Politics

On Nicole Wallace’s podcast,  Ken Burns, the great historian said that when racists found that blacks were going to be on their favorite baseball team, the higher quality individuals embraced the fact, came to accept it.  Not that simple. What makes higher quality?  It rather should be looked at as the decisions made  based on doors of opportunity to attain gratitification.

Hammurabi wrote a code  of laws for Babylon 4000 years ago, it was with the wisdom that the society as a whole would be much more productive, predictable, and happy if laws and enforcement curtailed some of the violent, unfair, and disruptive behavior.

But now we have to go deeper.  We know that men can aspire and conspire to circumvent, change, and rewrite laws to gain power and influence that is beneficicial to a small group but harmful to the greater number of people in a society.  To make  long principle short, the problem is that man, as a species,  community, or nation  has not yet engineered a way to control the small minority of humans who seek unfair, disproportionate wealth, power, or other advantage over the society, at the expense of the majority of the members, and sometimes even to the demise of the society.  Some members simply don’t care if their actions will lead to the destruction of the society as long as it is after their lifetime. “What do I care.  l’m not going to be around in 30 years.” (an actual quote from Donald Trump)

So the initial question is – how do we as a society control those few who are hypermotivated to gain huge personal power to the detriment of society. There wust be new institutions, attitudes, stated moral principles.   This question is more theoretical.  More practical is How do we reverse the present situation where the top 1% owns 32% of the wealth and the bottom 50% own 2 per cent of it? .   slavery was an institution that was overwhelmingly accepted in the North s well as the South in the US in the 18th century. Back then the idea that black and white children would be educated in the same schools, the same universities. was simply not in the dreams of anyone of any color. So maybe we can take solace that it is possible to reverse the tides of the political economy that dictate the hegemony of the financilly elite.

I saw a clip where an excited man was saying that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time. The reporter dismissed the man’s thesis, but the man insisted.  “No, no, there is new evidence.  They have pictures.”  I’m not sure what he meant by that but anyone with a formal education, and most people who do not, understand the lack of credence of the idea.  The earliest humans evolved 200,000 years ago.  The dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago.  This is not a theory.  Paleantologists, paleozoologists, archeologists, anthropologists, and other scientists who have studied the prehistoric biosphere are quite in agreement.

Elon Musk, on the Joe Rogan show,  related his rather goofy  ideas about finding civilizations in outer space on other planets in other solar systems, etc, etc.  then Rogan excited replied that, hell, there may have been an advanced civilization here on earth 10 million years ago.  To this Musk joyfully agreed.  But to the above mentioned scientists, this is just as bananas as the moron who claimed proof that man was on earth together with dinosaurs. They have scientifically determined when the first life forms appeared, the first vertebrates appeared, first mammals, and most other life forms appeared. They have developed a massive taxonomy of plants and animals all over the earth and when, where, and how they lived.

If there had been a civiliztion ten million years ago unknown to today’s scientific community,  not only would all remains of the civilization have to have been lost but hundrds of thousands of years of the peoples predessessors’  traces would also have to have been lost –  artifacts and fossils.

Joe Rogan prooved congruent in ignorance to the first dinosaur-excited character in his lack of sophistication of paleozooic developement.

People saying China  1-child policy  was a mistake.  The proof of that is that now there re too many old people, not enough young people.
But the populaion has grown from 1 billion to 1.4 billion in 20 yers.
Invasive species.  expansion of man’s numbers has caused extinction of 100’s of speies per year.   fellow invertebrates, many fellow mammals and most fellow primates. …  New short sighted or selfish declaration that more babies will make a country better.

Everything makes a difference – sometimes imperceptively on the sub atomic level, sometimes with broad global ramifications.  The decision to take anti-oxidants last year may have stopped a tiny cancer process in one cell in your stomach. The decision to appoint Hitler as Chancellor by von Hindenberg in 1933 caused worldwide suffering.

