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What’s Different about Humans?

Lots of answers to this question but I am focusing on one particular thing. The natural world is a constant struggle of all against all, but this struggle is quite different from the worldwide violence that humans have created.  What is different about natural vs. human struggle?

The struggle for existence in nature can sometimes be very violent, and can (especially for victims of parasites) gruesome. But usually what you see in nature is a struggle that can be called “I will outgrow you” or “I will out-reproduce you” or “I can do better than you” rather than “I will kill you.” Natural selection, the engine of evolution, is not always bloody; it is competition.

Consider a forest. You look all around you, and you see green leaves. If you look closely, and at the right time, you will also see herbivores such as caterpillars. The leaves produce toxins, and the caterpillars tolerate them, resulting in a balance that ends up, by chance rather than by design, allowing both of them to survive and even flourish. This is struggle for existence but not violence. You can feel peace in a forest but not, of course, on a battlefield or the scene of an ISIS terrorist attack.

In contrast, you cannot hear a single day of news without being confronted with violence, sometimes unspeakable violence, all around the world. Humans, perhaps uniquely among all species, have gone far beyond the Darwinian struggle for existence and gone into what can only be described as evil. Humans, unlike other animal species, are not content with simply out-competing another person. In this sense, the religious people might turn out to be right, that humans, alone among species, are fallen.

This essay also appeared on my evolution blog.

Can Any of Us Really Be Safe?

In the previous entry, I wrote about the reservoir of rage in rural Oklahoma against anyone who stands for the teaching of evolution, teaching about global warming or any other environmental issue, or racial equality. And I correctly indicated that this rage is found in only a small percentage of the people.

But a small percentage can ignite a mass wave of hysteria. The examples I cited last time, especially the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, are famous. And even if they do not ignite hysteria, a small number of people can wreak havoc if they have and use guns, which, as I mentioned, the Confederacy of rural Oklahoma certainly does, though they have so far chosen not to use them. And, as any of the numerous recent shootings indicate, all it takes is one person.

Yes, all it takes is one person. My example is the man, Steve Raucci, who carried out 62 acts of vandalism, including terrorist acts (setting explosives on people’s cars and trying to burn down their houses), in Schenectady, NY. Ira Glass tells his story on the “Petty Tyrant” episode of This American Life.  Even  though the police and most of the people who were repeatedly victimized knew who was carrying out these terrorist acts, the police could not even get a warrant, not even to search the man’s office at a public middle school (an office that belonged to the taxpayers), until someone secretly recorded a nearly complete confession from the terrorist. Until that complete confession was placed in evidence, the people who worked at Mt. Pleasant Middle School were helpless, unless they had their own guns, which were not permitted at work. Raucci even had a bomb in his office, ready to use. His gripes were personal, not political or religious; imagine what he would have done if he thought himself an agent of God!

This is why I do not want to openly pursue, other than this blog and on Facebook, the story of the rural Oklahoma armed Confederacy. I will not campaign against it where I live. If any Confederates should decide to take violent action against me, there is virtually nothing I could do to stop them. They could spray-paint my house, or try to burn it down, they could put bombs on my car, and law enforcement would be unable to stop them. (And perhaps, based on my observations, some law enforcement agencies would not try.) Steve Raucci did all of these things to his victims, without law enforcement being able to even investigate him other than to record anecdotal observations. I strongly believe Campus Security officers where I work are doing and will do whatever they can to investigate some instances of crimes already committed against faculty on our campus, but their powers are limited.

So, I have chosen to tell you all about the rural Oklahoma Confederacy and the potential dangers it poses, but I am not going to start any actions against it, even speaking out in public, except in these blog and Facebook outlets. I feel like a Syrian unable to say anything bad about Assad, or a Russian unable to say anything bad about Putin. I merely point out that the same situation exists in America, though it is not enforced by the government as it is in Syria and Russia.

Of course, the NRA would say that I could get lots of guns and have them ready to hand at any time and wherever I am. This is in fact what one NRA spokesman said regarding the Charleston church shootings: if the people in church all had guns, they could have stopped the shooter. He was seriously suggesting that people take their guns to church. I cannot have guns at my workplace, a university. I am certain that our enrollments, already low, would drop disastrously if the Oklahoma state government instituted (as has been proposed) a policy for professors to have firearms in class. Students would, rightly, fear for their safety in such an environment. And as for my home or on my person at other times? I’m not saying whether I am armed or not. But I am certain that such a defense is, or would be, imperfect.

