Who Can be a Shaman? Who Must be a Shaman?

Pasaquan and the modern Shamanism of St. EOM, Eddie Owens Martin.

While not religious, I am fascinated by religion. This mode of thought and experience is obviously instinctive, patently irrational, and strenuously defended and rationalized via theology, apologetics, and other formerly respectable modes of thought, not to mention jihad and other sorts of brute power. We are (mostly) in a much better position today than in the old days when every political system had its state religion, and woe betide anyone caught thinking crosswise. Yet in the even earlier days of our species, religion was much more free-form, and while the instinct of religion is/was shared universally, its expression varied widely among far-flung, isolated peoples. We may generally call it shamanism. The first ingredient was an acceptance that some people care a lot more about spiritual matters than others do. Typically this is because they are misfits, maybe mentally disturbed, and have a heightened appreciation of the unreality of this reality that we think inhabit. Mind-altering drugs provide a glimpse of this widened perspective, and naturally comprise a central part of many shamanistic sacraments.

It is striking how the shared appreciation of an alternate reality, whether though official scripture, traditional dogma, or via ecstatic worship practices or mind-altering drugs, contributes to social bonding and personal psychological healing- which are the ultimate positive impacts of religion. Maybe the starkest naturalistic reality, now that we have evolved to appreciate its full horror, is incompatible with psychic health. Maybe an alternate, colorful, humane, and supportive reality is essential, and is particularly binding and healing if everyone shares it, almost regardless of its particular nature or irrationality. But on the other hand, even religions of intolerance, war, human sacrifice and cannibalism have sustained long-lived cultures, so the binding may take precedence over the humane-ness.

Ideologies and value systems are in play as well. Societies run on particular views of what is right, who counts, what is meaningful, etc. While these touch on empirical reality in some respects, their values and social apparatus are relatively untethered, free to valorize some, deprecate others, and place values on obscure things and odd activities. A misfit will be, by definition, more likely to suffer under the ambient ideology and prone to seek an alternative. Whether the shaman supports the current culture or seeks to subvert it, her work is critical in framing a social ideology that most other members of society hardly even know exists, and are not generally capable of shaping or grappling with consciously.

At its best, shamanism provides more than a narrative or theory about the unseen forces that run the world. It also centers the society with a purposeful narrative of its existence and the essential part each member plays in its continuance. It can heal individuals via the power of this social cohesion- as even medical science is beginning to recognize- since even without any objective medicine whatsoever, the rituals of care, support, and confidence are themselves powerful expressions of our social nature and aids to healing.

But what about today? We are heading into a post-religious world, where neither shamanism nor mainline theology rings true, capitalist ideology reigns, and social atomization is in part the result. It was jarring and intriguing to run across an odd TV program about an autodidactic shaman in Georgia, Eddie Owens Martin, who died in 1986. As a gay man in rural Georgia of the early 1900's, he fled to New York and led an underground life, which led to a career in fortune telling. Eventually he inherited a property in Georgia, and moved back on his own terms, using the proceeds from his fortune telling to build a spiritual retreat / theme park, with ornate decoration throughout.

St. EOM painting from Pasaquan

The connection between fortune telling and other facets of free-form shamanism are obvious. Martin, who renamed himself St. EOM, was obviously a charismatic person, and attracted helpers who attended ceremonies and helped with the painting. There was a hair theme, where Martin thought that he received messages from the gods through hair that had to be pointed upward. After he went bald, he resorted to pointing the ends of his extensive beard to the sky in order to maintain this connection. And what about all the symbology? It seems to consist of benevolent faces and highly colorful geometric designs, as are common in other spiritual and ceremonial settings. It looks like an effort to capture positive and healing material from the archetypes, which are partly eternal, and partly influenced by the culture of the day, where multiracial themes of harmony were coming to prominence.

All this reminded me strongly of two other shamans of the day, Carl Jung and Walt Disney. Where Martin was a spontaneous and demotic shaman, Jung come at it from a scholarly, indeed logorrheic perspective, producing book after book of memories, dreams, reflections, and rationalizations by which he straddled the scientific and credulus approaches to spiritualism. Most evocative was his Red Book, which features highly colorful dreamscapes full of pregnant symbols and meaning, harvested from his forays into the inner world of his own fixations and archetypes.

Lastly, Disney obviously shared the fantasy and dream motivations of Martin, though seemingly without much of the spiritual baggage. Disney was also moved in some mysterious way to make these fantasies concrete by creating theme parks where this positive message of colorful suspension of reality was given relentless and popular expression. These are demotic shamanism on a vast scale, drained of any deeper significance other than the lightest symbology that fleetingly speaks to part of us that hopes for an escape from the humdrum and pressing constraints of reality.

• Another healing fantasy in glorious animation- Secret of the Kells.
• Private schools- the real scandal is that they exist at all.
• Slavery.
• Crytocurrencies are a criminal accelerant- and should be banned. Not to mention being an environmental disgrace.

Prospects for Hydrogen

What are the prospects for hydrogen as part of a sustainable, green economy?

Hydrogen is perennially spoken of as a fuel of the future- clean, renewable, light. It is particularly appealing in an environment (like that of California) where solar energy is having a huge impact on the grid and causing rising portions of solar production to be "curtailed". That is, turned off. But even in California, solar power has hardly scratched the surface. Only few roofs have solar and the potential for more power production is prodigious. Over time, as more renewable sources of energy come on line, the availability of excess power at peak times will rise dramatically, prompting a huge need for storage, or other ancillary uses for excess power. Many storage schemes exist or are under development, from traditional water pumping to batteries, flywheels, gravitational weights, etc. Hydrogen is one of them, spoken of as a versatile storage and fuel medium, which can be burned, or even more efficiently put through fuel cells, to return electrical power.

A typical day on California's electrical grid. The top teal line is total demand, and the purple zone is power not supplied by renewables like wind, hydropower, and solar. During the mid-day, most power now comes from solar, an amazing accomplishment. Roughly 2 GW are even turned off at the highest peak time, due to oversupply, either locally or regionally. How could that energy be put to use?

Unfortunately, as a fuel, hydrogen leaves much to be desired. We have flirted with hydrogen-powered cars over the last couple of decades, and they have been a disaster. Hydrogen is such an awkward fuel to store that battery-powered electric vehicles have completely taken over the green vehicle market, despite their slowness in refueling. The difficulties begin with hydrogen's ultra-low density. The Sun has the gravitational wherewithal to compress hydrogen to useful proportions, at the equivalent of 100,000 earth atmospheres and up. But we on Earth do not, and struggle with getting hydrogen in small enough packages to be useful for applications such as transport. The prospect of Hinden-cars is also unappealing. Lastly, hydrogen is corrosive, working its way into metals and weakening them. Transforming our natural gas system to use green hydrogen would require replacing it, essentially.

The awkwardness, yet usefulness, of (reduced) hydrogen as an energy currency in an oxygenated atmosphere is incidentally what led life during its early evolution to devise more compact storage forms, i.e. hydro-carbons like fats, starches and sugars. And these are what we dug up again from the earth to fuel our industrial, technological, and population revolutions.

