Peterson: That's you, man, corrupt right to hell!

Atrocity's opposite points to a solution

Jordan Peterson, the Canadian clinical psychologist and author, has laid out a path to reconciliation for a  very divided world that involves every single one of us.  At a talk he gave at Cambridge University a week ago, a student asked: “I'm wondering what are the things that you look forward to with hope that could bring togetherness?”

That student, and fellow listeners, got an answer worthy of a lifetime of reflection.

Two years ago Cambridge blocked a proposed visit in an outburst of wokeness because he had been photographed standing next to someone wearing a t-shirt with an anti-Islamic slogan. After a campaign to restore free speech to the university by admirers and academics Peterson was able to return and made a deep impression. An academic has reported:

I saw Peterson speak twice on his Cambridge visit. He spoke passionately, at length and without notes, to rapt audiences. He engaged the crowd with care and warmth. His seminars were a model of academic engagement. There was a lively, disputatious and often rigorous battle of ideas that ranged from the neuroscience of perception via William Empson and 17th-century counterpoint to Mesopotamian creation myths.

To answer the student's question, Peterson took a typically complex route to what is a profound answer. He began by recalling that he had spent many years pondering what it was that divided human from human, and, indeed, what compelled a human to commit an atrocity on another human. For this reason he had studied the “Auschwitz phenomenon”, which hangs on this question: What makes an otherwise trusty Auschwitz guard commit atrocities on the arriving prisoners?

Peterson starts to untie the knot:

There's one famous story - I think it was in Man's Search for Meaning [by Viktor Frankl,  a survivor of Auschwitz]. The people who came to the concentration camps were transported in [train] cattle cars, and many of them in the winter froze to death if they were on the outside of the cattle car and or were suffocated if in the middle.

They were separated from their families and there were people of different nationalities and different languages, families all crammed together, so they're as alienated and broken as people could possibly be.

You'd think that'd be enough wouldn't you, but no. You come to the camp and the people in the cars would cheer if they came to a camp that had no chimney [for burning bodies], and so that shows you what joy is like under those conditions.

One of the tricks that the guards used to play in Auschwitz was they get these people after this brutal transport to pick up like a hundred pound [45kg] sack of wet salt and carry it from one side of the compound to the other and back. Those places were small cities; they had 50 000 people in some of the camps, so it was a walk across town after you'd been separated from your family and just about froze to death and were three-quarters dead and had everything stripped away.

Just who the hell did you have to be to then subject that person to work for no other reason than to prolong their suffering? Solzhenitsyn said that when he was in [Russian gulags], at least if he was laying bricks in a wall, at least he had the satisfaction of building something. There was  some tiny iota of meaning in the work, something redemptive in that a crumb that you could feast on in the midst of your starvation.

But whoever came up with this Auschwitz torment figured out how to make work itself counterproductive. Work itself becomes nothing but a means to more suffering, and remember the joke on the outside of the Auschwitz camp - “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work makes you free).

What would I have to be like to do that?

I wanted to think about just what exactly would you have to be like to make that joke, and part of the reason I wanted to figure that out is because I'm a human being and a human being made that joke, and a human being forced that [salt sack] punishment onto someone who was already suffering.

I wanted to figure out what I would have to be like to do that. I thought if I could figure that out then I could figure out what the opposite of that was because maybe such things should be brought to a halt.

That's what we were supposed to remember from the concentration camps which we're continually reminded never to forget.

Well, you do not remember what you cannot understand, and so we think [we] know evil.

People did this. But don't be so sure that those people aren't you.

That's a horrible thing to contemplate but a necessary thing to contemplate, and I would say, also, that if you don't contemplate it you end up placing that great evil somewhere else - in some other person, in some other race, in some other political party.

If it's not part of your own heart, and the fight isn't there, well, you're going to have the fight somewhere.

I thought about that for a long time and what I concluded was that the way out of that is to make better people at the individual level. It's a psychological issue fundamentally, not a sociological issue, not an economic issue - certainly not an economic issue - not a political issue. It is all those things to some degree, but not fundamentally.

There's no political reason to have some suffering person under your dominion carry a sack of wet salt that weighs a hundred pounds from one side of a compound to another.

No, that's you man, corrupt right to hell! And so you think that's pretty terrible - and it is pretty terrible -  but there is one advantage to specifying evil in a very distinctive and precise manner is that when you specify something that precisely you also specify its opposite.

So, if there's evil of that depth, then, at least in principle, there might be the opposite of that, which would be the force that might resist it.

While I was looking into the heart of darkness, the light started to shine through, and I started to understand that you should not lie. That’s a big mistake.

First of all, I’ll tell you one thing - I never saw any of my clinical clients ever get away with anything, ever!

We'd track their misery back to its origination point, and sometimes it was a mistake on their part,  often a moral error which they knew was a moral error when they were committing it but may have forgotten about afterwards. So it became unconscious in some sense, or habitual, or it was a moral error by someone else that they were beholden to: a lie on the part of their mother, father, someone they were tangled up with, someone malevolent.

But, yeah, the pigeons come home to roost, man. How could it be otherwise? You really think you have the capacity to bend the structure of reality without it eventually snapping back and hitting you in the face. How arrogant can you possibly be to think that?

So I came to believe that truth in particular, spoken truth but not only spoken truth, was the antidote to that evil and to that suffering.  

It's more complex than that, but that's something.

I also came to believe that each of us have far more under our dominion in terms of the destiny of the world than we would ever care, to dare, to dread.

I don't know how it works but each of us [makes] decisions between heaven and hell all the time. With every decision. In fact, with every decision, that's a decision up or down, and in some manner the whole collective enterprise is guided by those individual decisions, and it's not washed away in the mix.

Somehow it’s not just your trivial action in the sea of seven billion random actions. We're networked, and our actions echo, and what we do or don't do, or what we do deceitfully has ramifications far beyond what we can immediately see or often are willing to see.

The only more frightening realization than nothing you do matters is the realization that everything you do matters.

[If] you think meaninglessness is terrifying, you try its opposite and you see how terrifying that is.  But [that opposite state] is a holy terror, right, it's a terror that sustains and ennobles, and every single person knows that that is true, knows that you're fleeing from your destiny by avoidance of the necessary responsibility that your conscience calls you towards.

Everyone knows that and we toy with it because we can and we try to avoid it because we test, we're immature and we're bitter often, and it's not surprising because people suffer dreadfully and it's very difficult to suffer dreadfully without becoming bitter but it doesn't help, and all it does is make suffering worse, and it spreads it.

If the suffering is morally objectionable spreading it is hardly going to rectify that.

So I'm optimistic about our possibilities because I think we can do anything we set our minds to. Hopefully, we'll set our minds to the proper things and every single one of you have to make that decision.

Therefore, as Peterson concludes, it's up to each person to create unity when the alternative is division, peace when strife threatens. We can set our hopes on the willingness of each individual person to polish their conscience to be shining bright so as be firm against any temptation to set person against person, group against group. In good faith, we should be looking for the ways and means to unite and resolve conflict ourselves, not blaming the other as the sole cause or seeing that other as the only source of resolution.

A kindred sentiment has been expressed by Russian writer and prisoner of conscience Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote in his The Gulag Archipelago, the account of his time in brutal Siberian prison camps:

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Watch Peterson's talk to the Cambridge Union in full here:

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Calm gives families the base to succeed

In light of Thanksgiving Day just passed, and the rapid approach of year's end, words from a literary gem came to mind. Charles Dickens began his story A Tale of Two Cities, about a turbulent time in French history, the Revolution being the central figure, that led to a comparison with the unrest in Britain arising from rapid industrialisation. Dickens wrote:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. 

Views of the our age are at odds with each other, it's hard to find those who accept the middle ground. This is especially so since the opinion-leaders are absolute in their declarations about how much evil there is abroad in society, and how their exhortations are to be obeyed under pain of social cancellation.

Dickens' words force us to assess where we are at in our lives; to judge our neck of the woods and our place in it; to weigh whether we know what we are about; and, finally, to make a decision about our individual lives that is a both... and... verdict rather than an either... or... one. 

