Billionaire "Philanthropy"

Windigo Dark Side

As the major news networks flashed the face of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev across television sets all around me last week I kept asking myself  "How does malevolence emerge in a person?"

I recall having similar thoughts while sitting in a white chair watching the sun reflect off the glossy blades of AstroTurf at Schoellkopf field in Ithaca, NY in May 2005.

Though I did not attend Cornell University I did go to the 2005 commencement. There I witnessed a most intriguing commencement speech. Jeffrey Lehman was president of Cornell for a single academic year (2004-05). In his last public appearance as president he delivered a speech framed almost entirely in the language of Star Wars.

Here is a large portion of Lehman's speech. I'm posting it here hoping my readers will digest it with me over the coming days.

It is clear that "special powers you have." You have the power to do good in the world. You have the power to create the magic that will make our lives better, to make constructive contributions to all humanity. We celebrate you and all that you can accomplish.

But we also know that at this moment you might also be feeling a wee bit anxious. You might be wondering, "What if I fail? What if I don't live up to the expectations that others have for me, or that I hold for myself?"

Think of the Star Wars movies. We know that, just as the Force is strong with you, it was also strong with Anakin Skywalker.

He too had special powers. But he ended up as Darth Vader. How could that have happened?

So let me begin by reassuring you. None of you will become Darth Vader. Really.
But perhaps your anxiety might present itself in a slightly milder form: how can you be sure that you do not go over to the Dark Side?

And here I think that I can be of some service to you. This morning I will take a little bit of poetic license and extend the metaphor of the Dark Side to explore some of life's moral complexities, the traps, if you will, that await you on the other side of graduation. These traps might not be so serious as to put you on the road to becoming Sith Lords, but they might nonetheless make it harder for you to realize your full potential.

Let me begin by discussing what I mean, and what I do not mean, by "the Dark Side."

First, when I speak of the Dark Side I am not talking about anything like unwavering devotion to the cause of evil.  That narrow a view doesn't work even in the world of George Lucas. Lucas takes great care to indicate that, as Anakin Skywalker turns into Darth Vader, he does not believe that he is embracing evil. He believes that the Jedi are the ones who have been corrupted; he is committed only to knowing the truth and to saving the life of someone he loves.

Nor can we say that the difference between the Sith and the Jedi is that one pursues its ends through intolerable means and the other restricts itself to benign means. Each side is equally willing to be violent to promote its cause.

The Dark Side I am interested in is more subtle. Think of it not as evil, but as good people run amok. Yielding to a certain kind of wholly understandable temptation, in a way that ends up being counterproductive for the individual or damaging to the larger community.

In your lives after graduation, what forms might that Dark Side take? How might they tempt you? How can you successfully resist them, so that your lives are maximally successful, fulfilling, and beneficial?

Rather than approaching those questions head-on, I would like to examine them indirectly, as they are refracted through the lens of fiction. To do so, I will make use of two different works by one of the great writers of our time, Thomas Pynchon.

Pynchon came to Cornell to study engineering physics in 1953. He was a talented science student, but he was also good in other subjects, and in his sophomore year he decided to major in English.

Pynchon had some wonderful teachers in the English department, people like M.H. Abrams, Baxter Hathaway, James McConkey, Arthur Mizener, and Walter Slatoff. They recognized his prodigious talent early on. One of them saw the potential in a paper that Pynchon wrote for class, entitled, "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna." The literary journal Epoch was edited by Baxter Hathaway at the time, and he decided to publish "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" in the Spring 1959 issue, just before Pynchon graduated. According to a letter from Pynchon 25 years later, having that story published in Epoch was a major factor in his decision to try to make a living as a writer.

The story concerns a man named Cleanth Siegel who attends a party in Washington, D.C. Siegel finds himself cornered, one at a time, by two different members of an extended, interdependent social group, both of whom regale him with details of their lives, from the petty to the bizarre. As they drone on and on, Siegel feels himself getting fed up with them, and with the entire lot of partygoers. He comes to see himself as a kind of father-confessor to this self-styled group. And then, oddly, he comes to see himself as their savior.