But how useful is hydrogen for strictly in-place storage applications, like load balancing and temporary grid storage? Unfortunately, the news there is not good either. Physical storage remains an enormous problem, so unless you have a handy sealed underground cavern, storage at large scales is impractical. Second, the round-trip efficiency of making hydrogen from water by electrolysis and then getting electricity back by fuel cell (both rather expensive technologies) is roughly 35 to 40%. This compares unfavorably to the ~95% efficiency of electrical batteries like Li ion, and the 80% efficiency of pumped water/gravity systems. Hydrogen here is simply not a leading option.

Does that mean we are out of luck? Not quite. It turns out that there already is a hydrogen economy, as feedstock for key chemical processes, especially ammonia and fertilizer production, and fossil fuel cracking, among much else. Global demand is 80 million tons per year, which in electrical terms is 3-4 tera watt hours. That is a lot of energy, on the order of total demand on the US electric grid, and could easily keep excess power generator's hands full for the foreseeable future. Virtually all current hydrogen is made from natural gas or coal, so the green implications of reforming this sector are obvious. It already has storage and pipeline systems in place, though not necessarily at locations where green energy is available. So that seems to be the true future of hydrogen, not as a practical fuel for the economy in general, but as a central green commodity for a more sustainable chemical industry.

• Unions
• Afghanistan, inexorably going back to the Taliban.

The Autism of Politics

Our politics is an inarticulate communal search for expression of emotion.

I recently saw "A Brilliant Young Mind", a British take on growing up with autism. It is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen, exploring themes of family, loss, and love with wrenching sensitivity. The challenge of expressing, even feeling, one's own emotions is at the heart, naturally enough, for people on the spectrum. There is a fight by family members to crack that shell, to establish communication that expresses the love they know is there, and which will build warmth and confidence.

One theme is the power of speech- the bullying in school, the words of love from a parent. We may have recited the saying about sticks and stones, but it isn't true. Humans feel and use speech as touch, like Chimpanzees use grooming, to soothe each other. Music functions similarly, to touch others with shared emotions, strengthening essential bonds of trust and empathy. We also use speech also to attack each other, and climb the social hierarchy on the bodies of those cut down by words. 

Well, politics is a natural extension. We feel strongly that there should be someone in charge of each political unit- one person who embodies and expresses our feelings about the whole. It is not just a job, or an executive position, but a strongly archetypal role, which includes the work of binding us together through speech, or not, as our collective mood dictates. We have just been through an administration dedicated to the destructive power of speech, firing off tweets to cut down friends and enemies, formulating cryptic messages supporting inequality, tribalism, and racism. 

But political speech is hobbled by the vast population it addresses. The movie above spoke to me, perhaps because I felt familiar with many of its themes and dilemmas, or happened to appreciate its artistic approach. But it may not speak to you. Politics is about finding the largest possible audience, using the vaguest possible formulations to which listeners can impute their feelings about the body politic. It is thus necessarily painfully awkward, smothered in platitudes, and minimally communicative. In short, a little autistic. 

A still from the movie, with the main character and his mother in a typical pose.

So we as citizens are all in the position of wanting the collective to satisfy a some very deep needs for connection, security, and self-realization and expression. But we are reading a cryptic body politic and leadership for clues of true intention, hidden beneath what may be a voluble exterior of near-meaningless speech, and at the same time confounded by a lack of transparency and radical lack of personal access to those people who are the leaders. Conversely, those leaders are sequestered in their security and network bubbles, wanting (ideally) to understand and share the feelings of their constituents, but unable, simply by the scale of the enterprise, to do so. And anyhow, seeking the average feeling or attitude in a democracy ends inevitably in a muddled middle. Thus leaders are confined to rhetoric that in recent inaugurations, state of the union addresses, and so forth has been bland and weak, as uninspired as it is uninspiring. 

Our political / psychological needs seem to differ along temperamental / party lines, with Democrats forever searching for the healing leader who can reach out across the divide to bring a larger coalition together to accomplish empathetic ends, for the downtrodden, for the environment, and for the future. On the other hand, Republicans seem, since at least the time of Goldwater, to be unhopeful about change, and the future in general, indeed motivated by fear. Their quest is for a leader who will advocate for the hard truths of the inherent and useful infairnesses of life to restore the social hierarchical order, keep out aliens, and keep down the restive and poorly paid masses. The last administration was unusually forthright about the whole program, thus speaking into an intense rapport with its "base", while foresaking the traditional mincing "compassionate conservative" or "city on a hill" gestures that have in the past served to sugar-coat that message.

But speaking to the base turned out to be a disastrous political strategy, losing the House, Senate, and Presidency in turn. However powerful in expressing, even generating, rare emotional responses in that base, it failed to follow the most basic principle of political math. So we are back now to the anodyne stylings of a new Democratic administration, back to a normal relationship, which is to say not much of a relationship, between the leader and the led. Which is a great relief on the national level, even if it would be maddening and unsatisfying on any personal level.

• Are you on the spectrum?
• That music in our heads.
• The true nature of conservative jurisprudence.
• Myths, magic, and gods- right or wrong?
• Hamsterkauf?
• Bill Mitchell on inflation and other historical matters.
• Some delightful piano.

There Are no Natural Rights

Rights are always a political construct, which we devise and grant each other.

American politics is drenched with "rights". The Bill of Rights, natural rights, god-given rights, human rights. Both right and left use "rights" language to claim victimization and seek restitution. But the history goes back much farther, to the Magna Carta and beyond, into the heart of being a social species. Sociality means compromise, giving up some powers in return for other things, some of which are called rights. Good civilized behavior and diligent work entitles us to membership in the group, and benefits such as collective defense and shared resources. Since there can be long time lags between service and repayment, even extending over a lifetime or even multiple generations, a way is needed to keep track of such obligations. One way is to proclaim rights, such as a right to communal fields and pastures for members of the group, in perpetuity.

Thus rights are generally keenly felt as obligations and matters of long-standing, even eternal, usage. But all are social agreements, as our proclivity to murder and execute each other makes clear. If one does not even have an inalienable right to life, what are the others worth? They are neither natural nor god-given, but entirely human-given. They are rhetorical constructs meant to structure our communal relations, hopefully for good of all and the durable continuance of the system, but sometimes, not so much. Indeed, rights can be brutally oppressive, such as those of Brahmins in the Indian caste system, among many others.

Gun nuts frequently make a fetish of their rights- to guns, self defense, and in various convoluted ways to religious rights and duties. When rights have been written into the law, such as our constitution, that moves them into another rhetorical level- the legal system. But that just expresses and codifies agreements that exist elsewhere in the social system, and which the social system can, through its evolution, change. Gay rights have been an outstanding example, of the destruction of one rights system- that of normative sexuality and marriage rights- and the rise of a new set of rights oriented to personal freedom in the expression and practice of sexuality. Where in ancient times, fecundity was of paramount importance, that need has naturally fallen away as a societal imperative as our societies and planet creak under loads of overpopulation.

This mutability and social basis of rights leads to a lot of one-upmanship in rights discourse, like the attempts to found abortion rights in presumptively more universal or fundamental rights like privacy, autonomy, or women's rights, versus competing formulations of rights to fetal life with related arguments about the legal and life-like status of embryos and fetuses. All this speaks to the fact that rights are not discovered on tablets handed down by either god or Darwin, but are continually developed out of our feelings about our communities- what is fair based on what is required from each of us to live in them, and what they can reasonably demand and give in return.

• Let's hear it for the neurodivergent.
• Cattle are unsustainable.
• Good riddance.

Competition

Balancing collaboration and competition for a healthy society.

