Pinker keeps up attack on dismal academia

 Steven Pinker ... "Follow reason!". Photo by Rose Lincoln / Harvard University (CC by 2.0)   

Steven Pinker's latest book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, contains some useful insider observations on the academic mindset. Though he is a professor at Harvard, he despairs that much of value can come from an environment where independent, critical thinking is held up to be the central value, but where capitulation to what is a fashionable ideology is the norm. 

This blog has given a lot of attention to what comes across from many instances within academia of a blinkered habitus, that is, a practice or disposition often widespread in a shared environment. See here, here and here.

As the Economist reports, in his book, "he deals with today’s attacks on reason from anti-vax conspiracy theorists on the right and social-justice warriors on the left". 

But Pinker is especially unrelenting in the criticism of his peers that he has mounted in previous books. This time he is moved to declare:

Modern universities—oddly enough, given that their mission is to evaluate ideas—have been at the forefront of finding ways to suppress opinions, including disinviting and drowning out speakers, removing controversial teachers from the classroom, revoking offers of jobs and support, expunging contentious articles from archives, and classifying differences of opinion as punishable harassment and discrimination. 

He himself was the victim of an attempt to condemn and block his work, with The Economist reporting "A personal attack [...] last year, with a vicious and shoddy campaign demanding that the Linguistic Society of America cancel him." 

He finds that one of the major causes of this state of affairs is that his peers have rejected the capacity of humans to employ reason, which he referes to as rationality.  

Fashionable academic movements like postmodernism and critical theory (not to be confused with critical thinking) hold that reason, truth, and objectivity are social constructions that justify the privilege of dominant groups. These movements have an air of sophistication about them, implying that Western philosophy and science are provincial, old-fashioned, naïve to the diversity of ways of knowing found across periods and cultures. 

Here is why he calls it a mindset that is "fashionable":

For decades, Hollywood screenplays and rock-song lyrics have equated joy and freedom with an escape from reason. “A man needs a little madness or else he never dares cut the rope and be free,” said Zorba the Greek. "Stop Making Sense," advised Talking Heads; “Let’s go crazy,” adjured the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.  

As for a definition of rationality, Pinker acknowledges the difficulty of being precise, but explains it this way:

A definition that is more or less faithful to the way the word is used is “the ability to use knowledge to attain goals.” Knowledge in turn is standardly defined as “justified true belief.” We would not credit someone with being rational if they acted on beliefs that were known to be false, such as looking for their keys in a place they knew the keys could not be, or if those beliefs could not be justified—if they came, say, from a drug-induced vision or a hallucinated voice rather than observation of the world or inference from some other true belief.

The value of Pinker's Rationality is not that it persuades as to what the truth is but how to to find it. He has the slogan: Follow reason! 

Now, arguments for truth, objectivity, and reason may stick in the craw, because they seem dangerously arrogant: “Who the hell are you to claim to have the absolute truth?” But that’s not what the case for rationality is about. The psychologist David Myers has said that the essence of monotheistic belief is: (1) There is a God and (2) it’s not me (and it’s also not you). The secular equivalent is: (1) There is objective truth and (2) I don’t know it (and neither do you). The same epistemic humility applies to the rationality that leads to truth. Perfect rationality and objective truth are aspirations that no mortal can ever claim to have attained. But the conviction that they are out there licenses us to develop rules we can all abide by that allow us to approach the truth collectively in ways that are impossible for any of us individually. 

For example, using reason, "we reach the moon, invent smartphones, and extinguish smallpox":

The cooperativeness of the world when we apply reason to it is a strong indication that rationality really does get at objective truths. 

The confidence in our capacities, the willingness to employ them in a cooperative spirit for the common good, all of which was recognised over millennia, has now dissipated as various streams of philosophical thought and associated moral myopia unite to engender an ideological view of the world and of human qualities rather than engage in truth-distilling debate.

That is why it is a disappointed Pinker who reports that the institutions of learning that he is most familiar with are severely emaciated through an unwillingness to "follow reason". From a review of Rationality in the  New Statesman:

One of his big themes in recent years has been the decline of free speech in American academia. In Rationality, he complains about “the universities’ suffocating left-wing monoculture, with its punishment of students and professors who question dogmas on gender, race, culture, genetics, colonialism, and sexual identity and orientation”.

That does ring true when we note the uniform character of the clientele at leading universities:

A Harvard Crimson survey of the incoming Harvard Class of 2025 revealed that 87% of the class voted for Joe Biden, compared to 6.7% for Howie Hawkins and 6.3% for Donald Trump. [Source]

And, to digress a little, that statistic offers The Babylon Bee an opportunity to mock the moral superiority felt by those who are carrying the left's banner in the culture war of its own making:

Man Who Agrees With The Media, Universities, Corporations, And Hollywood Thinks He's Part Of The Resistance

The Guardian's reviewer of Rationality points out that Pinker is dedicated to defending reason and objectivity in public discourse:

Since Enlightenment Now came out in early 2018, Pinker has been engaged in almost unceasing conflict with what he considers his many intellectual enemies, who include intellectuals (“intellectuals hate progress”), progressives (“intellectuals who call themselves ‘progressive’ really hate progress”), and universities full of progressive intellectuals (a “suffocating leftwing monoculture”). He has also taken aim at postmodernism (“defiant obscurantism, dogmatic relativism, and suffocating political correctness”)... 

That reviewer provides some evidence that supports Pinker's view of the gaps in orthodox beliefs arising from dubious research:  

Joe Henrich, the chair of evolutionary biology at Harvard, and several of his colleagues [...] have criticised behavioural scientists for routinely publishing “broad claims about human psychology and behaviour” based only on samples from WEIRD societies. [Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic]

However, Pinker himself comes in for criticism for academic misconduct. From the Guardian review:

[...] a recurring theme of the criticisms is that he’s not always careful with the data (“shockingly shoddy”, is how the historians Philip Dwyer and Mark Micale have put it). 

A deeper problem, critics say, is Pinker’s faith in data to reveal the truth. Yes, it would be great to just rely on the data, they argue, but data is interpretive all the way down, shaped by what is collected, how it’s collected and for what purpose. That’s a problem Pinker acknowledges in Enlightenment Now, but never fully reckons with. “When you really dig not only into the facts but into his own sources, it’s fully ideological,” [Nicolas] Guilhot, the intellectual historian, told me.

It may be that Pinker sees himself offering fresh findings to the public in the search for truth, findings that those entrapped by academic orthodoxy would be too afraid of the cultural backlash to present. His response to the allegations he misused data is given here. 

To continue with the Guardian review, an insight into his wish to encounter the diversity of views available is given in these terms:

“Unlike a lot of academics, I actually have conservative and libertarian friends,” he said. “They sometimes ask me, ‘Why should we trust climate science when anyone with an opposing view would be cancelled?’ I disagree about the climate science, but it’s otherwise a good point.”

He went on: “The reason these organisations are so important is that a lot of repression comes from a small number of activists. Even if they’re not a majority view, a radical minority can become a repressive regime.” In Better Angels, he continued, he wrote about this dynamic of the “spiral of silence”, which led to witch-hunts, the Inquisition, the French Revolution, Stalinism and Nazi Germany. He also compared what he sees as the intellectual bankruptcy of woke orthodoxy to the folktale The Emperor’s New Clothes. “It takes a little boy to point it out,” he said.

As well as displaying moral courage, following reason can be a tall order because it is no longer modelled for the younger generation in academic or public discourse. Therefore, as the Economist points out: 

Since Mr Pinker cannot simply argue for reason, fully seven of the book’s 11 chapters instead set out a rationalist’s catechism—a primer of formal logic, probability, causation and so forth. In these passages he justifies reason by showing what it can do, using games and logical puzzles.