Late in the story, Siegel meets one of the newer, more marginal entrants into the Group, a man named Irving Loon. And Siegel develops a hunch that Loon suffers from a mental illness called Windigo psychosis. A person suffering from Windigo psychosis has a deep identification with the Windigo, a mythical Canadian ice monster that craves human flesh. This identification can often lead the psychotic to become homicidal as well. Pynchon writes, "[I]f this hunch were true, Siegel had the power to work for these parishioners a kind of miracle, to bring them a very tangible salvation."

Now the salvation that Siegel has in mind for them is horrifying. He goes up to Loon and says the word "Windigo," hoping that it might trigger a psychotic break and prompt him to violence. And it works. Loon flips out. While Siegel watches, Loon takes a Browning Automatic Rifle down from the wall, and loads it with ammunition. Siegel casually leaves the party and walks downstairs, whistling as he goes. He hears screams. He shrugs. And as the story ends he hears the first burst of gunfire.

All of us would say that Cleanth Siegel went over to the Dark Side. He would presumably argue that the damage he caused was in some sense necessary to promote a larger good, the overall good of his flock. But this is nothing more than the familiar claim of a fanatic.

Unfortunately, the daily news reminds us that fanatics remain all too present in our world today. In pursuit of what they consider a greater good, they do horrible things. Even murder feels warranted to them, they are so obsessed with achieving their objective.

But in speaking of what I will call the Windigo Dark Side I do not want to limit our attention to this kind of fanaticism. That feels too remote, too distant from our lives. I want to make the challenge more relevant, more difficult, by having the Windigo Dark Side also encompass fanaticism's much milder cousin: tunnel vision.

People afflicted with moral tunnel vision recognize a good, something that carries a positive benefit for the world. They see a path to that good. And they become so committed to pursuing that path that they lose sight of the costs to other values that might be associated with going down that path. These are the kinds of blind spots that can undermine communal life and collective progress.

The temptations of moral tunnel vision are everywhere we look. Think, for example, of the soldiers who, in their efforts to defeat a dangerous enemy, are tempted to slip into torture. Think of the campaign workers who want to help their candidate, and are tempted to caricature the opponent unfairly. Think of the advocates for a cause who are tempted to use tactics that are disproportionate to the goal they champion. Think of the business leaders who are tempted to be stingy about workplace safety in order to improve their price position in a competitive marketplace. Think of the university leaders who are tempted to deform their institutions in hopes of rising in the magazine rankings.

In the world of action you will find that it is surprisingly easy to become convinced of the paramount importance of your cause. It is a short step to see those who oppose you as evil or immoral, or maybe just stupid or naive. And another short step to tell yourself that the harm you inflict on them is necessary to promote a greater good, or might even be, in some way, for their own good.

When you leave Cornell, I know that you will use your Jedi powers to promote noble ends. And I know that most of the time, you will not find it difficult to remain clear-eyed about the relationship between the goals you are pursuing and the means that are appropriate to them. But you should also be prepared to face the temptations of the Windigo Dark Side.

The second Pynchon work that I would like to discuss is his second novel, The Crying of Lot 49, published in 1965. It tells the story of Oedipa Maas and her struggle to make sense of a world in which nothing can be known with certainty.

The book begins when Maas receives a letter informing her that she has been named co-executor of the estate of her ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity. Her efforts to sort out the estate lead her to meet a series of alienated young people, one of whom directs her to attend a play entitled, The Courier's Tragedy. The play feels like a bad imitation of Shakespeare, a senseless mixture of sex, betrayal, torture, and killing. In Pynchon's words, it is "like a Road Runner cartoon in blank verse." Late in the performance, Maas is struck by an obscure reference to "Trystero."

Maas sets off to understand this reference. She traces the evolution of the play's text through different publications, finding many changes associated with the Trystero line, but none that offer any realistic account of why the changes were made. Her odyssey leads her into an increasingly bizarre world. To take just one example, she encounters a man who claims to have built a machine incorporating Maxwell's Demon. Those of you who, like Pynchon, studied physics, know that Maxwell's Demon is an imaginary creature who was invented to get around the second law of thermodynamics. And part of Maas's growing frustration in The Crying of Lot 49 derives from her inability to get the machine to work.