Language has many purposes. It is used to communicate facts and opinions, compliments and insults. Virtuallly all languages have built-in
structures to express respect. Titles.  Mr. Smith, Dr. Brown, professor
Jones, general Black, reverend Bush, father Furgusson, officer Blake, your honor, your highness.    If your child is in the hospital, you address the doctor as Dr. Jones.  If you were to say, “Hey Jones, what is your prognosis? How long will Billy have to stay here?”, you may  convey a lack of respect for his station.  Dr Jones may be slightly less likely to give the same deference to your son, Billy.

Another structure present in virtually all languages is what anthropology calls forbidden words. In the vernacular:  profanity, curse words, obsenities, expletives, swearing or foul language. Forbidden words have a multitude of uses.

They are used by an in-group among themselves where they wouldn’t use them publicly to define an identifiction. On my dormitory floor in college, we all used profanities fluidly. it was sort of a bonding mechanism.  ”My goddam prof gave us 30 fucking pages of reading.”

Secondly they are used to convey respect by not using them in many situations. The same college student goes to a History discussion class and refrains from using the forbidden words that are de riguer back in the dorm. They would be out of place, and convey disrespect. If  a pastor gave a sermon and said,  “Theres’s too much fucking sin in the world”  it would likely be deemed inapproprite and disrespectful- breaking the taboo of forbidden words. And thus the respect for the pastor may diminish.

In 1972  Comedian George Carlin had a comedy routine where he identified the 7 words you cannot say on TV:  shit, piss, fuck, cunt, motherfucker, cocksucker, and tits. He was arrested for breaking obscenity laws. The case was dismissed but  later the case went to the Supreme Court when a radio station broadcast the Carlin sketch. SCOTUS ruled that the Federal Communications commision could sanction broadcasters for airing inappropriate material. But the decision was accompanied by subjective definitions that attempted to define speech that was indecent, but not obscene,  protected by the first ammendment, or “patently obscene,” which is not protectected. It asserted that speech that was merely indecent, (and, in turn, indecent defined as inappropriate for minors) could be broadcast only at certain times of the day. And that “patently obscene” could not be broadcast at all.  Of course all this meant not only that  all these terms were debatable, but the passage of time changed the words that fell into each catagory.  Since Carlin, the word piss, one of his 7 forbidden words, as in pissed off, is a regular staple of even buttoned-down news shows.

The hard sciences are concerned with hard concepts:  light, heat, energy, gravity, wave, particle, distance, speed, time, and others.  There are other real concepts which effect daily life that are only considered scientifically by the social sciences.  Fear, hate, motivation, gratification, structural violence, love, learn, and respect. In testing rat labs the international standard for motivation of the rat to find food is a reduction in the animals weight by 15%.  And a recent one, structural fear, which means fear propagated by demagoguery to compel a target audience to support a certain cause or leader.  Typically a population is made to be fearful that if a leader is not elected or a law is not adopted the country will be thrown into war or inundated by rising crime.  Many people speak casually about what they think of these concepts but it is left to the social sciences to  speak of them with operational definitions and  determine the the interaction and impact of these concepts on the society.

Once a student of mine said, scornfully, that just because he saw a murder on TV doesn’t mean he would go out and commit  murder.
For most people this is true, but the social sciences have massive amounts of scientifically attained research showing that, indeed, mass media has enormous influence on human behavior. The Bandura experiments showed how groups of young children reacted more violently across several measures, including hitting a plastic punching bag, than the control group after watchining a more violent video than the control group. And, rarely, the effects have an immediate, striking impact.  The film”The Boys Next Door” showed teens, trying to impress, made the stunt of lying down on the line in the middle of the road, letting cars pass by on both sides.  Within a week, in 2 different incidences, two youth were killed after trying the stunt in real life, on a real highway, and the film was shelved.

