The Ash Twins Blog

Writing for the New York Times, Stanley Fish offers the following useful commentary on the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision:

The justices in the Citizens United majority are more in the Brandeis camp. They believe that free trade in ideas with as many trading partners as wish to join in will inevitability produce benign results for a democratic society. And since their confidence in these results is a matter of theoretical faith and not of empirical or historical observation — free speech is for them a religion with long-term rewards awaiting us down the road — they feel no obligation to concern themselves with short-term calculations and predictions. . . .

The idea that you may have to regulate speech in order to preserve its First Amendment value is called consequentialism. For a consequentialist like Stevens, freedom of speech is not a stand-alone value to be cherished for its own sake, but a policy that is adhered to because of the benign consequences it is thought to produce, consequences that are catalogued in the usual answers to the question, what is the First Amendment for?

Answers like the First Amendment facilitates the search for truth, or the First Amendment is essential to the free flow of ideas in a democratic polity, or the First Amendment encourages dissent, or the First Amendment provides the materials necessary for informed choice and individual self-realization. If you think of the First Amendment as a mechanism for achieving goals like these, you have to contemplate the possibility that some forms of speech will be subversive of those goals because, for instance, they impede the search for truth or block the free flow of ideas or crowd out dissent. And if such forms of speech appear along with their attendant dangers, you will be obligated — not in violation of the First Amendment, but in fidelity to it — to move against them, as Stevens advises us to do in his opinion.

The opposite view of the First Amendment — the view that leads you to be wary of chilling any speech even if it harbors a potential for corruption — is the principled or libertarian or deontological view. Rather than asking what is the First Amendment for and worrying about the negative effects a form of speech may have on the achievement of its goals, the principled view asks what does the First Amendment say and answers, simply, it says no state abridgement of speech. Not no abridgment of speech unless we dislike it or fear it or think of it as having low or no value, but no abridgment of speech, period, especially if the speech in question is implicated in the political process. . .

The majority’s purity of principle is somewhat alloyed when it upholds the disclosure requirements of the statute it is considering on the reasoning that the public has a right to be informed about the identity of those who fund a corporation’s ads and videos. “This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions.”

Justice Thomas disagrees. The interest “in providing voters with additional relevant information” does not, he says, outweigh “’the right to anonymous speech.’” The majority’s claim that disclosure requirements do not prevent anyone from speaking is, Thomas declares, false; those who know that their names will be on a list may refrain from contributing for fear of reprisals and thus be engaged in an act of self-censoring. The effect of disclosure requirements, he admonishes, is “to curtail campaign-related activity and prevent the lawful, peaceful exercise of First Amendment rights.”

Only Thomas has the courage of the majority’s declared convictions. Often the most principled of the judges (which doesn’t mean that I always like his principles), he is willing to follow a principle all the way, and so he rebukes his colleagues in the majority for preferring the value of more information to the value the First Amendment mandates — absolutely free speech unburdened by any restriction whatsoever including the restriction of having to sign your name. Thomas has caught his fellow conservatives in a consequentialist moment.

The consequentialist and principled view of the First Amendment are irreconcilable. Their adherents can only talk past one another and become increasingly angered and frustrated by what they hear from the other side. This ongoing soap opera has been the content of First Amendment jurisprudence ever since it emerged full blown in the second decade of the 20th century. Citizens United is a virtual anthology of the limited repertoire of moves the saga affords.

Nelison et al (2009) find convincing evidence of costly fairness in a clever ultimate-game variant:

We investigated if responders accept a 50–50 split in a modified version of the ultimatum game, in which rejection yields a higher payoff (€7) than accepting the equal offer (€5). Therefore, the decision to accept the 50–50 split in this modified ultimatum game cannot be perceived as a self-interest act, as opposed to the standard game, in which acceptance may reflect resignation in the knowledge that the equal split is the best one can expect. A substantial proportion [55%] of responders accepts the equal split in this modified game (Study 1), which clearly establishes egalitarian preferences. Further studies show that the willingness to accept is not an artifact of indifference towards the extra payoff (Study 2), but reflects true concerns for proposers’ outcomes (Study 3).

Salon’s Tom Engelhardt makes a worthwhile observation:

Strange, isn’t it, that the debate about hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare costs in Congress can last almost a year, filled with turmoil and daily headlines, while a $636 billion defense budget can pass in a few days, as it did in late December, essentially without discussion and with nary a headline in sight?