The ongoing discussions about race and caste in America are plumbing the depths of who we want to be as a society, and of the human psychology of hierarchy and competition. As Darwin taught, competition is inherent to life. Winners don't just feel good, they live to fight another day and reproduce another generation. Competition is naturally at the core of human psychology and development as well. We only learn to know our selves against a backdrop of challenges overcome, and people to compare ourselves with. We celebrate the winners in art, music, politics, sports, business. Excellence only exists in comparison.

America was conceived from the first as a winners versus losers project. White Europeans, already sailing all parts of the known world in search of treasure and plunder in competition with each other and the other great Asian cultures, found a virgin land. At least virgin in that it hardly offered any competition, with peoples who were summarily exterminated or enslaved. That this domination was transferred to Africa as a convenient source of losers to be utterly dominated, and ultimately branded as an inferior caste in perpetuity, is at once spiritually shameful and also a natural consequence of the competive drive that inheres in all people.

Idealists then came up with a competing dream of socialism and communism, which was to be a sweeping antidote to all these racial, economic, and social injustices. But competition inexorably reared its ugly head, moving the field of play from its traditional moorings to the political and existential levels, even to the very nature of reality and truth, as seen in the Stalinist systems, and the numerous appalling dictatorial systems that copied it. There was no getting around the need to prove that some are more equal than others.

However we run our formal systems of government and economics, we live in countless competitive settings- socially, economically, sexually, in families and outside. No one loves unconditionally, or serves without reward. So the genius of civilization has been to tame and channel competitive structures and impulses to positive ends. Fairly rewarding work, or setting a standard of one sexual partner in marriage, are examples of rough attempts to forge stable, just, and positive social outcomes out of competitive instincts that if given freer license would destroy us. 

Slavery was a system that, while mostly stable and marginally productive, was also profoundly unjust. One tribe simply declared itself dominant, and used every insidious tool of indoctrination, oppression, and violence to maintain that position. Over time, the original source of the competitive superiority, (whether that was just or not), became irrelevant, and the disparity became as unearned by the oppressors as it was undeserved by the oppressed. It served in no way to expose the natural talents of either in a fair environment of self-expression and actualization through competitive effort. 

So over the history of our country, we have fitfully been waking up to this injustice and expression of erstwhile competitive success, and fighting over how to forge a new social contract. That is perhaps the main reason our political system is so bitterly divided right now. "Freedom" rings from the mouths of both sides. But for one it is typically the freedom to continue enforcing their inherited inequities and privileges. For the other, it is the quest to escape exactly those inequities, which have reified, (as they have similarly in India's caste system, over centuries), into a vast network of debilities, social dysfunctions, ingrained or instinctive attitudes, artistic modes and motifs, economic and geographic patterns.

The new social contract is obviously modeled on modern meritocracy, where all are educated as far as possible, all participate freely in the many markets that pervade our lives, from mating to consuming to job-finding and politics, and all benefit in proportion to their contributions as regulated by those markets. Historical inequities would have little influence in this world, while individual talent and character count for all. This assumes that such a meritocracy is a fair ideal, which many dispute, as the fate of the losers remains uncertain, and in our current version, unbelievably harsh.

But there is no ridding ourselves of competition, however blessed we are with countervailing instincts of empathy and cooperation. It is a rock of human nature, and of our personal development. The best we can do is to regulate it to be fair and moderate. That is, expressing the competitive success of the individual, not her forebears or tribe. And allowing enough benefits to winning to provide motivation towards excellence and success, without destroying the portion of society that necessarily will be losers in various markets. This is the perennial conflict (and competition) between right and left, Republican vs Democrat.

• What happens when the poor are concentrated on one place- East Lake Meadows.
• How long Taiwan?
• Fond memories of the Trumpers.
• What will become of our empire?
• Ten days of quarantine is plenty. Even eight would be OK.
• FOX- another reason to cut the cable cord.

On the Transition to Godhood

Kicking and screaming, humanity is being dragged into a god-like state.

We thought that harnessing electricity would make us gods. Or perhaps the steam engine, or the first rocket ship, or the atomic bomb. But each of those powerful technological leaps left us wanting- wanting more, and wanting to clean up the messes each one left behind. Next are biotechnology, gene editing, and robotics. What to do?

The fact is that we have powers that traditionally were only given to gods. Vast raw physical powers, the ability to fly, and the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, instantly, and to know practically anything at a touch. But the greatest of all is our power to derange the entire biosphere- destroying habitats, exterminating species, filling our geologic layer with plastic and radioactive debris, and changing the composition and physics of the atmosphere. 

We have not come to terms with all this power. Indeed half of our political system can't stand the thought of it, and lives in the fantasy that nothing has changed, humanity is not trashing its home, and we can live as profligately as we wish, if only we don't look out the window. Even more disturbingly, this demographic generally holds to a fantasy god- some bearded male archetype- who will either make magically sure that everything comes out OK, or alternately will bring on the end times in flames of wrath and salvation for the select, making any rational worry for the environment we actually live in absurd.

Judgement day is coming!

This, at a moment when we need to grow into our awesome responsibilities, is naturally disheartening. Growing up out of an infantile mind set, where our parents made everything OK, is hard. Adulthood takes courage. It takes strength to let go of fantasy comforts. But the powers of adulthood are truly god-like, especially in this age. We make and remake our environments, look deep into space, into the past and the future, know and learn prodigiously. We make new people. 

Is is clear, however, that we are not taking these powers seriously enough. Overpopulation is one example. We simply can not go on having all the children we want, taking no responsibility for the load they are putting and will put on our home, the biosphere. As nascent gods, we need to survey our domain holistically and responsibly, looking to its future. And right now, that future is rather bleak, beset by irresponsible actors resistant to their higher calling.

• What to do about all the lies?
• Another view of god.
• Don't drive everywhere.
• General breakdown.
• How did South Korea do so well? Rigorous contact tracing and quarantine enforcement.
• Greed in shorts.
• Direct air capture of CO2.

The Parables of Octavia Butler

Review of Parable of the Sower, and Parable of the Talents, about earily familiar dystopias and the religions they call forth.

Octavia Butler is having a moment. The late science fiction author published the parable books in 1993 and 1998, not even knowing of the coming G. W. Bush administration, let alone that of Donald Trump. But her evangelical-supported right wing presidential candidate issues a call to "Make America great again". Her insight and prescience is head-spinning, in books that portray an America much farther gone into division, inequality, corporate power, and chaos (all owing to climate change(!)) than we in actual reality are- yet only by degrees. That is only the window dressing and frame, however. Her real subjects are religion and human purpose. I will try to not give away too much, since these make dramatic and interesting reading.

The books introduce heroine Lauren Olamina, who is totally together and possessed of a mission in life. She grows up in a neighborhood compound walled off from the chaos outside, but quite aware of the desperate conditions there. Her father is a pastor, and both she and her brother become, through the books, preachers as well. The brother in a conventional Christian mode, but Lauren founds a new religion, one maybe tailored for the generally skeptical science fiction audience. God is change. That is it. Lauren emphasizes empathy, usefulness, education, and the shaping of change, but there is no god as traditionally conceived. It is a sort of buddhistic philosophy and educational / communal program rather than a supernaturalist conjuring, and love (or fear), of imaginary beings.

