Fighting Back

How many times have you found yourself arguing for a position you didn't really support merely because someone had tried to impose upon you the opposite position?

Classically, this is the behavior of teenagers - in extreme cases classified as "oppositional defiance disorder" - but even adults experience this kind of inherent oppositional reaction when we feel our independence is being challenged.

In psychology, this is known as "psychological reactance theory". From Psycholopedia:

Psychological reactance is an aversive affective reaction in response to regulations or impositions that impinge on freedom and autonomy (Brehm, 1966, 1972, Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Wicklund, 1974). This reaction is especially common when individuals feel obliged to adopt a particular opinion or engage in a specific behavior.

Specifically, a perceived diminution in freedom ignites an emotional state, called psychological reactance, that elicits behaviors intended to restore this autonomy (Brehm, 1966, 1972, Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Wicklund, 1974). Reactance, for example, often encourages individuals to espouse an opinion that opposes the belief or attitude they were encouraged, or even coerced, to adopt. As a consequence, reactance often augments resistance to persuasion (Brehm & Brehm, 1981). Reactance was proposed to explain many common examples of resistance in society, such as the adverse effects of prohibition.

Yes, this is a real, traceable, verified concept: an individual is more likely to be confrontational when s/he perceives that his or her freedoms are being impinged. It doesn't matter why or whether or not they agree with the underlying principles: merely the act of feeling confined, physically or mentally, induces a basic "fight or flight" syndrome that comes out as oppositional defiance.

Keep this in mind both as you watch your own behavior and as you watch how others respond to you. If you know you are predisposed to a negative response in certain situations, you can have mitigate that response to some degree and prevent yourself from getting into confrontations you don't necessarily want to have. You can also strive to prevent others from feeling the same kind of confinement and, thus, hopefully reduce their tendency to be confrontational in return.

(Sorry for the long lag between posts; I'll try to get at least one a month up.)

Once Upon a Time

A raven, flitting around somewhere, notices a silver spot. Being curious, it pecks at it, and a seed falls out of a nearby hole. It pecks again, and another seed falls out. Now, whenever it pecks that silver spot, it expects a seed; whenever it wants a seed, it will peck the silver spot.

This is learning. Learning is entirely based on predictive pattern analysis: the ability to say, "in the past, every time X has occurred, Y has resulted," and use that information for future prediction. Advanced learning is being able to extrapolate that cause/effect into areas not identical but similar to the original situation: maybe the spot is gold, and maybe it's a piece of candy instead of a seed.

In simpler terms, the act of learning is an act of building stories - even ones far less interesting than "Jack and the Beanstalk." We build, in our heads, a narrative course of actions that we can use to inform ourselves as well as others in the future. Our brains are very good at building these stories: being good at stories - being good at learning - provided a heritable survival advantage, so our ancestors who were better building stories tended to survive more.

It's important, however, to recognize when our story-building goes awry: when we don't have enough data or experience to build a realistic cause/effect model, or when we highlight the wrong thing as being the cause or effect. This is also something we tend to be good at, unfortunately, because it's a side effect of constantly looking for stories.

The most critical part of any story we build is that we be open to modifying, expanding, or removing it based on experience in order to keep it useful: remember, if the story can't predict anything, it's not useful and may even be counter-productive as we waste energy in support of a pattern that doesn't exist. If the raven finds that it's not just silver spots, but square silver spots, that result in seeds, continually pecking a round silver spot and expecting a seed is a waste of energy; if it goes on long enough, the raven may starve.

Stories are extremely powerful, and while they can be useful, we need to constantly check and validate them to prevent them from becoming detrimental, both to ourselves and to society.

Privilege

privi: private
lege: law

Privilege means, literally, "private law". Operating from a position of privilege means that the rules are applied differently - or are just not applied at all - for you.

There are many kinds of privilege. Some are earned, at least partially. Many are gained through luck or circumstance. Some are assumed even when not held.