A judgment of the "via media" - the middle path - kind can give us the courage to press on with calm in our heart soul, and in the spirit that Beat poet Gary Snyder advised in his poem For the Children: Stay together/Learn the flowers/Go light. This triple plea has been inspiring this blog for more than a decade. 

It's imperative that the search for meaning is undertaken in a serious manner, rather than letting ourselves be swept along by the various layers of influencers. We should return to the basic guidelines for human conduct, starting with prayer, and next with attention to the family as the primary unit of society, so clearly on display at Thanksgiving. 

Snyder's poem goes like this: 

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us.

the steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together

learn the flowers

go light

From Snyder's 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning volume, Turtle Island.

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Death and riches: the search for meaning

The Succession clan make a point over wealth and death

“I don’t want to die. Save me. I have a family. I’m too young to die.” The man, in his sixties, had end-stage prostate cancer. The doctor, Rosalind Noor, to whom this plea was directed, recalls:

He sat, bolt upright, staring straight ahead, panting for air. [...] I couldn’t shake the fear in his eyes. It sent aftershocks into my soul that led to the questioning of assumed truths and changed the course of my life.

One reading of the man's outburst – he died a matter of minutes later – is that he had no resources to find peace about his approaching death. His focus was fixed on what he had not done in his life, still needed to do, displacing any belief in an afterlife he may have had that would have provided solace.  

In that manner the psychic condition of the cancer patient bears a close resemblance to that of the super-rich, whose "toxic excess" causes them to struggle through life, failing to find peace. 

Clay Cockrell is an American psychotherapist "and my specialism is ultra-high net worth individuals". He reports that for his clients: 

[T]here are the struggles with purpose – the depression that sets in when you feel like you have no reason to get out of bed. Why bother going to work when the business you have built or inherited runs itself without you now? If all your necessities and much more were covered for the rest of your life – you might struggle with a lack of meaning and ambition too. My clients are often bored with life and too many times this leads to their chasing the next high – chemically or otherwise – to fill that void.

The "void" that is death in the minds of some or the absence of  a "ground of being" for others gives rise to the lack of an accurate perspective on life, with this crippling defect laid bare at times of stress.

As a doctor, Noor has had the opportunity to observe that "a nihilistic view of death is not too infrequent nowadays: that death is final and that there is no afterlife".  She reflects on that in this way:

Interestingly, a theory called “Terror Management Theory” posits that those without a belief in the afterlife need to find fulfillment and leave a legacy within their own lifetimes in order to feel a sense of peace about death. However, those who believe in life after death do not have this pressure to reach these markers of success within their lifetimes due to their belief that reward comes in the afterlife.

Her reflections in this direction had a profound effect: "My preconceived ideas about success started to shift, slowly transforming from outward to inward markers of success":

I felt the shift between the two groups described in the “Terror Management Theory”: I no longer found myself wanting my “dream career” at any cost, but instead preferred inner peace and calm. The hoops I needed to jump through to get to my end goals and were no longer glittering markers of success, but black holes through which I had to sell my soul. My goals morphed from climbing to the top of the career ladder at the youngest age possible, to finding satisfaction in the smaller things in life — the way a blossom catches the evening sunshine in spring, a particularly elegant sentence, a small act of kindness.

Noor's studies also connect us to the areas of difficulty that Cockrell is called upon to deal with, as we will see shortly. But first Noor:

There’s a rather interesting finding in Daud Batchelor’s research into the happiness of Islamic nations. According to his Islamic Index of Well-Being, countries and territories that are not necessarily the wealthiest or enjoy the best living conditions were found to be among the happiest. While interesting, this finding should not really be surprising at all because it follows scriptural guidance from all the major world’s faiths — wealth does not and cannot buy happiness. In the words of Ash-Shafi’i, an Islamic legal scholar from the ninth century:

I know that contentment is the core of richness, and I adhered to it, so I never stood at anybody’s door, or begged anyone. Consequently, I became rich without a dirham (a penny), passing by people as if I were a king.

Cockrell, too, has a conclusion that uncouples great wealth from happiness: 

Most of the people I see are much more willing to talk about their sex lives or substance-misuse problems than their bank accounts. Money is seen as dirty and secret. Money is awkward to talk about. Money is wrapped up in guilt, shame, and fear. There is a perception that money can immunise you against mental-health problems when actually, I believe that wealth can make you – and the people closest to you – much more susceptible to them.

I see family situations like those in [the TV series] Succession all the time. People like the series’ lead character, Logan Roy, who came from humble beginnings to create an incredibly successful media empire. His entire life has been focused on his business. However, it is evident that he has failed miserably at raising fully functioning children.

Too many of my clients want to indulge their children so “they never have to suffer what I had to suffer” while growing up. But the result is that they prevent their children from experiencing the very things that made them successful: sacrifice, hard work, overcoming failure and developing resilience. An over-indulged child develops into an entitled adult who has low self-confidence, low self-esteem, and a complete lack of grit.

The wealthy parents I see, often because of their own guilt and shame, are not preparing their children for the challenges of managing their wealth. There is truth in the old adage “shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations”. On numerous occasions the child of a wealthy family has said to me: “We never talked about money. I don’t know how much there is or what I’m supposed to do with it. I don’t know how to take care of it. It’s all so secret and dirty.” 

What could possibly be challenging about being a billionaire, you might ask. Well, what would it be like if you couldn’t trust those close to you? Or if you looked at any new person in your life with deep suspicion? I hear this from my clients all the time: “What do they want from me?”; or “How are they going to manipulate me?”; or “They are probably only friends with me because of my money.”  

And it can be very difficult to watch these individuals struggle with the toxicity of excess, isolation and deep mistrust. Succession is a dramatised version of the world they operate in – it is made for television and part of its purpose is to give audiences the pleasure of watching the wealthy struggle. But for someone who has worked with them, I know that their challenges are real and profound.

Which brings us back to how Rosalind Noor's reflection on death changed her perspective as to the relationship between wealth and the possession of meaning and happiness in our lives, especially when belief in an afterlife is part of the mix. She writes:

Happiness, therefore, rests with being content with what we have — whether that be little or lots, whether we are in good health or bad, or whether our lives are long or tragically short. This contentment is not just for ourselves, but also for our friends and loved ones, as well as for the strangers who touch our lives. Perhaps, then, the root of happiness is knowing that our lives are of a fixed, determined length, and being content with what we have before that time comes.

Belief that reward comes in the afterlife means that our present lives here become a path, with the decisions that we make affecting whether our afterlife is a reward or a punishment. Death comes to be viewed, not the final end of life ... but as a completion of the hardships and duties and a release from the suffocation of this worldly life into the everlasting gardens of paradise.

Death therefore morphs from a nightmare into just a transitionary phase to the afterlife through which we all pass — death is just a moment, after which death is no more. Death becomes powerless. Indeed, d “Terror Management Theory” found that beliefs in the afterlife result in increased self-esteem, reduced anxiety, as well as reduced response to pain. This understanding of death therefore not only makes death more meaningful, but also can make life more pleasant.

Indeed, I increasingly found that happiness was not to be found in the consumerist trappings of our society, but that I was at my happiest when I shifted my goals away from these.

Health of mind and body is an ongoing concern worldwide as we come out of the Covid-19 pandemic, with nations exploring guidelines for work and recreation to achieve optimal satisfaction for citizens. Perhaps a starting point for formulating measures for the future are the compelling words that have meant so much to Rosalind Noor. Imagining ourselves at the end of our life, looking back we gain a perspective on what is meaningful and of eternal value: 

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

John Donne Sonnet X

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Disability's insight into Christian anthropology

Alice Rumble, who says of her debilitating illness, 'You've taught me so much' (Photo source)

 Australian lawyer Alice Rumble has myalgic encephalomyelitis - "It's a brain disease," she tells people. "I'm disabled." It's also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. It forced this woman to abandon her career in law, and threatens her dream of gaining a PhD.

The onset of her disability can be pinned to a fever she experienced when she was 18, which is 16 years ago. In that time, Rumble notes, she has gained what might be termed wisdom. From her new perspective, what had been a wall blocking all her plans has become a window on what is beautiful in herself and in others. 