A society, at any given time, has its own tacit rules of what speech is acceptable and when. In 1940 the classic film Gone with the Wind was
made.  A minor scandal was caused when the producers decided to include the later famous line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Such a word had never been spoken in a public medium. The producer David Selznick, was fined $5000, but the line was subsequently allowed in the film.  But why?  Why are there forbidden words?  Again it is a device arising out of culture, a device to maintain a level of respect in the society – respect that reaches across differences.  And this is a quintessential element of forbidden words, as well as titles – to generate respect across barriers, personalities, ethnicities, ages, religions. We use titles for people who are opposite politically, ethnically, regionally. Societal respect. A reflection that we all benefit from the sacrafices, accomplishments, and diligence of the many who came before us and helped build our society.

So why do the forbidden words become no longer forbidden and what are the effects of the process?  The most overwhelming driver of  the process is, of course, the media, and its go-to phenomenon that substitutes for great writing – voyeurism.  Violence, along with sex, loathsome behavior, betrayal, etc is the required voyeuristic  formula for modern TV dramas.  And violent, abusive, language is, of course, mandatory.

screenply…???   eloquent, forceful, dramatic, convincing, and entertaining without erroding the purpose of the taboo on forbidden words.

Media shows a US president who is patently, and unabashedly dishonest in House of Cards, a vice president of the US who is cynical and disingenuous (as all of her co-workers are) in the show VP,  a former teacher who is in the glamorous, exciting business of  drug smuggling in Breaking Bad and the Sopranos, the also-glamorous mafia family.  And we shouldn’t omit the glamorous violence of every episode of Game of Thrones.

What is  role model?

Sparta was the superpower, Athens was the rising star.  In May, 431 BC, Sparta pre-emptively attacked Athens. The Peloponnesian war lasted 28 years.  Harvard scholar Graham Allison identified what he called Thucydides’ Trap, a tendency toward war when the top dog among countries percieves  another country catching up to them, and threatening their predominnce. He cites several other times in history where this phenomena is visible.

Allison says his studies show that the leaders of the most powerful countries use structural fear to generate popular support for opposing the encroaching challengers. Structural fear is fear that is organized, generated, perpetuated  by social  and political institutions to manipulate individuals and maintain control.  So leaders who wish to reduce a the capabilities of a rising power can generate support for war
by inducing fear of the new power and describing  it as an existential threat to their nation.  Allison relates this to the position of the US, and its relation to its economic challengers, mainly China.

In 1990 I was pretty sure that China was going to become our next prime enemy, biggest threat, worst fear, replacing Russia.  Does it worry you that China will soon overcome the US as having the largest economy in the world?  They will be number one. Some Americans have been convinced by demagoguery that they should fear this. Whether there is anything to worry about or not, politicians cannot resist the use of structural fear, describing China’s overcoming the US economically as an existential threat. Rally round me. I am strong and I will save us all.  Its like free money. Press the fear button and, voila, out pops support like a gumball machine.

Not all Americans fear China’s economic climb, hopefully, but guess what. Nobody, zero, in Poland or Paraguay or Thailand or Spain fears another country’s surpassing their GDP.  Everyone wants their country to thrive, but only #1 gets caught in Thucydides trap.

