested in whether this will bring more conservative Christians into the organic-food fold, to try to support Eden Organics by counteracting the boycott which was pretty much instantly called.
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Fb status May 28 2014, plus commentary: source of all abuse

Fb post and Tweet, 5/29/2014:

Attempts to control others is a *panic reaction* when ur subconscious assumptions of entitlement r threatened. What do u fear? #YesAllWomen

Fb added commentary:

(140 characters to sum up the source of all abusive behaviors ever ... yeah, I think I'm proud enough of that to share my Tweet here too ; ). )

Expansion:

This 140 character summary is based out of some hard, hard life lessons I've learned through observation of myself and others : (.

Of course the worst attempts to control stem from feeling entitled to [our perception of what we need to feel loved]. Of *course* this "need" -- constructed via personality and experience on top of the *true* need, which is [to be and feel loved] -- of course this "need" is pre-rational / infantile / "instinctual," and of course, then, the actions that arise out of it are just exactly as un-self-disciplined as that depth of personal history would suggest, unless and until the person in question has done major healing and developmental work.  Maybe we did that work at the "right" times (our first chances, when we were 9 months, and 3 years old, and 8 years old, and etc. ...), but more likely we missed one or more steps and spend our adult lives (ages 14 and up) scrambling to uncover and realign the bits in us that didn't end up growing right (or at all).

I firmly believe that each human has a right to *be* loved, and even a right to *feel* loved (which I suspect we can all admit is two different things, but I might be projecting ;) ), but our true need is obscured by all kinds of justifications and coping mechanisms around the constructed but still subconscious "need" for what we *perceive* we need to feel loved.

These can be very stupid things, like, we need our life-partner to always be a little bit sick because one of our parents was never physically healthy (and therefore always needed us to be emotionally wrapped up in taking care of them ... and now our life partner), or we need our life partner to be emotionally unavailable, because that is what feels like "home" to us (despite in fact making it impossible for an actual need, to "feel loved," to be met!).  Or what we perceive we "have a right to" can be very real, healthy things, that are actually how we feel *love* (instead of just how we feel emotionally "at home"), which ideas/methods like the Love Languages (words, physical touch, doing things for the other, gift-giving, and whatever the other ones are I can't remember ;) ) get SO much closer* to.

• * [... and yet they miss so thoroughly, sigh: The only presentation of the Love Languages I've read was by a man -- the author, or at least an author, of the book/ideas -- and I found his descriptions quite masculinized and exclusionary of my experience, despite being in a magazine designed for both genders with a cant towards female readers. Particularly odd was his making a point to include sex under "physical touch," when sex actually -- obviously, I would have thought(!) -- can (and probably should ;) ) involve aspects of all of the Love Languages he listed, and DEAR GOD is it important for people to understand that a person with a Love Language of touch *needs* specifically non-sexualized touch, a *lot,* or you break the person emotionally, just like if you assumed all your caring-via-words should be sexual, that would be sick and wrong, and zero people would be surprised when an all-words-of-love-are-sexual relationship broke the object of "affection."  Eww.  And yet from all societal indications many men (and presumably some women) think *all* touch should, properly(?!?), have a sexual load on it.  Plus, I of course find particularly irritating the lack of acknowledgement of the spiritual senses and how much they matter.  Hence, I find the Love Languages a very useful idea-direction, that got seriously, sadly, warped before it reached final form.]

Of course as a believer in the Divine (still on the Catholic train, after all these years ;) ), I have no dissonance with a perception that (1) there is no way humans alone (much less any one other human) can fill another human's need to be loved absolutely, and that (2) our scrambling in panic to force others to fill that fundamental, monkey-brain need in us, and the failure of it ever working, are both predictable outcomes.  We are looking for something infinite in a finite place.  (Most secular writers I've read from around this topic gave up the concept of actual fulfillment long ago (it is, after all, clearly illogical to perceive it as possible) and merely aim for "as healthy/fulfilled as we can figure out how to get to."  Which is pretty much what religious people end up doing too, functionally.)