The key, though, is that in all cases of privilege, the privileged person is acting from a position of strength or advantage over others who aren't privileged. The person with privilege doesn't have to be doing this deliberately or maliciously, or even be aware that s/he is doing it at all; often, one advantage of privilege is being unaware that a state of privilege even exists: those who have privilege may not be aware of it, while those who do not have it generally don't have a choice but to be aware of it. Furthermore, exercising a privilege generally (though not always) involves detriment to someone not privileged.

There are many privileges that are granted through general culture, so something that provides privilege in one culture may not (or may deny it) in another.

An example of a privilege that most people wouldn't think about: my parents are both great at finances, and have taught me from a young age about them. That's a privilege - it's an advantage most kids don't have. I didn't "earn" it in any way, and in this case my having it doesn't necessarily detract from others. But the knowledge I have gained because of my parents' fiscal ability is something that most of the people I know don't have.

An example of a privilege that is easy to spot is that I'm male. Being a male, even (or especially) in modern US culture, provides a plethora of advantages that most men aren't really aware of. We all know about things like wage differences, but even things like "not having to be vigilant about rape prevention" are privileges that men have and women don't.

An example of a privilege I lack is that I'm not straight. This goes far beyond issues like same-sex marriage and discrimination at work: the assumption of heterosexuality is so prevalent in culture that there is quite often a feeling that I have to hide my sexuality in everyday conversation or make other people angry/upset/flustered. Straight people don't have that stress: a straight man talking about his wife/lover/girlfriend does not cause any kind of disruption, but a gay man talking about his boyfriend/husband or a lesbian talking about her girlfriend/wife does. Thus, straight individuals are operating from a position of privilege.

We often can't avoid privilege - I can't stop being a guy, or at least not in ways that anyone would find reasonable, and I can't change who my parents are - but we can do our best to make sure that, in the exercising of privilege, we do not hurt or disadvantage others who are not privileged. This is often easier done that it seems, but first we have to be aware of the advantages we have that others lack. Also, we have to realize that, sometimes, levelling the field again isn't enough: to counteract privilege we, the privileged, must sometimes go out of our way to actively disadvantage ourselves in order to help someone who is unprivileged - especially if that privilege is indemic to culture and widespread.

So close... and yet, so far

Always remember: we're looking out, not up.

Once around the park

50 years ago today, a man orbited the Earth for 108 minutes. His primary concern, before launch, was making sure he had enough sausage to last him the trip.

The fact that the man was a Russian, and that, at the time, the US and the USSR were engaged in a bitter cold war, has no bearing on the significance of the event. As Michael Collins said of the moon landing some 8 years later, the accomplishment transcends borders and nationalities: "Everywhere we went, instead of saying 'you did it, you Americans did it,' they were saying 'we did it, we, the human race, did it,' and I thought that was a wonderful thing."

Today, space programs are international, with almost all the major players cooperating on a world stage. Even as private space flight begins to take off (pun intended), space travel remains one of the few egalitarian concepts in a world rocked by conflict.

The US has led the world in accomplishments in space since landing on the moon. We should do everything we can to encourage our population and scientists to continue exporing this next great frontier. At the same time, though, we must remember that we weren't the first ones there: we owe much of our drive and inspiration to Yuri.

5%

We humans are silly, irrational creatures. Neurologically, we make decisions based on bad or misleading assumptions, impractical expectations, and often raw, unfiltered emotion. Psychologically, we then try post-hoc justification of what we've already decided, often allowing ourselves to jump through ridiculous logical hoops to try and seem reasonable. If that fails, we might even abandon pretense at rationality and simply appeal to unknown or unknowable forces that don't have to obey the rigid laws of reality.

By all rights, we ought to still be living in caves and banging rocks together.

And yet, we're not. We live in sky scrapers and mansions, apartments and houses. We travel around our planet at hundreds of miles an hour, or off of it at thousands. We create languages that lead to novels and poetry, instruments that produce punk rock and symphonies, artworks that inspire great emotions.

