Reflections on Gaza

(A photo I took there in 2015)

 In 2015, I was part of a delegation to Palestine, with stops in Israel in Tel Aviv and Jaffa.

We visited Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Bethlehem, and East and West Jerusalem. And Gaza. That sounds like a lot, but everything is close there in terms of geography. In terms of Palestinian people’s ability to freely move around and between the West Bank and Gaza, not so much.

Obviously, that doesn’t make me an expert, but I saw things I wish I hadn’t seen and learned things I wish I didn’t know. Sometimes knowledge brings no joy. 

I’m not interested in picking any fights, justifying any atrocities, minimizing anyone’s suffering, or valuing some lives and deaths over others. But I can say some things about Gaza or what Gaza was with some confidence.

One, it has often been called an open-air prison. Don’t take my word for it—just google the term. In my experience that wasn’t far off the mark.

Two, it’s tiny. For comparison, one of our smaller counties is Wirt with around 235 square miles and a little over 5,000 people. Gaza is more than 1/3 smaller, at around 140 square miles, but it has—or had—2.3 million people, one of the world’s densest populations. In parts of it, you’d have a hard time shaking a stick without hitting someone. 

Three, it’s been under military blockade for 15 or so years. Everything was scarce, including safe drinking water, food, power, sanitation, and all the basics. At the time, people were trying to rebuild after the last conflict. Around then, the UN said it wouldn’t be livable by 2020. As for the accuracy of that prediction, I guess it’s a matter of definition. It’s definitely true now.

Four, the unemployment rate was around 50 percent before the war. I saw lots of people sitting at tables and hoping to sell things nobody would ever buy. Before this crisis, around 80 percent relied on aid from the UN.

Five, about half the population consists of children under 18 living in very adverse conditions. There’s lots of science about how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can lead to all kinds of problems down the road. 

Six, it wasn’t easy to get into and almost impossible for most residents to leave. I found the sense of claustrophobia overwhelming. 

Seven, I’m sure most people there were not connected with those wielding power. That’s true everywhere in the world and is especially true of the women and children who have made up the bulk of casualties.  A pre-war poll found that 44 percent of Gazans had no trust at all in the government and 23 percent had “not a lot of trust.” 

Eight, there are Christians there, representing Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions, although church buildings have been damaged or demolished by bombings from recent or previous conflicts. Gaza’s only Christian hospital, once connected with Southern Baptists, was bombed in mid-October. It was the only that treated cancer.

Nine, it has one of the world’s highest literacy rates for men and women, above 97 percent, higher than ours. Gazans value higher education, although resources were slim and are now nonexistent. I remember talking with men and women university students about their love for English language writers like Dickens, Twain, and Hemingway. Reading and writing were their ways of dealing with the feeling of isolation from the world.

Ten, most people there are or are descended from people displaced from Israel. Many are or were still  living in refugee camps.

As a thought experiment, try closing your eyes and imagining a situation like this happening anywhere in the world.

One of the most striking things about the people was their refusal to be defined by their situation. More than once, members of the delegation teared up when seeing the conditions. “Why are you crying? We’re living our lives” was their typical response.

I’m sure many of the people I saw have been killed or injured and all have been displaced and are dealing with horrible conditions  of hunger, thirst, disease, lack of medical care, and trauma.

Watching this reminds me of the aftermath of 9/11, when people were understandably afraid and outraged. Unfortunately, the response by US leaders had disastrous consequences, including invading Iraq, which wasn’t involved in the attacks. The result was around 4,500 US military fatalities and 32,000 wounded. Well over 30,000 US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have committed suicide, a number that grows every day. The death toll for Iraqis is impossible to calculate, although it’s in the hundreds of thousands. The long-term cost will be around $2 trillion. And the situation in that part of the world still isn’t rosy.

The use of force is always unpredictable, with unintended consequences for all parties, as any glance at history shows from the days of the Iliad to our time. Violence tends to lead to more of a growing spiral than a cycle, with each act leading to a more severe reprisal. Who knows how many seeds of spiraling violence have been sown over the last few months- or who will reap that whirlwind?