As I wrote before, rural Oklahoma crawls with people who are angry and delusional enough that they could, if they chose, use guns against people who disagree with them about evolution, global warming, environmental issues in general, or racial equality. So far, they have chosen to not do so. And we cannot really protect ourselves against them. The story of Steve Raucci proves this.

I also published this essay on my evolution blog.

The Missionary

I am, at the present time, a science missionary. I teach biology at the college level in rural Oklahoma, which is the hotbed of nearly every anti-science and anti-humane belief you can think of. For example:

• Evolution. All of my colleagues teach about evolution, but I teach the evolution course at our university. Some of my students believe that if you accept evolutionary science, or even if the Earth is old, there is no point in you even believing in God. Therefore, I am considered, by some, to be an agent of Satan.
• Global warming. Senator Jim Inhofe cites the Bible as proving that global warming cannot be occurring. Therefore, to teach about global warming—as I do extensively—is to put oneself on the side of Satan, according to some.
• Environment. I teach about the importance of environmental stewardship, not only to protect nature but to protect the living systems that keep billions of people on Earth alive. This runs slap counter to the fundamentalist Christian belief that Jesus is going to come back and destroy the Earth soon and therefore we should deplete it as quickly as possible.
• Racial equality. In general biology, and in evolution, I teach about the scientific evidence for the equality of human races. Racial inequality is theoretically conceivable, but is not true. But, I now report from personal experience, there are still violent people in rural Oklahoma who believe passionately in the inferiority of non-white races, and these people have guns.

I could teach these things in some part of the world where people already believe them; I could give them evidence that they could use to see that their beliefs in evolution, global warming, environmental issues, and racial equality are fact-based, not just “politically correct.” For example, were I able to speak French, I could teach such things in France, where nearly everyone, except for the (very minority) nationalist party and (the rare) notorious Islamist extremists, everyone would agree with me. But I have chosen to be a missionary, teaching these things in an environment of hostility and, sometimes, violent hatred. We white Americans have subdued Native Americans (all 500 nations of them), demeaned blacks, and now see the trees as just obstructions to the wrecking ball of progress. And in rural Oklahoma, many people passionately believe that these were, and are still, the right things to do.

I experienced this in a direct way on Friday, August 21, 2015. I stopped at a roadside stand in Tushka, Oklahoma, that was selling Confederate flags. Despite the fact that the stars-and-bars has become an almost toxic symbol in most of the United States, it is in fact the flag of rural Oklahoma. I felt I had to tell the vendor that this symbol was offensive to even most Oklahomans. This is when he started yelling at me and telling me that Tushka, Oklahoma, was not part of the United States but was part of the Confederacy “and damn proud of it.” He bragged that his grandfather fought on the Confederate side of the civil war; I said my great-great-grandfather did also, on the Confederate side, and that I respect him but I do not need to celebrate this particular aspect of his legacy. The man further claimed that the Confederate flag was just offensive to Yankees. I informed him that my family’s roots go back six generations in Oklahoma. The very moment I began talking with him, his friend (whom he identified as a prominent citizen of Tushka) called the sheriff. The sheriff’s deputy immediately showed up and started to get out of the car and let me see his gun. He did not point it at me because by then I was already leaving—if he had pointed his gun, it would have been at my back—and I got away. Apparently he did not consider me worth pursuing, although I am sure my license plate number was recorded and, for anything I yet know to the contrary, there may still be a warrant out for me. (By law I am supposed to carry a regular license plate in addition to my specialty plate, which is about wildflowers. I just exchanged the plates, putting my regular plate on, just to minimize the chances that I will be recognized.) I was unarmed and merely stopped to tell the vendor that he was offending many Oklahomans. First Amendment. I was not trying to arouse any violence (as if there was anyone present who might have joined in with me to start a riot had I done so).

I feel, though I cannot prove, that had I been black, law enforcement in that particular place would have tackled me and beat my face into the pavement. This has happened in several places, even places with much less of a Confederate presence than rural Oklahoma.

I also cannot help but wonder if this man paid taxes on the financial transactions so visible in this photo. Of course, if he does not recognize the legitimacy of the United States and Oklahoma governments, why would he?