One question is whether such a philosophy would actually gain adherents, form communities and function as a religion. I get the sense that Butler would have dearly loved for her ideas to gain a following, to actually ripen, as did those of fellow science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, into an actual religion (however horrible his escapade actually turned out to be!). But their difference is instructive. Hubbard's Dianetics/Scientology is a floridly imagined narrative of super-beings, secret spiritual powers, and crazy salvation. Absolute catnip to imaginative seekers wanting to feel special and purposeful. On the other hand, Olamina's system is quite arid, with most of the motive force supplied, as the book relates, by her own determination and charisma. Her philosophy is true, and therein lies a big, big problem. Truth does not supply purpose- we already knew that scientifically. Natural selection is all about change, and makes us want to live, flourish, and propagate. Change is everpresent, and while it might be healthy to embrace it and work with it, that is hardly an inspiring and purpose-filling prospect, psychologically. As the books relate in their narrative of Lauren's life, change is also often quite terrible, and to be feared.

But the more important question is what role people such as Lauren play, and why people like her followers exist. People need purpose. Life is intrisically purposeless, and while we have immediate needs and wants, our intelligence and high consciousness demands more- some reason for it all, some reason for existence, collectively and individually. An extra motive force beyond our basic needs. We naturally shape our lives into a narrative, and find it far easier and more compelling if that narrative is dramatic, with significance beyond just the humdrum day-to-day. But such narratives are not always easy to make or find. Classic epics typically revolve around war and heroic deeds, which continue to make up the grist of Hollywood blockbusters. Religion offers something different- a multi-level drama, wrapped up in collective archetypes and usually offering salvation in some form, frequently a hero, if not a militaristic one. Last week's post mentioned the life of Che Guevara, who found purpose in Marxism, and was so fully seized by it that he bent many others, possibly the whole nation of Cuba, to his will / ideology. Lauren Olamina is a similar, special person who has, through her own development and talents, discovered a strong purpose to her life and the world at large that she feels compelled to share, pulling others along on her visionary journey. Are such people "strong"? Are their followers "weak"? 

Human social life is very competitive, with the currency being ability to make others think what you want them to think, and do what you want them to do. Our ideology of freedom was built by a founding class of dominant, slave-holding rich white men who wanted only to come to a reasonable accommodation for political power within their class, not extend freedom to women, blacks, or the poor. This ideology was highly successful as a sort of civic religion, coming down to us in two traditions- the "winning" tradition of native American extermination, ruthless capitalism, and growing international empire- all set within a reasonably stable elitist political system. And the second "freedom" tradition, which gave us abolitionism, the civil rights movement, and the modern Democratic party, which takes Jefferson's ideals at their word, however little he actually meant them.

Religion is a particularly powerful engine of political and social ideology, making people go through ridiculous rituals and abasements to keep on the safe side of whatever the powerful tell them. So yes, domineering social personalities like Lauren and Che, (and Trump), are very powerful, deservedly treated as larger-than-life, charismatic figures. Their powers are archetypal and dangerous, so it falls to skeptics and free-thinkers to offer antidotes, if their charisma goes off the rails. Butler offers a hero who is relentlessly good and positive, as well as charismatic and strong, so the only competition comes from ignorance, conventional wisdom, and from the competing religious powers like traditional Christianity. But the power of artificial purposes, and of the charismatic figures who propound them, is almost uniformly corrupting, so Lauren's opposition is, in the end, far more realistic as a portrayal of what we are facing, now and in the future.

• "China is about to bring 21 gigawatts of coal fired power online."
• Stocks are euphoric, headed for a fall.
• Obstruction of justice, in a continuing saga of impeachable offenses.

Science Says ...

What are facts, and how can we respect them?

The recent and prevalent locution of "science says ..." is grating to everyone- scientists, civilians, red, and blue. We get the shorthand meaning, but it has unpleasant, domineering overtones. Yet, sadly, something needs to be said, if facts can not make themselves heard. The "science says ..." mantra means that not only is something a fact, but it is widely, perhaps unanimously, recognized as a fact by experts who know where such facts come from and what they mean. Lately this usage has been in flood due to the pandemic, a way for data-driven people to criticize their more negligent neighbors.

The problem is that facts are not always totally clear or secure. So we have to fall back on arguments from authority, to support what we believe are important actions, based on other values. Masks were originally denigrated - by scientists! - as not very useful for protection against viruses that were small enough to easily pass right through typical cloth. But as more data came in, it became clear - to scientists - that even partial filtering and simple dispersion of infectious aerosols was quite helpful, not only for others facing a possible asymptomatic carrier of SARS-COV2, but to mask wearers themselves, by reducing the infecting dose. This is especially true in a setting with decent ventillation. Evidence piled up from epidemiological studies as well as mechanistic studies of mask wearing, that even lax masking is better than none. Now a shorthand for all that is "science says...". 

But the evidence is hardly 100%. Small studies and suggestive trends in disease data from well and poorly-masked populations make for important public health recommendations, but not quite facts. More detail and mechanism will be helpful, including the relative amounts of virus capture and dispersion by masks, and the role of the infectious dose in the severity of disease- the race that is run between viral replication and immune defense. Few people are themselves directly conversant with all this work, which means that most have to appeal to the authority of those that are. But then any blogger can claim to be an authority, and declaim a different set of conclusions and thus facts. 

We seem to have mostly settled down about these facts, tentative as they are, when it comes to the coronavirus, even though actually respecting them and changing habits comes hard to some. But climate change has been a different matter, being so economically important and implicated in everyone's current way of life. One's conservatism is directly related to resistance to changing one's way of life, which necessarily implies denying and disbelieving the once-subtle, now overwhelming evidence that "science says" assigns blame for accelerating climate change to us and our production of heat-trapping gasses.

Facts? What facts?

This is where the "science says ..." mantra becomes politically fraught and adversarial. If reality is knocking on your door and telling you to repent, confess your sins, and change your ways, experience tells us that is has to knock extremely hard. Addicts tend to change only after they have hit rock bottom, and see death in the eye. Listening to a bunch of pointy-heads and libtards go on about the biosphere, arctic ice, and obscure species is just not compelling. Quite the opposite- it is often taken as offensive and completely out of touch with a fossil fuel addict's immediate struggles and attachment to basic habits and ways of being.

And who cares about facts anyhow? Not the modern Republican party, not our president. Whether "science says" those facts or their own eyes behold them, the social facts of political control in grossly unfair setting of US power structures, and continuing support from the morally unmoored rich and their corporations, are far more significant than any global risks that all will bear with increasing pain over the coming decades. The social facts of the right wing media's blizzard of propaganda are likewise shaping a totally different world, in both values and truths and facts, than what scientists are perceiving. The mantra of "science says" then comes to mean a set of values rather than just facts, that we should perhaps attend to non-human species and ecosystems instead of worrying about a war on Christmas; that expertise is more valuable than con-jobbery and lying propaganda; that worrying about the vastly excessive human population on Earth might be more important than saving every fertilized egg for the patriarchy. For science is a value system, both in its methods and its objects. It is largely and generously funded by society, but naturally has its own agenda, which seems far-sighted and logical enough to its practitioners, but is, in the end, a set of values, which themselves will be judged by society as worthy of propagation, or not.

• An example of how the science has to be parsed pretty carefully, by expert observers. Masks, planes, and time.
• Our degraded country.
• That tired Taliban, ready to take over all of Afghanistan.
• Medicare advantage, or disadvantage?
• Are we great again, or what?
• Climate action and inaction.. still highly insufficient.