No wonder that public opinion polls in the US and across the world show overwhelming support for de-escalation, massive humanitarian aid, and a ceasefire.

One thing seems clear to me: the longer this situation lasts, the worse the long-term outcomes are going to be. For everyone concerned.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

The thing with feathers

 A few weeks back, there were plenty of things I wanted to post about. The (now successful) UAW strike. A major win on child nutrition.  But after the terrible events of the last month, they seemed out of place and tone deaf and I couldn't think of any appropriate thing to say. 

A saying of the Buddha's kept running through my mind: "Better than a thousand empty words is one word that brings peace." Since the market seemed pretty saturated with empty words I paused.

Then I had a dream. 

Although the latest scientific research seems to suggest that dreams are the brain's way of processing memory and recent events, and some are clearly just plain static, I still think they can often bring deep insights from the unconscious. There's a reason that meaningful dreams occur throughout the Bible and many other sources, myths, and legends.

I don't go all the way with Freud or Jung...but I do go a good bit with both. This dream seemed to have something to say about the state of the world and I've shared it with several people.

It went like this:

I was in a city at war with a real life friend and comrade. No other context given. In the waking world, several years previously we were part of a delegation to the West Bank and Gaza that left a huge impression on us both. In the dream, we were part of the underground resistance to an unnamed invader.

In the beginning, we were running through battered streets, trying to avoid being killed or captured, we passed a beautiful bird that appeared to have been damaged by a vehicle crash or explosion. It seemed to be dead or dying. Since we were being pursued, we didn't have time to stop. Besides, we didn't know what else to do aside from making sure it was out of its misery.

After a number of encounters, we ran back the way we had come. To our surprise, the bird was on its feet and starting to flap it's wings. We looked at each other and said something like, "Holy ****, the bird might actually recover!"

I woke up and immediately this well knwon poem by Emily Dickinson came to mind: 

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

My takeaway: the thing with feathers really might recover. 

 

Is war worth it? What veterans think

As the US teeters on the edge of another war of choice thanks to the actions of Prince Joffrey  President Trump, it might be good to take a look at what veterans think of the last couple wars.

According to the Pew Research Center,

Among veterans, 64% say the war in Iraq was not worth fighting considering the costs versus the benefits to the United States, while 33% say it was. The general public’s views are nearly identical: 62% of Americans overall say the Iraq War wasn’t worth it and 32% say it was. Similarly, majorities of both veterans (58%) and the public (59%) say the war in Afghanistan was not worth fighting. About four-in-ten or fewer say it was worth fighting.

 Veterans who served in either Iraq or Afghanistan are no more supportive of those engagements than those who did not serve in these wars. And views do not differ based on rank or combat experience.

Since these are the people, mostly from the working class, who are going to put their bodies at risk next time around in another war started by rich people, it might be good to consider what they think.

I keep going back to what John Adams, our second president, had to say on the subject: "Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war."

And then there's this line from Dylan: "Here I sit so patiently waiting to find out what price you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice."

Another eclipse

I tried to take a picture of the eclipse with my phone but it obviously didn't turn out well. Still the lunar eclipse reminded me of a time long ago when a similar event brought disaster.

It happened during the Peloponnesian War between ancient Athens and Sparta and its  allies . The war lasted from 431 to 404 BC and sped the decline of Greece. It went through several fits and starts.

One of the worst turns was the Athenian decision to send an expedition to Syracuse, a fabulously wealth city in Sicily. For all kinds of reasons let's just say it turned out bad.

But when the Athenians were finally about to cut their losses and head for home, a lunar eclipse occurred. The Athenian general Nicias was given to believe in omens and, after consulting priests, decided to way 27 days.

That was just enough time for the Syracusans to seal their doom. With few exceptions, those of the Athenians who weren't massacred wound up dying in the stone quarries where they were kept in appalling conditions.

I draw two lessons from this:

1. just because you can go to war doesn't mean it's a good idea; and

2. when it's time to go, get the hell out.