Director Michael Haneke recently released “White Ribbon,” a historical piece about Germany before World War I. Salon just published an interview with Haneke in which he shares the insights of a filmmaker who is both artist and social critic:

I think that education is one of the decisive points in human experience. When I was making the American version of “Funny Games,” there was a word I discovered that I find is so indicative. There’s a scene in which one of the two boys pees himself, and the other one says, “Please forgive him. He’s not housebroken.” I think that word is so illuminating: It suggests that we have to be broken for the house. We have to be broken to be acceptable socially, and that’s the dilemma of every educational system.

You have to partially destroy or restrict the freedom of the individual in order for him or her to function in society. That’s the dilemma of every generation, and I’m not convinced that current approaches to educational theory are necessarily the ideal solution either. . .

The question that I’m asking is: What conditions have to be in place for people to seek to grasp such ideological responses [like Nazism]? In a position of hopelessness, humiliation and despair, people clutch at any straw, and those straws usually take an ideological form, whether religious or political. Out of hopelessness, they turn to ideology — the model is always the same, although the external forms may be different. . .

There are so many different things that take place in “The White Ribbon” that there are any number of possible explanations. It may not be that the acts have been committed by someone intentionally. For example, when the barn burns down, it’s possible that was simply caused by an accidental spark. Perhaps the hay had been stored when it was too wet, and spontaneous combustion happened. Perhaps the farmer’s wife who died simply fell. It was an accident, and she was not murdered. The explanations, in fact, are so unimportant. In real life, there are any number of events that take place that we don’t understand. It’s only in mainstream cinema that films explain everything, and claim to have answers for anything that happens. In reality, we know so little about what happens. It’s far more productive for me to confront the audience with a complex reality that mirrors the contradictory nature of human experience. . .

I remember with my first film that was shown in Cannes, “The Seventh Continent” [in 1989], there was a screening and afterward we had a discussion. The first question came from a woman who stood up and asked, “Is life in Austria as awful as that?” She didn’t want to accept the difficult questions being raised in the film, so she tried to limit them to a specific place and say, “That’s not my problem.” You could make the same mistake with this film, if you see it as only being about a specific period.

Loewenstein (2000) writes,

Visceral factors have also traditionally been seen as an erratic and unpredictable influence on behavior, but again the popular view distorts reality. Certainly, as highlighted above, feelings fluctuate, often rapidly. Their changeability should not be confused, however, with  unpredictability. In fact, both the determinants of visceral factors and their influence on behavior are highly systematic, whereas cognitive deliberations, which are commonly seen as the source of stability in behavior, are a major source of unpredictability. Thus, cocaine-addicted rats that are given free access to cocaine simply self-administer the drug repeatedly until they collapse from exhaustion or die. The behavior of human addicts is far more complex than rodents’ because human drug-takers cognitively deliberate the long-term consequences of drug-taking. They binge, go “cold turkey,” relapse, and engage in elaborate self-control strategies and self-deception. As Roy F. Baumeister and Kristin L. Sommer (1997 p. 77) write, “consciousness is not an essential mediator of human behavior because behavior can occur in elaborate, lawful, and predictable patterns without consciousness. Instead, … the function of consciousness is precisely the opposite: it overrides those lawful and predictable patterns.”

In an article on emotions in economic theory, Elster (1998) writes,

In societies where blood feuds are common, revenge can be a lifetime obsession. In his outstanding study of blood feuds in nineteenth century Corsica, Stephen Wilson (1988, pp. 30, 280) refers to one case in which a man killed six persons who had testified in the trial of his brother, and to another in which a man killed all 14 witnesses who had testified against his brother. Other studies of feuding (Milovan Djilas 1958, Miller 1990) confirm the view that the passion for revenge or “”wrath” (Frijda 1994) can be a lifetime concern. Unlike love or limerence, however, the durable thirst for revenge is not a universal phenomenon. The spontaneous urge to retaliate may be universal, but its transformation into a lifelong passion occurs only in societies where it is amplified by strong social norms.

From a 2004 article in Slate:

Last month, In Defense of Animals, a California-based animal rights organization, sent me some materials about its “Guardian Campaign.” A polite letter complimented me on my most recent book, then requested that I use the term “guardian” rather than “owner” in future writings about dogs. . .

The benefits of relating to animals as guardians rather than as owners would be “far reaching,” wrote IDA president Dr. Elliot Katz (who’s no relation). Changing how we speak would help change how we act. In a world where dogs are protected rather than owned, Katz argued, it would be easier to crack down on animal abuse, end the puppy-mill trade, and stop the killing of animals at shelters. . .

