The Ash Twins Blog

Salon’s Heather Havrilesky offers a serious analysis of the tragicomic phenomenon of “authentic” household items.

. . . Sundance’s “Man Shops Globe” (premieres 10 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7) is at once so fascinating and so repugnant. Of course, I would never blame Keith Johnson for this. His job traveling the globe to buy enormous overpriced pieces of weird, ancient junk so that Anthropologie can put that junk in its stores and sell it for truly ludicrous, mind-blowing prices is obviously the sort of job that anyone who wishes they had enough time and energy to rummage endlessly through flea markets would love. He’s a creative professional, one who’s exceptionally good at spotting exactly the sorts of rusty old bullshit that anxious, existentially wobbly, overworked yuppies find hopelessly, thrillingly, reassuringly authentic. . .

[O]n their way through the South African countryside, Johnson and McGowan unexpectedly stumble on a furniture maker creating benches out of tree limbs and odd bits of lumber. “He was a guy who clearly loved what he was doing, and that came out in his things,” says Johnson. And so we return to the unspoken goal of these treasure hunts: to ease the anxious yuppie back home. If you hate what you do for a living, at least you make enough money to own stuff that was created by someone who loves what they do.

But let’s not blame him for this expensive pursuit of soul and history. No, let’s blame the slippery, hectic, disposable, mass-produced culture we live in, first and foremost, the culture that makes us ache for things that mean something, that might be genuine enough to ground us between tweets. Let’s blame the hideous stucco huts and vinyl-sided monstrosities whose ugliness added insult to the injury of our impending bankruptcies. Let’s blame the overpriced but still cheap-looking crap we bought at Target before we lost our jobs, cheap stuff that made us sick to cast our eyes upon it, when compared to the divine, sacred things we saw in those damnable catalogs on the floors of our bathrooms. . .

Because if the world weren’t so filled with tacky, impermanent things, then we wouldn’t thirst so terribly for big, heavy, meaningful furniture flown in from Paris. If the world weren’t littered with Styrofoam cups and vertical blinds and stained wall-to-wall carpeting and other tacky junk, then we wouldn’t be so hungry for that meticulously branded, fully sanctioned and approved, carefully designed, obscenely expensive imported French junk. . .

[T]he most telling moment of “Man Shops Globe” comes when Johnson is presented with a grandiose, colorful, tangled plastic chandelier, the sort of “Emperor’s New Clothes” objet d’art that walks the line between trash and treasure, between exquisite and hideous. What will Johnson think of this one? We wonder as he gazes almost confusedly at the monstrosity.

Finally, he pronounces it divine. “It was the high-low thing, which is always so interesting,” Johnson explains. “You have this very grand chandelier shape, and then, on close inspection, you see that it’s made of Barbie legs and plastic milk bottle tops.” And so, another bit of arts and crafts is christened and made relevant by Johnson’s Midas touch. Indeed, at the end of the second episode a quick note on-screen tells us that the even-larger chandelier Johnson commissioned from the same artists “was purchased by President Obama. It now hangs in the children’s room in the White House.”

Thomas Franks at Wall Street Journal makes some much-needed comments about the Washington Post:

“The economy may stink for some, but things are going swimmingly for Democratic insiders,” a page-one story in last Sunday’s paper asserted. And the stage on which those Democratic insiders flaunt their prosperity, an Italian restaurant called Tosca, is the object of the paper’s admiration. . .

“Table 45, tucked discreetly behind the servers’ station,” the Post tells us, “always goes to Steve Elmendorf, a hot hand these days in Democratic lobbying circles” (emphasis in the original). According to lobbying disclosure forms filed with the U.S. Senate, Mr. Elmendorf has lobbied for Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Clear Channel. Nevertheless, he was not always such a well-seated power-broker: He “started out on the banquette,” the Post notes, and had to earn “his upgrade.” How he accomplished this is not described. Like the precise services lobbyists provide for their clients, I suppose, his promotion at Tosca must remain one of the mysteries of democracy.

Then there’s former Sen. Tom Daschle, today an “adviser” at the lobby firm Alston & Bird; the Post tells us he habitually occupies Table 26. And this is a special table, a table that is a good indicator of Mr. Daschle’s career trajectory, should you happen to give a damn about such things. Things were dark when the former senator abandoned his bid to become secretary of Health and Human Services in February. But then, like the swallows coming back to Capistrano, Mr. Daschle returned to his lofty perch at Tosca. In fact, says the Post, “It was Daschle’s return to Table 26 that signaled to know-it-all Washingtonians that he had no intention of fading away.”