One more for the road

Yesterday's post highlighted one of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's great nuggets. A few people really enjoyed that. Fortunately, there are plenty more where that one came from. Here's one that is sadly all too true all too often:

"How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we are marching into battle against an enemy."

 And speaking of bad reasons and bad things generally, here's a look at what House and Senate Republicans are proposing about the federal budget.

War before people

For a long time, there has been a prejudice in the social sciences which tended to view early humans as peaceful noble savages and blame human violence on more recent social structures like capitalism, imperialism and all that. Short version: we used to be cool but now we're crap.

I'm no cheerleader for predatory capitalism or imperialism, but that view turned out to be pretty much perfectly wrong. More and more evidence indicates that the rate of violence as it affects a portion of the human population has actually decreased throughout human history. By a lot. In other words, we may be crappy now, but we were a whole lot more crappy and violent in hunter gatherer societies.

It is also now pretty well established that something like war has long existed in chimpanzee societies and that this is unrelated to human intervention.

You could view that as a downer, but I don't. It shows that we really can make progress and control our historical end evolutionary baggage to some degree. Of course, we're not there yet!

The wonders of the market

El Cabrero has from time to time been a critic of so-called free market ideologies. Now, thanks to a recent email from a reader, I take it all back. Well, some of it anyway.

The reason for my conversion is that, through the market's invisible hand, you, Gentle Reader, as well as I, can be the proud owner of a Zombie Outbreak Response Team license tag holder for your vehicle.

There are no guarantees, but it just might get you behind the security lines at a zombie apocalypse outbreak.

Maybe I'll go read some more Ayn Rand now.

YOU WOULDN'T KNOW THIS FROM LISTENING TO SOME PEOPLE, but the federal deficit is actually shrinking.

IMAGES OF WAR by way of NPR here.

HOLY PILL MILL, BATMAN! Read about the latest fun and games from the WV attorney general here. No wonder consumer protection is on the back burner these days.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The lion in summer

Pictures of Arpad, Great Pyrenees and security chief at Goat Rope Farm, have often graced this blog. During the winter, he looks pretty regal, reminding me of the noble lion Aslan from C.S. Lewis' Narnia books. In the summer, however, not so much.

Because his hair is so think, he gets miserable when temperatures rise. So, around late may or early June we break out the clippers and attempt to give him a bit of a shave.

Let's just say the results aren't pretty and it takes several assaults to make a real dent in the old fuzz bucket. A neighbor described the shorn version, not too unjustly, as "the biggest white rat I ever saw."

But he still looks like an angel to me.

HOW MUCH LONGER? Here's an item by a co-worker on how family members of miners who died in Massey's Upper Big Branch disaster and still urging Congress to move on mine safety.

THE POLITICS OF COAL  are the topic of this post from Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo.

GOT FIGS? Here are the latest musings on war, peace, drones, gardens and such from the Rev. Jim Lewis.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Thought for the day

A friend of mine raised an interesting point the other day. What if they repossessed wars when people couldn't pay for them anymore?

ECONOMIC BLOODLETTING. Krugman came up with a good analogy.

THE REAL CLASS WAR. Here's a quick look at the wealth gap.

THE SCIENCE OF STUBBORNNESS is discussed here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The new normal?

Here's an interesting--and ominous--statistic: more than 42 million people last year had to flee their homes because of natural disasters. This was more than twice as many as the year before. Climate change might have a thing or two to do with that.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said the increase from 17 million displaced people in 2009 was mainly due to the impact of "mega-disasters" such as the massive floods in China and Pakistan and the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti.

It said more than 90 percent of the disaster displacements were caused by weather-related hazards such as floods and storms that were probably impacted by global warming, but it couldn't say to what extent.

It looks like 2011 is going to have some nasty numbers of its own. As this Newsweek article suggests, extreme weather is likely to be the new normal.

CLASS WARFARE FROM THE PRESIDENT? As if.

FIXING THE ECONOMY. Here are some ideas.