Frederick Douglass

The autobiographies of Frederick Douglass are a milestone of US literary, political, and social history.  

To deepen my appreciation for our history and the ongoing crises, racial and otherwise, I have been enjoying the final autobiography of Frederick Douglass, of the three that he wrote. This is the longest and, for obvious reasons, most comprehensive, where he can provide details about his escape and controversial activities that had been too sensitive previously, and cover later parts of his career. It is a paragon of style, incisive analysis, and emotional impact. Not having a great deal to add myself, I give over this blog to a few selected quotes.

Douglass (then named Bailey, and in his late teens), was sent by his master to a Mr. Covey, who specialized in "breaking" unruly slaves, by supervising and working them relentlessly, and whipping them weekly. Finally, after an escape attempt, Douglass he has had enough and fights back, come what may. What comes is that Covey gives in completely, and is cowed for the rest of the year from laying a finger on Douglass.

This battle with Mr. Covey, undignified as it was and as I fear my narration of it is, was the turning point in my "life as a slave." It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty. It brought up my Baltimore dreams and revived a sense of my own manhood. I was a changed being after that fight. I was nothing before; I was a man now. It recalled to life my crushed self-respect, and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to be a free man. A man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, though it can pity him, and even this it cannot do long if signs of power do not arise. p. 591 in the American library edition of the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass.

Douglass took a long tour in Britain, where he marvels at the discrimination he is not experiencing. It remains a deep statement about the work that still now remains.

I seem to have undergone a transformation. I live a new life. The warm and generous cooperation extended to me by the friends of my despised race; the prompt and liberal manner in which the press has rendered me its aid; the glorious enthusiasm with which thousands have flocked to hear the cruel wrongs of my down-trodden and long-enslaved fellow-countrymen portrayed; the deep sympathy for the slave, and the strong abhorrence of the slaveholder, everywhere evinced; the cordiality with which members and ministers of various religious bodies, and of various shades of religious opinion, have embraced me and lent me their aid; the kind hospitality constantly proffered me by persons of the highest rank in society; the spirit of freedom that seems to animate all with whom I come in contact, and the entire absence of everything that looks to me like prejudice against me, on account of the color of my skin, contrast so strongly with my long and bitter experience in the United States, that I look with wonder and amazement at the transition. In the southern part of the United States, I was a slave - thought of and spoken of as property; in the language of the law, "held, taken, reputed, and adjudged to be a chattel in the and of my owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes, whatsoever". In the Northern States, a fugitive slave, liable to be hunted at any moment like a felon, and to be hurled into the terrible jaws of slavery- doomed, by an inveterate prejudice against color, to insult and outrage on every hand (Massachusetts out of the question)- denied the privileges and courtesies common to others in the use of the most humble means of conveyance- shut out from the cabins on steamboats, refused admission to respectable hotels,  caricatured, scorned, scoffed, mocked, and maltreated with impunity by any one, no matter how black his heart, so he has a white skin. But now behold the change! Eleven days and a half gone, and I have crossed three thousand miles of perilous deep. Instead of a democratic government, I am under a monarchial government. Instead of the bright blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, gray fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as a slave, or offer me an insult. I employ a cab- I am seated beside white people- I reach the hotel- I enter the same door- I am shown the same parlor- I dine at the same table- and no one is offended. No delicate nose grows deformed in my presence. I find no difficulty here in obtaining admission into any place of worship, instruction, or amusement, on equal terms with people as white as any I ever saw in the United States. I meet nothing to remind me of my complexion. I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people. When I go to church I am met by no upturned nose and scornful lip, to tell me "We don't allow niggers in here." pp. 688-689, ibid.

 

Douglass looks at the pre-civil war politics of Southern resentment and entitlement, upon the growing spread and success of the abolition movement, which had been Douglass's work for the prior decade.

... Mr. Calhoun and other southern statesmen were more than ever alarmed at the rapid increase of anti-slavery feeling in the North, and devoted their energies more and more to the work of devising means to stay the torrents and tie up the storm. They were not ignorant of whereunto this sentiment would grow if unsubjected and unextinguished. Hence they became fierce and furious in debate, and more extravagant than ever in their demands for additional safeguards for their system of robbery and murder. Assuming that the Constitution guaranteed their rights of property in their fellow men, they held it to be in open violation of the Constitution for any American citiazen in any part of the United States to speak, write, or act against this right. But this shallow logic they plainly saw could do them no good unless they could obtain further safeguards for slavery. In order to effect this the idea of so changing the Constitution was suggested that there should be two instead of one President of the United States- one from the North and the other from the South- and that no measure should become a law without the assent of both. But this device was so utterly impracticable that it soon dropped out of sight, and it is mentioned here only to show the desperation of the slaveholders to prop up their system of barbarism against which the sentiment of the North was being directed with destructive skill and effect. They clamored for more slave States, more power in the Senate and House of Representatives, and insisted upon the suppression of free speech. At the end of two years, in 1850, when Clay and Calhoun, two of the ablest leaders the South ever had, were still in the Senate, we had an attempt at a settlement of the differences between the North and South which our legislators meant to be final. What those measures were I need not here enumerate, except to say that chief among them was the Fugitive Slave Bill, frames by James M. Mason of Virginia and supported by Daniel Webster of Massachusetts- a bill undoubtedly more designed to involve the North in complicity with slavery and deaden its moral sentiment than to procure the return of fugatives to their so-called owners. For a time this design did not altogether fail. Letters, speeches, and pamphlets literally rained down upon the people of the North, reminding them of their constitutional duty to hunt down and return to bondage any runaway slaves. In this the preachers were not much behind the press and the politicians, especially that class of preachers known as Doctors of Divinity. A long list of these came forward with their Bibles to show that neither Christ nor his holy apostles objected to returning fugatives to slavery. Now that that evil day is past, a sight of those sermons would, I doubt not, bring the red blush of shame to the cheeks of many. pp. 722-723, ibid.

In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln, the North sought ways to avoid war ... does this attitude sound familiar?

While this humiliating reaction was going on at the North, various devices to bring about peace and reconciliation were suggested and pressed at Washington. Committees were appointed to listen to Southern grievances, and, if possible, devise means of redress for such as might be alleged. Some of these peace propositions would have been shocking to the last degree tot he moral sense of the North, had not fear for the safety of the Union overwhelmed all moral conviction. Such men as William H. Seward, Charles Francis Adams, Henry B. Anthony, Joshua R. Giddings, and others- men whose courage had been equal to all other emergencies- bent before this southern storm, and were ready to purchase peace at any price. ... Everything that could be demanded by insatiable pride and selfishness on the part of the slave-holding South, or could be surrendered by abject fear and servility on the part of the North, had able and eloquent advocates.

Happily for the cause of human freedom, and for the final unity of the American nation, the South was mad, and would listen to no concessions. It would neither accept the terms offered, nor offer others to be accepted. It had made up its mind that under a given contingency it would secede from the Union and thus dismember the Republic. pp.770-771, ibid.

 

Douglass's influence can be appreciated in small part by this piece in his honor by N. Clark Smith.

• Yes, collusion. Indeed, what on earth was Muller doing?
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• We deserve even better.
• Bill Mitchell on work. Yes, somebody has to do it!
• All hail coal!
• All hail Facebook!
• Stutterers unite!
• Mourning for parts of California in flames, such as Big Basin state park.