There are parts, perhaps many parts, of rural Oklahoma that are racist and where racism is supported by law enforcement. These people are a relatively small fraction of the population, but they have guns and they have religious zeal. We all know what even otherwise peaceful people can do when they are high on religion. The Crusaders raped and murdered Constantinople, even though it was (an Orthodox) Christian city; Catholics raped and killed Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre; Protestant Pilgrims burned Pequots alive; Orthodox Serbs tortured and killed Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina; Islamists have tortured and murdered whole Muslim villages. I don’t think we are anywhere near that point yet—I don’t expect any threats in the near future to my personal safety—in rural Oklahoma, but all the elements are there, just waiting for the spark to start the flame. I am a missionary science educator in rural Oklahoma and am aware of the risks that this entails.

I can tell you that this Confederate champion was wildly angry at someone disagreeing with him in public, someone merely saying he was wrong. He was reacting the same way that North Korea, the same week, reacted to anti-communist messages being broadcast by South Korea. In that case, shots were fired across the no-man’s-land border, and, as of this writing, war between North and South Korea has been narrowly averted. Both North Korean and modern Confederate leaders are equally violently opposed to any public criticism, and weapons are ready to hand in both cases. My position as a scientific missionary in Oklahoma is not as dangerous as would be the position of a Christian missionary in North Korea (one of them was actually arrested), but in both cases the hostility against missionaries is the same.

It is not just uneducated people who hold these beliefs. A student wrote a paper for a class taught by one of my colleagues in which the student openly stated that blacks are inferior to whites and ought to be enslaved. People who believe these things generally do not like to think for themselves, and it turns out this paper was plagiarized from a white supremacist website.

Rural Oklahoma crawls with people who are angry and delusional enough that they could, if they chose, use guns against people who disagree with them about evolution, global warming, environmental issues in general, or racial equality. So far, they have chosen to not do so. But this is their choice. I’m not sure I can trust them to keep making the same choice indefinitely into the future.

I also published this essay on my evolution blog.

The Ferguson Asymmetry

The one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, a black man, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, was understandably marked by black protests. While most protestors were peaceful, the protests did occasionally get out of hand, as when on the fourth night of the protests some of them formed a human chain that blocked Interstate 70.

But this is what they did not do: no black protesters showed up with assault weapons in order to help to maintain peace and order, or to keep whites from harming them.

However, on that fourth night, five white men showed up at the protest with assault weapons. They did not use them, but they kept them ready to hand. The police kept them under surveillance but did nothing to keep them from being ready to, within less than a second, begin opening fire, had they decided to do so. The white men were members of an organization called Oath Keepers. In the words of its founder, Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers should “go armed, at all times, as free men and women, and be ready to do sudden battle, anywhere, anytime, with utter recklessness.”

It seems obvious to most of us that this act was intended to antagonize not just all blacks but all Americans who do not share the wild-west mentality. Notice that Rhodes did not say, be ready to do battle if it should become necessary after deliberation, but “to do sudden battle,” and not to use firearms in any kind of careful or measured capacity but to do it “with utter recklessness.” Recklessness means something that is done without any reckoning or forethought. The whole purpose of the organization is to be ready to explode into terrorist shooting sprees whenever, in one member’s opinion, some line of intolerability has been crossed. I think this organization is just one step away from being a terrorist army. I say this not because they have assault weapons but because of their emphasis on sudden and reckless use of them.

What do you suppose would have happened if black men had shown up with assault weapons? Even if they made no move to use them? Even if they just stood silently and grimly around like the white men did? Would the mostly-white police have simply stood by? This seems unlikely, given that in recent weeks white police officers have pushed black men down and repeatedly beat their heads into the pavement in response to traffic violations.

It appears, from this incident, that gun-rights advocates defend the right of white males to carry assault weapons in public and proclaim a thinly veiled threat to use them.

Religion and Good Ideas

Once again I am writing about a book years after it was published. Steven Johnson is one of those thinkers who can apply concepts across many different fields of thought. Perhaps the best example of this is his book Where Good Ideas Come From.

He contrasts the creativity of liquids as opposed to gases and solids. Stay with me on the development of this idea. Consider the origin of life, which occurred in water on Earth and probably must occur in liquids anywhere in the universe. In gases, molecules bounce off of one another chaotically, causing each new association to instantly fall apart; and in solids, the molecules do not move relative to one another and form new associations. Only in liquids can new associations form and last long enough to prosper. Johnson says that the same thing is true of ideas. New ideas cannot readily form in societies with rigid structures of thought. Nor can they persist, even if they form, under chaotic conditions. The chaotic conditions of thought that came immediately to my mind when I read Johnson’s ideas were the kinds of random “creativity” found in the early to middle twentieth century: the random music of composers such as John Cage and the more general randomness of Dadaism. Not much has come from these ideas. I’ve talked with people whose minds bounce from one idea to another: just when they have an insight that I think might yield fruit, they have moved on so that I cannot even talk with them about their own good ideas. Life, and good ideas, cannot form in either rocks or nebulae. (Johnson had many memorable phrases, but I think I made that one up myself.)