ANTI-WAR BIPARTISANSHIP? Maybe a little bit.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The long defeat

Lately I've been blogging about things that are totally realistic and relevant to social justice from The Lord of the Rings. This is installment #4.

El Cabrero is no elf or other immortal, but I have been around for a while. And when I look back on many struggles, some "won" some lost, I get kind of sad. It is possible--and fun--to help win a good fight every now and then. But it seems to me, with apologies to Dr. King, that the moral arc of the universe wings around randomly but tends to tilt towards plutocracy and oligarchy. Which is to say rule of, by, and for the wealthiest.

The first big fight I took part in was the Pittston strike. The union won a contract, but after a few years the company got out of coal and many were either laid off or had to work nonunion. Another big one was the Ravenswood lockout, when 1700 steelworkers were locked out of their jobs and "permanently" replaced. The union members won that one too, eventually getting their jobs back. Just lately though, the company that inherited the plant cut off retiree health benefits.

And so it goes.

There are a couple of lines from LOTR that sum this up pretty well, both spoken by the elves Elrond and the lady Galadriel, who fought against the Darkness for ages beyond human imagining. Elrond said,

"I have seen three ages in the West of the world, and many defeats and many fruitless victories."

Galadriel puts it this way,

"Through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat."

I ask again, where's the escapism?

THAT PINKO, EISENHOWER. Here are some musings on the relativity of left and right.

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? Here are some interesting reflections on war.

FASTING FOR THE HUNGRY. Even foodies are doing it to protest proposed Republican cuts to nutrition and food security programs.

UPPER BIG BRANCH. The federal mine agency MSHA never hit the Massey mine with major fines for safety violations prior to last year's disaster.

HEAVY METAL. Metal books possibly dating to the 1st century AD could be the earliest surviving Christian writings.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Silver linings?

Lately the news seems to be all disasters all the time (although the one in New York was fortunately averted). Silver linings seem few and far between.

But Paul Krugman makes some interesting points about a possible silver lining in the Gulf disaster in today's New York Times. He notes that the environmental movement has been declining in influence for many years, largely because of successful efforts at reducing visible pollution. But

as visible pollution has diminished, so has public concern over environmental issues. According to a recent Gallup survey, “Americans are now less worried about a series of environmental problems than at any time in the past 20 years.”

This decline in concern would be fine if visible pollution were all that mattered — but it isn’t, of course. In particular, greenhouse gases pose a greater threat than smog or burning rivers ever did. But it’s hard to get the public focused on a form of pollution that’s invisible, and whose effects unfold over decades rather than days.

The decline in visibility made it easier for the right wing and business groups to push back against environmental regulations.

Then came the gulf disaster. Suddenly, environmental destruction was photogenic again.

It's too soon to tell if this will lead to a change in attitudes, but images are powerful things.

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL and a new therapy based on it may help people accomplish goals and get through hard times.

GETTING LOCAL. Here are some ideas about revitalizing local economies.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Here's a look from The American Conservative about the possibility of a Right/Left coalition against war and empire.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Cultures of honor

Stewpot Rooster was always ready to defend his honor.

Lately Goat Rope is looking at how cultural factors can shape people's attitudes towards violence. As noted previously, in societies where the good things of life are scarce and easily stolen, people often develop attitudes that support the use or threat of violence to defend goods, status and respect.

Social scientists refer to such societies as "cultures of honor," but that term may require a little unpacking. The term honor, after all, has many meanings. In this case, we are not referring to honor in terms of moral rectitude or virtue such as Samuel Johnson did in his dictionary. Johnson defined honor as "nobility of soul, magnanimity, and a scorn of meanness."

Instead, as Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen argue in Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South, the term refers to societies in which

The individual is prepared to protect his reputation--for probity or strength or both--by resort to violence. Such cultures seem to be particularly likely to develop where (1) the individual is at economic risk from his fellows and (2) the state is weak or nonexistent and thus cannot prevent or punish theft of property.