IDA’s letter proudly pointed out that San Francisco; West Hollywood; Berkeley, Calif.; Boulder, Colo.; Amherst, Mass., and the state of Rhode Island have already enacted ordinances changing owners into guardians. (Some of those jurisdictions have also embraced the animal-rights movement’s other language crusade, changing “pets” into “companion animals.”) . . .

Social movements are only as effective as their ability to win popular support. I’m currently living in rural upstate New York, and I showed the IDA packet to Sandra, a sheep farmer who lives down the road with her female partner. She was shocked. “I love my Rottweiler,” Sandra told me. “But I’d love to marry my partner and I can’t. I have to say I’m a bit uncomfortable with dogs having more rights than I do. Me first.” Sandra had just filed legal papers to have her partner declared her legal guardian in the event of serious illness. She said she was not about to do the same for her dog. . .

My IDA packet contained a testimonial from a Michael Mountain of the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. “People of other genders, races and even age groups were once treated as property in this country,” Mountain wrote. “Now, it is time for ‘people’ of other species to be accorded the same simple dignity of being recognized, not as someone else’s property but as beings in their own right.”Mountain couldn’t have made the point more dramatically—or offensively. I don’t care to jump in with a moral value system that equates my beloved border collies with human slaves. Nothing about this comparison helps animals. It distorts their true natures and diminishes ours.

The guardian campaign is a vivid example of the growing tendency to blur the boundaries between us and our pets. Many Americans have already stopped seeing their dogs and cats as animals. They’re family members, emotional support systems, metaphors for issues from our own pasts, aids for healing and growth, children with fur.

Seeing them the way we see ourselves—as having human thoughts and needs, human rights—is another kind of abuse and exploitation. It is cruel to crate a child, but it’s often helpful and soothing to crate a dog. No human would want to spend five minutes in a kennel, yet good kennels, much maligned by deeply attached pet owners, are often the safest and best places to leave dogs when we leave home.

Seeing dogs as piteous, deprived, abused, and needy can lead us to treat them unwisely. Vets cite overfeeding and the resultant epidemic obesity as a major killer of dogs and cats in America. Yet I can’t count how many times I’ve heard somebody say, “I feed him because I just can’t bear to starve him.” Or “I just can’t resist when he begs for food. He’s so cute.” Any vet or animal nutritionist would tell these people that they’re doing as much harm to their cute little beggars by overfeeding them as they would by kicking them.

People who see their dogs as humanlike often struggle to train them properly, especially if they believe they were abused or mistreated. Owners sometimes think their dogs have already suffered so much that they couldn’t possibly inflict any more criticism. Yet it’s that very firm, effective training that would make those dogs happier and more secure. And what about the growing number of owners who find neutering cruel or unbearable, because they would find it so? Refusing to neuter may put their own pet or someone else’s in danger—causing aggression, running away, and unwanted litters. Or the pet owners who make their dogs hyper by believing they need to “play” continuously, like overprogrammed boomer children? They drag them to unruly play groups, toss Frisbees and balls night and day, haul them to an endless round of organized activities—but fail to teach them how to be calm.

The humanlike view of dogs affects the decision about when to euthanize a sick or elderly pet. I recently attended two veterinary conventions where scores of vets told me their biggest recent problem is people who see their pets as so human that they simply cannot end their lives or suffering, no matter the cost or the pain.

There is no evidence that dogs have the kind of complex emotional lives and value systems that we do. It’s one reason why we love them so much, in fact. They are neither “good” nor “bad.” They don’t hold grudges, act in petty ways, or seek revenge. They read our moods, but not our minds. If they did, we’d start loving them as we love other humans—which could mean a lot less than we love them now.

Dogs are not “people” of another species. They are another species. To train and care for them properly, to show them how to live in our complex world, requires first and foremost that we understand that. I owe my dogs much—more than I can say—but they are not my “companions”—as if we voluntarily chose to hang out together but none of us has authority over the others. I bought and/or acquired them. I own them. I am profoundly responsible for their care and well being.

Guardianship, a word always applied to human beings, implies equality—the highest and perhaps most noble of all goals in this democratic nation. Ownership implies responsibility. Americans who own dogs need to be more responsible for them, literally and emotionally—not more equal to them.