The Gift

How to be thankful, without anyone to be thankful to.

Remember back when Barack Obama told business leaders that "you didn't build that"? He meant that they didn't build all the public goods that their businesses relied on- the roads, the legal system, the military defense, the regulatory bodies creating fair playing fields, the educational system. Businesses make it their business to be as myopic as possible, feeding off "business models" that foist as much cost onto others- workers, the government, the environment- as amorally possible. That is the only way to survive.

We all are a little like that, with tunnel vision focused on what we need, what we can get, and what we can do. Sometimes it is all one can do merely to survive in a world that seems so difficult, competitive, even hostile. But at the same time, who and what are "we"? Is our next need the full measure of our place in reality? Our focus on doing and on agency is a highly misleading aspect of consciousness. It presupposes a gazillion things that we have no agency over, couldn't even if we tried, and couldn't understand in any case. We didn't make our bodies, for one thing. This biology that we think we are so familiar with is, to biologists, incredibly inscrutible. The trillions of cells, billions of neurons, gajillions of molecules, all work away in obscurity to make us go. But are we thankful? Rarely. We didn't make them. We don't even understand them, and a century or two ago, we really, really didn't understand them. They are utterly alien. Yet they are also us.

The story goes similarly with everything else about us- the flow of time and fate, the universe we live in. All these are, at a fundamental level, still hardly understood. Where did all the energy of the big bang come from? What did it expand into? Why did it cool into the particles of physics? Are there other universes? No idea. And even if we had an idea, we weren't there and didn't make it happen. We are recipients, not actors, in this most vast drama. We should not be distracted by the competitive social systems we live in, and the pressing difficulties of life, to forget that we, as the conscious "I" of an individual human, are mysterious feathers floating on rivers of unplumbed unconscious depths, in a rich forest of abundance, on a planet mild and pleasant, in a universe that rendered these provisions in fantastic plentitude, to us and possibly to countless other worlds as well.

The lilies of the field, well, they toil quite hard, actually, in their own way. But that may not be apparent to the homilist, and took some science to figure out.

There needn't have been an intention behind all this- to conjure a cosmos, and evolve life. Indeed, it is rather unlikely given the little we do know. At any rate, we have speculated long and hard enough to know that more speculation isn't going to get us very far, or obtain any brownie points. We are, regardless, the benificiaries of these gifts. This is a, perhaps the, fundamental religious feeling- thankfulness for the infinite powers and entities that we embody, experience, and rely on, yet have precious little understanding of- the mysterium tremendum.

Does this all imply god? No. God is a rather pathetically inferred solution to, or better yet, an anthropomorphization of, this mystery. As social beings, and products of families, we in a primitive state might naturally ascribe the vast mysteries that undergird our existence and far outstrip our conceptions to a personified father figure (or mother, if one's society happens to be matriarchial). No error could be more obvious. Science has served to push the boundaries of mystery a little farther out, from a choking fog where virtually everything is obscure, to a view that goes billions of light-years across the universe. What all this has shown is, that as far as we can see, mechanism is the rule. Our bodies are mechanisms. The universe is a mechanism. Diseases are not the vengeance of jealous gods, nor is the weather. The inference of god has not held up well over time- not well at all. Yet that does not mean that we shouldn't be thankful for the gifts we receive, which are so rich on our life-giving planet. Nor that we shouldn't strive to pass them on rather than destroying them in the current moment of greed, by our thoughtless overpopulation and immiseration of this world.

• Another soul eaten by the president.
• And his base... the truly demented.
• The ideology of business naturally shoots itself in the foot.
• Failure of public management angers some.

Eating the Wild Things

Despite humanity's long tradition of eating wildlife, it is high time to rethink it as a practice. 

The coronavirus outbreak certainly gives one pause, and time to think about what we are doing to the biosphere and to ourselves. It also makes one wonder about the wisdom of killing and eating wildlife. I have been reading a book about a different disaster, the struggles of the crew of the ship Essex, back in 1820. This Nantucket-based factory ship was hunting whales in the middle of the Pacific when, in an ironic, yet all too-rare turn of events, a huge male sperm whale rammed and sank the mother ship as the smaller whaleboats were out killing its relatives. Months of drama, extremity, and cannibalism ensue, (for the humans), after which a fraction of the crew survive to tell the tale. It seems to us now bizarre, and beyond wasteful, that street lights in Nantucket were lit with whale oil, and that people would sail all over the world's oceans just to kill whales for the oil in their heads and blubber. Humans have an instinct for survival, and for the most concentrated source of various goods, and, whether under the colors of capitalism or simple greed, think little of externalizing costs, no matter how brutal and far-reaching, whether eating each other, "fishing out" some rich source of food, causing extinctions, or setting Charles island of the Galapagos ablaze in an inferno (another episode that occurs in this ill-starred history). One must be "hard" in this business of living, after all.

Well, we can do better. Now, two centuries on, we are still abusing the biosphere. Some ways are new, (climate change, plastics, insecticides), but others are old, such as over-fishing. Factory ships are still plying the great oceans of the world, vacuuming up wild animals so that we can eat them. And not just do they derange whole ecosystems and litter the oceans with their waste, but they also kill a lot of innocent bystanders, euphemistically called "bycatch"- sea turtles, albatrosses, dolphins, whales, etc. Albatross populations are in steady decline, from very low levels and heading towards extinction, for one main reason, which is the fishing industry.

This simply has to stop. It is a tragedy of the commons, on a collossal scale, all for the atavistic desire to eat wild animals. Human overpopulation, coupled with technology, means that no wild animals stand a chance in an unregulated environment- not in Africa, not in Brazil, and not in the international oceans. We are killing them by a thousand cuts, but do we also have to eat them, as the final indignity and form of waste?

If we want to save the biosphere from utter impoverishment, humanity needs a change of heart- an ethic for keeping the wild biosphere wild, rather than running it like so much farmland, or so much "resource" to be pillaged, whether "sustainably" or not. Obviously, eating meat at all is a fraught issue- ethically, and environmentally. But surely we can agree that wild animals, and wild ecosystems, deserve a break? Conversely, where we have so screwed up ecosystems by eliminating natural predators or introducing invasive species, we may have to kill (and yes, perhaps eat) wild animals in systematic fashion, to bring back a functional balance. Go to town on feral hogs, boa constrictors, Asian carp, etc. (But try to do so without poisoning yourselves and the evironment with lead.) The point is that we are stewards of this Earth now, like it or not, and ensuing generations over the next hundreds and thousands of years deserve an Earth with a functioning biosphere, with some semblance of its original richness.

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• It's the same old Pakistan.
• Astronomers take a whack at the virus.
• What to do after the protests. And then prohibit public employee unions from corrupting political campaigns. And then prohibit all other special interests from corrupting campaigns as well, for good measure.

Iran: Object Lesson of the Enlightenment

Review of Iran: A Modern History, by Abbas Amanat. Part 2- the contest between autocracy, democracy, and theocracy.

Has history ended? Did all countervailing ideologies give up and yield to democracy as the universal form of government and does peace now reign? Apparently not. Indeed, democracy is embattled in many areas as it has not been in decades- even in the US, whose institutions are under sustained attack by a renascent autocratic / plutocratic coalition. Iran has exemplified the contest between the ideals of democracy, human rights, state stability, authority, and religious sentiment in ideologies of government over many centuries. It has been positioned at some remove from, though in durable if not tragic contact with, the European cultures that fostered the Enlightenment in all its aspects. What has been their impact, and what are we to make of the current result?