Think Wild West, prisons, rough city neighborhoods or schools, isolated but dangerous rural areas, herding societies, etc. Cultures (and subcultures) of honor have developed in many parts of the world where similar conditions prevail. And once a culture acquires certain traits, they can often endure long after the conditions that engendered them have changed.

ON A RELATED NOTE, here's a article about the influence of war on human evolution.

WHAT HE SAID. Here's Gazette columnist and economics professor John David writing in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.

HUNGRY PLANET. From the New Yorker, this is an interesting take on the global food crisis that takes a swipe or two at market fundamentalism.

SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE don't watch a whole lot of television.

FAILED CHARM OFFENSIVE. Here's what Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship had to say about the recent settlement of a lawsuit by the widows of the Aracoma mine fire.

WOOLY MAMMOTHS, ANYONE? Scientists are talking seriously about cooking one up.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: MAMMOTH

Farewell to glory, plus stuff on the economy, fear, and whales

Statue of the death of Achilles, courtesy of wikipedia.

Goat Rope is all about the Odyssey of Homer these days, although you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like this stuff, click back on earlier posts.

The visit Odysseus makes to the underworld is a turning point in the story. It can be seen as a kind of initiation, marking the end of Odysseus the warrior and the beginning of his return (although he ain't there yet).

He meets many people in the underworld. There's a sad encounter with the shade of his mother Anticlea, who died of grief after despairing of her son's return. There's a failed meeting with the ghost of Ajax, a mighty Greek warrior who went mad and committed suicide at Troy largely through the actions of Odysseus. Odysseus wants to make up but Ajax refuses to speak.

Lots of veterans--of war and peace--have lost people after having let them down in life and experience regret and survivor's guilt.

But one of the most important encounters is with the ghost of the warrior Achilles, who was given a choice between long life without fame and an early death but enduring fame. The Homeric term for fame or glory was kleos, which meant in part living on in song after one's death. Since the underworld was pretty grim, that was often regarded as the only meaningful form of immortality.

He did get fame--we're still talking about him today. But kleos turns out to have been an empty promise.

Odysseus, thinking him the most fortunate of men, greets him thus:

...Achilles,
there's not a man in the world more blest than you--
there never has been, never will be one.
Time was, when you were alive, we Argives
honored you as a god, and now down here, I see,
you lord it over the dead in all your power.
So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.

He's not buying it. In a shocking renunciation of the cult of glory, Achilles replies

No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!
By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man--
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive--
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.

I think this farewell to and disparagement of glory--coming from someone who got more of it than anyone else--marks the key difference between the Iliad as a poem of kleos to the Odyssey as a poem of nostos or homecoming.

One last word: Achilles' renunciation of the "glory" of war calls to mind a saying of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman:

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A JOB? Job seekers outnumber jobs about about three to one, according to the latest Economic Policy Institute snapshot. Here's a related issue brief on the subject.

SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH, FREE ENTERPRISE FOR THE POOR. That pretty well sums up Wall Street bailouts while millions of American families are feeling the squeeze. I can't claim originality on this one, but free enterprisers in a recession are kind of like the proverbial atheists in foxholes.

ON A RELATED NOTE, this item argues that gouging the poor lies at the root of the credit/housing meltdown.

WITHOUT A NET. As the economy tanks, millions of workers are watching the value of their 401(k)s evaporate. This McClatchy article suggests that the economic crisis may lead Americans to re-evaluate the current social contract.

THE FIX. Here's Paul Krugman on what the bailout might look like.

THE FEAR FACTOR. A new study finds some interesting connections between political views and the response to fear.

URGENT ANCIENT WHALE UPDATE. The early ones used their back legs to swim--a feature missing on more recent models. El Cabrero doesn't know about y'all but I find the evolution of aquatic mammals fascinating.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: DON'T EVEN ASK

A DAUNTING JOURNEY

Circe, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the Odyssey of Homer, but you will also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

After many ordeals, Odysseus and his men have it pretty good on the island of Circe. As he put it:

...there we sat at ease,
day in, day out, till a year had run its course,
feasting on sides of meat and drafts of heady wine...
But then, when the year was through and the seasons wheeled by
and the months waned and the long days came round again,
my loyal comrades took me aside and prodded,
'Captain, this is madness!
High time you thought of your own home at last,
if it really is your fate to make it back alive
and reach your well-build house and native land.'