The drama of the modern dog is that he is segregated from society—from work, children, public places—and then blamed for not knowing how to live in our world. The things he wants to do—have sex, roll in gross stuff, roam freely, squabble with other dogs, chew shoes, pee on every other tree—are either illegal or frowned upon. His challenge isn’t to become a free and equal person in the best traditions of our society but to learn how to live in the alien world of people.

Guardianship suggests dogs have a right to live their own lives as they wish. This is impossible in our dog-unfriendly world. Ownership implies a human duty to help the dog adjust to this difficult, inhospitable place.

The following WebMD article gives an interesting discussion of the phenomenon of Santa Claus mythology. It serves to begin with parental platitudes. Those in favor:

Any thought of hooking Santa Claus away from the holiday stage is enough to make some parents roll their eyes or throw up their hands in outrage.

“Why on earth are we in such a hurry to take away the innocence and magic that exists in childhood?” says one parent in an online message board.

“Let children be children for as long as possible!” says another parent.

And against:

A brief review of comments from some online message boards, however, reveals that the Santa notion also elicits its share of cringes:

“I will never teach my children about the myth of Santa, because he is not the reason we celebrate Christmas.”

“You teach your kids not to lie and yet we lie to them right away about Santa and the Easter Bunny.”

“The truth is some kids get nothing for Christmas, because there really is no Santa and some parents cannot scrape up the extra dough. The child that gets told Santa loves and gives to everybody will wonder what is wrong with them.”

“Why would anyone want to make the nice gesture of buying and wrapping the perfect gift, only to give the credit to a fictional character?”

The article then offers some relevant facts:

Small studies from the United States and Canada suggest that virtually all children know about Santa Claus, even if they do not view him as a real person. A significant percentage of believers discovered the truth behind the tale around age 7. Only half of kids aged 8 to 11 reported believing in Santa.

When they did find out the truth, most of them reacted in a positive manner. Two out of three kids said they felt a sense of pride in figuring out the truth about Santa Claus. Half of them said that although the jolly guy was not real, they liked the idea of him.

And some relevant knowledge from child psychologists:

Very young children live in an imaginary world, and that world is reality for them. “Little kids think there actually might be a monster in their closet or a dragon under their bed,” says Douglas Kramer, MD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. “It seems real to them, so it’s got to be real.”

At ages 1 through 4, children can comprehend tangible things such as sleigh, reindeer, and Santa Claus as a real person, Kramer explains. These kids cannot yet grasp abstract concepts.

At 4 to 6 years old, Kramer says children may begin questioning whether Santa Claus is a real person. It is not until kids are about 6 to 8 that they may be ready to understand that Santa Claus is real, but not in a concrete sense. Their ability to think abstractly begins developing at this time and continues on until they are about 14 years old.

And some professional advice:

Parents who strongly believe that they are betraying their children’s trust by sharing the Santa Claus tale probably do not need to tell them the story, says Robert Feldman, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who has conducted extensive research on lying and deception.

Keep in mind, though, that in the overall scale of deception, propagating the Santa myth is no worse than saying things like “You look terrific,” or “You haven’t gained weight,” or “What a great dress,” says Feldman, noting that people generally use lies as a social crutch.

“We actually teach our kids that deception is acceptable,” says Feldman. For example, he says parents often ask their children to pretend they like gifts from relatives to spare the feelings of family members. . .

Tasha Howe, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif., says parents can use fantasy to encourage children’s critical and independent thinking. When children ask questions related to Santa Claus, such as “Is there really a Santa Claus?” or “How do reindeer fly?” she suggests encouraging little ones to come up with their own explanations.

The article ends by deflating the intense disagreements among parental philosophers:

There is no scientific research indicating the Santa tale can be helpful or harmful to kids, says Howe. So when her students who are parents ask her whether or not they should promote the Santa tale, she simply responds, “It’s a personal choice. Whatever choice you make, I don’t think it’s going to harm your child.”

Another article, published in Yahoo News, discusses the phenomenon of letters written to Santa. According to a spokeswoman, the U.S. postal services receives hundreds of thousands of letters a year. Scranton psychology professor Carole Slotterback wrote a book after reading hundreds of these letters:

One kid asked to be an elf. Another made a list that included Pokemon cards, a camera and a microscope. But about every third item, the child wrote: “NO clothes.”

And then there was the one written in careful cursive on bright pink paper, in which Santa was asked for perhaps the greatest gift of all: a mom.

“Not just for me but my daddy, brother and granny … my daddy works so hard and then he comes home to cook and clean and it should be easier,” the letter read. . .