Sometimes the paper’s lustful speculation about Washington’s sycophants-for-hire becomes a form of sycophancy on its own. In August, for example, the Post’s Style section featured a much-noted story about Heather Podesta, wife of lobbyist Tony Podesta, sister-in-law of Obama transition director John Podesta, and principal of her own lobby shop, whose clients reportedly include Eli Lilly, Cigna and Home Depot. . .

Concerning public distaste for the influence-for-hire industry, Ms. Podesta comes across as refreshingly flippant. According to the Post, she wore an ironic “scarlet L” to last year’s Democratic convention, apparently to laugh off last year’s anti-lobbyist sentiment. She once issued an invitation to a fund-raiser promising a lunch that was supposed to consist of “the Select Committee on Intelligence for the first course followed by your choice of Appropriations, Judiciary or Rules committees”. . .

But it’s not just prudery or populist distaste for fancy risottos that turns the public against lobbying: It’s the deep venality that makes possible jokes about senators being bought like lunches. It’s the debasement of politics from a matter of persuasion to one of money and connections. And it’s because the capital’s main journalistic watchdog seems perfectly content to see politics made into a kind of financial transaction—so content, in fact, that the paper’s publisher planned dinner salons that would apparently have put the Post itself on a partial pay-to-play footing.

Excerpt from Ratnieks & Wenseleers (2008):

Coercion and enforced cooperation are not restricted to insect societies but also occur in vertebrate [12] and [50] including human [51] and [52] societies and multispecies mutualisms [53], [54] and [55] (Figure 1). In contrast to insect societies, however, in which coercion typically promotes inequality in a group composed of related individuals [5], in human society and in mutualisms, coercion often promotes fairness and reduces exploitation or cheating in groups with low or zero relatedness [51] and [54]. In other words, coercion is used to promote cooperation rather than altruism. Another difference is that, whereas coercion in insect societies usually has indirect inclusive-fitness benefits, in social vertebrates and mutualisms it usually provides direct benefits [53] and [54]. For example, in mutualisms, individuals can terminate interactions with uncooperative partners, thereby focusing interactions onto more cooperative partners [53], [54] and [56]. Similarly, in social vertebrates, punishment can have direct benefits to the punishing individual, such as by inducing the victim to behave more cooperatively in the future [50]. In such cases, punishment and stable social behaviour can evolve even at zero relatedness.

In vertebrate societies, enforcement can take varied forms: in cooperatively breeding cichlid fish, subordinates that do not help are evicted and thereby prevented from inheriting the natal territory [57]; monkeys punish individuals who do not share food [58], police disruptive individuals in the group [59] and enforce fairness by not cooperating with others perceived as unfair [60]; naked mole rat queens shove pups to stimulate them to work [61]. A particularly ruthless example of enforcement is found in meerkats, in which the dominant female suppresses the reproduction of subordinates [62]. If a subordinate female becomes pregnant when the dominant female is also pregnant, the dominant female subjects the subordinate female to aggressive attacks and temporarily evicts her from the group. This behaviour usually leads to abortion of the subordinate’s brood [62].

Enforcement can also explain cooperation between species [53] and [54]. For example, the cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus eats ectoparasites on its client reef fish but could also cheat by eating client tissue or mucus. Clients use three different mechanisms to enforce cooperation: (i) they avoid cleaners that have been observed cheating (partner choice); (ii) they switch to other cleaners (partner switching); and (iii) they aggressively chase uncooperative cleaners (punishment) [63] and [64]. After such punishment, cleaner fish act more cooperatively and are less likely to feed on mucus [63] and [64]. Similar examples occur in the mutualisms between yucca plants and their yucca moth pollinators [53] and [54] and between legume plants and nitrogen-fixing bacteria, in which plants sanction bacteria that fail to fix nitrogen by cutting resources to root nodules containing such bacteria [55].

Finally, recent studies in experimental economics show that humans have a strong tendency to punish individuals who do not reciprocate or act fairly [51] and [52]. For example, in the ultimatum game a resource is divided between two individuals. The first player decides how to divide the resource. The second player can then choose whether to accept his share or to reject it, in which case both players receive nothing. The rational strategy is for the first to offer a mimimal share and for the second player to accept whatever is offered. However, first players often offer an equal share, and second players frequently reject less [51]. The apparently altruistic behaviour of the first player and the spiteful behaviour of the second player, if offered a small share, makes no sense in the context of a single interaction with an anonymous partner. However, it could be explained on the basis of the presence of ’relatedness’ owing to nongenetic, cultural causes (cultural relatedness) caused by the inheritance of identical cultural variants from common cultural ancestors [65]. Alternatively, and more likely, the results suggest that, in humans, single interactions with anonymous partners are uncommon and have not shaped our general social responses [66].

