Rethinking the War on Drugs in the Age of Opioid Addicted Europeans

I don't see racism everywhere I look. In my view, most issues are far too complex for "race" to serve as a dominant explanatory factor.

That said, it's rather stunning to see the recent tsunami of news articles (like this one recent news piece from NPR) taking the position that as people of European descent become an ever bigger percentage of drug addicts, throwing their asses in jail is no longer trendy as a first-choice paradigm for addressing the problem. Almost overnight, in this age of opioid addiction, compassionate treatment has become "common sense."

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The Importance of Reaching Out to One’s Perceived Enemies

Everyone out there has good stories and lessons to share. It is my faith that it is one of our highest duties as human beings to reach out to connect with other human beings to identify and share those treasures within each other without exception and without judgment. Sometimes it's not easy and it takes some deep breathing to get past crusty exteriors of ourselves and others.

Over the past year I've reached out to have coffee with several local FB Friends who had bristled at my political views (and vice versa). In each case, over a couple hours of conversation we found common concerns and common dreams along with that willingness to connect. Later this week I'm going to join one of those men for coffee again. Aside from his staunch views that many would consider gun-loving libertarian/conservative, he is also a dog lover, brought almost to tears by the thought of dogs who suffer. He is also a dedicated family man, a cancer survivor and a man who, many years ago, pulled himself up (with unfathomable hard work) from a place that would seem to most of us to be an impossibility.

Over the past couple of months, I also reached out to a woman who (I'm certain) gets indigestion when I speak of things like single payor health care. She is a dedicated nurse who, over several decades, worked her way through a dozen challenges that might have crushed many of us. She generously gave me the gift of hours on the phone, during which she invited me to lean hard on her to help me process a situation that felt like an emotional bludgeoning. [More . . . ]

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Gaslighting Checklist and Tutorial

Is someone gaslighting you? Here's a basic definition:

Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think.
Here is a handy checklist.

How can you combat gaslighting as a journalist? Mary Louise Kelly did a great job in her interview of Mike Pompeo recently. Here's a bit of that interview.

In the 1950's, social psychologist Soloman Asch did some experiments that showed how powerful it is to be gaslit (or at least something that seems similar to gaslighting) even when it involved strangers with no emotional connection in a laboratory setting.

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Stinky Farts, Stinky Thoughts

The impeachment hearings offer daily fodder to those who struggle to understand how the human mind works. Many people keep expressing frustration about the lies being told by the politicians. That raises the question: Did the brain evolve as a truth-seeking organ? What if the brain's main function is survival, not truth? What if the brain's main function centers on the "Four F's": Feeding, Fleeing, Fighting and Reproduction?  What if Truth is only a fragile, occasional, happenstance by-product of the brain's main evolved function?

That brought this Scientific American article front and center: "Did Humans Evolve to See Things as They Really Are? Do we perceive reality as it is?" Here's an excerpt:

One of the deepest problems in epistemology is how we know the nature of reality. Over the millennia philosophers have offered many theories, from solipsism (only one's mind is known to exist) to the theory that natural selection shaped our senses to give us an accurate, or verdical, model of the world. Now a new theory . . . is garnering attention . . . Grounded in evolutionary psychology, it is called the interface theory of perception (ITP) and argues that percepts act as a species-specific user interface that directs behavior toward survival and reproduction, not truth.

Lindsey Graham is now taking the position that the Impeachment is improper because not actual crimes were committed. The Democrats then carted out Graham's 1999 video where he said the opposite.  Every human being watching this drama unfold knows all of the following with a certainty:

  1. Graham meant what he said in 1999.
  2. Graham means the opposite today.
  3. Graham won't have much trouble doing some mental gymnastics to justify both positions.
  4. If a Democrat is impeached in the near future, Graham will revert to his 1999 position.

How is it possible for Graham to justify these diametrically opposite positions? The function of the human brain is well beyond my understanding, of course.  At this time, I would simply point out that one's own farts smell OK, whereas the farts of others are unpleasant. There's actually some science on why our own farts smell OK. I would simply extrapolate: Both our farts and our own dysfunctional thoughts get free passes.  Why?  Because they are our farts and our thoughts, not those of others.  And where our entire tribe farts, that's OK too, because it's our tribe and not some other tribe. Our crappy thoughts constitute our theories, meaning that the confirmation bias kicks in like a powerful optical illusion to help us ignore conflicting evidence.

Hypocrisy is an ancient problem, of course.  It goes back at least to biblical times:

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; ... You hypocrite! First, remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye.

This hypocrisy continues to modern times:

Morality is difficult. As [psychologist Johnathan] Haidt writes on his website, "It binds people together into teams that seek victory, not truth. It closes hearts and minds to opponents even as it makes cooperation and decency possible within groups. . . . Morality binds and blinds. The metaphor [Haidt] uses to describe this idea is that we are 90 percent chimp 10 percent bee. That is to say, though we are inherently selfish, human nature is also about being what he terms "groupish."

The hypocrisy we are witnessing might be a little less distressing to the extent that we can accept the fact that the brain did not evolve for truth, but rather for assimilating resources to assist survival, utilizing the power of one's tribe whenever useful. If we can wrap our heads around this scary fact that the brain is much more geared for social power than truth, the impeachment hearings are nothing extraordinary. These hearings are merely more episodes of watching people gathered in tribes fighting for evolutionary fitness.

That said, this is an enormous and distressing price to pay in exchange for understanding.  But maybe it's . . . . true.   Maybe those moments where human minds transcend daily survival pressures to seek consistent principled truth are extraordinarily precious moments that need to be noted and celebrated.  Maybe we will never have a society based on truthful principles unless we work hard together.

Nietzsche pointed that being able to see truthfully is a moral issue. He wrote that one is truthful only to the degree that one is courageous. Maybe those fragility of those moments where people work hard and self-critically to embrace truth should remind us to appreciate what we have when politicians show the moral courage to act on principle.

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On Fragility of Memory and on Picking Friends

From "The Reality of Illusory Memories," by Elizabeth Loftus, et al (1995).

The fragility of memory in real-life settings has been simulated in the interference studies of the last two decades. In these studies, subjects first witness a complex event such as a simulated violent crime or an automobile accident. Sometime later, half of the subjects receive misleading information about the event, while the other half do not. . . . With a little help from misinformation, subjects have recalled seeing stop signs when they were actually yield signs, hammers when they were actually screwdrivers, and curly-haired culprits when they actually had straight hair. Subjects have also recalled nonexistent items such as broken glass, tape recorders, and even something as large and conspicuous as a barn in a scene that contained no buildings at all.

These finding are critically important, both on a cultural scale and in our individual lives. This is why it is so important to choose friends who will challenge us and question not only our assumptions but also our perceptions, our FACTS. Our memories become sick and dysfunctional to the extent that we spend time with people who want to bask in the cozy warmth of agreeableness, who crave loyal tribal friendship more than truth. We need friends who (lovingly) challenge us when we most want them to agree with us.

Next time you crave someone to agree with you on politics, religion or your belief that someone has treated you unfairly, choose your audience wisely. Don't choose a friend who simply wants to make you feel happy and supported. Choose friends who will put you under the spotlight.

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