How Rumble's ordeal relates to Christian anthropology — the study of the characteristics of human nature employing Christian insights, will be explained, but, first, we travel with her along the road of the transformation in her mindset. She captures the material nature of the person as a body, but more than that. In a love letter (edited here), she takes a very absorbing approach to revealing the spiritual features of her experience:     

Dear disabled body,

Thank you for carrying my heart and soul these past 16 years. You've pushed me to become a better, braver person and taught me some of the most important lessons of my life.

It took years for me to understand you and for a long time I was afraid of you. You brought suffering and uncertainty. You were an invisible force that I thought had come to take away who I was — my intellectual capacity, my work ethic, my physical stamina, my social life. 

Fevers, chills and nausea descended. Food randomly wreaked havoc on my guts. My neck became taught with swollen, throbbing lymph nodes. Stabbing pain attacked my joints. Eventually, one of my legs started an involuntary Irish jig. I struggled to walk.

Doctors told me I wasn't going to be able to work or study again. I began to tell my loved ones, trying out the idea. They'd say, "Oh don't say that", as if I was speaking a curse into existence. They were scared too. 

I began to wonder whether I was trying hard enough to "fix" you. The dreaded phrase, "Have you tried..." echoed in my head. I'm sorry I starved you in a quest to find the answer in food. The carnivore diet was a low point. I'm sorry I made you eat beef mince for breakfast. The diarrhoea was a fair response. 

Sometimes Rumble forced regimes of exercise on her body, or acted against what her body was telling her on the advice of medical people who were financially exploiting her vulnerable state. Despite these, her human spirit did not give up and the tally of positives mounted:

Thank you, though, for introducing me to the heroes in the health profession. The ones who don't give up or blame me when their recommendations don't work. The ones who listen, believe and advocate. They work tirelessly to care for us in a health system designed to fix problems, rather than support disabled people. 

You've taught me so much. We've learned how to cook, meditate, knit, garden, navigate bureaucratic systems and care for sick or sad loved ones. You've taught me a kind of empathy that comes from being an "other" — someone who lives in a world not designed for them. I'm so grateful you've helped me meet so many hilarious, creative, supportive and generous disabled people. 

Although we've had to grieve my past self and career plans, you've freed me from the weight of my own expectations about who and what I should be. You've helped me become braver than I ever imagined. I've faced down institutional discrimination while fighting for the disability supports I desperately need. These battles have taught me more about advocacy than law school ever did. 

You've also brought out the best in the people around me. My partner, family, friends and former colleagues have loved and supported me through the upheaval, grief, uncertainty and wild diets. 

Now I've come to accept and appreciate you, I've found the right name to introduce you by. A name that provokes puzzled expressions and sympathetic eyes: Myalgic encephalomyelitis. "It's a brain disease," I explain, and people believe me. 

Maybe it was never about your name. Maybe the world around me accepts us because I finally do. Instead of tentatively suggesting, "They think I might have chronic fatigue syndrome", I now proudly say, "I'm disabled." 

And that is a beautiful thing.

Yours, 

Alice

Readers will shudder at Alice Rumble's words!  How can this young woman be proud because disabled? How can she regard her gruelling experience as "beautiful"?

The answers erupt from what we can know about the human person using our general experience as well as from Christian insight. "Dear disabled body, Thank you for carrying my heart and soul..." and for teaching "some of the most important lessons of my life".

We see clearly from the vantage point of our human nature, that our "heart and soul", the spiritual element of each person, is the "controlling dynamism animating the body". As marvellous as the body is in all its complexity, we see from Rumble's experience that we have the capacity to rise above whatever the body throws at us. Of course, this principle has to be tempered by an acknowledgement that the brain can be affected by external influences, extreme circumstances, or toxic substances that impel a person to do what is irrational. 

But body and soul are a unity in each person. This is expressed this way: The human being can be recognised as either an "embodied soul", or as an “ensouled body". "The essential unity of body and soul constitutes the person in this world of matter, time and space," says Peter Elliott here. Therefore, Rumble is not defined by her disability, by the state of her body. 

The capacity of the soul, which endows the human with intellect, will and conscience, is the focal point of the human dignity Christians seem increasingly to have to fight for on behalf of the vulnerable in this philosophically shallow era. Elliott makes the same point: 

When asked what is the real difference between a Christian anthropology and an atheist or agnostic understanding of the person, a Christian would probably point to belief in the soul. Returning to the Genesis principle of the person created in the image of God, we see this ‘imaging’ above all in the divine life, the ruah, or breath God breathed into the man, Adam (Genesis 2: 7)*. This is the basic scriptural understanding of ‘soul’. Only the human being has received the divine breath. 

The body and soul form a unified person, but each has distinct functions. 

The intellect and will make us radically different to animals, who follow instinct. We also possess a unique capacity to reflect. Reflection indicates not only higher intelligence, but the abiding reality of the soul. I can think about my thoughts. I can be aware of myself as a person. I can be aware of other persons. In my intellect I can evaluate my decisions. I can regret past actions and determine new courses of action. A higher animal can learn to evaluate past actions, avoiding situations etc., but only through trial and error and a limited memory. Yet even the highest primates have no capacity to reflect on themselves or to do what this essay attempts, to reflect on personhood. The ape is not a philosopher. 

However, clearly Rumble has gone deep, she has plumbed the capacities of the human person, appreciating the fact that as well as the material, there are abstract realities which enrich our existence. She identifies bravery, beauty, the ability to be a better person, the love shown her, all of which overpower the evil exhibited in money-making medical practitioners. Of the abstract sphere of the human world, Elliott adds some detail: 

Our intellect recognizes that truth, goodness and beauty are of great value. True or false, right or wrong, good or bad, are categories of concern to most people (**). Our innate seeking after truth perhaps takes its highest form in the moral quest, when we seek ‘the good’, and wish to avoid evil, or at least when we know that we should be making moral choices. This moral sense or capacity is natural to being a person, hence described as the Natural Law. Human persons are moral beings. To be a person is not only to be interested in moral questions, but to be able to make moral decisions. The capacity to choose is free will. (***) The capacity to evaluate and make moral judgements that guide these choices is the human conscience. 

Yet [...] we are imperfect, with a tendency to do what is wrong. This means that we are involved in a constant moral struggle. With St Paul we can say that while we know the good we should do, we often choose what we know we ought not to do (Romans 7: 14-25)****. Christian anthropology remains incomplete until it includes this reality of sin and guilt in our lives. The human person should never be idealised, less so when we still live in the shadow of events that cut the last century in two: genocide, wars, tyrannies, revolutions, slaughter unprecedented in all history.

Nevertheless, the Catholic understanding of the human person remains optimistic. Contrary to what some journalists claim, Catholics do not hold to a pessimistic doctrine of human nature. We do not believe in the ‘total depravity’ or innate corruption of the person, linked to a doctrine of human helplessness or the ‘bondage of the will’. This is the belief of Martin Luther, John Calvin, fundamentalist Christians and some pessimistic modern philosophers. Catholics believe that free will has not been destroyed and corrupted by original sin. A human being still has the capacity to live as the image of the loving Creator. The inherited effects of original sin have certainly weakened human nature and we all need divine grace, but we still retain innate dignity, moral worth and freedom to choose.

The quest for beauty, or striving to make something beautiful, is far more than a pleasure-pain reflex. I may like a certain food because the taste gives me pleasure. I like some music because it makes me relax. I take pride in what I make with my own hands. But there is also something higher at work here, a capacity to seek the Beautiful, a tendency or desire to reach out to the divine, whether in art, literature or music or by appreciating the natural beauty of the created world and universe around us.

The human being’s quest for order, design or symmetry, whether in building a house or planning a garden, also goes far beyond the instinctive repetition of design seen in some insects (such as bees) or animals. We have a sense of participating in a greater Design. We sense a partnership with the ultimate Planner, that we share in the work of creation. This was the mandate given to us in the second Genesis creation account. This reaches a particularly high point when humans understand that their capacity to transmit human life through child bearing is not "reproduction" but "procreation", the mandate given in the first Genesis creation account (Genesis 1:28) *****. Our imaging of God is to be responsible co-creators on this planet. 