Ira: OK, people, settle down. There seems to be a few more people here tonight. I’m Ira Cordell, and this is the second meeting of Modern Anthropology in the Coreyville adult education program. If you signed up for Zumba you are in the wrong room. (snickers) … OK, first I want show you a picture of my son at his first communion on Sunday.
Phil: Ha ha. I don’t think so, Ira.
Ira: Why is that, Phil? (grinning)
Phil: Because last week you told us you were gay and Jewish.
Ira: Bingo. 2 points for Phil for paying attention. And now I’m saying I’m straight and Catholic. I said that last week just as a fun experiment to demonstrate the generalizations, good or bad, correct or otherwise that come with identity. So in effect I WAS gay and jewish to you. Now, without thinking much about it, you will adjust your perceception of me- based on your preconceived notions of what those categories mean.
Jim: Will you be a bisexual Klingon next week, Ira?
Ira: Ha, I don’t think so, Jim. I will remain as I am. So let’s move on. This evening, a survey. It is universally illegal in the US to marry a sibling. If you think this law is appropriate write ‘yes’ on these little cards. If not write no.
Frank: Are you kidding, Ira?
Ira: No, Frank. And don’t get neurotic about anything. It’s just a little entertainment.
……OK, raise your hand if you wrote ‘yes’….(pause) uh, 13 out of 13. OK can anyone give me a reason for your answer.
Frank: Who would want to marry their sister? (laughter)
Ira: Well, in fact, almost nobody. So the question becomes, why DON”T people want to marry their sister.
Christy: Well, inbreeding is supposed to produce deformities, I’ve read.
Ira: That’s right. Research clearly shows that mental aberrations as well as
physical deformities occur after continued inbreeding, but not always.
Steve: There’s also the stigma. It’s disgusting and it’s not socially acceptable.
Ira: Yes, its certainly socially unacceptable. So now we have 2 reasons for the taboo. It causes developmental problems and it won’t get you on the society A list. Now, question: Which came first? The concern over abnormalities or the social unacceptance?
Christy: I think it was the social unacceptance. In ancient Rome, the emperor Caligula…married his sister and it was as much of a scandal then as it would be today.
John: Yeah, they thought he was literally crazy.
Ira: Okay so the stigma, social faux pas, taboo, distaste was evident 2 millennia ago. So where do we go from there?
Jim: Well, I think the taboo existed before there was the scientific sophistication that incest led to deformities. Especially because they didn’t happen every time.
Ira: So this means – possibly – that social behavior may be driven by biological determinants?
Tom: It seems so. Like our appetites. Things that don’t taste good together aren’t digested well together. Personal tastes differ. Some people like seafood. Others hate it. But no one likes to eat mustard and jelly together, because the digestive juices stimulated will cause putrification.
Ira: woah!! I don’t think this class needs me. That was quite relevant, Tom.
Tom: I studied this once in grad school, heh heh.
Ira: That’s very cool. OK, moving on, from incest to homosexuality.
Lara: What about it?
Ira: Well, until about 50 years ago it was considered immoral or perverted and was
illegal virtually everywhere in the world:
Steve: And it still is illegal in many places.
Mark: I suppose it was like the taboo of sibling sexual relations. It was considered
distasteful and unnatural.
Ira: And perhaps a threat?
Lara: How do you suppose it was a threat?
Ira: In the sense that historically change has often been a threat. If there is a change in cultural values, a change you do not hold to, your position or influence, real or imagined, may be diminished. Values you hold may no longer be as respected. So homosexuality can become an enemy of one’s identity group. Leaders of a community may feel their position, status, power threatened by a new norm and may be hostile to a change in the intolerance of new group, which may be gays,
immigrants, a different religion, a minority, etc. Any people you can group together.
Tom: So the leaders of a community feel their status is threatened so they marshal intolerance to the new group to preserve their own power?
Ira: Exactly, and it often isn’t hard to do. Just verbal abuse can do it. Whether it is rational or not, it may model abuse, open the door to aggressive abuse, which is gratifying in itself for many. And produce an out group which is fair game for discrimination.
Tom: And make them scapegoats. Blame everything on them like the Jews in the 1930’s and 40’s.
Ira: That’s right. But are there biological determinants feeding non-acceptance of gays like we concluded there likely were with incest?
Lara: I would think there could be. People have to procreate to survive.
Ira: Yes, and many tribes and clans of people did not survive in the last 100,000 years.
But the curious question remains.
Mark: If there were a biological determinant driving a taboo for homosexuality, why would it be wrong to discriminate against homosexuals?
Ira: Well, Mark, this would be my argument. Sex between siblings can lead to a weakening of the gene pool and extensive deformities and disabilities. But homosexuality in the 21 century will not lead to declining population. If it were ”natural”to discriminate against homosexuality, man is not always at his best when he is natural. That is why we invented civilization to make laws forbidding man’s natural proclivity to kill, steal, pillage, conspire against fellow humans. So it may be argued that sibling sexual relations cause many problems to the species – and people can find others besides siblings for relations. Homosexuals are causing no harm by not having heterosexual relationships and procreating. And, because of sexual orientation, cannot have, are not attracted to heterosexual relations. Okay, we’re running out of time so let’s try to sum up what we have all concluded together. Or if not concluded, what we have put together as a theory of human behavior and an ethical way forward.
Jim: Well, we have suggested that there may be two reasons for the taboo of incestuous relations. One, that there is a detrimental effect to the human gene pool, and causes physical and mental aberrations. So there may be a genetic predisposition for a distaste for marrying your sibling. And in different cultures there is a conscious taboo on it. It is illegal and very socially unacceptable.
Ira: Or if not a genetic predisposition, a developmental phenomena. There is a new science called evolutionary psychology which contends that some parts of our brain
have evolved to adapt to changing demands met by the species. When man invented jelly and mustard, his brain may have evolved to alter his appetite. But it is all very speculative and not really necessary for our discussion.
Christy: So for the homosexuality, it may also be for 2 reasons. Something we were born with – an aversion to homosexuality, or something we learn through culture.
Steve: And also the purely social thing. People wanting to turn people against gays as a way of maintaining or gaining power. The way people turned others against jews and blacks to gain power.
Ira: Very true. like George Wallace, governor of Alabama ceremoniously stood in the doorway blocking the entrance of the first black student to be admitted to the University of Alabama. He was elected 4 times and had millions of devotees. So there we have it.
We have solved the problem. Two reasons for the sibling taboo and 3 for the homosexual discrimination. (social unacceptance / a genetic or developmental revulsion / use as a tool for power)
Ira: Well, next week why don’t you all bring your ideas on what are the most difficult
unsolved problems of our society.
Phil: Then after this course we can all run for Congress.
Ira: Don’t see why not.