Other games also show that humans are willing to expend resources to punish selfish individuals 51 In: H. Gintis et al., Editors, Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life, The MIT Press (2005).[51]. Here, the paradox is to explain why punishment occurs given that it is costly to punish selfish individuals [51] and [65]. The benefits probably come from the repeated nature of human interactions. Punishment can be costly in the short term but beneficial in the long term [52]. Overall it is clear, however, that in humans, punishment forms a powerful mechanism for promoting cooperation. In an experimental setting, the presence of punishment increased levels of cooperation [67]. In a comparative study of 15 small-scale societies, levels of cooperation were correlated with the degree to which uncooperative individuals were punished [68]. This finding parallels results from insect societies showing that more stringent policing promotes greater worker altruism (Figure 3).

From O’Mara (2009):

On 16 April 2009, the US Department of Justice released legal memos detailing coercive interrogation techniques used with terrorism suspects during the Bush administration. . .

From reading the memos, the underlying neuropsychobiological model appears to be the following: a person possesses information (by definition, this information is in their long-term memory, that is, the enduring personal register of experience, events and facts that lasts at least for minutes and can extend to decades); they intentionally withhold this information under questioning; applying certain non-verbal techniques (Box 1) over prolonged periods of time (press and other reports indicate up to six months or more) will facilitate the release of this information from long-term memory by the captive. The memos do not fully articulate the mechanisms by which coercion makes captives reveal such information. Nevertheless, they appear to be based on the idea that repeatedly inducing shock, stress, anxiety, disorientation and lack of control is more effective than are standard interrogatory techniques in making suspects reveal information. Information retrieved from memory in this way is assumed to be reliable and veridical, as suspects will be motivated to end the interrogation by revealing this information from longterm memory. No supporting data for this model are provided; in fact, the model is unsupported by scientific evidence.

Contemporary neuroscientific models of human memory and executive function are very different. The structural and functional integrity of the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortices, as well as regular sleep, are essential for normal memory function. The hippocampus and the prefrontal cortices are extensively inter-linked and each co-regulates the other. Recalling previously learned information activates a variety of brain areas, especially the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. Moreover, activity in the prefrontal cortex is particularly associated with intentionally controlling access to, and retrieval of, memories. When these brain areas function improperly, both memory and executive functions (intention, planning and regulation of behaviour) can be impaired.

Stress causes heightened excitability or arousal in the brain and body, a perception that present or future events will be unpleasant combined with a lack of controllability over these events [1]. Experiencing stress causes release of stress hormones [2] (cortisol And catecholamines, such as noradrenaline. Stress hormones provoke and control the ‘fight or flight’ response (the immediate and rapid preparation by the body and brain for action in response to threat) that, if overly prolonged, can result in compromised cognitive neurobiological function (and even tissue loss) in these brain regions. Both the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex are particularly rich in receptors activated by stress hormones. Cortisol binds preferentially to glucocorticoid receptors in hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, increasing Ca2+ access and, thus, neuronal excitability [2,3], which compromises normal physiological functioning of neurons if it is sustained over substantial time periods. Catecholamines modulate many sites in the brain (including the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex) and have many effects, including provoking glucose release, and increasing blood pressure and heart rate. These responses are beneficial over the short term, but cause long-term damage to the brain and body if this state of ‘hyperarousal’ is maintained over the long term. Furthermore, the amygdala [4] (involved in the processing of fear- and threat-related stimuli) can become enlarged, creating a negative feedback loop that amplifies the effects of subsequent stressful events. Finally, prolonged and sustained sleep deprivation, in part because it results in a substantial increase in cortisol levels, has a deleterious effect on memory.

There is a large literature on the effects of extreme stress on motivation, mood and memory, using both animals and humans. To summarise a complex literature briefly: chronic, prolonged and extreme stress: (i) inhibits long-term potentiation (LTP; the biological process believed to underlie memory formation in the brain) and facilitates long-term depression (the inverse of LTP) [1]; (ii) causes hippocampal atrophy and, hence, impairs learning in humans and animals [1–3,5,6]; and (iii) is implicated in many neuropsychiatric disorders (especially anxiety, depression and post- traumatic stress disorder) [5]. Notably, repeated chronic exposure to uncontrollable pain (e.g. electric shocks) causes many effects similar to those found under severe but non-painful stress.