Indeed, we do have to learn to think clearly. And we have to keep our emotions in check, while watching where our prejudices lie. Delusion and illusion are part of our reality, and so is sin. The irrationality of the period leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, for example, can be put down largely to the contagion of greed that took hold of the higher echelons of the corporate world. However, Pinker, as an enthusiastic atheist, would probably reject that reading and posit the mere lack of logic.  

That being said, Pinker points out that to be rational takes a moral stance, and he makes the timely argument that the human is a rational being and that by sharing the results of science and the growing wealth of knowledge, everyone will benefit as we arrive at the truth that allows us to better understand ourselves or cope with the various predicaments of our existence here on planet Earth.

From what the reviewers of Rationality demonstrate, he succeeds in that argument. 

However, this post has highlighted Pinker's - and the reviewers' - dismay at the dismal state of thinking in scientific circles, among public intellectuals (of which he is one, of course), and especially among the denizens of academia. What seems to stirs his blood is the use of society's intellectual firepower to merely further an ideological cause with all the manipulation of information that goes with it, rather than to exercise the heretofore celebrated scepticism that made university life so vibrant and public discourse so interesting and productive.

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CRT: Is sin at the heart of social injustice?

My previous post focused on the relationship between social structures and personal responsibility, and the light shed on this matter by Catholic social teaching. Today, we will take on board two responses to Critical Race Theory which offer Catholic insights into the nature of grave social injustices and, therefore, how best to overcome them.

First, an overview by Jesuit priest Andrew Hamilton:

Critical Race Theory itself developed out of a wider discussion among lawyers about the importance of the social context in the interpretation and administration of law. It asked whether legislation was influenced by such factors as the race, wealth, social standing, gender and religion of the legislators, and whether the administration of the law by lawyers, judges and police was influenced by similar factors.

These questions led them further to ask whether such biases prevented those involved and society at large from seeing the prejudice and partiality of their decisions and actions. In other words, whether the system was rigged, and its kings unclothed. And if so, what was the proper response.

CRT is a field of study based in social psychology which has to do with the effects of social relationships on personal attitudes and beliefs, and so on institutions. It is not a set of conclusions but an enquiry in which radical and less radical views on all sides can be stated and questioned. Its focus on race reflects the attention given to racial discrimination in the United States.

The Second Vatican Council committed Catholics to associate concretely with movements for justice and change in the world. In so doing, they found themselves in the company of people who had a similar thirst for justice but located the obstacle to change not in personal sin but on social structures that perpetuated injustice. 

The emphasis on social structures and on a conflictual approach to social reform led Catholics naturally to expand their understanding of sin to account for the destructive, unconscious attitudes of groups enshrined and perpetuated institutionally in economic, legal and policing systems. They spoke of social sin and of sinful structures and emphasised reform through political action. They then faced the challenge to show how this was compatible with the Christian emphasis on personal sin, conversion and reconciliation.

In the Catholic tradition the person, their human dignity and their inner life and values are central in any reflection on their relationships to one another, to institutions and to the world. In all situations human beings are agents and their decisions to act or not to act are of central importance, whether they perpetrate discrimination or suffer from it. Lasting improvement comes only when there is personal conversion, repentance and reconciliation.

This is a laborious process. It accepts the need to change the social structures of law, policing and economic relations that embody discrimination. But it also asks whether such change will be effective or lasting without a change of heart and a meeting of minds, of a respect that goes deeper than condemning our friends’ enemies, supporting a movement, and using right words. 

It suggests that we need to do more than treat either the perpetrators or the victims of discrimination as representatives of a class. We must also enter their lives and their experience in order to understand them. We need to avoid, too, reducing the responsibility of those of us who look on from outside to denouncing those who discriminate and cheering their victims.

Underlying Critical Race Theory and Catholic reflection on social sin is the conviction that we are all complicit in shaping our world and its structures. To reform them commits us to the long process of change of heart, self-reflection, engagement with those from whom we differ, and solidarity. These are building blocks that shape a just society. 

The second Catholic commentator is Dr Jeff Mirus, a writer and publisher, whose article on this topic is headed "Structural sin is personal sin deflected and justified". How he supports that viewpoint is of interest to us as we explore the methods CRT proponents use in promoting their cause.

Mirus begins:

We hear a great deal today about systemic or structural sin, such as systemic racism. And the truth is that we all participate in sin in many more or less institutionalized forms. We take certain modes of action for granted, without examining the network of institutions, beliefs and habits which underlie the results such “systems” produce. [...] That is an inescapable problem in life. But we also take advantage of systemic or structural sin to deflect our own personal guilt.

Most social, political and economic “orders” are unjust in significant ways. It is to temper such injustices that the prophets of the Old Testament so frequently reminded the Israelites to care particularly for those who were injured by, or fell through the gaps in, the prevailing “order”—especially widows and orphans. 

It is part of the human condition that some prosper and some decline under any given set of conditions, and the institutional arrangements of any society evolve and develop in ways that suit the needs and goals of those classes of people with the most power, wealth and influence.

We know all this, and we think about it more often as modern society continues to evolve into a perpetually “managed” or even totalitarian society, not so much because of a brutal and repressive power group as because of the shared values of the dominant commercial/governmental class. It belongs primarily to perceptive, moral and courageous politicians and judges to attempt prudently to restrain the worst excesses and greatest inequities, since excesses and inequities are inseparable from social life and social arrangements.  

Mirus then gets into the subject matter the title of his article points to. Beyond the inequities apparent in typical cultures, he sees dominant portions of cultures also captured by false philosophies and values, that they then attempt to impose on the rest of society. He states:

In addition to dominant cultures [affected by] intrinsic unrecognized shortcomings, there are dominant narratives which are carried forward not only by persons and families but, increasingly, by the media and educational institutions which are informed by the dominant culture. This includes what we call “virtue signaling”, and it is important to note that secular cultures signal virtue in substantially different ways from religious cultures.

This virtue-signaling arises inescapably from the sense of guilt which is entirely natural to the human condition, and which may be at times denied but never escaped. For Christians, this sense of guilt is deliberately focused on personal sins. While Christians may not always recognize clearly the particular forms of heartlessness and even violations of “fairness” which are endemic to the cultures of which they are a part, when they do recognize them they typically recognize that they are personally involved in the pattern and must strive to break the pattern in their own spheres of influence through deliberate changes in their own behavior.

That’s how Christian guilt works. It is largely the same as with our own more obvious personal sins. Certain evils that are protected or fostered by the larger patterns of any given culture—in our families, our socializing, our businesses, and our laws and governments—become opportunities for the recognition of our own personal failure to mitigate these evils, first through our own cultivation of the missing virtue, and then through whatever influence we can bring to bear on those around us, those with whom we interact, those for whom we vote, and so on.

Yet that is most definitely not how guilt works for secularists, for it is in the nature of secularists to be in denial. Refusing to acknowledge an authentically spiritual horizon—a God who is to be worshipped, a conversion that is to bear personal fruit here and now so that the converted can be welcomed joyfully in heaven—secularists must find a different way of dealing with guilt, which is the human person’s natural response to sin. If a Christian seeks to renew himself to be worthy of the perfect society of love in heaven, the secularist seeks to transform his earthly heaven by eradicating the attitudes and influence of others whom he sees as impeding the progress of a worldly paradise.

Sometimes this requires the marginalization of particular groups believed to stand in the way of a permanent earthly paradise (as if anything earthly were permanent); sometimes it requires more overt revolutionary action to raise up a new right-thinking regime which promises to force social perfection on all those who fail to see the great promise of each new worldly moment. Now, Satan, of course, operates at the heart of moral zealotry (as opposed to moral goodness), ever hiding his face and his purposes under the guise of an angel of light—and we are not wrong to notice that secularists are far more likely to acknowledge Satan than to acknowledge God. 

But the point is that, even as the true Christian takes the guilt of others on to himself, the secularist continually projects his own guilt on to others, making them almost literally the scapegoats, sacrificing them to the brave new world. And yet nothing ever suffices to end the relentless cycle of enforced change to create a misconceived heaven on earth.