Just kidding.

NASA recently held its first public conference on the recent sightings of UFOs. Except they are calling them UAP’s – Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – seemingly to tone down the sensation. But I’m sure the conference will jack up the hopes of the many co-conspirators who desperately want to believe that extraterrestrials from afar have intruded into our biosphere.

I never want to crush anyone’s raison d’etre, but the chances of aliens visiting our solar system is virtually 0.0. (The term ‘virtually’ keeps it scientific and covers me if little purple men call a meeting in Times Square tomorrow.) This is because of The Factor. The Factor keeps aliens from making it to our solar system and always will. But UFO buffs can take heart that my words will have far less reach than alien believers such as William Shattner, Chloe Kardashian, or Katy Perry. And to know you are a part of a grand tradition of sky watchers and alien searchers.

In the 1890’s, with the expanding reach of new telescopes, an Italian astronomer reported seeing a multitude of “canals” on the surface of Mars – in straight lines and parallel to each other. The sighting was repeated around the world and speculation that they were created by an intelligent civilization launched a tumult of sensational news and compulsive Mars watching. Although the the phenomena was soon found to be an optical illusion, the genie was out of the bottle. Like news of a fraudulent presidential election, many couldn’t let go, and doubtlessly some gained by not doing so. The sensation lasted into the 1920’s after decades of no new evidence of life on the red planet.

Later, eyes turned to Venus as the most likely place to find life. It was the most similar to Earth by size and distance from the sun. But as time passed, Venus too became a dead end for alien searchers and researchers. The increasing abilities of science to measure found that “daytime” surface temperatures on the planet went up to 900 F, it had 92 times greater atmospheric pressure than that of Earth on the surface, and clouds of sulphuric acid and methane are constantly swirling through its atmosphere. Oof, I’d rather live in Hoboken.

After this, UFO people didn’t really have anywhere to search for UFOs’ homes. But this hardly mattered. Many UFO groups were satisfied to concentrate on the thousands of reported sightings every year. And their origin? Out there, of course. One group is called The Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It’s founder had a project called the Rapid Mobilization Investigative Teams that were on the ready to quickly get to the site of a UFO landing. Another was a project to protect any and all whistleblowers working for the government, who surely know all about many alien landings, and want to come forward but are fearful.