Circe is cool with all that (unlike the other nymph Calypso in a similar situation). She promises to help but warns him that he must undertake yet another journey if he is ever to make it home:

'Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, old campaigner,
stay no more in my house against your will.
But first another journey calls. You must travel down
to the House of Death and the awesome one, Persephone,
there to consult the ghost of Tiresias, seer of Thebes,
the great blind prophet whose mind remains unshaken.
Even in death--Persephone has given him wisdom,
everlasting vision to him and him alone..
the rest of the dead are empty, flitty shades.'

It will be a dangerous trip, beyond the confines of the know world. It sounds like the dead "lived" underground beyond the Mediterranean somewhere in the Atlantic, which the ancient Greeks considered to be the river Oceanus. Neither he nor his men are glad to hear the news. She gives him final instructions for his task and helps him on his way.

The way you know you've really arrived as a mythological hero, by the way, is to take a trip to the land of the dead. Odysseus will join the company of Orpheus, Heracles, and Theseus. In future years, Aeneas and Dante will make the trip as well.

Come to think of it, I guess we all will, one way or another.

AMERICAN HUNGER. Here's an item from AARP on the growing problem of hunger and food insecurity in the US.

OCCUPATIONS have their problems, as economist Joseph Stiglitz discusses in this op-ed on Iraq and Afghanistan.

THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT in helping the economy grow is discussed here.

PUT MONEY IN THY PURSE. Financial compatibility may be the key to a good marriage.

RELIGION ON THE BRAIN, literally.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, if you feel like a theological workout, here's an interesting paper on the history of Christian views of warfare.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE HOMEFRONT

The Vatican Penelope, courtesy of wikipedia.

The Odyssey of Homer is about something lots of people are thinking about and living with today: what does it take for someone who has been away at war to make the transition to "peaceful" civilian life.

This has always been an issue after major wars, but it rose in public awareness after Vietnam and is once again front and center. Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, a student of classics who works with traumatized Vietnam veterans, has written two illuminating books on the subject: Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America. Shay sees in the story of Odysseus many parallels with the trials of returning veterans--in fact, the hero of the epic may be seen as an example of how not to do it.

(An alternate reading would suggest that Odysseus needed to go through all these things in order to be re-integrated into society.)

While the parts of the story that stick most in popular imagination are the monsters and adventures encountered on the way home, the epic is also about the cost of war on the home front, about parents, spouses and children left behind and about the corrosive effect of war on social norms and customs. His son Telemachus grows up fatherless in a patriarchal society and is menaced by his mother's insolent suitors who devour his household resources and threaten his life.

Odysseus' faithful wife Penelope is under enormous pressure to remarry as Telemachus' adulthood nears. Her husband is presumed long dead and the society in which she lived had no place for independent unmarried women who were not elderly or caring for children.

Penelope's young suitors are lawless and arrogant in pressuring her to wed and violating all the laws of hospitality. Perhaps one reason why they don't know how to act is because so many older and presumably wiser men have long since gone to Troy, never to return.

(To inject a little modern reality here, this is actually something documented in population research. As economist Jeffrey Sachs wrote in Common Wealth: Economics for A Crowded Planet, "a youth bulge significantly raises the likelihood of civil conflict, presumably by raising the ratio of those who would engage in violence relative to those who would mediate disputes."

The older folks have their sorrows too. Odysseus' mother Anticleia died of grief over her son's failure to return. His father Laertes has retired to a rural farm where he grieves and labors in solitude. The war has also changed the lives of servants who remain behind.

Even when loved ones finally are reunited in the story, they usually weep uncontrollably at first, mourning lost time that can never be regained.

Monsters and all, the Odyssey is a pretty realistic tale.

SLOW FOOD. Here's an item on sustainable eating.