This is what I mean in my title which says that “structural sin is personal sin deflected and justified”. [...] The secularist continually projects his own sins on to others, thereby justifying himself—placing himself on the road to paradise by remaining on the “right side of history”. It is always others who must be reformed or eliminated. 

In his conclusion, Mirus offers this perceptive observation:

To use a new term which is very convenient in this context: The secularist projects his guilt onto the world at large and asks: “To create the perfect world, what must be changed and whom must I cancel?” But the Christian, who is always profoundly ashamed, asks: “To love God better, how must I change and whom must I help?” And when enough Christians ask enough hard questions of themselves, “structural sin” recedes.

As Mirus averred above, an insidious "soft totalitarianism" is showing itself as part of the Critical Race/Justice Theory mindset. There is no sense of collaboration, of solidarity with the whole of society, in trying to remove the structural issues relating to race relations and inequality in the United States and elsewhere. Likewise, in the conflictual social setting that CRT advocates champion, Hamilton would have to look long and hard to find any of the "engagement with those from whom we differ, and solidarity" that he posits as the building blocks of a just society.

[] My thanks to the writers used here as my sources for their wisdom on this fraught topic. Read their full articles using the links given above.

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

In past generations, Catholics of an Irish heritage growing up in the Anglophone world knew the reality of systemic prejudice - structural injustice - against them. That is why they put such a strong emphasis on gaining an advanced education, particular in law and journalism. The result has been an over-representation of Catholics in law, the judiciary and politics.

Although such prejudice did not impact me personally, my father related how his father had been belittled when being interviewed for a job, when the employer decreed that my grandfather's personal name, Ignatius, from St Ignatius de Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, would be off-putting in commercial circles. He got the job, but he would thenceforth be known as Charlie.

Another example of the awareness of structural injustice that Irish Catholics encountered whether in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where I grew up, related to the second-class-citizen nature of working people. For that reason the labour movement, and certainly in New Zealand, labour leaders, found friends in the Catholic hierarchy.

That background is by way of introduction to my reflection on Critical Race/Justice/Social Theory, which is upending social relationships in the United States in particular.

Critical Justice Theory, a German philosophical way of looking at society that uses Marx and Kant and others of an atheistic ilk, posits that inequality is "deeply embedded in the fabric of society (i.e. structural)", with the practice of critical social justice involving "actively [seeking] to change this". For that reason, education "is a political project" (Sensoy and DiAngelo 2017). 

Just to dwell on that point for a moment, children's education has always been shaped by the goals the educator has wanted to achieve in that child. Just think of the Great Books program, which has a much diminished status in academic educational circles these days.

To move to the main point of this post, there is nothing new in arguing as Critical Race Theory proponents do in a manner as if they offer an extraordinary insight, that social structures can impede groups within a society of achieving full human development.  

Divisions in society

From the letter of Pope Leo XIII in 1891, Rerum Novarum, on labour and the condition of the working class, the Catholic Church has given a lot of attention to the injustice perpetrated through the structures of society, and the structural influences on the condition of people globally. In 1931, Pope Pius XI's letter Quadragisimo Anno, marking 40 years since Rerum Novarum, spoke about how industrialisation had created a society that was "more and more divided into two classes":

The first, small in numbers, enjoyed practically all the comforts so plentifully supplied by modern invention; the second class, comprising the immense multitude of workingmen, was made up of those who, oppressed by dire poverty, struggled in vain to escape the straits which encompassed them.

Pius recounts how in the previous 40 years Leo's advocacy of labour unions as an aid to social reform had borne fruit, and so Christian workers "learned to defend ther rights and interests energetically and efficiently, retaining at the same time a due respect for justice and a sincere desire to collaborate with other classes". [My emphasis - we will come back to this point later.] 

The Church's attention to the disparity in conditions among people also turned to the role of colonialism. As with Pope John XXIII's Pacem in Terris (World Peace 1963), in his Populorum Progressio (1967), Pope Paul VI looked to creating a more human condition for those in the developing world:

It is unfortunate that on these new conditions of society a system has been constructed which considers profit as a key motive for economic progress, competition as the supreme law of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right that has no limits and carries no corresponding social obligations.

This unchecked liberalism leads to dictatorship rightly denounced by Pius XI as producing "the international imperialism of money". (#26) 

Paul warns against violence in trying to bring about change: 

There are certainly situations whose injustice cries to heaven. When whole populations destitute of necessities live in a state of dependence barring them from all initiative and responsibility, and all opportunity to advance culturally and share in social and political life, recourse to violence, as a means to right these wrongs to human dignity, is a grave temptation. (#30) 

We know, however, that a revolutionary uprising - save where there is a manifest, long-standing tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good of the country [Note this teaching!] - produces new injustices, throws more elements out of balance and brings on new disasters. A real evil should not be fought against at the cost of greater misery. (#31)

Writing of the horrendous living conditions in many Third World countries, Paul does not dispute that:

The present situation must be faced with courage and the injustices linked with it must be fought against and overcome. (#32)

But let them take care to associate private initiative and intermediary bodies with this work. They will thus avoid the danger of complete collectivization or of arbitrary planning which, by denying liberty, would prevent the exercise of the fundamental rights of the human person. (#33)

Regimes of racism  

Paul also sees how racism is an obstacle to collaboration globally and within nations: 

[It is] a cause of division and hatred within countries whenever individuals and families see the inviolable rights of the human person held in scorn, as they themselves are unjustly subjected to a regime of discrimination because of their race or colour.

Pope John Paul II examined the structures that are obstacles to social well-being. His 1987 encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (On Social Concerns) states that "political motives" and a lack of "political will" have often created or left unchanged "misguided mechanisms" for regulating society. But that necessarily highlights the moral element of injustice in that...

...the behaviour of individuals considered as responsible persons, interfere[s] in such a way as to slow down the course of [human/group] development and hinder its full achievement. (#35)

Therefore, John Paul spends some time of this issue, which is at the forefront of Christian antagonism toward CRT, presented as it is in an aggressive and humiliating way to those who are not Black. There is little sensitivity shown, little attempt to create a collaborative approach to solving the problem of racism from the structures of US society. The ideological demand for immediate acceptance of methods and conclusions is concerting to those who are familiar with the freedom of mind and action commonplace among those outside that right-think training ground of universities.

John Paul identifies "sin" and "structures of sin" as the "roots of the evils which afflict us" (#36). He is talking about "a situation - or likewise an institution, a structure, society itself":

Whenever the Church ... condemns as social sins certain situations or the collective behaviour of certain social groups, big or small, or even of whole nations and blocs of nations, she knows and she proclaims that such cases of social sin are the result of the accumulation and concentration of many personal sins.

It is a case of the very personal sins of those who cause or support evil or who exploit it; of those who are in a position to avoid, eliminate or at least limit certain social evils but who fail to do so out of laziness, fear, or the conspiracy of silence, through secret complicity or indifference; or those who take refuge in the supposed impossibility of changing the world, and also of those who sidestep the effort and the sacrifice required, producing specious reasons.... (#36 footnote)

[Evil structures are] ... always linked to the concrete acts of individuals who introduce these structures, consolidate them and make them difficult to remove. And thus they grow stronger, spread, and become the source of other sins, and so influence people's behaviour. (#36) 

One can speak of "selfishness" and of "shortsightedness", of "mistaken political calculations" and "imprudent economic deccisions". And in each of these evaluations one hears an echo of an ethical and moral nature. Man's condition is such that a more profound analysis of individual actions and omissions cannot be achieved without implying, in one way or another, judgments or references of an ethical nature. 

In this consists the difference between socio-political analysis and formal reference to "sin" and "structures of sin". 