Then in the 1990’s the first known exoplanets (planets outside of our solar system) were discovered orbiting distance stars. Now UFO fans had an unlimited source for purple people. Solid ground. Not burning stars or crushing neutron stars. It seemed a little more credible to claim that we surely aren’t alone if there are an unlimited number of planets.

Now to return to The Factor. The reason for my obstinate dismissal of visitors from space has to do with the understanding of distance. I may have attained a slight advantage here because from the time l was ten through high school l had a map of the solar system hanging on a wall in my bedroom. And like the words of the Lord’s Prayer
hanging next to it, I remember the words of the paragraph in the corner of the map almost verbatim. In part, it said, ‘An idea of the vastness of space may be better understood if we consider it to scale. If the sun were a globe 30 inches in diameter, the earth would be more than 100 yards away and smaller than the size of a pea. In this same scale the nearest star would be more than 14,000 miles away.

So The Factor – super distance – is what precludes space travel for humans beyond our solar system and for extraterrestrials from intruding on us. Our space craft travel fast. Speeding through the void at 30,000 km/hr, 18,000 mph, or 6 miles per second, they reach Mars in a little over 9 months. This is doable for humans so inclined. But exoplanets are a fur piece. The closest one to Earth is called Proxima B, circling the closest star, in our home galaxy, The Milky Way. It is 4.2 light years from Earth. I told my friend Chat the speed and distance, and he calculated the time it would take for a brand new US spacecraft to reach it.

Chat told me it was 152,287 years. 150 thousand years!!!! One way!! Imagine how daunting just planning for the provisions would be. OK, 290 billion beef jerky sticks.  Check.  870 billion chicken bouillon cubes.  Check.

For those not yet convinced, there is the Second Factor, the ‘find me’ factor. Imagine you are standing at the center of a circle with a radius of 100 meters. You can’t find your dog Elvis, but you know he is sitting somewhere on the circumference of the circle.
So you take off between the houses and trees to get to the circumference. After running around for 15 minutes you find Elvis. Now imagine you are again at the center, but this time Elvis is on the circumference of a circle with a radius of ten miles. So now to travel completely around the circle you must travel 10 x 2 x pi = 62,8 miles. Now this is quite a walk and Elvis is a bit harder to find, might take weeks  Finally imagine a circle with the radius of the distance from Earth to Proxima B – 4,5 light years. Chat told me this is 23.54 trillion miles. This is how far away Elvis is, damn dog. But now Elvis isn’t located on a circumference this far away. (Which would be a 144 trillion mile walkaround). He is located anywhere on the surface of a sphere around your spot on the Earth – this far away – 23 trillion miles. Good-bye Elvis. And this is just the closest rock to our Earth. So the goal of this little vignette was to help convey that beings from Proxima B, or anywhere else, have but an infinitesimally small percentage of a chance – virtually zero – of finding their way to us here on Earth.

(Addendum. For those of you who are worried that the chance of Proxima B being able to sustain life is pretty much nill, much less than Mars, the second closest exoplanet is only 30% further. So if the 150,000 years we spent going to Proxima was a royal waste of time, we can try for Barnard B which would take 190,000 years. Or third closest Ross B, 425,000 years. We should probably do all 3 on the same trip to save time)

Man is a romantic species. We have always been intrigued by the mysterious and scary – dinosaurs, ghosts, wars, UFO’s , the 9/11 conspiracy theories, the giant geoglyphs of the ancient South American Nazca visible by airplane, and who really built the pyramids. It would be unthinkable for a modern society not to ponder about UFO’s and aliens coming to Earth. We can’t deny the imagination. But neither can we deny science, objective truth, and rational thought. And rational thought, for those who want to embrace it, precludes the possibility, given our understanding of physics, of living things traveling between our solar system and anywhere else in our formidable universe.