Regardless of the question of God, though, certainly -- observably -- truly wonderful and loving people regularly do some truly horrifying things, whether subtle or overt, both long term and in the immediate now, to people they really do love, because of this.  In fact, we probably do them *more* to people we "really do love," because we have fewer defenses and boundaries, and higher expectations that aren't-getting-met, with people we love, right?  We talk about emotional contracts and codependence because of this; real trauma happens every day to and because of well-meaning, thoughtful people, because we are subconsciously panicking, because we are never quite getting what we actually, really need, and very few people have the capability (and let's be honest, often just not the energy) to catch themselves in time to prevent injuring the object of our desires.

Of course there are a significant percentage of people who do truly inhumane, uncivilized things, when their deepest needs are not being met. 

People who have significant chemical imbalances.

People from cultural backgrounds (whether family-sized or larger scale) that never opened their eyes to healthier/growth-oriented choices than they were brought up with, or who were taught superiority/entitlement so thoroughly that these teachings function as truths unquestionable. 

People who have accepted social teachings (all the prejudicial -isms) that make their lives "easier" to "understand" while actually blocking them from understanding anything helpful about themselves, the people around them, or how to get their relationship needs truly met.

People who instinctually avoid pain and discomfort for themselves to such a degree that they justify (consciously or subconsciously) using other people however is "necessary" to feel comfortable or assuage pain. 

• (I note in passing that pornography, at least standard pornography, is a gateway drug to this deadening, and occasionally deadly, trip.  I also admit that I feel a sad satisfaction-of-logic that pornography is, as I was recently reminded during a talk about sex education, creating a generation of men with impotence problems, because their bodies have been thoroughly trained in isolation and with unreal input, and can't function with the real thing, even when the young man is truly in love ... all from an "innocent," "boys being boys," "justifiable," and unfortunately now "quite normal" (and incredibly physiologically, as well as psychologically, addictive) habit.)

Being aware that one's instinct to control another is based on a panic reaction to one's own needs not being met, is the first step toward building a better future, because one can then both work on understanding their own needs (as exposed by their panic) and also deliberately, consciously, consider what choices might be both more effective and healthier in getting their needs met -- identifying the real difficulty and creating, finally(!), an opportunity to truly resolve, instead of energetically perpetuate, what is uncomfortable or painful.
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On art: a reaction to quotes from Brian Eno

About a week ago, my friend Brian (not Brian Eno) posted this on Fb:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/15/happy-birthday-brian-eno-the-father-of-ambient-music-on-art/

I had this reaction (which I didn't end up posting on his Fb acct bcz it doesn't look like it doubles as a conversational blog the way mine does):

The quotes cited do not suggest an attachment to the universal subconscious, though ... for a variety of reasons, I am not surprised that this is lacking, but the lack creates the impossibility of any given piece of art/ artistic effort having  any predictable or even actual effect on humanity beyond the strictly visceral (and the psychological/emotional changes that can be wrought through strictly visceral channels).  It is no wonder that the thoughts quoted, then, are not only basically ontological but at some level nihilistic.

Art produced with this lack of intention is very unlikely to touch the underlying levels of creation in a positive manner, although certainly because of its separated'ness it can affect our universal mind/world in a negative, destroying way ...

If one is willing to admit the existence of a universal subconscious and/or a God (either route will get you there), then the creative ideas, the forms, the energy of the colors, the resolution, the frequency of the sounds, the dance, the making -- they all *can* (not always do) become the motions of energetic/spiritual transformation for the artist(s), the surrounding people, and the people who encounter the art, and I would argue, also, the world in general ... a fundamental act of creation: literally sharing in the eternal creation of the universe.  Even a purely secular view of the universe as shifting and interactive mathematical equations has led some thinkers to perceiving this type of malleability in the base levels of existence.

This is why I think art matters.

This is why every breath matters.

Interactivity, intentional awareness, and deepening understanding of the 'most real' things are the only way we can learn a workable, sustainable -- hopefully true -- morality.  I can understand how it is that many people perceive that the judgements of people are, in the end, what determines value ... theirs is an extremely rational and quite logical worldview based on what many people consider the only reasonably 'provable' level of existence ... but I deeply, deeply disagree with them.

Sep 27 2013 Fb status: Americans are "WEIRD"

This is intellectually yummy, incredible, awesome, and a giant DUH, all at the same time. It is also sooooo long that I haven't quite gotten through it, but even partway through, quite useful.

Thank you, Travis :).

www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/
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