She comes to believe that a conspiracy has created an underground postal system in California, going by the acronym W.A.S.T.E., "We Await Silent Tristero's Empire." As her obsession with the putative conspiracy deepens, Maas finds herself more and more isolated, cut off from her husband, from her psychiatrist, and even from the lawyer she thought was helping her.

Towards the end of the book, Maas is led to an obscure historical source which suggests that Tristero [sic] really existed as a man who, in 1577, set up an underground postal system to challenge the existing postal monopoly in sixteenth century Europe.

And then, just when the reader is tempted to believe that the puzzle has been neatly sorted out, Pynchon shows how W.A.S.T.E. and the entire Tristero postal conspiracy might have been an elaborate hoax, constructed by Inverarity himself in order to torment his ex-girlfriend. But we really cannot be sure. Because this is, after all, a world in which nothing can be known with certainty.

In The Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon has again given us characters who do not feel quite like us. Cleanth Siegel was a fanatic. And Oedipa Maas seems to be a bit too easily drawn into the world of conspiracies.

But in speaking now of what I will call the Tristero Dark Side I again want to broaden our view. Rather than restricting our focus to conspiracy theorists, I would like to define the Tristero Dark Side by reference to a related but more familiar idea, the rush to judgment. This is the temptation to see too quickly a pattern emerging, to infer too soon an organizing principle, and then to become unable to assimilate contrary evidence into your worldview.

After you leave Cornell, you will have the opportunity to take positions of authority and responsibility. In those roles you will be required to act under conditions of uncertainty, to use your best judgment about what is going on when you have little information. These will be wonderful opportunities for you to do good in the world. They will invite you to draw on your very best qualities your compassion, your intelligence, your intuition.

And at these moments you will also have the opportunity to negotiate the temptations of the Tristero Dark Side. It will be surprisingly easy to believe that you know more than you do, to see more order in the universe than is really there, to see less entropy, to see conspiracies where there is only coincidence. It will take hard work to remind yourself of the limits of your own knowledge, to stay receptive to new evidence, to keep an open mind, especially when you feel very real time pressures weighing on your decision.

Think, for example, of the national leaders who must assess the danger posed by other countries. The journalists who must decide how much credence to give an anonymous tip. The labor negotiators who must decide whether to trust the latest representations that management has made to them. In these contexts, people are naturally tempted to connect the dots. It is more satisfying to know the answer than to live with ambiguity. And often it is easiest to have that answer take the form of malevolence, or conspiracy. It is so tempting to rush to judgment.

And yet, you can defeat the temptations of the Windigo Dark Side and the Tristero Dark Side. You do not have to develop moral tunnel vision. You do not have to rush to judgment. I am happy to provide you with five strategies for staying true to your best selves. Think of them, if you will, as the five virtues of a Jedi Master: a love for complexity, a patient spirit, a will to communicate, a sense of humor, and an optimistic heart.

First, a love for complexity. Fanaticism is anchored in the belief that one has discovered The Truth, a master key that explains the world. That same kind of belief can generate both tunnel vision and a rush to judgment.

When you feel yourself developing that kind of certainty that you have access to a master key, push back. Use all of your intellectual and sympathetic powers to seek out multiple perspectives. See the world through your critics' eyes. Feel your adversaries' pain. When it seems as though you've got it all figured out, ask yourself whether Pierce Inverarity might have led you astray, and whether you might be missing something important.

Second, a patient spirit. When the stakes seem highest, it is natural to believe that only swift and decisive action will do. When you feel that impulse, wait. Take a walk around the block. Review in your mind the foreseeable consequences of your decision the outcome you hope for and the collateral damage that might be avoidable. Remember how much you do not know. Then you will be able to act, and to do so in ways that enable you to keep on learning.

Third, a will to communicate. Pynchon's writings are filled with the communicative failures of his protagonists. Characters have insights, but they fail to share them with others in a way that is intelligible, in a way that can be helpful. And those failures make it easy for the Dark Side to move in. In these circumstances your rule of thumb should be that responsibility lies with the speaker. It is up to the person with the insight to find a way to convey it so that the audience understands.