CHEATING IN SCHOOL. Of the many sins of which El Cabrero may be guilty, cheating in school isn't one of them, although I was more than willing to slack. Nowadays it seems to be much more common. A new study looks at students who don't cheat.

DOG DAYS. Here are some reflections on summer's end.

WHICH CAME FIRST for humans--words or numbers?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TURNING OFF THE SAFETY SWITCH

"Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2" video game, courtesy of wikipedia.

"We are learning to kill, and we are learning to like it." That's how Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of On Killing, describes the desensitization for violence occurring in much of popular culture.

Grossman's observations about contemporary culture are based on his study of how soldiers deal with combat. As noted in previous posts, WWII era military officials were mortified to discover that only 15-20 percent of troops in battle fired at their opponents. This led to modifications in the way military training was conducted.

Targets became more realistic. Killing became a major topic of speech (and shouts) in basic training. By a combination of basic operant conditioning and social learning, the military was able to dramatic increase firing. By the time of the Vietnam War, around 95 percent of soldiers shot at opponents. The trauma this caused both then and now is well known and well documented.

Grossman is concerned that the same desensitization that soldiers underwent in military training is now a part of popular culture via realistic and violent video games and the mass media. These lack the traditional elements of discipline that goes along with military training. The result, he argues, is a coarsening of culture which creates a climate where violence can spread.

He is also aware of how other social problems, such as poverty, racism and social fragmentation can increase the social distance that helps to enable violence.

While some may dispute his argument, it is hard to deny that social violence today often tends to escalate to the lethal level. Instead of going from fist to stick to knife to gun, to paraphrase the title of Geoffrey Canada's book on violence, people often jump straight to gun.

At any rate, I would highly recommend Grossman's book to anyone interested in reducing the level of violence at all levels. The things we don't like don't go away when we ignore them.

ALL THE HAPPINESS WE CAN AFFORD. New research is revisiting the connection between income levels and happiness.

AFFORDING LESS HAPPINESS. The recession means fewer hours and less money for many working people.

COMFORTABLY NUMB is the title of a new book about America's pharmacological pursuit of happiness. Here's an interview with the author.

SUPREME JOKE. I missed this when it first came out on the 15th, but here's a commentary from the NY Times about the WV Supreme Joke--I mean Court--fiasco.

JUST IN CASE, here are 10 common first aid mistakes, according to Newsweek.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

CULTURAL DISTANCE

In the Dhammapada, the Buddha says

All beings tremble before violence.
All fear death.
All love life.
See yourself in others.
Then whom can you hurt?

Part of the secret of unleashing violence on others is precisely countering the ability of people to see themselves in others, in eliminating empathy. Often this involves seeing the other as the Other--someone totally different from oneself.

In his book On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman refers to this as "emotional distance." Often, this is done by means of emphasizing cultural distance, which creates what he calls "emotional hooding."

As he puts it,

It is so much easier to kill someone if they look distinctly different from you. If your propaganda machine can convince your soldiers that their opponents are not really human but are "inferior forms of life," then their natural resistance to killing their own species will be reduced. Often the enemy's humanity is denied by referring to him as a "gook," "Kraut," or Nip." In Vietnam this process was assisted by the "body count" mentality, in which we referred to and thought of the enemy as numbers. One Vietnam vet told me that this permitted him to think that killing the NVA and VC was like "stepping on ants."

The best known example of a militaristic policy based on cultural distance is the Nazi idea of the master race, but it has shown up many times in many guises. Obviously, this kind of thinking can promote atrocities.

Grossman notes, however, that the use of cultural distance to promote killing often rebounds on those who promote it. If one does something to one's opponent, one should not be surprised if the opponent does the same given the opportunity.

RETAIL RECESSION. According to this NY Times article, a number of retail chain stores are heading for bankruptcy.

IRAQI LABOR LAWS. Thirty seven members of Congress have signed on to a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki urging that Iraqi workers be guaranteed the right to organize. Saddam Hussein-era laws restricting independent labor unions apparently remain in effect. The letter says in part that

We believe that the promotion of fundamental worker rights is essential to ensuring that the exercise of human rights becomes a reality for the people of Iraq.