[...] among the actions and attitudes opposed to the will of God, the good of neighbour and the "structures" created by them, two are very typical: on the one hand the all-consuming desire for profit, and on the other, the thirst for power, with the intention of imposing one's will upon others. (#37) 

Ideology as a form of idolatry

So the pope is saying that personal "actions and attitudes" can accumulate and be concentrated so that good structures are destroyed or diminished and evil structures imposed in their place. He adds that we have to beware what lies behind the structures established for overtly benign reasons:

[However,] we would see that hidden behind certain decisions, apparently inspired only by economics or politics, are real forms of idolatry: of money, ideology, class, technology. (#37)

I have wished to introduce this type of analysis above all in order to point out the true nature of the evil which faces us with respect to the development of peoples: it is a question of a moral evil, the fruit of many sins which lead to "structures of sin". To diagnose the evil in this way is to identify precisely, on the level of human conduct, the path to be followed in order to overcome it. 

In the next section of On Social Concerns John Paul II lays out how we should go about resolving social conflict. His approach is to start with urging everyone to take responsibility "for ensuring a 'more human life' for their fellow human beings, [and ...] become fully aware of the urgent need to change the spiritual attitudes which define each individual's relationship with self, with neighbour, with even the remotest human communities..." (#38)

... and all of this in view of higher values such as the common good or....the full development "of the whole individual and of all people".

The moral nature of his approach mirrors that of the leader of the arduous campaign to end segregation in the United States. On this point, Penn State academic Joshua F.J. Inwood states:

Martin Luther King Jr's understanding of the role of love in engaging individuals and communities in conflict is crucial today. For King, love was not sentimental. It demanded that individuals tell their oppressors what they were doing was wrong. 

As King noted, all persons exist in an interrelated community and all are dependent on each other. By connecting love to community, King argued there were opportunities to build a more just and economically sustainable society which respected difference. As he said,

“Agape is a willingness to go to any length to restore community… Therefore, if I respond to hate with a reciprocal hate I do nothing but intensify the cleavages of a broken community.”  

He also said: "Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that".

In this light, for Christians, as with any sin, conversion - a thorough change in behaviour - is demanded, entailing a new relationship with God, recognition of the consequences of the evil act or omission, and hence a recommitment to "one's neighbour, either an individual or a community":

It is God, in "whose hands are the hearts of the powerful", and the hearts of all, who according to his own promise and by the power of his Spirit can transform "hearts of stone" into "hearts of flesh" (Ezk 36:26). (#38)

The Church has observed over the centuries that the pursuit of justice alone in righting a wrong, as in the case today of  trying to dismantle racist structures in society, can cause misery of a different kind. Therefore, as the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (2004) states:

In order to make society more human, more worthy of the human person, love in social life - political, economic and cultural - must be given renewed value, becoming the constant and highest norm for all activity. (#582)

Human relationships cannot be government solely according to the measure of justice. "Christians know that love is the reason for God's entering into relationship with [humankind]. And it is love which he awaits as man's response. Consequently, love is also the loftiest and most noble form of relationship possible between human beings. Love must thus enliven every sector of human life and extend to the internaional order. Only a humanity in which there reigns the 'civilisation of love' will be able to enjoy authentic and lasting peace" (John Paul II, 2004 World Day of Peace) (#582).

That "civilisation of love" envelopes everyone in society, pressing them to live honestly and also to right the wrongs that humans so easily create in our frailty. It is through the power of love, and by extension, that of the mercy and forgiveness that Dr King demonstrated, that society can more willingly demolish the structures of sin, build the means to healthy person-to-person relationships, and reinforce vibrant social relations throughout the community.

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Young people's faith: What you can do to help

Families that pray together... Photo by Ksenia Chernaya from Pexels

Parents today shoulder a huge responsibility in transmitting religious faith and practice to their children. Society is increasingly secular, in fact, it is aggressively spreading an anti-religion message. We see the traditional moral standards that have protected the world's diverse societies now being dumped as the elites of academia, news media and government set about enforcing a new set of "rights" that promote a selfish freedom, an individualism that is undermining the common good. 

A scholarly book just out delves into what American parents can do to pass on to the next generation those beliefs that they and their forebears have respected and often defended at much cost. The book examinies what American parents most seek from a local church, synagogue, temple, or mosque. It explores the experiences and outlooks of immigrant parents including Latino Catholics, East Asian Buddhists, South Asian Muslims, and Indian Hindus.

The book is Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation (OUP). One of its book's authors, sociology professor at the University of Notre Dame, Christian Smith, sees parents' predicament this way:

Most religious parents know that the number of non-religious Americans has grown in recent decades, especially among youth. They know that their culture valorizes autonomous self-definition, expects some degree of youth rebellion, and exerts forces they view as undermining religion. Every religious parent has heard stories about children of faithful parents who grow up to neglect or reject religion. That can be heartbreaking, and the worry that it may happen with one’s own children can be a burden.

We have seen with the "gay pride" militancy, and even more so the aggressive campaigning of the transgender brigade so that in this milieu of a post-Christian, even post-religion society, children from young ages are absorbing messages that are religiously offensive and disconcerting on the human plane. For a terrifying example of how children's minds can so easily be bent, see this TikTok post that shocks the mother of an "enlightened" child.

Where we're at

Smith has spent more than two decades investigating the spiritual beliefs of teenagers and young adults. He developed the widely used description of the overall spiritual mindset of young people, that of moralistic therapeutic deism. This term was introduced in his 2005 book, co-authored by Melinda Lundquist Denton, called Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. The term is used to describe what they consider to be the common beliefs among U.S. youths, and it is worth looking at these to get some context for our discussion on parenting through these dire times.

From interviews with about 3000 teenagers, their points of belief were found to be: 

1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die. 

This list shows us how superficial is the state of belief in our post-Christian world. One commentator, Rod Dreher, explains the MTD mentality:

MTD is not entirely wrong. After all, God does exist, and He does want us to be good. The problem with MTD, in both its progressive and its conservative versions, is that it's mostly about improving one's self-esteem and subjective happiness and getting along well with others. It has little to do with the Christianity of Scripture and tradition, which teaches repentance, self-sacrificial love, and purity of heart, and commends suffering - the Way of the Cross - as the pathway to God. Though superficially Christian, MTD is the natural religion of a culture that worships the Self and material comfort.

Surveying the moral beliefs of 18-to-23-year-olds, Smith and his colleagues found that only 40 percent of young Christians sampled said that their personal moral beliefs were grounded in the Bible or some other religious sensibility. It's unlikely that the beliefs of even these faithful are biblically coherent. Many of these "Christians" are actually committed moral individualists who neither know nor practice a coherent Bible-based morality.

An astonishing 61 percent of the emerging adults had no moral problem at all with materialism and consumerism. An added 30 percent expressed some qualms but figured it was not worth worrying about. In this view, say Smith and his team, "all that society is, apparently, is a collection of autonomous individuals out to enjoy life." 

These are not bad people. Rather, they are young adults who have been terribly failed by family, church, and the other institutions that formed-or rather, failed to form-their consciences and their imaginations.

MTD is the de facto religion not simply of American teenagers but also of American adults. To a remarkable degree, teenagers have adopted the religious attitudes of their parents. We have been an MTD nation for some time now.

"America has lived a long time off its thin Christian veneer, partly necessitated by the Cold War," Smith told me in an interview. "That is all finally being stripped away by the combination of mass consumer capitalism and liberal individualism."

Dreher's declaration, "To a remarkable degree, teenagers have adopted the religious attitudes of their parents", draws us back to what those parents who are willing to make the effort can do to protect their children from the distorted weltanschauung gripping society.

As Smith said above, it's up to parents to make the move. He continues on that theme:

The empirical evidence is clear. In almost every case, no other institution or program comes close to shaping youth religiously as their parents do—not religious congregations, youth groups, faith-based schools, missions and service trips, summer camps, Sunday school, youth ministers, or anything else. Those ­influences can reinforce the influence of parents, but almost never do they surpass or override it.

What makes every other influence pale into virtual insignificance is the importance (or not) of the religious beliefs and practices of American parents in their ordinary lives—not only on holy days but every day, throughout weeks and years.