It is clear from Rumble's account that she is a free creative agent, driven to make the most of her talents, despite the difficulties. She expresses a great sense of personal identity, and on that foundation can reach out to others to seek support and to help other disabled people. It is very obvious Rumble is more than a disabled body.  

One last point is that of the respect that must be given to each person for the very reason that we have an innate dignity arising from our human capacities, which reflect the nature of God. This quest for respect is an ongoing battle. Elliott describes the situation this way:

The Marxist vision of ‘economic man’ has collapsed, or been transformed into another false anthropology – the person as a consumer in a globalized free market. [...] A selfish individualism emerges, an individualism that tramples on the rights of others and exults in the survival of the fittest and richest. This secularist individualism would reshape the person through genetic engineering and killing the weak and unfit. 

In the face of this challenge, the Catholic understanding of the human person is not individualistic, rather, the person is seen as essentially a social being, created to live with and for others, created for self-giving love. The Gospel of Christ, the virtues, beatitudes and commandments, shape persons who are called to find true fulfilment in self-giving love, in the service of others, first in the family and then in the wider society. In community, Christians are always called to respect the common good.

At the same time, Catholic insistence on the immortal nature and destiny of each human person includes a struggle for his or her rights and duties in society, for justice. This struggle for the ‘truth of the person’ sets the Church on a collision course with the aggressive individualism that dominates much of modern culture, expressed in ideologies based on self-liberation or the absolute right to do as one wishes.   

Alice Rumble has won through to achieve an understanding of her life's meaning and purpose. We can join together to wish her further growth as a person and we can pray for the healing of her body. From her account we can see why some people, having experienced mental or physical trauma, exclaim : "It was the best thing that could've happened to me!" Such a view is comprehensible only in light of Christian anthropology, explicitly recognised or flowing from the innate character of the human person.  

* Genesis 2:7 — "The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." 

** Gaudium et Spes, 15

*** Gaudium et Spes, 17

**** Romans 7:14-25 

***** Genesis 1:28 

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When boys are boys — and know their dignity

Uju Azika at home with her boys, when they were younger. Photo: Natasha Alipour-Faridani (Source)

A while back I read a mother's description of the challenges of raising children, especially boys. She said that when she corrected her daughter, the daughter seemed to react with, "Ahh, so that's the way adults do it", and complied. With her son, the reaction seemed to be, "So what happens if I don't do it that way?" causing battles galore.

Another mother, of three sons, in an article titled "A feminist's guide to raising boys", writes: Me to Joe, our youngest, at some point in 2011: “I don’t like your attitude, young man.” Joe to me: “I love my attitude.”

"Vive la difference" has gone out of vogue these days but in the raising of children it tends to be inescapable. The difference in the characteristics of each sex needs to be recognised, too, for the health of society.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley gave a speech to a group of fellow conservatives at the end of  October, in which he spoke of the signs of distress that males in American society are displaying:

According to the Washington Post:

He said liberals’ “attempt to give us a world beyond men” was part of their larger effort to “deconstruct America”, an endeavor that, according to the senator, includes critical race theory, economic socialism and doing away with the concept of gender altogether.

“The Left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic. They want to define the traditional masculine virtues — things like courage and independence and assertiveness — as a danger to society,” Hawley said.

America’s men are withering as a result, Hawley said. The senator cited a recent Wall Street Journal article that reported men are abandoning higher education in record numbers and lagging behind women. One expert said that if current trends continue, two women will earn a college degree for every man within the next few years.

“Can we be surprised that after years of being told they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games?” the senator remarked.

Hawley called for conservatives to fight the “attack on men” and push for “a revival of strong and healthy manhood in America”.

“We need men to raise up sons and daughters after them, to pass on the great truths of our culture and history, to defend liberty, to share in the work of self-government,” he said. “We need the kind of men who make republics possible. And it is not too much to say that our ability to get that kind of men will determine the success of our long experiment in liberty.”

Reaction to the speech was typically negative in the mainstream media, but some did look beyond Hawley's continuing association with the long-time misogynist, former president Donald Trump, and find points of agreement.

For instance, Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi writes:  

Hawley’s “manhood” speech is easy to ridicule and has been widely mocked. However, it’s important to note that at the heart of it there is a truth that should be not ignored: men, as a whole, are not doing well. There has been a big rise in single men over the last few decades (from about 29% in 1990 to 39% in 2019); this group has fallen behind partnered men in earnings and education. Nearly 60% of students in American colleges and universities are women, and boys in America have been falling behind girls in school since the 1950s.

And while there’s a loneliness epidemic everywhere, loneliness seems to be more likely in men. So are deaths of despair: men are more likely to die of suicide and alcohol abuse than women. Men are the victims of 77% of homicides and commit 90% of them. As Hawley noted, “Many men in [the US] are in crisis, and their ranks are swelling. And that’s not just a crisis for men. It’s a crisis for the republic.”

Mahdawi sees the truth in this last matter, especially, fearing that "loneliness, resentment and poverty" will give rise to fascism, with "weaponized masculinity" becoming part of the armoury of overly ambitious politicians.

She goes on to offer a solution, namely, a wider emotional repertoire:

Men who identify with a traditional masculine ideology, it has been well-established, are worse off than men who don’t: they are less likely to seek psychological help and more likely to feel isolated.   

That brings us to the questions: What are characteristics of traditional masculinity? and What are those of non-traditional masculinity?

Back to the Washington Post, whose report on the Hawley speech offers some context:

While Hawley claims there’s “an attack on manhood,” experts say they’re not challenging masculinity generally, but rather, some of its harmful downsides — stoicism, dominance, aggression — or what has been colloquially referred to as “toxic masculinity”. The American Psychological Association for the first time in 2018 issued guidelines about what it called “traditional masculinity”. Pressuring boys and men to conform to such a “traditional masculinity ideology” can lead to higher rates of suicide, violence and substance abuse, the association warned.

The group defines that ideology as “a particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.”

So far, items identified as part and parcel of traditional masculinity include "stoicism, dominance, aggression", which definitely reflect an extreme state of qualities that might be positively expressed as endurance and protectiveness. The second selection of "anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence” equate what seems to me to be qood qualities and bad. 

Presumably the APA presents "achievement" as a negative when it becomes an unrelenting drive to gain status of some kind;  that "adventure" and "risk" are to be shunned when applied in an anti-social manner, such as dangerous driving, or alcohol and drug consumption, rather than striving to go a step beyond others in sport or science or enterprise-building.

Fredric Rabinowitz, a psychology professor who helped the APA develop the 2018 guidelines, said [the guidelines] were designed to help boys and men lead happier, healthier lives.

“We see that men have higher suicide rates, men have more cardiovascular disease and men are lonelier as they get older,” he told the New York Times. “We’re trying to help men by expanding their emotional repertoire, not trying to take away the strengths that men have.”

That distinction didn’t stop [some] from claiming that the APA was pathologizing masculinity. 

Jared Skillings, the APA’s chief of professional practice, made the distinction in defending the guidelines: “We’re talking about negative traits such as violence or over-competitiveness or being unwilling to admit weakness,” he told USA Today. “Of course masculinity also has positive traits — courage, leadership, protectiveness; the report includes both sides.”

A slew of articles lately have tried to prescribe ways to prevent boys turning into oppressive, self-harming monsters.

From the article cited above,  "A feminist's guide to raising boys", we get the mother's surprise at the degree of "boyness" her sons showed: "[I]t was impossible not to notice how differently they behaved to some of the girls we knew." The mother comes to see that how maleness is displayed is definitely from nature, but also from nurture - and so:

What would I do differently? In the end, all you can do is look very, very hard at yourself sometimes and hope that you catch this stuff – your assumptions and gender biases and all the ducked conversations. Hug your boys a lot and tell them, often, how much you love them. Enjoy being with them.

It would be interesting to learn from Mahdawi what she would say about raising sons if the child she had with her wife this year had been male.