Some are funny — one asked Santa to check the appropriate box: Real or not real? — but many more are not, she said.

“I’ve never gone 5 or 10 minutes without getting teary,” said Brennan. “It’s very emotional.”

Children who sent letters instead of lists were generally more polite and chatty, for instance asking about Mrs. Claus, Slotterback said.

Except for the death threat. One child wrote: “Dear Santa, I am going to kill you and steal the toys from your workshop.”

One odd comment made by Slotterback is about the psychological reaction of children to growing up in a society saturated by fearmongering about terrorists:

And there was no indication that children feared the terrorists would get Santa, she said.

“Terrorists can do all kinds of things to our world, and they can hurt us in many ways, but one thing they can’t do is touch Santa,” said Slotterback. “And that was nice to see.”

That comment suggests, perhaps thankfully, that it is only the old woman Slotterback, rather than the actual children, that is fooled by societal fearmongering.

One more excerpt about children’s use of politeness:

But she noted a surprising lack of social niceties in the correspondence, unless the child was asking for a pet. A boy who asked for a golden retriever used “please” 16 times, she said. The next-highest use came from a girl who wanted a horse.

Slotterback cited other research that found people who expect their requests to be fulfilled — like a boss asking an employee to do something — are less likely to say please. Perhaps likewise, she said, kids expect Santa to come through.

From an article in the Economist about the history of cleanliness:

There seemed to be no end… to the inventiveness of American firms when it came to setting new hygienic standards. All-over washing, the application of deodorant, the shaving of armpits, dental mouthwash: each was transformed into essential rituals for the self-respecting modern American woman.“But I’m 31…I’ll never get married now!” wails Frances, a glossy-haired young woman leaning forlornly against a tree, in a 1936 advert for Lux soap in the Woman’s Home Companion. Fortunately, her girlfriend has a tip to help her win back her beau: washing her underwear in Lux. “Avoid Offending!” instructs the ad. “Many girls lose out on friendship, romance, happiness—because of one shocking, unforgivable fault…perspiration odour in underthings.” Thanks to Lux, Fran learned to wash her underwear in fragrant suds, and thus to hold on to the man of her dreams.

American soapmakers devised an ingenious way to market their product. They sponsored drama series on radio, and later television, designed for the suburban housewife, known as soap operas. Procter & Gamble was behind “The Guiding Light”, first broadcast on radio in 1937, and which became the world’s longest-running soap opera. Lever Brothers and Colgate-Palmolive were also enthusiastic sponsors.

From an article in Miller-McCune:

In a paper posted recently on the online journal Evolutionary Psychology, independent researcher Gregory S. Paul reports a strong correlation within First World democracies between socioeconomic well-being and secularity. In short, prosperity is highest in societies where religion is practiced least.

Using existing data, Paul combined 25 indicators of societal and economic stability — things like crime, suicide, drug use, incarceration, unemployment, income, abortion and public corruption — to score each country using what he calls the “successful societies scale.” He also scored countries on their degree of religiosity, as determined by such measures as church attendance, belief in a creator deity and acceptance of Bible literalism.

Comparing the two scores, he found, with little exception, that the least religious countries enjoyed the most prosperity. Of particular note, the U.S. holds the distinction of most religious and least prosperous among the 17 countries included in the study, ranking last in 14 of the 25 socioeconomic measures.

Paul is quick to point out that his study reveals correlation, not causation. Which came first — prosperity or secularity — is unclear, but Paul ventures a guess. While it’s possible that good governance and socioeconomic health are byproducts of a secular society, more likely, he speculates, people are inclined to drop their attachment to religion once they feel distanced from the insecurities and burdens of life.

“Popular religion,” Paul proposes, “is a coping mechanism for the anxieties of a dysfunctional social and economic environment.” Paul, who was criticized, mostly on statistical grounds, for a similar study published in 2005, says his new findings lend support to the belief that mass acceptance of popular religion is determined more by environmental influences and less by selective, evolutionary forces, as scholars and philosophers have long debated.

In other words, we’re not hardwired for religion. . .

Indeed, researchers in a variety of other studies are targeting the positive effects of church-based social interaction. One study published earlier this year in the Journal of Happiness Studies concluded that the quality and depth of personal relationships has a far greater effect on children’s happiness than does religious practice itself — church attendance, prayer, meditation. In many American communities, organized religion is the principal conduit to those kinds of close relationships, as well as to civic action and problem-solving. . .