American youth who have grown up to be religiously committed almost always had parents who were very religiously committed. Successfully passing on faith is by no means guaranteed. Outcomes vary widely. Children choose their own lives.

But setting aside exceptional cases, what is nearly guaranteed is that American parents who are not especially committed, attentive, and intentional in passing on their faith will produce children who are less religious than they are, if they are religious at all. That knowledge may trouble some parents, but it can also empower. 

Therefore, we can derive from Smith's work a useful list of traits and practices that will serve parents who are "committed, attentive and intentional" in providing their children with the means to develop a lasting relationship with God. From Smith's account of his findings: 

1. [Parents should] simply to be themselves: ­believe and ­practice their own religion ­genuinely and faithfully. Children are not fooled by performances. They see ­reality. And when that reality is authentic and life-giving, they just may be attracted to something similar.

2. Parenting style: Though the influence of parenting style is known to vary somewhat by race and ethnicity, it is broadly true that the religious parents who most successfully raise religious children tend to exhibit an “authoritative” parenting style. Such parents combine two crucial traits. First, they consistently hold their children to clear and demanding expectations, standards, and boundaries in all areas of life. Second, they relate to their children with an abundance of warmth, support, and expressive care.

It is not hard to see why this parenting style works best for raising religious children. The combination of clear expectations and affective warmth is powerful in children’s developmental formation.

Parents should not be "authoritarian" in style, because that will invite rebellion, and coldness will preclude a close relationship. On the other hand, with a "permissive" style, parents are "signaling to their children that it doesn’t matter much what they do, including where religion is concerned". As well, a "passive" style without affective warmth nor clear expectations is doomed to failure. 

Parents sometimes say they want their children to decide for themselves, but in what other area of life do we take this attitude? Do we tell childen to decide for themselves to go to sports practice or not? Whether they should learn to swim or not. Do we let kids decide for themselves whether to practice their music or not? Parents need to respect their own dignity and understand the responsibility God and society have placed upon them to guide and cherish (meaning "to care beyond measure") their young ones.

Other effective traits

The following set of traits, Smith says, work to some extent, but the empirical evidence in terms of passing on religion are clear in that they don't work as well as the authoritative but warm style of committed parents.

3. Routine Talking about Religion. As a normal part of family life during the week, [parents] talk with their children about religious things—what they believe and practice, what it means and implies, and why it matters to them. In such families, religion is part of the warp and woof of everyday life.

This does not mean such families talk about religion all of the time. But it does indicate to children that religion matters, and that it is relevant enough to the rest of life that it should arise normally in ordinary discussions of any number of topics. 

Parents are also more likely to succeed in passing on religion to their children if they allow their children to explore and express their own ideas and feelings along the way, though without letting discussions turn into relativistic free-for-alls. This means granting a freedom to consider doubts, complications, and ­alternatives without fear of condemnation, combined with parents’ seriously engaging their children and expressing to them their own beliefs, reasons, and hopes.  

4. Channeling for Internalization: Nonparental influences—congregations, youth groups, religious schools, and so on—pale in comparison to the influence of parents. That does not mean that these other factors are ­irrelevant. They can make a difference in the religious formation of youth, but normally they do so because religiously committed and intentional parents “arrange” for it.

The idea is that parents channel their children into involvements and relationships that reinforce (not replace) their more direct parental influence. Channeling means subtly nudging, introducing, and steering children in the “right” religious directions.

The goal of religious channeling is for children to personalize and internalize their religious faith and identity over time. When channeling is effective, children, as they approach independent adulthood, think of themselves more as people who believe and practice their own faith, rather than as kids who go along with their parents. Channeling arranges in the lives of children a variety of influences that will help this transition happen.

Research suggests that among the most important of these channeling influences is the presence of non-­family adults in religious congregations who know the children well and can engage them in talk on serious topics, beyond superficial chitchat. The more such adults are present, the more a church, temple, synagogue, or mosque feels like a community or an extended family, which is itself a strong bonding force. 

Smith has valuable suggestions on tapping into non-family contacts and environments that will encourage an personal and mature acceptance of belief, so read more at the source of my information.

What we parents have to remember is that society is catechizing our family - forcefully. Therefore, we have to be very intentional in creating environments in the home and in our neighborhood, and with friends and family, that do not reinforce, but mitigate the impact of the messages transmitted through the media and social networks, messages arising from those whose intent is to overturn the proven norms of morality, family life and our concept of the purpose of our existence.

Given the complexities of life and the fact that children grow to exercise their own independent agency, Christian Smith has one further valuable insight - pray:

What parents can do—really, all they can do—is practice in their own lives the faith they hope their children will embrace; build warm, authoritative relationships with their children; be mindful and intentional about steering children into relationships and activities that can help personalize religion internally; and then pray and hope that the divine forces in which they believe will lead their children into lives of truth, goodness, and beauty.

For more on this topic:

A useful book - Return: How to draw your child back to the Church by Brandon Vogt

A video discussion on Handing Down the Faith: Go here 

Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation (OUP, 2021) by

Christian Smith, who holds a PhD and MA in Sociology from Harvard University. Smith is the author of more than 20 books, many about the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers and emerging adults; and

Amy Adamczyk, who is professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Programs of Doctoral Study in Sociology and Criminal Justice at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). She has published over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles. Her first book, Cross-national Public Opinion about Homosexuality, received the 2018 Outstanding Book Award from the International Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

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UN chief amps up dangers to humanity

Excellencies,

I am here to sound the alarm:  The world must wake up.

We are on the edge of an abyss — and moving in the wrong direction.

Our world has never been more threatened.

Or more divided.

We face the greatest cascade of crises in our lifetimes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has supersized glaring inequalities. 

The climate crisis is pummeling the planet.

Upheaval from Afghanistan to Ethiopia to Yemen and beyond has thwarted peace.

A surge of mistrust and misinformation is polarizing people and paralyzing societies.

Human rights are under fire. 

Science is under assault.  

And economic lifelines for the most vulnerable are coming too little and too late — if they come at all.

Solidarity is missing in action — just when we need it most. 

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday the Secretary-General, António Guterres, expanded on his warning last week in launching the Our Common Agenda project that unless action was taken rapidly, the outlook for humankind was frightening.

In June, he was unanimously re-elected to his position, giving him another five years at the helm of the 193-member organisation. So he is a man whose words carry a lot of weight.

Because of the sobering words used in his speech yesterday, Guterres' warning did get some airplay on TV and in news sites, but only in the usual 20-second sound bite form. But let's give our attention more fully to why Guterres feels so compelled to "sound the alarm". While we do so, note how he frames the series of crises we face as a breakdown of morality. 

For a start, he says:

Perhaps one image tells the tale of our times. The picture we have seen from some parts of the world of COVID-19 vaccines … in the garbage. Expired and unused. On the one hand, we see the vaccines developed in record time — a victory of science and human ingenuity. On the other hand, we see that triumph undone by the tragedy of a lack of political will, selfishness and mistrust. 

A surplus in some countries.  Empty shelves in others. A majority of the wealthier world vaccinated.  Over 90 percent of Africans still waiting for their first dose. This is a moral indictment of the state of our world. It is an obscenity. We passed the science test. But we are getting an F in Ethics.

 World leaders are also not giving the necessary attention to climate change:

The climate alarm bells are also ringing at fever pitch.

The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was a code red for humanity. We see the warning signs in every continent and region. Scorching temperatures.  Shocking biodiversity loss.  Polluted air, water and natural spaces.  And climate-related disasters at every turn.

Climate scientists tell us it’s not too late to keep alive the 1.5 degree goal of the Paris Climate Agreement. But the window is rapidly closing.

We need a 45 per cent cut in emissions by 2030.  Yet a recent UN report made clear that with present national climate commitments, emissions will go up by 16% by 2030. 