But what stance does a feminist dad take in raising a son?  "How to raise a boy: my mission to bring up a son fit for the 21st century" opens with a portrait of the 4-year-old son fully aware of his maleness:

Where does it come from, I wondered, this kneejerk allegiance that distances little boys from little girls and makes an us-v-them of gender distinctions, right from the get-go? Where does it lead, as those boys become men? These are questions I’ve been wondering about a lot as my son gets older. He’s a friendly, curious kid who adores his older sister but his sense of himself, just now, seems to come across most clearly when he emphasises the contrasts between them. Along with millions of other little boys he will be coming of age during a richly complicated time for young men, and I want to help him get this right.

One of the sources of inspiration this father turned to was Indian-born writer and academic Sonora Jha, who has written the book  How to Raise a Feminist Son (2021). Jha tells him how she raised her son (now in his early 20s) as a single mother:

In all that time, bringing him up, I may have used the word ‘feminism’ about three times. It wasn’t like I woke him up every morning and said: ‘Here are the principles of feminism you will learn today.’ Instead it was allowing him to cry. It was talking about how things may be uneven in the world towards girls.

Raising him here in the US as a young man of colour, he was being called to a certain kind of masculinity. And he didn’t necessarily feel comfortable around that. For me it was an act of compassion towards him to introduce feminism. Not as a theoretical concept but as an everyday guiding principle in the way that we were going to lead our lives.

Somehow, as a society, we’ve come to believe [... that] a boy will be bullied if he is not the bully. We’ve decided that this is how men will win, whether that be jobs, women, leadership. It doesn’t need to be that way.

It’s not just about raising gentle, empathic boys. It’s not just about explaining to those boys that there are certain structures preferable to men and we want to dismantle those structures. It’s about explaining why we want things to be more equitable, because if and when they are, boys will get to be not constantly leaders but also followers, they will get to fail, they will get to spend more time at home [in domestic roles], and they can do all of those things without their very humanity being called upon, without them being told: ‘You are less of a man because of this.’

She convinces her interviewer of the need for one key technique: 

Jha insisted that the only indispensable resource in raising awake-to, alert-to sons was conversation. Little and often.

This element of raising a feminist son by means of conversation is stressed, too, by a second interviewee. She is Uju Asika, the London-based author of a parenting blog, the author of  Bringing Up Race (2021), and the mother of two early-teenage boys. She is a firm advocate of listening to gauge a son's attitudes and experience, and to gather topics for pointed conversations:

A quick chat. When I go into lecture mode I can see them zoning out. Kids have really short attention spans. But in a way I see that as something we can use to our advantage.

When you read the various statistics about boys, male violence, toxic masculinity, all this – it really does start to feel overwhelming, like it’s a crisis point for boys and men. I try to be more hopeful and see it as an opportunity to keep adding to their options. The boys coming into the world now? I hope as they get older they’re going to feel a lot more liberated, as opposed to being fit into the boxes that have existed for generations of men. The main thing is to expand the ideal of what we consider manliness to be.

"More muggings. More incidents of knife crime. I ask my sons: ‘What would you do if you came across this happening? Or, if someone tried to steal your phone, how would you respond?’” She tried to help her sons expand their definition of manliness to include smart submission (“A phone is just property, not relevant, you hand it over”) and verbal instead of physical intervention. Walking away intact from a dangerous situation? Manly. Choosing words over fists? Manly.

Asika said: “It’s one of those tricky, where-do-you-draw-the-line problems, between telling them to stand up for themselves, not be victimised – and at the same time not wanting them to become an actual victim because they stood up for themselves. As a mother the main thing I want is for my sons to be safe. But I do still tell them: ‘Stand up to bullies, stand up against racism, stand up for what you believe in. But does that necessarily have to mean a physical altercation? Does it have to mean fists? Can’t it be with your voice, with your values?’”

 At the end of the day, mine are boy-boys and always have been. They’re still gonna be punching each other on the arm when they’re in their 40s. You do wonder, sometimes, where it comes from.

The direct answer to that query, the spark giving rise to our wonderment at the distinctiveness of the male or female human being from the start of their life, is the nature of God's creation: 

For this reason we cannot neglect giving the necessary attention to the ecology of the human person, that is, to the nature of the human as created.

Pope Francis told participants of the 24th General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life in 2018:

In a holistic view of the person, it is necessary to articulate with ever greater clarity all the concrete connections and differences in which the universal human condition dwells and which involve us, starting from our body. 

Citing his 2015 encyclical Laudato si', Francis continued:

The acceptance of our body as a gift from God is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy an absolute power over creation.

Learning to accept your body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology.

This acceptance of the body also recognizes the differences between persons, he said.

It is therefore necessary to proceed with a careful discernment of the complex fundamental differences of human life: of man and woman, of fatherhood and motherhood, of filiation and fraternity, of sociality and also of all the different ages of life.

Valuing one's own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different.

In a like spiritual setting, the male person has a dignity and vocation distinct from the female person. Male qualities express themselves as a "generous initiative and caretaking of what has been entrusted to him".

But international speaker and author Katrina Zeno sees an even deeper element:

The nature of the male is not to dominate with power or to withdraw into passivity, but to be priest – to offer his body and blood for the sanctification of others.

[Just as] motherhood is knit into the very structure of a woman’s being, [... meaning] that some women are called to biological motherhood, [...] but every woman is called to spiritual motherhood, [...] man – every man without exception – is called to spiritual priesthood.

Priesthood, then, is knit into the very structure of a man’s being. He offers his body and blood so that others can draw closer to God. His life is a sacrificial offering not for material comfort, status, or power, but to purify his family, wife, neighborhood, and workplace of sin and its effects.

That’s a mighty tall order and a very distinctive way to live the masculine language of the body. It’s also painfully counter-cultural in a society that is consumed by affluence and has forgotten the distinctiveness of the ordained priesthood. 

 The masculine vocation is to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, the Great High Priest – to imitate the priestly language of Jesus’ body upon the cross.

But how do men do this if they’re not ordained priests? St. Paul hits the nail on the head in Ephesians 5 where he writes, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. He gave himself up for her to make her holy, purifying her in the bath of water by the power of the word, to present to himself a glorious church, holy and immaculate, without stain or wrinkle or anything of that sort. Husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies.”

Without apology, St. Paul describes the priestly role of the husband to his wife and his domestic church (i.e., his family). Put in everyday language, a man is being priestly when he drags his body and blood out of bed in the morning to pray and then lead his family in prayer. He’s being priestly when his body and blood go to work for the thirty-second year in a row. And he’s being priestly when his “body and blood” resist the temptation to look at pornography or to be unfaithful to his wife (even if she’s his future wife). Priesthood, even spiritual priesthood, is very incarnational. It doesn’t take place in some ultra-spiritual realm, but is expressed through the concrete language of a man’s body.

Every man, without exception, can bring the priestly presence of Christ through his body and blood into the marketplace and political arena to transform society and culture from within.Through the masculine language of their bodies, men can be an alter Christus, another Christ; they can offer their lives to purify the world of sin and its effects and bring others closer to God. 

The spiritual dimension certainly gives the male a role and perspective that precludes the display of any form of self-seeking power but rather elevates the male's life to one of service, a life built on respect for himself - which includes the exercise of a wide emotional repertoire - and a vision of a goal much greater than himself.

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CRT values are an absolute fizzle* without love

The goal of driving out racism is to be applauded, but the principles offered in promoting Critical Race Theory and the marxist methodology pursued in promoting it lay bare the fact it reflects a barren understanding of the root of evil and of the means to eradicate it from the human heart and society as a whole.

The values adherents of the cult of CRT espouse are particularly indicative of the limitations the theory suffers under. Those values of "equity, diversity, and inclusion", join "equality, liberty and fraternity" as touchstones for a secular society that has lost its God-given moral compass as expressed in the Bible, and as embedded in our human nature.What is particularly false, even obnoxious, in the CRT gameplan is the way the "equity, diversity, inclusivity" trio are thrust forward as the moral arbiters of social behaviour such they that must be obeyed without exception. In other words, they are presented as the absolute values that measure the moral standing of society, or groups within society.