Of course, we've also created weapons of mass distruction. We've severely imbalanced if not outright destroyed entire ecologies. We've perfected genocide, popularized prejudice, and fought for thousands of years in the names of so-called benevolent deities.

95% of what we do as a species is irrational to say the least. It's that last 5%, though, that must give us pause. That last 5% gives us science, and reason, and medicine, and technology... all the things we associate with progress.

And while hope is silly, irrational, a product of the first 95%, it is hope that drives us again and again to thinking that maybe, just maybe, that last 5% can, in the end, make up for all the rest.

Which brings us to tonight, and my own personal moment of irrationality: here's hoping that, in the coning year, every one of you finds enough benefit from that last 5% to make the other 95 worthwhile.

Happy New Year.

--Austin

Tradition

It is the method by which we perpetuate culture, passing on beliefs, ideas, or customs from one generation to the next. Traditions form the basis of cultural identity, the mortar with which a family, a city, a country builds its personality. They are often unassailable bastions at the core of history for a people.

And that's why they're dangerous.

Traditions are often immune to challenge, merely by virtue of being "traditions": doing something "because that's the way we've always done it", whether it's who carves the turkey, how we set up the Christmas decorations, or how we venerate people in the past. And while culture is often an excuse, "the past" is really the key point here, because tradition looks only to the past and only with longing in its eyes.

The hidden assumption in tradition is this: the way things were done before is the best way and will always be the best way going forward. That assumption is quite often wrong. If a behavior is, in fact, the best method, then it should be able to stand on its own without being labeled "traditional"; if it is not, then no amount of reverence for history should prevent the best choice from being made. "Tradition" implies that a bunch of desert nomads from 2000 years ago could know what's best for people living in hundred-story high rises. It implies that a handful of rich white men from a few hundred years ago knew what was best for computer gamers and gun owners today. It argues that, because something was done in a specific way at some point in the past, that way is now a priori the best way and should never change.

As Toscanini said, "Tradition is just the last bad performance."

There are reasons to value cultural, historical or social traditions in the context of history, such as teaching traditional art forms, languages, or even rites. But those traditions should never be divorced from the time period in which they arose or their own cultural histories: why things were done a certain way, what the justification was, the effects of that tradition on future history, etc. Traditions should be valued as artifacts in the same way we value physical artifacts: as curiosities and points of reference, not as relevant for today's world. We can appreciate the role of ceremonial dance and religion in the political and social framework of pre-modern cultures without feeling the need to revere them, the same way we can appreciate an old flint knife without feeling the need to give up stainless steel or carbonite.

History shouldn't be ignored, but neither should it be placed on a pedestal and worshipped. Good practice and good information can stand on its own without arbitrary enforcement: if something is useful, it is useful whether it is old or new. We study Aristotle, Euclid, Newton and Freud not because of tradition but because of the inherent value of their statements and ideas, even if we've proven them "wrong" (or at least restrictive) in the intervening years: they are stepping stones along the path to modern logic, mathematics, physics and psychology. Just as we can appreciate Bach and Mozart without limiting ourselves to Baroque music and abandoning the Romantic period, we can appreciate the trappings of history without feeling the need to continue them and, instead, improve or even abandon them as need arises.

As we approach a holiday season that is often draped in traditions, don't be afraid to abandon them. If you find yourself sad or depressed, it may be because you're trying to cling to an outmoded idea of "should" that no longer fits - a tradition that is no longer useful. Embrace whatever celebrations or routines that you find useful, even if they aren't "traditional": go out instead of eating in, invite close friends to dinner instead of family, skip the presents and donate to charity or spend time at a soup kitchen - whatever it is that you feel is a better fit for you and your life today, not what you've been taught "should" be done.

Tradition looks to the past, but, while we must remember what has come before so as not to repeat the same mistakes, the past is not a model by which we can live. Progress exists only in the future, and with it comes the most powerful force we know - the thing that can forever destroy the historical, repetitive, traditional grievances of life:

Hope.