That would condemn us to a hellscape of temperature rises of at least 2.7 degrees above pre-industrial levels.  A catastrophe.

Meanwhile, the OECD just reported a gap of at least $20 billion in essential and promised climate finance to developing countries.

We are weeks away from the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow, but seemingly light years away from reaching our targets. We must get serious.  And we must act fast. 

Here is another powerful section:

Excellencies,

COVID and the climate crisis have exposed profound fragilities as societies and as a planet. Yet instead of humility in the face of these epic challenges, we see hubris [an arrogance that invites disaster]. Instead of the path of solidarity, we are on a dead end to destruction.

At the same time, another disease is spreading in our world today:  a malady of mistrust. When people see promises of progress denied by the realities of their harsh daily lives… When they see their fundamental rights and freedoms curtailed… When they see petty — as well as grand — corruption around them… When they see billionaires joyriding to space while millions go hungry on earth… When parents see a future for their children that looks even bleaker than the struggles of today...  And when young people see no future at all…

The people we serve and represent may lose faith not only in their governments and institutions — but in the values that have animated the work of the United Nations for over 75 years. Peace.  Human rights.  Dignity for all.  Equality.  Justice.  Solidarity.

A breakdown in trust is leading to a breakdown in values. Promises, after all, are worthless if people do not see results in their daily lives. Failure to deliver creates space for some of the darkest impulses of humanity. It provides oxygen for easy fixes, pseudo-solutions and conspiracy theories. 

It is kindling to stoke ancient grievances.  Cultural supremacy.  Ideological dominance.  Violent misogyny.  The targeting of the most vulnerable including refugees and migrants.   

 But what can we do?

Excellencies,

We face a moment of truth. Now is the time to deliver. Now is the time to restore trust. Now is the time to inspire hope. And I do have hope. The problems we have created are problems we can solve. Humanity has shown that we are capable of great things when we work together. That is the raison d’être of our United Nations. 

But let’s be frank.  Today’s multilateral system is too limited in its instruments and capacities, in relation to what is needed for effective governance of managing global public goods. It is too fixed on the short-term. We need to strengthen global governance.  We need to focus on the future.  We need to renew the social contract.  We need to ensure a United Nations fit for a new era. 

Guterres then covered what he called the world's "Six Great Divides", the first being the lack of peace. This is made clear by the fact of regional wars in Africa and unsettled conflicts in Iraq, Libya and Syria. However, also having an impact on global stability is the rumbling strife between the United States and China: 

It will be impossible to address dramatic economic and development challenges while the world’s two largest economies are at odds with each other. 

Yet I fear our world is creeping towards two different sets of economic, trade, financial, and technology rules, two divergent approaches in the development of artificial intelligence — and ultimately the risk of two different military and geo-political strategies.

This is a recipe for trouble.  It would be far less predictable than the Cold War. 

Dialogue is key to reconciling differences, and the will to understand each other. That is true, too, for the next of the Great Divides, climate change:

This requires bridging trust between North and South. ... We need more ambition from all countries in three key areas — mitigation, finance and adaptation.

More ambition on mitigation — means countries committing to carbon neutrality by mid-century —  and to concrete 2030 emissions reductions targets that will get us there, backed up with credible actions now.

More ambition on finance — means developing nations finally seeing the promised US$100 billion a year for climate action, fully mobilizing the resources of both international financial institutions and the private sector, too.

More ambition on adaptation — means developed countries living up to their promise of credible support to developing countries to build resilience to save lives and livelihoods.

This means 50 per cent of all climate finance provided by developed countries and multilateral development banks should be dedicated to adaptation.

To prevent a worsening of the ravages of climate change...:

Don’t wait for others to make the first move.  Do your part. Around the world, we see civil society — led by young people — fully mobilized to tackle the climate crisis. The private sector is increasingly stepping up. 

Governments must also summon the full force of their fiscal policymaking powers to make the shift to green economies. By taxing carbon and pollution instead of people’s income to more easily make the switch to sustainable green jobs.

By ending subsidies to fossil fuels and freeing up resources to invest back into health care, education, renewable energy, sustainable food systems, and social protections for their people.

By committing to no new coal plants.  If all planned coal power plants become operational, we will not only be clearly above 1.5 degrees — we will be well above 2 degrees.

This is a planetary emergency. We need coalitions of solidarity—between countries that still depend heavily on coal, and countries that have the financial and technical resources to support their transition. We have the opportunity and the obligation to act.  

The third of the Great Divides is inequality:

We must bridge the gap between rich and poor, within and among countries. That starts by ending the pandemic for everyone, everywhere. 

We urgently need a global vaccination plan to at least double vaccine production and ensure that vaccines reach seventy percent of the world’s population in the first half of 2022. [...]

We have no time to lose. A lopsided recovery is deepening inequalities. Richer countries could reach pre-pandemic growth rates by the end of this year while the impacts may last for years in low-income countries.

Is it any wonder? Advanced economies are investing nearly 28 per cent of their Gross Domestic Product into economic recovery. For middle-income countries, that number falls to 6.5 per cent. And it plummets to 1.8 per cent for the least developed countries — a tiny percentage of a much smaller amount.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the International Monetary Fund projects that cumulative economic growth per capita over the next five years will be 75 percent less than the rest of the world.

Ways of mitigating inequality include:

Countries shouldn’t have to choose between servicing debt and serving people.

With effective international solidarity, it would be possible at the national level to forge a new social contract that includes universal health coverage and income protection, housing and decent work, quality education for all, and an end to discrimination and violence against women and girls. 

I call on countries to reform their tax systems and finally end tax evasion, money laundering and illicit financial flows.

Fourth: 

Bridging the gender divide is not only a matter of justice for women and girls. It’s a game-changer for humanity. Societies with more equal representation are more stable and peaceful. They have better health systems and more vibrant economies.

Women’s equality is essentially a question of power. We must urgently transform our male-dominated world and shift the balance of power, to solve the most challenging problems of our age.

That means more women leaders in parliaments, cabinets and board rooms. It means women fully represented and making their full contribution, everywhere. 

I urge governments, corporations and other institutions to take bold steps, including benchmarks and quotas, to create gender parity from the leadership down.

That half of humanity has no access to the internet points to the reality of the digital divide:

We must connect everyone by 2030 [...] — to embrace the promise of digital technology while protecting people from its perils. 

One of the greatest perils we face is the growing reach of digital platforms and the use and abuse of data. A vast library of information is being assembled about each of us. Yet we don’t even have the keys to that library. We don’t know how this information has been collected, by whom or for what purposes.

But we do know our data is being used commercially — to boost corporate profits. Our behavior patterns are being commodified and sold like futures contracts. Our data is also being used to influence our perceptions and opinions. Governments and others can exploit it to control or manipulate people’s behaviour, violating human rights of individuals or groups, and undermining democracy.

This is not science fiction.  This is today’s reality. And it requires a serious discussion.

So, too, do other dangers in the digital frontier. I am certain, for example, that any future major confrontation — and heaven forbid it should ever happen — will start with a massive cyberattack.

That certainly is a sobering prediction. Servers and digital pathways around the world could be impacted by such an attack. For our knowledge-based global society, this would  truly be another of Guterres' catastrophes. 

Guterres goes on to the final Great Divide, the intergenerational mistrust affecting today’s 1.8 billion young people:

Young people will inherit the consequences of our decisions — good and bad. At the same time, we expect 10.9 billion people to be born by century’s end. We need their talents, ideas and energies. 

Young people need more than support. They need a seat at the table [...]

Young people need a vision of hope for the future. Recent research showed the majority of young people across ten countries are suffering from high levels of anxiety and distress over the state of our planet. Some 60 percent of your future voters feel betrayed by their governments.

We must prove to children and young people that despite the seriousness of the situation, the world has a plan — and governments are committed to implementing it.

The urgency of Guterres' warning to world leaders come through in his concluding statements: "We need to act now"...,  "with real engagement"..., "to bridge the Great Divides and save humanity and the planet".