A common argument in favour of torture is that it will reliably elicit veridical information from the captive’s long-term memory, as asserted by many media commentators in the context of the ‘ticking-time bomb’ scenario or in the case of a major imminent threat in which lives could be saved. A pragmatic anti-torture argument is that it will not; that torture is as likely to elicit false as it is true information and that separating the one from the other will be difficult. It is likely to be difficult or perhaps impossible to determine during interrogation whether the information that a suspect reveals is true: information presented by the captor to elicit responses during interrogation might inadvertently become part of the suspect’s memory, especially because suspects are under extreme stress and are required to tell and retell the same events that might have happened over a period of years. Other factors exacerbate this problem. Confabulation (the pathological production of false memories) is a common consequence of frontal lobe disorders [7] and, as already noted, prolonged and extreme stress has a deleterious effect on frontal lobe function [3]. Thus, distinguishing between confabulations and what is true in the verbal statements of tortured suspects will be difficult. . .

Brain imaging in people previously subjected to severe torture suggests that abnormal patterns of activation are present in the frontal and temporal lobes [9], leading to deficits in verbal memory for the recall of traumatic events [10,11]. A recent meta-analysis [12] of the relationship between pharmacologically induced cortisol elevations (in the upper physiological range) concluded that such elevations impair memory retrieval in humans, as do psychosocial stress-induced cortisol elevations. . .

[T]he fact that the captive is speaking also provides a safety signal to the captor; making the captive talk, rather than the truth of what the captive is revealing, might mark the end of the torture. As long as the captive is talking, the captor can avoid using torture. Waterboarding is cited in the legal memoranda as causing elevations in blood carbon dioxide levels (hypercapnia). Data on the effects of hypercapnia or hypoxia (decreased blood oxygen) on brain function are not cited; neither are data on carbon dioxide narcosis (deep stupor or unconsciousness), which might be expected as a result of acute and repeated waterboarding. Brain imaging data suggest that hypercapnia and associated feelings of breathlessness (dyspnoea) cause widespread increases in brain activity, including brain regions associated with stress and anxiety (the amygdala and prefrontal cortex) and pain (the periacquiductal gray) [15]. These data suggest that waterboarding in particular acts as a severe and extreme stressor, with the potential to cause widespread stress-induced changes in the brain, especially when this procedure is repeated frequently and intensively.

The proposed use of phobic stimuli (e.g. insects) underscores the unsophisticated folk psychological model underpinning coercive interrogation. Chronic controlled exposure to phobic stimuli is known as ‘flooding therapy’ and is among the most effective  methods applied under Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy (CBT) to treat phobias. Repeated and non-threatening exposure to a phobic stimulus usually results in individuals no longer being afraid of these stimuli.

Gallup et al (2009) find that victimization by peers during childhood and adolescence has opposite effects on the sexuality of males and females:

We studied levels of peer victimization from an evolutionary perspective by investigating self-reported victimization during adolescence in relation to sexual behavior in college students. One-hundred and twelve (47 female) undergraduates completed self-report measures of victimization during middle and high school, onset of sexual activity, and number of sexual partners. Nearly 85% of victimization during adolescence was perpetrated by members of the same sex. Furthermore, results show that this intrasexual victimization (particularly indirect forms) was negatively correlated with reproductive opportunities in males, but positively correlated in females. Males who were frequently victimized had fewer total sexual partners and partners per year on average, while females who were often victims of aggression reported having more sexual partners and an earlier onset of sexual activity. Regression analysis revealed that demeaning, diminishing and embarrassing was the most significant predictor of the rate of sexual activity in both sexes (although this relationship was inverted between them), while teasing was the best predictor of total sexual partners in females.

In the article’s discussion, the authors write:

Adolescent peer victimization appeared to significantly reduce mating opportunities among males, and results indicate that over 91% of this reported victimization was perpetrated most often by other males. We hypothesize that this is due to the effect victimization has on lowering status and reputational attainment in a male dominance system. For instance, being left out of the social group by members of the same sex diminishes social stature and presumably mating opportunities (Shackelford et al., 2005). Accordingly, we found that teasing, demeaning, isolation and exclusion were all negatively correlated with sexual partners per year in males. In addition, overall victimization in middle school, as well as individual measures of teasing, demeaning, and isolation were all negatively associated with total number of sexual partners (p < .1). This is in accord with previous findings by Pellegrini and Long (2003), who showed that male dominance predicts dating popularity. These interpretations are also consistent with evolutionary theory, as social status and resource attainment are often correlated with one another (Buss, 2004), making males at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy less desirable to females (Shackelford et al., 2005). This presumably results in fewer reproductive opportunities.