Amanat provides a magisterial overview of Iran's recent history, (recent meaning since 1500, which leaves out a vast portion going back to antiquity and beyond), focusing on its political systems as they range between autocracy and revolution, growth and decline, consolidation and decadence. Iran was heavily influenced by Europeans starting in the mid-1800's, as the great game got underway. While Russia was unapologetically autocratic, making its menace clearly lineal with previous contests against other invaders, Britain, and later the US, brought a new level of hypocrisy as imperial powers founded on Enlightenment ideals and practices, which were, however, not for foreign consumption.

The Qajar monarchy in the 1800's managed a weak position relatively well, keeping Iran intact and largely sovereign, if also continually corrupt, indebted, and backward. But finally, the modernist winds were too strong, and a constitutional revolution established a constitutional monarchy and parliament in 1906, then again in 1909. This parliamentary system never fully found its footing, however, tussling with the Shah for power, and buffeted through disastrous invasions and occupations during world war 1. It was sort of a Weimar Republic, never attaining full power in military or political terms.

But it embodied the idea of a Western-style, constitutional, democratic system. The addition of an Islamic advisory council was an afterthought and never seriously implemented during this era, since the ulama, or community of clerics, was generally content with its long-standing role of loose collaboration with the secular power, tending to a narrow sector of jurisprudence over religious, business, and personal matters, on a somewhat freelance basis. While the Shi'i clergy had occasionally led protests and fostered limited political activism in the face of gross injustices and suffering from their base among the small merchant class and urban poor, the idea of becoming a full partner in government, or its comprehensive adversary, did not cross their minds, since government was fundamentally unclean and not worthy of theology, short of the return of the twelfth Imam. The clerics were also fully invested in the somewhat corrupt system, having gotten quite rich from their segment of the economy.

But the trauma of the Pahlavi era, broken in the interval between father and son by a hopeful but chaotic constitutional period under Mohammed Mosaddegh, set the clergy- at least some of it- on a more activist path. Both Shahs were dedicated modernizers, dismissive of religion and destructive to the livelihoods and institutions of the clergy. Along with other islamists in the Sunni world like Qutb, they (that is, the less quietist elements, spearheaded by Ruholla Khomeini) started generating a comprehensive critique of modernism, the Pahlavi apparatus, and the West as antithetical to Islam, which it quite obvoiusly was and remains. They found that they still had enormous political power and public sentiment on their side, not among the intelligentsia, but among the common people who had been coming to the mosques, and requesting judgements, and paying their dues all along. All this was seized by Khomeini, who in 1963 gave fiery sermons denouncing the Pahlavi regime, and was duly detained, almost executed, and then exiled to Iraq. The Shah ran an economically successful few decades, but also a brutal secret service and a grandiose view of himself and the dynasty so severely out of step both with native sentiment and with the democratizing / human rights trends in the West, suddenly put on the top of the table by Jimmy Carter.

Faithful Shi'ite Iranians were interested in more spiritual fare than what the Shah offered, and the clerics, through Khomeini, gave them visions of an ideal society, rectified through "dear Islam" to resolve all the injustices and degradations of the Pahlavi era. In return, Khomeini was first elevated to the unprecedented status of "Grand Ayatolla", and then ultimtely to "Imam" status, which had never been done before, the twelfth Imam having been the last of the set, now in occultation. So the revolution rolled on with inexorable power, but also with inexorable revolutionary logic, piling up bodies and hypocrisies as the imperatives of staying in power overwhelmed all other scruples. For example, Amanat mentions with some acidity that, while centuries of Shi'i jurisprudence may not have foreseen the problems of writing a constitution, running foreign policy, or operating a secret service, it had long dealt, and dealt with care and discretion, in contract and property law. But all that went right out the window as the new government "inherited" or expropriated countless businesses and personal properties, took over all major industries of the country, and distributed their management to family members, cronies and loyalists.

Diagram of the Iranian government, from the BBC.

It is through the lens of the constitution and the cobbled institutions that have arisen in Iran that we can see the dialectic between Enlightenment principles and Islamic principles. Khomeini promised a democracy, where power would no longer be monopolized by a somewhat mad Shah. But it also had to be an Islamic democracy, "guided" by the clerics to retain purity and justice. The logic of all this resulted in a thoroughly theocratic state, where there is an interlocking set of instutions all run by the clerics, from the Supreme Leader to the Guardian Council, Assembly of Experts, and Expediency Discernment Council. Each are supervisory, with various veto and appointment powers, leaving the popularly elected parliament with little real power or even representative complexion, since its candidates are routinely disqualified by the Guardian Council for not being conservative enough.

In practical terms, this means that the system maintains just enough democracy to foster some hope and buy-in from some of the populace, while keeping complete control in the hands of the clerics. Will this end in utter corruption of both religion and government? It is difficult to say, but Iran has more of a functional democracy and republican system than many other Muslim countries, which is sadly not saying much. Those who reflect on the very origins of Islam and Shi'ism can readily see that theory of government is not a strong suit of this tradition. I see Khomeini as a demagogue- a Trumpian figure who promised the stars, offered a telling and comprehensive critique of the Pahlavi system, and had a genius for turning a phrase. But he did not promise a coherent and democratic program of governance, rather a messianic dream and relentlessly divisive politics. In the revolutionary process, he always played to the base, favoring extreme positions. A base whose core, there as here, is a religious element of great patriarchial conservatism and dismissive of intellect and compassion. He was fully behind the hostage-taking students, for instance, which solidified support at home while making Iran a pariah abroad.  Hate, of course, was and continues to be central to the Iranian theocracy, from the Great Satan (us), to the little Satan (the Iraq of Saddam Hussein), to the communist Tudeh party, to the Baha'i religion, which they particularly revile and persecute.

At first, the clerics worked with liberals to fashion a written constitution (a significant concession to modernity and Western ideas) and a civilian government. But as time went on, the many contradictions of this approach became apparent, since if the people were given real power, the clerics would lose theirs- that was a lesson of the first constitutions of the early 1900's, and again during revolutionary process in the 1970's and 80's, which saw many contestants for power. The clerics only won due to their cohesion and their ability, time and again, to move the masses with demagogic and messianic appeals.

So the Iranian clerics ended up in unknown territory, creating a government that had no Persian or Koranic precedent, other than putting clerics in charge of everything (including at the top, the monarch-for-life Supreme Leader), and hoping that their own formation, training, and institutions will keep them uncorrupted. At one dire point in the revolution, a hanging mullah suggested that his rather under-supported decisions didn't matter that much, since God would sort it all out in the end, sending those who deserved it to heaven. But by that logic, he should have killed himself first. It is always curious how those who supposedly believe in religion and the glories of its afterlife turn out to have a strong regard for their own lives in the here and now. One would think that meeting one's maker would be a more positive goal, rather than being a mere scrim for power politics in this fallen world.

Iran gets ranked just above China in the democracy index.

Anyhow, Iran has ended up with more torture, more executions, more war, a bigger secret service, a more intrusive state, and less freedom, than the Pahlavi era. It turned out that Islam is not a guarantee of good, let alone moral, governance. Islamic countries generally occupy the lower rungs of the democracy index, and other indexes of development and happiness. This while Islam portrays itself as a religion of peace, of mercy, and of the most exacting jurisprudence and scholarship. The revolutionary government of Iran dabbled in liberalism, and wrote up a semi-democratic constitution, and faced a culture of great diversity and intellectual depth. But in the end, authoritarian logic won out over traditional Shi'i quietism and over most Western trends, creating a sort of Shi'i Vatican writ large, with opaque committees of old bearded men running everything, with additional torture chambers and gallows.

Iran offers an object lesson why the interlocking lessons of the enlightenment are so important- why withdrawing religious projections, drama, and righteousness from the state, in favor of civic secularism, yields a more rational and humane way of life. Why even the most long-standing and cherished religious traditions and "scholarship", while they may serve as selective institutions to weed out the stupid and socially unskilled, are not conducive to the search for objective truth or even a marker of moral superiority.

All that said, the French revolution began with enlightenment principles, which did not prevent a similar revolutionary logic from sending it to appalling depths of brutality, injustice, and authoritarianism. Yet it also spread more liberal, anti-monarchical values throughout Europe during the Napoleonic era, and ended up, after decades of historical development, with true democracy in France and Europe. The whole point of political theory in the Enlightenment was to allow such development via a fundamental humanism and humility in the civic sphere and the state. Its antithesis is messianism of various sorts, from communism to Shi'i theocracy, (even atheist enlightenment, when driven to extremes!), which drives polarization, extremism, and totalitarianism. Iran may yet develop in a softer direction, after what is now forty years of theocracy, but that would take a substantial change of heart on the part of the current ruling class, and perhaps a reduced allergy to Western ideas.

• Happy Quds Day!
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• It is not clear that California is ready to re-open. Graph of the week:

Atheism, or Archetype?

Religion is built on a series of inborn archetypes and intuitions. Does that mean it is inevitable?

Religion is natural, but is it right? Increasing numbers of people in the US are giving up the practice and belief, if polls are to be believed. Hellfire and damnation is sure to follow, according to those left in the pews, at least those of the farthest evangelical congregations. As a student of Carl Jung, I appreciate the psychology of religion, seeing its processes as deeply reflective of our individual and communal psychologies, as well as the consequence of a complex evolutionary process whose aim has been as much social solidarity and reproduction as much, or more than, philosophical truth. At base, we are not rational beings, and follow a variety of themes and images, termed archetypes in the Jungian system, which persistently guide our dreams,  motivations, and cultures. We are not just economic units driven by profit and loss, but have richer dramatic lives and needs.

Father

What could be more obvious? We grow up in households with father figures who are unimaginably powerful. Food just appears, housing, furniture, love, care, and power and discipline. It is no wonder that, once we grow up, there is a father-shaped hole in our view of the world. In the usual patriarchial culture, the father stands alone, at the top, as both creator and moral disciplinarian, in an archetype that is expressed over and over again in cultures throughout the world, from Zeus to Allah, as it is in our political systems naturally as well. But the mother archetype is also in play, especially in Catholic and Hindu cultures, in the Marys and various powerful devas. Is it possible to see the world without using these instinctive lenses? That is what the scientific revolution and enlightenment attempted, in a cognitive revolution that remains, evidently, incomplete. Take prayer. In the form of requesting something from the father in the sky, it is pathetically immature and retrograde, however understandable in primitive conditions of complete existential mystery. On the other hand, some meditation, joy, and gratitude for the wonders of existence are surely healthy and consistent with mature knowledge of where we stand in the universe. Involvement with this archetype reflects quite directly how far one has gotten along the developmental road from childhood to maturity.

Heaven

The afterlife used to be a rather drab, depressing affair, in the classical Greek and Jewish systems. Then it was progressively gussied up into a lottery jackpot, in the Islamic and Christian systems. Buddhists and Hindus also find life after death, in the form of reincarnation, to be absolutely central to their philosophies. The magic of consciousness is incredibly hard to give up, and hard to get rational perspective on. It takes stringent dedication to naturalism and the evident facts of the world to accept, deep down, that death is really going to be the end- of everything. One need only think about animals- they are obviously conscious, and there are levels of consciousness all the way down the scale of evolution, to infinitesimal, then finally to nothing at all. How does that work, other than in direct proportion to their physical, brain-based endowments? What could be more clear, and in stark contravention of our intuitive and (weirdly) hopeful dream of life after death?

Tribe

We are not just endowed with intellect, but with a social nature, which focuses our striving and loyalty on the tribe. Our tribe is right and good, theirs is bad and wrong. Tribalism founds and plagues every new religious sect or philosophical school, which strains to show how it is right and its predecessors wrong. Jung vs Freud, Analytical vs Continental, Shiite vs Sunni, in endless profusion. Religions lack even the veneer of factual basis which characterize other divides like political polarizations or academic disputes. Doctrine, orthodoxy, and heresy are freely defined by whoever has social power. If one's village is Evangelical, woe to Catholics. If one's family is Seventh-Day Adventist, mere contact with outsiders is forbidden. Tribes have totemic symbols and artistic traditions as part of their identification / bonding apparatus, tokens of the archetypal processes at work.

Magical or zodiacal symbols in an Islamic Book of Wonders, circa 1400. 

Magic

Living in an enchanted word is natural, and wonderful. We all start there in childhood and treasure the dramatic, humanistic power of seeing the world through archetypal lenses- in animals with special totemic powers, crystals that heal, trees that listen. This is truly where traffic with archetypes is most fluid and explicit- bringing dreams to narrative life. Religious superstition raises this drama to existential levels, putting the magic on a celestial level of god(s), all-powerful father figures, and alternatives of eternal hell-fire or bliss. The chances of all this actually describing any kind of reality is nil- we are talking total fantasy. But its evident grip on billions of people shows just how powerful magical thinking is and how far we are from being rational.

Truth

All claim truth, but few prove it. Religions are notorious for splitting into sects, each possessing the final truth, the real story. Interestingly, atheists do not splinter in this way. There is plenty of bickering, about what humanism entails or is, how liberal humanists should be, etc., but there are no Seventh-Day atheists, or Twelver atheists, or other miscelleneous schools. Communism was atheistic, but was in truth a quasi-religious, authoritarian cult all its own. Once one has discarded attachment to these archetypes and the theologies they underpin, and to the need for truth as a matter of self-identification, why then it is easier to agree on what is actually true, as well as on the many areas where we just don't know, without the need to make up stories. This need, a dire need, for answers, especially to "big" questions, is a tipoff that we are dealing with archetypal energies, not with a rational level of thought.

One could compare atheism to the concept of nirvana in Buddhism and Hinduism- the release from the cycle of rebirth, from attachment to the archetypes, and escape to a level of intellectual / emotional freedom. Escape from rebirth is implicit, since the atheist doesn't believe in rebirth, heaven or afterlife at all. It focuses attention on this life, this moment, and compassion here rather than later. But to escape the causes of suffering, (especially the infliction of suffering upon others!), by regarding the archetypes intellectually and skeptically, and by distancing one's self from them, is far more important. To leave behind the seductive entanglements of archetypal belief and the often-abusive social relations they entail is personally momentous, and a healing balm for a planet full to the brim with faithful dogmatists.

• One moving, harrowing, story of escape.
• Viral data dump from a skeptic.
• Administration cut funding for surveillance before outbreak.
• Graph for New York.
• Unemployment-ocolypse.