Throughout his speech, it is clear the UN chief really does believe that it is a matter of certainty that we, in this decade, are at the point of saving humanity — and the only planet where we know life exists.

Therefore, his final thoughts are all the more pertinent:

We can live up to the promise of a better, more peaceful world.

The best way to advance the interests of one’s own citizens is by advancing the interests of our common future.

Interdependence is the logic of the 21st century.

This is our time. 

A moment for transformation. 

An era to re-ignite multilateralism.

An age of possibilities. 

Let us restore trust.  Let us inspire hope. 

And let us start right now. 

We have a moral obligation to open ourselves to change in our lifestyle and in the government policies we support. It's often the public's lack of support that pushes weak politicians to not do the right thing to save the environment, reverse climate change, and establish a social framework that makes possible greater participation by women and those on low incomes. We have to step up to the plate and get involved fully in reshaping our society with solidarity and the common good foremost in our minds and hearts.

For ideas on how to reshape society, refer to my previous post on the Solidarity Party.

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Solidarity Party: Time to restore society

Family business decision-making. Photo Paul Efe from Pexels

One day the American Solidarity Party might achieve sufficient voter support to be in a position where it is invited to enter into a formal coalition with one of the two main parties. That would require Christians to vote with the strength of their convictions, to vote in a manner where they do not have to block off one part of their conscience but can joyfully apply the principles they want to uphold.

Voting with a peg on the nose has become the state of affairs for those who over the long term have voted for a workers' party, such as the Labor/Labour Party in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. (Note the spelling difference in Australia.) Of course, this is because those parties now find it easier to pursue fashionable cultural reforms rather than revamping the modes of doing business and other elements of governance of the economy that have given rise to gross inequality of incomes, and the flow-on effect of stress on family life and welfare services.

The American Solidarity Party introduces its platform this way: 

The American Solidarity Party is committed to addressing the needs of the human family and the earth that sustains us with prudent policies informed by Christian democratic values. We offer the following proposals as a solid foundation for a government that supports life, justice, peace, and a healthy environment for all.

The party uses everyday language to spell out how it views economics - "political economy (economics) is a branch of political ethics". On that foundation it "rejects models of economic behavior that undermine human dignity with greed and naked self-interest":

We advocate for an economic system which focuses on creating a society of widespread ownership (sometimes referred to as “distributism”*) rather than having the effect of degrading the human person as a cog in the machine.

Its Economics platform is worth a read to glimpse how we could be living while in a modern industrialized society: 

🔅 Our goal is to create conditions which allow single-income families to support themselves with dignity.

🔅 We support policies that encourage the formation and strengthening of labor unions. Efforts by private entities to use public power to prevent union activities or to retaliate against workers who organize for their rights ought to be resisted at every level.

🔅 We call for the repeal of corporate welfare policies, for shifting the tax system to target unearned income and reckless financiers, and for changing regulations to benefit small and locally-owned businesses rather than multinational corporations. Economic rentiers and speculators who produce nothing but only take from workers through gimmicks allowed by corrupt relationships with public power need to pay their fair share through taxes on land, capital gains, and financial transactions.

🔅 We will work to restore the requirement that corporations must serve a public good in order to be granted the benefit of limited liability. We support the prohibition of corporate bylaws and the repeal of state legislation requiring shareholder profit to trump considerations such as employee wellbeing and environmental protection.

🔅 To deprive workers of their wages is a “sin that cries out to heaven.” The Department of Labor must investigate all cases of wage theft and fraud in a swift manner.

🔅 We support mechanisms that allow workers to share in the ownership and management of their production, such as trade guilds, cooperatives, and employee stock ownership programs. Rather than consigning workers to wage slavery under far-away masters, such ownership models respect their essential dignity.

🔅 Industrial policy and economic incentives need to be re-ordered to place human dignity first and to recognize that the family is the basic unit of economic production. We are committed to policies that emphasize local production, family-owned businesses, and cooperative ownership structures. Measures that prevent large corporations from passing on their transportation costs to local communities will help re-energize local production and local enterprises.

🔅 The bloated, “too big to fail,” multinational economic concerns which dominate the economic landscape need to be brought to heel and concerted antitrust action must be taken to break up the oligarchies that use their private power to corruptly influence public governance.

🔅 The monopolistic power of corporations, especially in the area of patent and copyright law, allows them to price-gouge workers and families. We call for a restructuring of intellectual property laws to encourage innovation rather than rent-seeking.

🔅 We support and encourage measures which allow local communities to limit the power of outside interests in managing their land. Tenant unions, community land trusts, and community-oriented development are to be supported in the effort to ensure the availability of affordable and inclusive housing. Allowing local communities more flexibility will allow for more diverse and innovative solutions to local problems rather than imposing them from a far-off central authority.

🔅 We advocate for social safety nets that adequately provide for the material needs of the most vulnerable in society. These programs need to also help the most vulnerable find a path out of poverty by providing them with the tools they need in order to fully participate in their communities with dignity, and not trap them as subsidized labor for private interests. 

🔅 To restore long-term solvency to the Social Security trust fund, we call for an end to the FICA tax cap.

🔅 Unemployment benefits need to include the option of allowing beneficiaries to take their benefits in the form of start-up capital to start or purchase businesses or create cooperative enterprises that help them to escape poverty on their own terms.

🔅 Natural monopolies and the common inheritance of the natural world need to be closely managed and protected by the public and not surrendered for a pittance to private greed. Our support of private property rights does not mean that we should surrender our common property into the hands of private oligarchs. Policies that deliver citizens their fair share of our common wealth and inheritance of natural resources are to be encouraged in the form of a citizen’s dividend and baby bonds.

🔅 Predatory practices which care more for stockholder value than human life must cease. We call for community-oriented lending practices and mutual aid organizations to replace predatory lending agents that target poor people and working-class communities. We must reject a financial system based on saddling workers with debt and interest payments that merely fuel consumerism and instead embrace one that encourages productive activity.

Societies all around the world are coming to the realisation that the way we have been living cannot continue and a new framework has to be put in place - with urgency!  

[*] Distributism

For further reading about alternatives to the worldwide status quo, see these:

[X] Mondragon Corporation - business group of worker cooperatives

[X] Cooperation Jackson - cooperative businesses in Jackson, Mississippi

[X] International Cooperative Alliance

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Gender issues: It's the young who suffer

With gender issues getting a lot of air play these days it's useful to keep watch on what young people are picking up on and how it is influencing their thinking.

It's also valuable in interpreting trends in society to have "insider information", especially from those who can report on how young people are responding to the gender diversity campaign that is being mounted in Western societies by small groups whose efforts are fanned by a mass media that is either uncaring about the social implications or fully captured by a newly fashionable storyline.

Clearly, the colour, the glam, and the edginess of transgenderism has filled the imagination of young people, and one young (mid-twenties) woman has just gone on record to describe in detail how all this has become an attractive talking point for teenagers. The tragic consequences, as highlighted in the British court case of girl-to-boy transitioner Kiera Bell (more about this later in this post), include a life that is beset with regret and depression. 

This American woman became part of a "community" of fans on Twitter that attracted a lot of  young teens. She relates how when interest in the latest news on what was the focus of the community died down it was not long before LGBTQ+ sexual orientation came up for discussion: 

Every time the discussion in the feeds died down to where there was just no new [community] stuff [...] to talk about, all the conversation slowly but surely shifted back to sexual orientation and gender.  From fan-ships of perfect LGB couples to ‘Hey, I drew this person but as a trans-female!’, to even forgoing pretending to talk about their interests and just discussing their own gender and sex presentation with their other online friends, it became quickly very clear to me that A. I no longer really belonged here, and B. Every single one of these kids was obsessed. Every. Single. One.