You can, of course, guess where I am going with this. Solid, rocklike thought cannot create new insights or solve problems. Perhaps the premier example of this is religion. When you force your thinking to be built upon a solid rock, which most religions insist you must do, you cannot solve problems. This is how religion kills creativity. Religious leaders, furthermore, offer chaos as the only alternative to their rock-hard religions. If you disbelieve what they say, then you might as well just live in an “Eat, drink, for tomorrow we die” mentality—this is what Paul said, and what religious leaders since him have said. Either you should believe everything the preacher says, or you might as well go on a crazy binge of rape and pillage, they imply. But gas is not the only alternative to rock. There is the liquid alternative, which has just the right amount of stability. Formal religion says that its truths are unvarying; stereotyped liberalism says that there is no truth. (I actually do not know any people who are of this kind of liberal.) A liquid way of thinking allows new ideas to form, and the ones that are closer to truth can persist, while the ones that do not work can be washed away.

Sometimes circumstances force rocklike religion to dissolve a little. The Black Death shook up the power of the Catholic Church, opening the minds of many Europeans to various reformation movements, as well as to the Renaissance and the beginning of science. The official doctrines of the Catholic Church are not, in fact, the same as they were in 1350 or 1600, even though it took centuries for them to finally admit Galileo was right. Today, a similar dissolution may be going on with regard to gay rights (a subject to which I have not given enough thought to have any intelligent opinions). There is not necessarily a point in time when everyone admits the error of their previous rocklike thinking; but after a while they come to accept new realities. Racism has declined slowly among conservatives. Could even George Wallace say that he stopped being a racist on such-and-such a particular date? People may never actually admit the error of previously unassailable beliefs; they may simply ignore them after a while.

Fundamentalism is not just the rocklike perpetuation of old ideas. Fundamentalists invent new ideas, then ossify them. For example, prior to Oral Roberts, there was no doctrine about the special quasi-divine status of Oral Roberts. But he turned this idea into rock, and even in death he still has followers who accept this status. A more liquid way of thinking not only allows new ideas to form but can allow followers of charismatic religious leaders to recognize the artificiality of the rock to which they had once anchored.

I also posted this essay on my other blog, Honest Ab.

Is Human Nature Racist?

Human nature is not innately racist. It is human nature to feel empathy for and behave altruistically toward those in your group, but not necessarily toward those outside your group. Through most of human history, human groups were confined within human races. Kids were raised to be racists because other races were outsiders.

But when kids of different races grow up together, they do not express racial hatred unless their parents or other members of society educate them to do so. Rogers and Hammerstein said in South Pacific something like, You have to be carefully taught to hate, before you are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate…

One of the best places to see this is where I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa was the scene of one of the worst racial incidents in American history, when in 1921 white racists burned down “Black Wall Street” which was one of the most affluent black business centers in the country (see also here). All that remains today are some metal placards in the sidewalks that indicate which black businesses were burned down. Reportedly, whites flew airplanes over the black Greenwood section of town and threw incendiary material onto the buildings. I interpret this as an act of war by white Americans against black Americans.

In the first photo, visitors from France were with us.

And yet today you can find white and black children playing together all over town. Not quite everywhere, but certainly in my neighborhood. In the intervening 92 years, racism has been largely unlearned in Tulsa. Problems remain, of course; last year a white police officer drove to the home of a black man and shot him. It has taken a long time—interracial marriage (“miscegenation”) was illegal in some states until 1967—but the progress has been astonishing. (The miscegenation laws were aimed at blacks and whites, apparently not at GIs bringing home Asian wives.)

These and other events make me suspect that there might be, among the many and diverse elements of human nature, an anti-racist sentiment floating around. It might be simply one aspect of the emotion of love. I do not know what it is. But it came seemingly out of nowhere into the mind and heart of an eleven-year-old boy who should have, by nature and nurture, been racist. If this anti-racist element indeed exists in human nature, we should embrace it and celebrate it.