As you assume greater leadership roles, having acquired special learning, knowledge, or expertise, that rule of thumb will become more and more important. It is not enough to have such learning. And it is not enough to bombard your listeners with data. You must come to understand what the linguist George Lakoff has called "frames" the ways in which your listeners structure their perceptions of the world. And you must help them to develop frames that will allow them to appreciate the importance of the learning you have to share.

Fourth, a sense of humor. Humor is the great enemy of the Dark Side, and the most powerful form of humor is self-deprecation. And here Thomas Pynchon has offered us a priceless example.

After graduating from Cornell, Pynchon emerged as one of the great writers of the twentieth century. His five novels have each won wide acclaim. But he decided early on that he would not accept the celebrity that success can bring. He chose instead to do what he could to preserve normalcy in his life by preserving his privacy. In particular, he avoided cameras. He would not allow his photo to be taken. He declined to give interviews.

But then, to the shock and amusement of a literary world that had become somewhat obsessed with finding Thomas Pynchon, along came the January 25, 2004, episode of the television show, The Simpsons.

In that show, Marge Simpson writes her first novel, The Harpooned Heart. Eager to promote sales of the book, the publisher seeks blurbs from Thomas Pynchon and Tom Clancy.

So picture, in your mind, the following scene. Imagine a Simpsons character. A man wearing a paper bag over his head, with a question mark painted on the bag, above the eyes. He's standing in front of a house, near a big neon sign that reads, "Thomas Pynchon's House. Come On In." The Pynchon character makes a call on his cell phone to Marge's publisher.

And here is what the Pynchon character says. (By the way, this really is the voice of Thomas Pynchon):

["Here's your quote. Thomas Pynchon loved this book. Almost as much as he loves cameras." ]

The Pynchon character ends the call and hangs a big sign around his neck that says "Thomas Pynchon," with an arrow pointing at his head, still covered by a paper bag. He starts shouting at passing cars:

["Hey, over here. Have your picture taken with a reclusive author. Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph. But wait! There's more!"]

A self-deprecating sense of humor will take you far indeed, perhaps all the way to the Simpsons.

And finally, an optimistic heart. When we reflect on Anakin's fall, we recognize that the Dark Side's greatest allies are fear and despair. Those are the emotions that fuel tunnel vision and a rush to judgment. To fight them you must arm yourself with realistic optimism. Not Panglossian denial of the problems in our world. But a kind of working faith that, on balance, over the long haul, things will work out, justice will be served, progress will occur, success will be achieved. That kind of attitude seems to be a predicate for most forms of collective achievement. Think of it, if you will, as the spirit that underlies Episode IV: A New Hope.

$4.4 million granted to study "free will"

Free will is an imaginary concept made up by religious people to rationalize other imaginary concepts like heaven and hell and good and evil.

There, may I have the money and get back to a question science can address?

What's that? Not so fast, you say? I first need to pay homage to the Christian philosophers that have continually tried to wriggle their way into relevant dialogue with the help of wealthy philanthropists?

One such source is the John Templeton Foundation. There is an article in the Chronicle Review of Higher Education this week that explores some of Templeton's recently funded projects. The topics are disappointing. Free will, immortality, and evil top the list. All of them being studied from the slanted angle of philosophy rather than science.

Here is Nathan Schneider in a piece titled "The Templeton Effect"

In the past few years, Templeton has been stepping up the number of its six- and seven-figure awards for people in the discipline to study what the foundation calls the "Big Questions." These "Big Questions" are the kinds of out-there topics that make philosophy seem bold and exciting to a college freshman but can feel thoroughly desiccated after a few years in graduate school: free will, the universe, evil, hope, consciousness.

Controversy, though, always follows money, especially when it's Templeton money. Partisans of Richard Dawkins and his fellow New Atheists have long despised the foundation, interpreting its interest in dialogue between science and religion as an attempt to buy undeserved credibility for the latter at the cost of the former. Adds Brian Leiter, "It's clearly more of a windfall for philosophers who have some sort of vague religious angle to what they're doing." Yet he also points out that Mele is an exception. His foregoing work on free will expressed scant interest in the religious implications—which makes it all the more noticeable that his Templeton project has a component devoted to theology.

