Sore Points

I’m usually sympathetic to police, they have a hard job, but sometimes police can be assholes.

In this situation, the cop should have stayed in his car. Instead, Detective Snowbawl lost his cool… and, made an ass of himself, and the whole situation worse than it needed to be.

But lets be clear, there were not a lot of neurons firing on this particular street corner, as you can see, with the idiots who were taunting and throwing snowballs…. at a man with a gun. That’s just begging for a Darwin award.

Fortunately someone called 911…. and someone else got this on tape.

Unfortunately I don’t think this will end very well for poor Detective Snowbawl’s career.
It could have been worse though… much worse for all concerned. People are dumb.

Cops have a tough job, but getting arrested is no fun either. Recently author Peter Watts got arrested at the Canadian border by American Customs Officers. Its hard to know exactly what happened…

Did the officers overreact? Maybe they did. But by his own admission, in this star article, he did all the wrong things.

You have to remember when dealing with Police, that they don’t know what a wonderful person you are, and Cops often have to make life and death decisions in a heartbeat.

What did Watts do wrong?

He got out of his car.
He began questioning the officers.
He refused to get back into his car when told to do so.
He continued his questions.

All of these actions will be seen by a police officer as highly aggressive. What he did would get you arrested pretty much anywhere.

If the police mistreat you, you have a right to complain and sue their asses, but there is plenty of time to sue and complain, AFTERWARDS.

When dealing with police, don’t make sudden moves, don’t do anything until they ask, and if they tell you to do something, this not the time for rational debate,(let alone taunts and snowballs) you could die.

People are dumb.

My photoshop skillz aside (and actually this was done in MSPaint, can you tell?) the men who dress as women are the heroes of this story. (With apologies, to the beautiful women of Iran for this grotesque image.)

As a political statement, you can’t get much better than this:

“We Iranian men are late doing this,” Dabashi said. “If we did this when rusari was forced on those among our sisters who did not wish to wear it 30 years ago, we would have perhaps not been here today.”

While I’m normally quite willing to pontificate, I think that says it all.

Some of my friends have been talking about tolerance and respect of religion. They asked myself and others to comment, but since I incline towards the long-winded, I’ve decided to turn my comment into a blog post, and then just promote in shamelessly.

Facts are facts, atheists in America, and many other places aren’t well thought of…

I Would Disapprove if My Child Wanted to Marry a Member of This Group
Atheist 47.6

In this particular study, Atheists did worse than any other group. The common wisdom being that without a fear of gods, or god given example, atheists lack a moral center, and are distinctly different, in a bad way, from people who believe.

But one of my friends asks the question of other atheists:

Have some of us [atheists] brought it upon ourselves?

The argument goes like this, many, or at least some atheists are condescending and arrogant towards religious people and their beliefs. Atheists enjoy mocking religion, and it is this that causes people to view atheists in a bad light.

To some degree, I think this may be true. Minorities often react defensively, and with the ‘New Atheism’ of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris et al… one could without too much trouble draw a connection between activist atheists and a negative reaction from the religious.

But, correlation is not causation, and I think a broader view of history shows something a bit different.

When I was younger I worked more than a few temp jobs, one of them landed me in a call-centre where I ended up partnered with a co-worker who was religious. The subject never really came up until after we had settled into a routine of having lunch together. Then one day, after I let it slip:

Why don’t you believe in god?

This wasn’t said with malice, more incredulity. I don’t think my co-worker had ever met an atheist, or anyone who had openly admitted to being one. My response was indeed somewhat condescending. I said: Well, you don’t believe in Santa Claus do you?

My coworker was offended and said as much. And my response to that was simple: I had been asked a question, and I gave an honest answer. This was accepted rather sheepishly by my coworker, but the working relationship slowly degraded after that day.

Looking back, I think its clear, I acted like a jerk. I took this person’s mystification about atheism personally, and reacted with a challenge. There are, in fact, all sorts of reasons I don’t believe, but I picked the one that, at least on one level, implied that religious people were childish.

Now, I still think its a valid analogy about belief, but taken the wrong way, I see why it offends religious people. There are many thoughtful, educated, and mature people who believe in gods.

So when someone asks that question these days, I respond with: why do you believe?

This addresses the problem in multiple ways. It shows a willingness to listen to their point of view, there is no implied condescension, and it gives me a point of reference. I can then use this point of reference to actually communicate, as opposed to lecturing. I don’t believe in gods for many reasons, and people who do believe, also have many differing reasons.

Now, that said, there are times, and have been times, when god-believers have not been so nice. Historically atheists have been persecuted, and killed, for their non-belief, and even the word ‘atheist’ was originally an insult. Certainly, some of the problems atheists have, come from being defensive, and arrogant. But putting all the blame on atheist shoulders, I think is clearly blaming the victim. There is a bit of a vicious circle here, but the tyranny of the majority is not a delusion of the minority. Some religious people are jerks too.

And as a minority, I do think there are times when you have to stand up for yourself, or be trod upon. This is why I value the contribution of the ‘New Atheists’, arrogance and condescension included.

We are competitive tribal creatures. We often, quite naturally, view the world through the lens of ‘us vs. them’. And as social animals, we find strength in groups, and these groups form around leaders. Leaders, are the people who speak loud enough, and plain enough… to be heard, understood, and followed.

So being loud and proud, is not so much about communicating with the ‘others’, but about communicating with people like us, and claiming our place at the table in civilization. Every religion thinks it has the answers, every political movement, and every ideology and philosophy. Claiming you know the way, means you are claiming that others are wrong. Its unavoidable.

And sometimes the strongest arguments, that rally the troops and get things done, are going to offend your neighbours, who strongly disagree. You can’t help but, on occasion, offend each others sensibilities.

Another of my friends addressed the issue of respect and tolerance for religions, by saying its not just about respecting the person, but also respecting their beliefs. The problem I see with this, is that people draw the line in different places about things they are willing to tolerate. And we’re not all going to agree on where that line is, anymore than we’re going to agree about what we believe.

The upshot is, sometimes the things people believe are going to offend you. Sometimes the way they voice their beliefs is going to offend you.

And sometimes, and this may come as a shock, you’re not on their radar, and what they are saying is not about you, directed at you ….or takes your feelings into consideration. And sometimes, you’re going to be a jerk.

So, what other people believe is not all about you, and you need to deal with it, you mofo.

There is a real problem with objectivity.

If you ask a journalist, they will probably tell you that objectivity involves telling both sides of the story. A strange result of this is that journalists will sometimes look long and hard to find any opposing view, even to a ridiculous extreme, just to maintain the appearance of being objective.

If you ask a philosopher, you’d get something more along the lines of: it’s objective, if it is not dependent on mind. The biggest misunderstandings I have seen when people get philosophical, is actually based on this. Ask yourself how you can know anything… without using your mind. Knowing something exists, something existing, are very different.

If you ask a scientist, they’d say objectivity is all about what is testable and repeatable. But tested by whom, and repeated how many times?

On a more basic level, objectivity is about finding truth.

Now, part of defining what is objective, is defining what it is not. A story is subjective when told in the first person, with no outside verification. Subjective is what we experience in our daily life. Seeing life from one point of view, is subjective.

The big problem with subjectivity, is that ‘my’ experiences often contradict ‘your’ experiences.

Psychologists have been saying for years that ‘eye witness’ testimony is ridiculously unreliable, but lawyers still rely heavily on it to ‘prove’ their cases. One of the big changes in recent years has been the use of DNA evidence. It has set more than a few of the wrongfuly accused free. Its not perfect, but science considers it more objective than many other kinds of legal evidence.

With all of these different standards of objectivity, its no wonder people can get confused. A perfect example of this is with religion. Whether its Abraham hearing voices telling him to kill his son, Isaac, or some new age alternative ‘medicine’ that makes ‘you’ feel better, direct subjective experience can be very compelling and convincing, at least, to the person experiencing it.

But, if you have ever been to a magic show, you’ll understand how easy it is for an individual to be completely fooled. Being fooled doesn’t mean you’re stupid. Our brains are imperfect things.

This is why at least attempting to be objective is important if you want to get to the truth of the matter. One of the important parts of being ‘objective’ is emotional distance. If a person is too involved emotionally, they might be too overwhelmed to see what is in front of them, or they may be so focused on the details, that they miss the big picture. Then afterwards, they let their brains incorrectly fill in the parts they missed the first time around.

Intelligent Design is a case in point. Many ID proponents will focus in on the parts of evolution that they don’t understand. This is similar, if the inverse, of what you get with Complimentary and Alternative Medicine. Proponents of CAM use testimonials as evidence, but this is basically just ‘eye-witness’ testimony, which can have emotional impact, but is by its nature very unreliable. Another name for this is anecdotal evidence.

Anecdotal evidence is a personal subjective experience, or series of these experiences, which someone might use, to show that what they are saying is true. If you watch late night tv, you’ll see alot of this in infomercials. It worked for me, so it will work for you.

Science is more thorough and rigorous, because the problem with this sort of evidence, is that people tend to pick and choose the anecdotes that support their argument, and ignore the one’s that contradict it. Advertisers often do this intentionally, but our human brains do this too, and often without us realizing it. Psychics also rely on this tendency of people to forget ‘the misses’ and remember the ‘hits’ when they do a ‘reading’.

So ‘emotions are bad’ for observation. And so those with a mind for science (and medicine) often appear cold and distant… in large part because that is exactly what they are intending to be. Its part of how they do their job. Its not especially comforting to the people who have to deal with them, but its the way to get to the answers we need.

Now it should be noted that while science strives for objectivity, the truly objective is an ideal. Its the goal of science, but science deals with evidence, not truth. We are all, even scientists, limited by our own subjectivity. If there are any objective facts, humans have no real way of knowing what they are.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, and it doesn’t mean all opinions about the world have the same value. Relying on the best evidence we have may not make us feel ‘emotionally’ better, but dealing with the ‘objective’ facts should be the first step. Once we have that understanding, then we can better deal with our emotional needs.

We are indeed emotional beings, we can’t and shouldn’t ignore this. Part of being objective is realizing our own subjective weakness. The reason we need to be objective, is to make our lives better… for us and the one’s we care about.

Last one for Kanye.