BIOFUEL VS FOOD. The move to make fuel from crops is driving up food prices and contributing to hunger in poor countries.

AUTOMATIC PILOT. A new study suggests that many of our decisions are made before we are consciously aware of it.

MASSEY. Some Massey Energy shareholders are pushing for greater disclosure of the company's political activities. Meanwhile, the compensation of CEO Don Blankenship is up by 35 percent.

URGENT KOMODO DRAGON UPDATE. If you've ever wondered just how Komodo dragons with lightweight skulls and not much biting power can kill and eat big critters, click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GROUP ABSOLUTION

Greek phalanx, courtesy of wikipedia.

There are any number of tragic features of human life, but one of the main ones is the duality of our social nature.

One the one hand, people can only become fully human and develop their potential in and through society. Infants raised in social isolation suffer devastating consequences. Even adults who are subjected to social isolation develop serious mental problems.

On the other hand, groups often bring out the worst in human nature. As Konrad Lorenz once said "man is not a killer, but the group is."

Group identification and absolution is a factor that Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of On Killing, identifies as a factor that can contribute to violence and killing.

He notes that

A tremendous volume of research indicates that the primary factor that motivates a soldier to do the things that no sane man wants to do in combat (that is, killing and dying) is not the force of self-preservation but a powerful sense of accountability to his comrades on the battlefield.

When people are powerfully bonded under stressful conditions, peer pressure is amplified and an individual can come to care so much for members of the group and what they think that they would rather kill or die than let them down. The 19th century French officer and military theorist Ardant du Picq considered this factor, which he called "mutual surveillance," to be of decisive importance on the battlefield. This tendency increases with identification with and proximity to the group.

The group effect, however, is not limited to organized warfare but can also occur with gangs, mobs, and other kinds of groups, which can give people a sense of anonymity and permission to do things they would never do alone.

Nietzsche may not have been far off the mark when he said that "Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule."

TAX DAY. The American Friends Service Committee is urging people to call Congress today to ask that resources now spent on the war in Iraq be redirected to meet human needs.

SPEAKING OF TAXES, here's a snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute that shows how corporate taxes have declined over the last 60 years.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, a new report by Citizens for Tax Justice shows that Tax Day has become easier for the wealthiest Americans.

LOW DOWN. Here's Jim Hightower on the damage the Bush administration has done to the U.S. economy.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, here's last week's Nightline coverage of the WV Supreme Joke--I mean Court.

THE GROWING GAP between the wealthy and everyone else is bigger in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia than many other states.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FROM A DISTANCE

17th century cannon, courtesy of wikipedia.

Lately the theme at Goat Rope has been the need for people who want a less violent world to learn what we can about violence, war and killing. Another way of putting might be to say that choosing to remain ignorant about such things because we don't like them is pretty much the Platonic Form of the Bad Idea.

One thing that seems pretty clear is that most ordinary people have deep resistance to killing other people, especially at close range. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of On Killing, suggests that only about two percent of soldiers take "naturally" to combat without the violence spilling over into their civilian lives. The number of genuine sociopaths who kill without remorse or restraint is even smaller.

One thing that makes killing easier is distance, broadly conceived. Artillery crews, snipers, airborne bombers and sailors engaged in naval warfare seemed to have less battlefield trauma and less resistance to firing than infantry fighters at a closer range who can see, hear and sometimes touch their adversaries.

In our age of high tech mass killing from miles away, this kind of killing has become commonplace, which means that killing is easier.

As Grossman points out, killing from a distance is anonymous. Further, when done as part of a socially sanctioned group in which each person only carries out a small defined task, this seems to convey a kind of group absolution on those who do the killing but never see it.

There are other ways that distance makes killing and violence easier, but that will have to keep until next time.

STILL TRAVELING. Usually during the week, this blog has links and comments about current events. That feature will resume Monday.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED