Abortion rights developments in Uruguay and the EU

Recent developments in Europe and Uruguay reflect some progress in the realization of reproductive rights globally. The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Poland’s treatment of a 14-year-old who needed an abortion after she was raped, and a law was passed in Uruguay in October making abortion legal in the first trimester of pregnancy. Both of these stories mark positive developments in a country and a region that have become battlegrounds where women fight the Vatican’s denial of their most basic rights and where the Church will never retreat peacefully.

It’s important to recognize the people fighting for reproductive rights there (and here, for that matter), and to note that it does appear that the movement for reproductive rights is gaining momentum in Latin America especially. But reading the stories of girls and women in these two reports reminds you just how much suffering misogynistic cultures and laws are causing real people. I urge everyone to read them, especially the report about the Uruguayan law and its regional context.

The big BMJ clinical trials announcement, and more pharma spin

I suppose it’s possible for a public statement from a corporation or pharma trade group to consist of something other than self-serving manipulative rhetoric. It’s probably also possible to find a Van Morrison song that doesn’t contain some variant of “old,” “road,” or “soul.” Wouldn’t count on either.

The British Medical Journal has announced that beginning in 2013 it won’t publish the results of clinical trials if the detailed data are not made available. (How tragically backwards things have become that this would have to happen at all, and that it will be only one small step towards the transparency needed, even assuming it works and that other journals follow BMJ’s lead. We’re talking about the evidentiary basis on which governments, doctors, and everyone else are supposed to make decisions about medical treatments, and the powerful – despite overwhelming evidence of the human costs of their duplicity - have been able to build a system in which they control access.)

Pharma has relentlessly fought attempts to get them to make the data available to the public, and they continue, and will continue, to use every trick in their bag to evade disclosure requirements. They’ll continue to insist that the problem isn’t that serious, the problem used to be serious but isn’t any longer, clinical trials databases are sufficient even if transparency isn’t enforced, they’ve always complied with reporting requirements, they’ve already been addressing the problem, they support efforts to remedy the problem, the problem can’t be remedied ethically or efficiently, they mean well and are investigating the best way to cooperate, and so on, all simultaneously.

Ben Goldacre and One Boring Old Man report on pharma’s spinjinks, past and present. If there weren’t lives at stake, it would be funny to watch them and their shills at it. I did come across an entertaining response to one of their tactics – one which rings strangely familiar… - in the comments at Goldacre’s blog:

-The sky is blue.

-I can’t see how you can be so sure.

-I see it every time the clouds clear. I saw it yesterday.

-So your most recent observation was 24 hours ago. It was also based on scattered sunlight that takes several milliseconds to travel through the atmosphere, so your claim is old, based on even older data.

-There is no reason to think the colour of the sky has changed. The laws of physics are the same as they always were, human colour perception likewise. If you’re claiming there is any reason to doubt the colour of the sky, can you present your evidence?

-All you have shown is that the sky was blue slightly more than a day ago. I am not claiming the sky is any particular colour, just that we do not know the colour of the sky at the moment. If you cannot present evidence that the sky is blue now, I cannot see that your claim is supported.

-I’ve just looked outside again and there was a slight gap in the clouds. I could see the blue sky.

-You have not presented comprehensive evidence that the sky is blue right now.

Gary Francione talks about animal abolitionism on Philosophy Bites

I like these short interviews. Nigel Warburton asks intelligent questions, and the discussions are quite content-dense. You really get a sense not only of the interviewees' perspectives but of where they stand in current debates.

Peter Kropotkin in Slate

I hate the title: “The Russian Anarchist Prince Who Challenged Evolution.” Kropotkin didn’t challenge evolution, or intend to challenge evolution, as the author notes right in the piece itself.

I hate the inane subtitle - “Are we cooperative or competitive?” – and the claim in one of the opening paragraphs that Kropotkin “came to believe that…cooperation was the predominant evolutionary force driving all social life, from microbes to humans.” He stated right in the introduction to Mutual Aid:

It may be objected to this book that both animals and men are represented in it under too favourable an aspect; that their sociable qualities are insisted upon, while their anti-social and self-asserting instincts are hardly touched upon. This was, however, unavoidable. We have heard so much lately of the "harsh, pitiless struggle for life," which was said to be carried on by every animal against all other animals, every "savage" against all other "savages," and every civilized man against all his co-citizens -- and these assertions have so much become an article of faith -- that it was necessary, first of all, to oppose to them a wide series of facts showing animal and human life under a quite different aspect. It was necessary to indicate the overwhelming importance which sociable habits play in Nature and in the progressive evolution of both the animal species and human beings: to prove that they secure to animals a better protection from their enemies, very often facilities for getting food and (winter provisions, migrations, etc.), longevity, therefore a greater facility for the development of intellectual faculties; and that they have given to men, in addition to the same advantages, the possibility of working out those institutions which have enabled mankind to survive in its hard struggle against Nature, and to progress, notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of its history. It is a book on the law of Mutual Aid, viewed at as one of the chief factors of evolution -- not on all factors of evolution and their respective values; and this first book had to be written, before the latter could become possible.