On the other hand, females who were frequently victimized during adolescence reported more sexual partners and had sex at earlier ages than their peers. With respect to intrasexual victimization, one interpretation of this is that females who are more attractive during early adolescence (i.e. middle school) are routinely subject of indirect victimization by members of the same sex due to envy and resentment (Hill & Buss, 2006). In line with this proposition, research has shown that envy over physical appearance is an important cause for indirect aggression by adolescent females (Owens, Shute, & Slee, 2000). Pellegrini (2007) also proposes that the use of indirect or relational aggression by females to access heterosexual relationships may be mediated by physical attractiveness, with less attractive females targeting their more attractive counterparts for victimization. Recent findings in middle and high school females also show that perceived physical attractiveness was positively correlated with indirect victimization (Leenaars et al., 2008). Furthermore, in studies of verbal aggression through derogation of competitors, women are found to slander their rivals by impugning their physical appearance and hence their reproductive value ([Buss and Dedden, 1990] and [Campbell, 1999]). This interpretation is consistent with the view that intrasexual aggression is evolutionarily adaptive as a means of diminishing the desirability of rivals, as males across cultures preferentially seek physical attractiveness when choosing mates (Shackelford et al., 2005).

Another possibility is that female victims are of lower status and may yield to male sexual pressure. Studies show that females who have experienced sexual coercion often suffer from psychological problems similar to those associated with victimization, such as poor social and psychological adjustment (Zweig, Barber, & Eccles, 1997) and low self-esteem (Testa & Dermen, 1999). In addition, low self-esteem has been linked with an earlier onset of sexual activity in females (Spencer, Zimet, Aalsma, & Orr, 2002), and in our sample overall victimization in high school was negatively correlated with the age at first sex. . .

Our data show that females were just as likely to be teased by males as by females, while all other measures of victimization were predominantly perpetrated by members of the same sex. In addition, regression analysis revealed teasing to be the most significant predictor of the total number of sexual partners in females. . .

Due to differences in parental investment and sexual selection, evidence suggests that men achieve increases in reproductive success mainly through increases in the number of sexual partners ([Betzig, 1986] and [Dawkins, 1986]), while costs entailed from short-term mating in females (Buss, 2004) suggests that maximum reproductive fitness in women is not linearly predicted by total sexual partners. Based on these predictions, adolescent victimization appears to be an effective peer fitness deterrent among males.

I would emphasize that our male evolutionary ancestors lived in durable groups of the same males. Sabotaging other males’ reproductive prospects through victimization would have increased one’s own reproductive chances.

The article continues:

Reproductive success in females on the other hand, is less contingent upon total number of sexual partners, with more emphasis put on mate choice and long-term resource investment, protection, and provisioning of offspring (Buss, 2004). Gestation and lactation put time constraints on female fertility; therefore an increase in sexual partners would do little to enhance a female’s reproductive fitness. Due to the prospect of infidelity and paternal uncertainty, males put a premium on fidelity in potential permanent partners. For this reason, females known to be promiscuous may suffer reputational damage, and this could affect the quality of their future long-term mates (Buss, 2004). Although males may show initial attraction towards promiscuous females in regards to a short-term mating strategy (Buss & Schmitt, 1993), they are less likely to pursue these females for a long-term, invested relationship. As a result, it can be argued that adolescent victimization is also linked to negative fitness consequences in females; not by reducing mating opportunities (as in males), but by promoting an increase in sexual activity which may be accompanied by damaging reputational effects.

From Lynn, Harvey, & Nyborg (2009), :

Evidence is reviewed pointing to a negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief in the United States and Europe. It is shown that intelligence measured as psychometric g is negatively related to religious belief. We also examine whether this negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief is present between nations. We find that in a sample of 137 countries the correlation between national IQ and disbelief in God is 0.60.

From Lichter & Carmalt (2009):

In this paper, we examine the question of whether religion—affiliation, beliefs, and practice—provides a source of marital strength and stability in the lives of American couples. Unlike most previous studies, we focus on religion and marital quality among 433 low-income married couples with co-residential minor children, using recently collected survey data on both spouses sampled in the Marital and Relationship Survey (MARS). Our working hypothesis is that religiosity is a positive force for marital quality among low-income couples, and that a practicing faith can buffer the negative effects of economic stress on marital quality. The results indicate that most low-income couples have unexpectedly high scores on the various dimensions of marital quality (e.g., commitment, emotional support, etc.). Religious affiliation and personal religious beliefs are less important for marital quality than if couples share similar beliefs about God’s divine plans for them and their relationship, if they pray together, or if they attend religious services together.