The absolutism in much of the argument of the CRT elite is made worse by the methods deployed to ensure adherence. The dictatorship of the many by the few is a sign, first, of the weakness of the principles of the theory - apart from the point that racism is unjust and must be removed from the hearts and minds of citizens, and from all institutions. Secondly, launching dictats at the public is a sign of the promoters' inability to persuade society's members of the rightness of the prescribed steps to eliminate racism.  

Scholar and Catholic bishop in California Robert Barron offers insights into where we must turn for a single moral code that ought to apply to everyone at all times. On this count, he exposes the flaws of the new set of values as to their purported role in reshaping society. He writes: 

For most pundits and social activists, at least in the West, these three values [equity, diversity and inclusivity] function as fundamental norms, self-evident moral truths of absolute value that ought to guide our behavior at both the personal and institutional level.

But this cannot be right. For whatever plays that determining role must be good in itself, valuable in every and any circumstance, incapable of being positioned by a higher value. Neither equity, diversity, nor inclusion enjoy these prerogatives, and this can be shown readily enough. 

Equity is a suspect value, Barron states, when it is made to do what is beyond its capability. He examines it as an element of equality so that equity of outcome, for example, points to the overall degree of social equality. However, it might be a stretch for the new-age moralist to employ this value as a measure of society:

Fostering equality is indeed a high moral value in the measure that all people are identical in dignity and are equally deserving of respect. This ethical intuition is embedded in the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” It is, accordingly, a moral imperative that all people be considered one and the same before the law and provided, as far as possible, parity of opportunity in the educational, economic, and cultural spheres.

But equity in all things? Absolutely not. Many inequalities that obtain within human society—differences in intelligence, creativity, skill, courage, energy, etc.—are naturally given and could be eliminated only through a brutally imposed leveling out. And what follows from these natural inequalities is dramatic inequity in outcome: varying levels of attainment in all arenas of life. To be sure, some of these differences are the result of prejudice and injustice, and when this is the case, strenuous action should be taken to right the wrong. But a blanket imposition of equity in outcome across all of our society would result in a massive violation of justice and would be made possible only by the most totalitarian sort of political arrangement.  

Diversity - the matter of the one and the many, of unity and plurality - has been an issue going back to ancient times:

I believe it is fair to say that, in the last forty years or so, we have massively emphasized the “many” side of this matter, celebrating at every opportunity variety, difference, and creativity, and tending to demonize unity as oppression. God knows that the awful totalitarianisms of the twentieth century provided ample evidence that unity carries a dark side. And multiformity in cultural expression, in personal style, in modes of thinking, in ethnicity, etc. is wonderful and enriching. So the cultivation of diversity is indeed a moral value.

But is it an absolute value? Not at all—and a moment’s reflection makes this plain. When the many is one-sidedly emphasized, we lose any sense of the values and practices that ought to unite us. This is obvious in the stress today on the individual’s right to determine his or her own values and truths, even to the point of dictating one’s own gender and sexuality. This hyper-valorization of diversity effectively imprisons each of us on our own separate islands of self-regard and gives rise to constant bickering. We loudly demand that our decisions be respected and our stances tolerated, but the ties that bind us to one another are gone. 

Inclusivity is examined next. It is defined in the Oxford dictionary as:

The practice or policy of providing equal access to opportunities and resources for people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized, such as those having physical or mental disabilities or belonging to other minority groups.

Bishop Barron turns his scrutiny to where this value fails the test of being absolute: 

Of the three, this is probably the one most treasured in the secular culture of today. At all costs, we are told over and again, we should be inclusive. Once again, there is an obvious moral value to this stance. Every one of us has felt the sting of unjust exclusion, that sense of being on the wrong side of an arbitrary social divide, not permitted to belong to the “in” crowd.

That entire classes of people, indeed entire races and ethnic groups, have suffered this indignity is beyond question. Hence the summons to include rather than to exclude, to build bridges rather than walls, is entirely understandable and morally laudable.

Nevertheless, inclusion cannot be an absolute value and good. We might first draw attention to a conundrum regarding inclusivity. When a person wants to be included, she wants to become part of a group or a society or an economy or a culture that has a particular form.

For example, an immigrant who longs to be welcomed to America wants to participate in an altogether distinctive political society; when someone wants to be included in the Abraham Lincoln society, he seeks entry into a very circumscribed community. In other words, he or she desires to be included in a collectivity that is, at least to some degree, exclusive! Absolute or universal inclusivity is, in point of fact, operationally a contradiction. 

The universal Church offers a useful case study as to how mistaken are those intent on inclusivity at all costs:   

On the one hand, the Church is meant to reach out to everyone—as is suggested symbolically by the Bernini colonnade outside of St. Peter’s Basilica. Yet, at the same time, the Church is a very definite society, with strict rules, expectations, and internal structures. By its nature, therefore, it excludes certain forms of thought and behavior.

Cardinal Francis George was once asked whether all are welcome in the Church. He responded, “Yes, but on Christ’s terms, not their own.” In a word, there is a healthy and necessary tension between inclusion and exclusion in any rightly ordered community.  

In conclusion, Barron reveals the supreme value that must guide us:

Having shown that none of the three great secular values are in fact of absolute value, are we left in a lurch, forced to accept a kind of moral relativism? No! In point of fact, the supreme value that positions every other value, the unsurpassable moral good in which all subordinate goods participate, can be clearly named.

It is love, which is willing the good of the other as other, which indeed is the very nature and essence of God. Are equity, diversity, and inclusivity valuable? Yes, precisely in the measure that they are expressions of love; no, in the measure that they stand athwart love. To grasp this is of crucial importance in the moral conversation that our society must have. 

It is because we can discern objective facts about human nature and our wellbeing, we can likewise determine what a valid moral system looks like. The deceit and manipulation of social forces, such as social media, makes it clear the CRT mindset renders equity, diversity and inclusivity weak indicators of where the common good lies, with these values more likely to be appreciated when considered as just part of the moral resources available in responding to the systemic and human challenges society faces.

[[[[[[[

*A fizzle occurs when the detonation of a device for creating a nuclear explosion grossly fails to meet its expected yield. The cause for the failure can be linked to improper design, poor construction, or lack of expertise. All countries that have had a nuclear weapons testing program have experienced some fizzles. — Wikipedia 

See also:

CRT: Is sin at the heart of social injustice?

CRT: The Church's teaching on how to reform society 

Absolutes versus the prison of my subjective feelings

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Our food habits reflect our self-respect

A bought breakfast on the way to school. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran.

That food manufacturers sell products that seriously affect the health of consumers is a scandal that demands attention.

An article by a senior journalist, with plenty of experience in dealing with agricultural issues and food safety, hit home to me how processed food has become the plaything of businesses in the same way that the tobacco industry has been pursuing profit while determinedly playing down the serious health consequences of the use of its products. 

With food we are seeing another case of private interests gaining profit while society is left to bear the cost of health care and family upheaval. 

"Diet-related diseases pose a major risk for Covid-19. But the U.S. overlooks them." is the title of the article on this issue that Politico (US Edition) ran last month. The writer is Helena Bottemiller Evich. She uses as examples of countries making efforts to encourage public health, from the British prime minister pushing steps to foster among the public a healthier diet, to Mexico:

Some states in Mexico recently went as far as banning junk food sales to children — on top of the country’s existing taxes on sugary drinks and fast food. Chile was already deep in its own crackdown on unhealthy products, having imposed the first mandatory, national warning labels for foods with high levels of salt, sugar and fat along with a ban on marketing such foods to kids.

In the US, apart from Michelle Obama's campaign, there has been no sustained effort to block the trend of the mounting toll of obesity:

[This is so] even as researchers increasingly recognize that obesity is a disease that is driven not by lack of willpower, but a modern society and food system that’s almost perfectly designed to encourage the overeating of empty calories, along with more stress, less sleep and less daily exercise, setting millions on a path to poor health outcomes that is extremely difficult to break from. 

Marion Nestle, a New York University professor and author of  books on food policy, told Evich:

How do we stop it? With great difficulty and political will. If you’re going to do anything about it, you have to take on the food industry, which no one wants to do.