And the worst part is, not all of them are even remotely candidates for what we might call ‘prone’ to gender dysphoria or anything else. They’ve just learned it’s cool to have a gender identity, and they’re parroting everything they’re hearing everywhere else. [My emphasis - BS]

The writer then gives two examples of exchanges during dead news days for the comunity:

The first one went like this: Person A (OP) posted something along the lines of “I’ve decided to test (note the word ‘test’) if I’m gender fluid. I’d like everyone to call me (opposite sex pronouns) for a while.  Immediately, many comments with affirmation and specifically addressing OP as opposite sex emerged. OP reacted with glee. 

The second instance, and the one that really broke me: Person B posts repeated questions about female gender orientation. Asks what it means if they are a tomboy and if that counts as a gender presentation. Is told no. Continues (in a series of posts, that because I followed this person I saw all of) to ask more and more questions including things like ‘what if I’m comfortable being female but I like masculine things and sometimes feel drawn to masculinity?

What does that mean?’ I didn’t see a whole lot of replies to this person, but today, they posted that they are now identifying as a “Demigirl” with the appropriate flag. I had to look this one up [see here].

[...] you’ll learn that a ‘Demigirl’ is a female who ‘mostly’ identifies with being a woman, but not completely, and is partially gender-fluid as a result. You’ll also learn that the official ‘flag’ for this hybrid identity was scribbled out by some person on reddit only about a month ago. A month. 

So, less than a year ago probably someone came up with this idea, a month ago they made a flag, and less than a day ago a young girl on the internet adopted this as ‘proof’ that their slight attachment to masculine stereotypes fits them in on the gender-identity board! Praise and affirmation followed.

Now to the cry from the heart! Our rapporteur identifies why the stakes are high in this matter:

Still don’t think the gender craze is coming for your kids? Do your kids interact at all in fan groups? Do they talk to people online? Do they go to public school? All it takes now is a half-day of questioning to find your perfect gender flag, and you’re good to go.

Forget trying to turn off their phones, if parents aren’t talking to their children right now about what sex (and gender) really are and how varied and multifaceted they can be while still existing in a binary then they might as well be handing them over to the gender-packaging factory to receive their stripes.

The instant someone says “I don’t always adhere to stereotypes” a million voices are waiting to tell them which of 364,000 identities they can fit into to be special and cool just like everyone else. If they don’t have a response for that, it’s over. Period. 

Another insight from this writer is that she, herself, as a girl was usually more interested in what the boys were doing than what her sisters were absorbed with. However, her mother had told her that she had been the same when growing up:

I’m a happy adult female now, and I was never truly gender-questioning. I just thought, for a while, that boys had more fun than I did, so I wanted to be one.  But that, in and of itself, is a thought that’s deep enough for modern gender activists to insist I be transitioned immediately and put on life-altering hormones, never given a chance to grow up or grow out of questioning, but affirmed [...] instantly! 

If I, like that young girl online, had been handed a ‘gender-affirming’ flag and an identity that ‘made sense’ out of why I was different from my peers, I might have jumped at it, especially without the presence of a wise older person to tell me I wasn’t anything different than what she’d been as a child. This is the problem, this is why this kind of thing is so dangerous and toxic and wrong. 

The life of Kiera Bell has shown what a dangerous situation society gets into by not giving more attention to how young people's attitudes are being shaped by propaganda - the correct word in the context (see here). Bell transitioned to male but has detransitioned, and took to court the British clinic that had handled her case. She has given an account of her circumstances here. When she was little...

I was accepted by the boys—I dressed in typically boy clothing and was athletic. I never had an issue with my gender; it wasn’t on my mind.

Then puberty hit, and everything changed for the worse. A lot of teenagers, especially girls, have a hard time with puberty, but I didn’t know this. I thought I was the only one who hated how my hips and breasts were growing. Then my periods started, and they were disabling. I was often in pain and drained of energy.

Also, I could no longer pass as “one of the boys,” so lost my community of male friends. But I didn’t feel I really belonged with the girls either. My mother’s alcoholism had gotten so bad that I didn’t want to bring friends home. Eventually, I had no friends to invite. I became more alienated and solitary. I had been moving a lot too, and I had to start over at different schools, which compounded my problems.

By the time I was 14, I was severely depressed and had given up: I stopped going to school; I stopped going outside. I just stayed in my room, avoiding my mother, playing video games, getting lost in my favorite music, and surfing the internet.

Something else was happening: I became attracted to girls. I had never had a positive association with the term “lesbian” or the idea that two girls could be in a relationship. This made me wonder if there was something inherently wrong with me. Around this time, out of the blue, my mother asked if I wanted to be a boy, something that hadn’t even crossed my mind. I then found some websites about females transitioning to male. Shortly after, I moved in with my father and his then-partner. She asked me the same question my mother had. I told her that I thought I was a boy and that I wanted to become one. 

As I look back, I see how everything led me to conclude it would be best if I stopped becoming a woman. My thinking was that, if I took hormones, I’d grow taller and wouldn’t look much different from biological men.

 When she went to the clinic that she took to court she was sure she wanted to be a boy:

It was the kind of brash assertion that’s typical of teenagers. What was really going on was that I was a girl insecure in my body who had experienced parental abandonment, felt alienated from my peers, suffered from anxiety and depression, and struggled with my sexual orientation.

After a series of superficial conversations with social workers, I was put on puberty blockers at age 16. A year later, I was receiving testosterone shots. When 20, I had a double mastectomy. By then, I appeared to have a more masculine build, as well as a man’s voice, a man’s beard, and a man’s name: Quincy, after Quincy Jones.

But the further my transition went, the more I realized that I wasn’t a man, and never would be. We are told these days that when someone presents with gender dysphoria, this reflects a person’s “real” or “true” self, that the desire to change genders is set. But this was not the case for me. As I matured, I recognized that gender dysphoria was a symptom of my overall misery, not its cause.

Five years after beginning my medical transition to becoming male, I began the process of detransitioning. A lot of trans men talk about how you can’t cry with a high dose of testosterone in your body, and this affected me too: I couldn’t release my emotions. One of the first signs that I was becoming Keira again was that—thankfully, at last—I was able to cry. And I had a lot to cry about. 

The consequences of what happened to me have been profound: possible infertility, loss of my breasts and inability to breastfeed, atrophied genitals, a permanently changed voice, facial hair. When I was seen at the Tavistock clinic, I had so many issues that it was comforting to think I really had only one that needed solving: I was a male in a female body.

But it was the job of the professionals to consider all my co-morbidities, not just to affirm my naïve hope that everything could be solved with hormones and surgery. [My emphasis - BS] 

And that is why Kiera took the clinic to court - and won, with the judges ruling that children under the age of 16 considering gender reassignment are unlikely to be mature enough to give informed consent to be prescribed puberty-blocking drugs. In response to a higher court last week overturning that ruling because it foresaw a complicated arrangement for establishing protection for young people:

Bell said she planned to seek leave to appeal to the supreme court, adding: “A global conversation has begun and has been shaped by this case. There is more to be done. It is a fantasy and deeply concerning that any doctor could believe a 10-year-old could consent to the loss of their fertility.”

The parent, author and columnist, Rod Dreher, comments:

Parents need to wake up, and wake up fast. There is an entire world of activists and allies devoted to convincing your child that he or she is something other than what they are, in terms of sex and gender. They are constantly trying to undermine your kid. You probably have no idea what it’s like. 

You might recall me telling you about meeting a Catholic father in Slovenia this summer, a man whose 12-year-old daughter is locked in a profound depression because some older teens from the US that she met online convinced her that she has to choose her gender identity quickly, before puberty really sets in. 

The girl is obsessed with this idea, doesn’t want to go to school, is struggling with eating, and so forth. This family is sitting in Slovenia, but the Internet made it possible for these ghouls in Oregon to colonize the child’s mind.

The message that comes through forcefully from all this is that parents must be constantly talking to their children about this topic because it is running hot on the platforms where young people congregate, and - don't forget - in many classrooms, too. Parents have to work hard to counter those two influences.

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