Read the rest of this article here at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

For me, the problem with Templeton funding is where the foundation is choosing to make these grants - Universities.  By distracting wide-eyed college freshman with a false carrot at the end of a never ending tunnel of philosophy Templeton is doing a disservice to institutions of higher learning.  If the foundation wants to give grants for young people to enter the seminary fine, but I'd prefer they keep their money out of the University. 

Philosophers may argue with me and say that Templeton funding is a boon to their field and that I should not rain on their parade. I call bullshit here. Why do you need funding above and beyond your salary? By accepting money for pseudoscience "experiments" you are hurting your field. If you are taking these huge sums and buying nicer armchairs you are no better than the clergy fluffing their nests with church donations. 

I will grant that not all people who have received some money from Templeton have automatically been turned into faith-pushers. Brian Greene and Tracy Day launched one of the most powerful science expositions in history with a starter grant given in part by Templeton - the World Science Festival.  Though there have been some controversial panels at the World Science Festival these should not overshadow the general awesomeness this festival offers. I have volunteered there three years in a row and it just keeps getting better. I highly recommend it.

Atheist Morality: Ratcheting Forward

By Kristopher Hite 

As a person with no religion and no belief in any gods, it may come as a surprise that I spend considerable time thinking about the best source of moral guidance. Throughout history there have been people who maintain a good reputation, a high quality of life, and provide constant intellectual stimulation to their peers while actively questioning what is right and wrong. Who are these people in present day and what do they have to say?

Dr. Ken Miller is a cell biologist and professor at Brown University. He is famous for defending evolution as a fundamental subject in biology classrooms and has given testimony in several important court cases. The most recent being Kitzmiller v. Dover, PA.  By doing so he has elevated the quality of public education in the United States and helped ensure evolution be taught as a matter of fact.  Through his work he has upheld the establishment clause fo the US constitution and for this I applaud him.

As for moral thought, Dr. Miller has gone on record saying that "science can only take us so far." I was able to ask him to elaborate on this thought last week as part of a Google Hangout On Air moderated by the HuffPostLive host Josh Zepps. I asked him where atheists ought to get their morals and where he gets his. Here was his response.

If, in science, we found an absolute, testable, empirical source of morality then scientists everywhere would agree on all moral questions. The reality is I think our discussions of morality, in other words, what is right and wrong, have to be informed by science. I think we have to be literate in science, even people who are not scientists. But ultimately moral questions require a philosophical point of view in terms of what is the good life? How should we treat each other? What is the value of human life?  Now as a Catholic, I have to confess, I draw a lot of my moral sense from the religious teachings of my faith. But I also would argue that there is a moral sense that is present in everybody. Whether they are a person of faith, whether they are an agnostic, or whether they are an atheist. I completely agree with the idea that one can have an atheistic world-view. And informed by science, and by using logic, and by having a philosophical view on life, you can in fact, develop a moral code which is consistent and which provides the greatest good for the greatest number.

His answers only lead me to more questions. Which philosophical views help provide the greatest good? And what time-scale for good should we choose? If not from science then where do these ideas originate? And how are contemporary atheists doing on developing a moral code?

Fellow blogger, Cara Santa Maria chimed in via the Huffpost discussion informing me that she had recently recorded a pertinent episode of "the Point" a spin-off of the the Young Turks Network. The episode was essentially a panel discussion of exclusively atheists trying to answer the question "where does atheist morality come from?"

As part of the panel discussion, video comments were aired as food-for-thought. To me, the most striking guest was AJ Johnson, Development Director for the American Atheists organization. Here is her comment.

 

Physicist and blogger Sean Carroll responded to her comment with a plea to  atheists to heed her words and to try harder to actively participate in the process of developing an atheist morality. Here is Sean.

AJ Johnson brings up a really important point when she says secularists should "own" their superior morality. I think that we have been on the defensive for a very long time because traditionally the reason why things were "right and wrong" ultimately flowed from God. God was helping us explain what is good, and what is bad. Of course God does not exist. But we haven't, as secularists, really given a good explanation of where our morality comes from. And partly, it's because we don't know. Figuring out how to act in the world without guidance from outside anywhere is a very difficult problem. We say nice things about equality and liberty and things like that. But we don't agree on the underlying philosophy. We don't have the cheap out of saying "well, here's the holy book where its all been written down." We have to think about things. And I think we need to do a better job.