Evich points out that the narrative cultivated by the food industry is another of the viewpoints propogated by elite groups for their own self-interested purposes, whether to sell newspapers, advertising, or political party. This time it goes like this:

There’s also a deep-seated belief in America that obesity and other diet-related diseases are the result of personal choices and anything the government does to meddle with our diets is an assault on American liberty. That narrative is increasingly being challenged by science. 

Research shows that once someone has obesity, there are almost no dietary or exercise interventions that are successful at reversing the disease over the long term and many people lack access to more aggressive treatments like drugs and bariatric surgery. Humans, it turns out, are largely hardwired to keep weight on once they gain it. 

 The severity of the matter is made clear by these statistics:

More than 42 percent of American adults — about 100 million people — had obesity before the pandemic began, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly three-fourths of American adults are overweight or have obesity. Roughly one in five children now have obesity.

The costs associated with this epidemic, along with diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and cancer, all related to diet, are among the greatest threats to the fiscal future of the United States, not to mention the health, well-being and productivity of millions of people. 

Where America goes, the rest of the world follows. Vietnam, where I live, has seen its the rate of overweight and obese children more than double in the past 10 years. From VnExpress:

By 2020, for every 100 children between the ages of five and 19, 19 are either overweight or obese, a sharp increase compared to the figure of 8.5 in 2010, according to National Institute of Nutrition figures released in April.

The rate of overweight and obese children was 26.8 percent in urban areas, 18.3 percent in rural districts and 6.9 percent in mountainous regions.

The health ministry has set a target of controlling obesity and overweight rates among children under five years at 5 percent in rural areas and 10 percent in urban areas.

Rana Flowers, a representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) in Vietnam, said the nation is facing an overweight and obesity burden. She warned of an increase in the consumption of soft drinks and fast food in schools across urban cities. 

In Vietnam, an increase in spending power has meant parents, often unaware of the likely result, give snacks of processed foods and soda drinks to their children because they are too busy to provide healthy meals. Also, it is true that "fat and healthy" is a pairing that is firmly in the traditional mindset of Vietnamese. 

In the US, says Evich,  Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is the only political leader who expresses concern. She adds:

There’s a bipartisan bill to require Medicare to cover medications and more types of specialists to help treat obesity. The legislation has been introduced repeatedly since 2013, the year the American Medical Association formally recognized obesity as a disease, but has not gotten much traction even as major Covid aid bills have moved through Congress.

Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine physician scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School who is a key advocate for the bill, said the pandemic has sparked much more interest among lawmakers and staff, but it hasn’t yet translated into legislative action.

One of the biggest challenges, she said, is that most people still do not understand obesity is a complex disease, not something that can be blamed on or fixed by personal choices, and it often requires multidisciplinary treatment that many people do not have access to.

“We aren’t taught about obesity,” Stanford said, referring to a lack of education in medical schools. “If doctors don’t understand obesity, why would the general public? Why would policymakers?” 

The minimal action within the government bureaucracy is of this type, as per Evich:

The Food and Drug Administration has been working to update what foods can be labeled as “healthy” since 2018 and has yet to unveil a proposed rule, let alone finalize or enforce one. The agency this month released long-delayed voluntary sodium reduction goals for food-makers to try to nudge them to use less salt in their products over the next two years. The policy, which is voluntary, took the better part of a decade to develop amid some pushback from the food industry. 

The goal is to slowly dial down the sodium used across the American food supply so consumers' palates can adjust to eating less salt over time.

As well as the use of added salt and sugar in processed food, there is the matter of foods becoming less nutritious even as their bulk grows. Crops, too, have higher yields, but the gain is according to weight, not nutrional value.

The Rothamsted Research centre, a leading British non-profit agricultural institute, has used statistics that go back 175 years to show that here has been a profound change in nutritional value of  wheat in particular since the 1960s.

With soil conditions being a stable element, the outcome is major for a world trying to feed itself in a healthy fashion, as well as preventing basic hunger. Scientists at Rothamsted report this:

Wheat is an important source of minerals such as iron, zinc, copper and magnesium in the UK diet. If you look at the data, their concentrations remained stable between 1845 and the mid-1960s, but since then have decreased significantly - which coincided with the introduction of semi-dwarf, high-yielding wheat cultivars. The overall decrease in mineral content of between 20 and 30% is considerable.

One effect which may contribute to the decreased mineral contents of semi-dwarf wheats, and other high yielding modern crops is ‘yield dilution’. During the ‘green revolution’ of the 1960s, these newer wheat varieties were bred that had higher yields – the driver for this was to combat hunger across the rapidly expanding populations in the developing world. These varieties produce bigger and more grains, but that means an increased amount of starch - which dilutes other grain components including minerals.  We have shown that semi-dwarf wheats also contain less minerals even when grown under the same conditions side by side with the old varieties. This demonstrates that is clearly a genetic effect and not due to environmental factors.  

The genetic effect cited here has dramatic implications for the effort to feed the world in a healthy way, given that genetically modified crops of all kinds are grabbing market share all around the world. 

News from Reuters out today:

Brazil Thursday became the first country to allow imports of flour made with genetically modified wheat, though shipments of the new variety developed in Argentina are unlikely anytime soon due to opposition from Brazilian millers and global consumers.

The story gives insight into what is happening in GM agriculture:

The decision may spur a broader global discussion about genetically modified wheat as prices rise and concerns grow that more severe weather could threaten food security. Genetically modified soybeans and corn have long been accepted on global markets, but are primarily fed to livestock rather than humans.

To conclude, Evich points out that the obesity crisis already apparent in many countries is a complex matter:

The problem is driven by so many factors, including poverty and systemic inequality, lack of access to healthy foods, lack of time to cook, overall stress levels, trauma, poor sleep, a lack of access to safe walking paths and parks, to name just a few. 

However, care over our food is important to personal health and it is something we have control over to a large extent. Care in this direction is also important as to the non-wasteful use of a nation's resources through having to increase the public health budget. The population as a whole needs to get busy in demanding political action to push manufacturers to be proactive in  food safety and public health to sustain the common good.

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Metaverse must spur parents into action

Family engagement breaks the digital stranglehold. Photo by August de Richelieu from Pexels 

Parents, please give full attention to the whirlwind surrounding Facebook, the toll levelled at its social media platforms, and its massive new project involving ways to entrap children first, but the rest of us, too, in a civilisation of its own making.

The fact that many leaders in the tech field apply tight restrictions on their own children's use of digital devices gives us one solution to society's difficulties with the whole tech domain.

First, what is going on that impels us to break new ground in parental control within the family. We need to be convinced that the array of digital dangers is large and that protection by way of restriction on device use is essential. 

Facebook's ambition to reconfigure everyone's environment into a proprietary "metaverse" creates a whole new set of dangers on top of the damage, to young people particularly, that its social media platforms already cause, according to Frances Haugen, the former Facebook data engineer and product manager, who produced thousands of company documents to explain her motivation in becoming a whistleblower.  

Within days of the public alarm and the intense interest of legislators aroused by the release of Haugen's Facebook information, Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta, saying it wanted a new name to point to the all-encompassing virtual reality world at the heart of its growth strategy. It was where the future of the internet lay. Commentators said Facebook was trying to distract attention from Haugen by starting a new narrative.

The word metaverse is borrowed from science-fiction, and refers to a future version of the internet which people access using virtual-reality and augmented-reality headsets, rather than via laptops and phones. (Source)

While in the UK and Europe, speaking at conferences and meeting lawmakers, Haugen has been condemning Facebook for launching this massive project while its Facebook and Instagram entities are wreaking havoc.

Instead of putting its profits before the well-being of its users, Facebook must invest in “security” before “metaverse”,  Haugen told a tech summit in Lisbon. The safety of children and protecting the public from false information must be the priorities. Her words:

 Again and again, Facebook chooses to expand into new areas rather than sticking to what it has already done. I find that unacceptable… We must devote more resources to basic security systems.

“Instead of investing to ensure that their platforms are a minimum safe, they are about to (hire) 10,000 engineers” in Europe for the development of the “metaverse”, she added.

 While in Brussels, Haugen gave an interview:

[T]he new focus on the metaverse creates a whole new set of dangers, Haugen said. In Snow Crash, the 1992 sci-fi novel that coined the phrase, “it was a thing that people used to numb themselves when their lives were horrible,” she said.

 “So beyond the fact that these immersive environments are extremely addictive and they encourage people to unplug from the reality we actually live,” she said, “I’m also worried about it on the level of — the metaverse will require us to put many, many more sensors in our homes and our workplaces,” forcing users to relinquish more of their data and their privacy.

 But Haugen said employees of companies that use the metaverse would have little option but to participate in the system or leave their jobs.

“If your employer decides they’re now a metaverse company, you have to give out way more personal data to a company that’s demonstrated that it lies whenever it is in its best interests,” she said.

And she cautioned the public not to expect more transparency.

“They’ve demonstrated with regard to Facebook that they can hide behind a wall. They keep making unforced errors, they keep making things that prioritize their own profits over our safety,” she said.

Haugen told the European Parliament: 

“The choices being made by Facebook’s leadership are a huge problem — for children, for public safety, for democracy — that is why I came forward,” she said. “And let’s be clear: it doesn’t have to be this way.”

She previously worked at other tech companies including Google, Pinterest and Yelp, and was able to compare the way they operate. She said that Twitter, for example, was “substantially more transparent”, accountable and aware of what is on its platform.

When before a UK parliamentary committee Haugen spoke of the urgent need for regulation of Facebook. The Guardian reported her testimony this way:

 [Facebook's] internal culture prioritised profitability over its impact on the wider world, said Haugen, and “there is no will at the top to make sure these systems are run in an adequately safe way”. She added: “Until we bring in a counterweight, these things will be operated for the shareholders’ interest and not the public interest.”

She warned that Instagram, which is owned by Facebook and used by millions of children worldwide, may never be safe for pre-teens.

Amid growing concerns about the impact of Instagram on the mental health and body image of teenagers, Haugen said Facebook’s own research likened the app’s young users to addicts who feel unable to step away from a service that makes them unhappy.

“The last thing they see at night is someone being cruel to them. The first thing they see in the morning is a hateful statement and that is just so much worse.” She claimed the company’s own research found Instagram was more dangerous than other social media such as TikTok and Snapchat because the platform is focused on “social comparison about bodies, about people’s lifestyles, and that’s what ends up being worse for kids”.

She added: “I’m deeply worried it may not be possible to make Instagram safe for a 14-year-old and I sincerely doubt it’s possible to make it safe for a 10-year-old.”

Even without Haugen's evidence, public alarm at the toll of social media has been mounting. But it's becoming increasingly clear how the technology employs algorithms that actually promote addictive use, that encourage division in society by spreading the kind of information that outrages rather than informs. The whole technological world also robs people of personal information.

Parents, step forward. Protect your kids. 

The fact that many leaders in the tech field apply tight restrictions on their own children's use of smartphones and the like seems to have flown under the radar of busy parents, who know the dangers facing their children, who despair at the lack of mutual engagement of family members, who acknowledge the addictive power of devices on their children and themselves, but who do not relish the battles with self-discipline or with complaining youngsters who are battling peer pressure.

Before we turn to some enlightened tech leaders for inspiration, guidance from health leaders might be in order:

In 2019, the World Health Organization released guidelines dictating that children aged 5 and under should have no more than one hour of screen time a day. The guidelines are somewhat similar to advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends children younger than 18 months should avoid screens aside from video chats. (Source)

It says parents of children under 2 should choose "high-quality programming" with educational value and that can be watched with a parent to help kids understand what they're seeing.

A 2020 BusinessInsider article provides useful motivational information;

Our first example is Google CEO Sundar Pichai, whose middle-school-aged son doesn't own a cell phone — and the TV can only be accessed by using special controls. He aims to model the desired behaviour by restricting his own cellphone and computer use. 

Pichai's standards for screen time in the household may stem from his own childhood in Chennai, India. He told Bloomberg that he grew up with little phone access, no computer, and no television.

Second is the old favourite, Steve Jobs: In his household, dinnertime was reserved for face-to-face conversation with his children — meaning no iPads or iPhones in sight. Meal times "provided a space for him to discuss different topics and connect with his kids". 

Apparently the Jobs children hadn't even tried out the iPad after it hit shelves in 2010. He told the writer of a biography: "They haven't used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home."

Third, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and her husband, Google executive Dennis Troper, "want their  children to learn how to ... balance screen-time with other activities".

In 2019, [she] told the Guardian that while she prefers her five children to create 'self-control methods,' there are times when she needs to limit screen-time.

"I have times when I take away all my kids' phones, especially if we're on a family vacation, because I want people to interact with each other," said Wojcicki. "So, I take away their phones and say: 'We're all going to focus on being present today.'"

Wojcicki emphasizes that she wants her children to have a healthy outlook on devices and understand when it is time to take a break from them. 

Fourth is investor and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban, "who set up special routers in his house, allowing him to monitor when his kids are using the internet — and shut down all activities when they go over their set screen-time limits".

Fifth are Snapchat cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel and former Victoria's Secret Angel Miranda Kerr. They limit their [then] 8-year-old's screen time to 1.5 hours per week.

Spiegel himself grew up not watching TV as a kid, and has said it forced him to read, build things, and think for himself. He told the Financial Times that he wants to pass on the same benefits to his daughter.

Though that doesn't necessarily mean he wants to completely cut her off from technology. 

"I think the more interesting conversation to have is really around the quality of that screen time," Spiegel told the Financial Times.

In the past he has advocated for parents to consider reevaluating and limiting their kids' screen time.

Finally, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and tennis icon Serena Williams "say they plan on limiting their daughter's screen time as she gets older". 

Although [their] daughter is only two years old, Ohanian told CNBC that the couple already have a game plan for when their toddler develops a curiosity for all things digital.

"My wife and I both want her to know what it's like to have limits on tech," Ohanian said. "I do look forward to playing video games with her when she's older, but it's really important that she gets time to just be with her thoughts and be with her blocks and be with her toys, so we'll be regulating it pretty heavily."

Restrictions imposed on screentime offer the opportunity for young people to learn how to be warm and engaged and for adults to flourish.

The countercultural aspect of standing against the digital oppression evident in modern life comes clear when that environment is observed by a newcomer. An example is given in the observation offered by Chinese student Habi Zhang and reported here:

She said that when she arrived in Indiana, she was amazed by large homeschooling Catholic families in Indiana where people don’t give their kids cellphones, and where people’s social lives don’t seem driven by technology. She said, “I see true, full humans in those lovely souls.”

[There,] no one is distracted by the “modern life” that is supposed to be inundated with emails, texts, or phone calls; they are effortlessly fully present and engaging each other with full attention. 

Her experience contrasted sharply with what amounted to a shallow shared consumerism she was accustomed to in China. It also confirmed her "conviction that our deepest emotional needs can be satisfied only in genuine human companionship".

From the same reporting, we learn of the views of James Poulos who has a new book out, Human Forever: The Digital Politics of Spiritual War. He foresees the moral attitudes abroad in society enabling political forces that will overwhelm society.

Poulos said that what’s wrong with [civil] institutions is that they are not going to survive in a world in which everyone has a smartphone and plugging it into our brains all the time. “We have to accept the fact that we are cyborgs now,” he said.

He added that it is not clear that most people want to live in a world free from digital devices. Poulos: “The thought that institutions built to rule the world, in a liberal international sense, are able to extend control over those devices is being proven not to be true. Liberal democracy [is not] proving itself capable of controlling these technologies.”

In brief, it's up to parents to take control of what they can to prevent their families being hollowed out by the powerful digital realm. The family is the basic unit of society and its influence can also be powerful. Therefore, it seems true to our situation that the survival of thriving communities is dependent on "the activism that happens in our neighborhoods and homes”.

See also my posts:

Facebook: What parents can and must do 

Facebook evidence calls parents to arms

Ω If you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.