At this point you may say "we can look to evolution and neurobiology for our moral origins. We can see how justice plays out in animals. We can look to cognitive neuroscientists like Josh Greene who can tell us the average response to moral dilemmas in the fMRI scans of human brains. We can use this scientific data to rationalize a fair system for human society. Right?"  Wrong says Sean Carroll.

You do not want to commit the naturalistic fallacy. You do not want to say that because things happen in nature that they are the right things to have happen. We need explain the fundamental reason for saying that some behavior is good, some behavior is bad. I think that evolution helps us explain why we have the predilections we do. And evolution is certainly going to play a crucial role in an ultimate understanding of morality, but it does not GIVE it to us in any simple way. We should be able to do better than that.

If science can not tell us where morality comes from, then what can? As atheists shouldn't we be skeptical of any idea that can not be explained with the scientific method?  I'll give you my answer.  Yes we should be skeptical of pure moral philosophy but that does not mean we should shut our ears to it.  Much can be learned from living people as they have the highest probability of experiencing the same existential questions you have.  The very term "humanist" implies that we ought embrace our peers and draw our ethics from them.  There are currently very powerful  leaders in the atheist community, like it or not.  Though we do not hold these leaders as infallible vessels of an invisible sky-father there is a large collective of minds tuned-in to their thoughts via the internet. 

PZ Myers is one of these leaders. A professor of biology at the University of Minnesota at Morris PZ writes one of the most widely read blogs on the planet.  Being in the right place at the right time, PZ has the unique position of wielding a mighty horde or electronic followers numbering in the hundreds of thousands. When he asks them to do something, they do it en masse. This can be seen any time he asks them to crash some bogus internet poll which they do in throngs.  This kind of klout is not to be taken lightly. Though PZ has been dogged as being odious and even a "shepherd of internet trolls" by thinkers like Sam Harris, in my opinion PZ has made some excellent points lately. I think he has some moral guidance to offer in explaining secular morality more precisely as Sean Carroll has challenged us to do. The following passage penned by PZ  appears in the latest issue of Free Inquiry, titled Atheism’s Third Wave.

Professor and blogger PZ Myer

Science is neutral on moral concerns; it only describes what is, not how it ought to be. And this is true; science is a tool that can be used equally well for curing diseases or building bombs. But scientists are not and should not be morally neutral, nor should scientific organizations or culture be excluded from defining the appropriate uses of science. Science without humanist moral standards leads to Mengele or the Hiroshima bombing or the Tuskegee syphilis experiments.

Similarly, atheism may be value-neutral, but atheists and atheist organizations should not be. Atheism sensu stricto may be a specific assertion about a fact of the universe, but atheism as practiced is a defining idea in a mind and a powerful foundation for a human community. It has meanings and implications that we must heed and use for achieving our goals.

And what should those goals be? Because I’m an atheist and share common cause with every other human being on the planet in desiring to live my one life with equal opportunity, I suggest that atheists ought to fight for equality for all, economic security for all, and universally available health and education services. Peace is the only answer; extinguishing a precious human life ought to be unthinkable in all but the most dire situations of self-defense. Ours should be a movement that welcomes all sexes, races, ages, and abilities and encourages an appreciation of human richness. Atheism ought to be a progressive social movement in addition to being a philosophical and scientific position, because living in a godless universe means something to humanity.

I went to see President Obama speak in Colorado last week. During his speech he echoed this sentiment of equality and inclusiveness. He pointed out that the history of the United States has seen protection under the law and participation in government become more and more inclusive. He described that process as a ratchet in which progress only goes forward. It is my sincere hope that unprecedented personal connectivity can couple to decentralized information and push the ratchet of progress even further. Maybe even so far as to see an open-atheist as a viable candidate for major political office one day.

Thank you for reading. I hope that as a peer you will leave a comment below and tell me where you get your sense of right and wrong so I might share your wisdom.

Origins of Morality

Where do we get morals? Each other.

The Superior Human?