His intention was plainly to focus on the evolution of mutual aid in order to counteract the biased view prevailing among many of evolution’s spokespeople (and also opportunistically adopted to this day by creationists) and to contribute to a comprehensive picture.

I hate the suggestion that Kropotkin was primarily taking issue with Darwin rather than challenging what he viewed as ideological distortions of Darwin’s ideas by Huxley and others as a means of defending Darwin’s theory against political misrepresentations.

And I hate that Dugatkin refers to Kropotkin as a prince here and in the title of his book on the subject - The Prince of Evolution: Peter Kropotkin's Adventures in Science and Politics – while noting even in this shorter piece that Kropotkin had renounced that title by the age of 12. I think his wishes should be respected.

There are other problems as well. These aside aside, though, I’m very pleased to see evolutionary biologists writing about Kropotkin on popular sites, and the article’s informative enough. I’ll also be reading the book

(only $3.99 for the Kindle version!) over the next few days.

Erich Fromm Interlude - the irrational belief in power

Since I’m talking about Erich Fromm these days, I thought I’d post a short quotation from The Art of Loving (p. 116) which might offer some inspiration to activists:

To believe in power that exists is identical with disbelief in the growth of potentialities which are as yet unrealized. It is a prediction of the future based solely on the manifest present; but it turns out to be a grave miscalculation, profoundly irrational in its oversight of the human potentialities and human growth. There is no rational faith in power. There is submission to it or, on the part of those who have it, the wish to keep it. While to many power seems to be the most real of all things, the history of man has proved it to be the most unstable of all human achievements.

Erich Fromm #4A: Human needs

“…one of the essential features and dangers in man in contemporary society, namely that we have become out of touch with all realities except one, that is the manmade reality of business, of organization of things we can manipulate. We are in contact with artifacts. We are in contact with social routine, and we are in contact and refer to what produces more things, but we are not in contact with the basic realities of human existence. We are not in contact with our feelings, with what is really our feeling, with our happiness, unhappiness, our fear and doubt, and all the things that go on in a human being. We are not in contact with our fellow man or nature. We are only in contact with a small segment of the world created by ourselves, and actually we are deeply afraid of touching anything deeper.” - Erich Fromm, PoN, KL 763-768

“What I mean to say is that the aim of life, which corresponds to the nature of man in his situation of existence, is to be able to love, to be able to use one’s reason, and to be able to have the objectivity and humility to be in touch with a reality outside of oneself, inside of oneself, without leading to distortion. This type of relatedness to the world is the greatest source of energy beyond that produced by the chemistry of the body. There is nothing more conducive to creating anything than love as far as it is genuine. Being in touch with reality, doing away with fiction, having the humility and objectivity to see what is, and not talk about things that separate us from reality, is the most essential basis for any sense of security, for any sense of feeling 'I' without needing props which substitute for that feeling of identity." - Erich Fromm, PoN, KL 370-6

[This subseries of posts about the ideas of Erich Fromm will cover his thinking about human needs and about love. I’ll begin in this post with a discussion of his understanding of human needs. In the next, I’ll describe the forms of evidence Fromm drew upon in making the case for these as fundamental needs. Then I’ll talk in more depth about Fromm’s understanding of these as generic needs and the productive and destructive ways people and societies attempt to fulfill them. After that, I’ll move in a slightly different direction and summarize Fromm’s ideas about love. In these four posts, I might briefly foreshadow some of my criticisms (four wholly noncritical posts is a lot to ask!), but I’ll try to limit myself to describing his views without taking a position. The next series of posts will be highly critical, discussing problems with his formulations, particularly those that stem from his religious sympathies and those that come into relief when we extend his ideas to nonhuman animals.]

As I discussed in an earlier post, Erich Fromm believed that any meaningful humanistic psychology/psychiatry, and humanistic practice more generally, had to begin with the attempt to determine our fundamental needs as human beings. Only if we’re aware of these needs can we distinguish superficial and harmful attempts to meet them from useful and productive actions. Only then can we rationally attempt to fulfill them in our own lives and intelligently help other people to do so. Only then do we have a sound basis on which to evaluate our own society, recognizing the real sources of distress and obstacles to joy and fulfillment within it. Only then can we see through our culture’s accepted notions of what’s best for us, think clearly about what the good society means, and together fight the forces that obstruct and distract from their fulfillment and build movements and communities that favor and promote it. Only on this basis can we build a comprehensive humanistic practice that doesn’t lose sight of needs when talking about values or ethics, and that recognizes the deep connections amongst these. Viewed in this light, it’s surprising how many conversations about well-being, political values, and transforming society proceed in the absence of a reasoned discussion of human needs and without even an attempt to establish a shared baseline understanding.

As I’ve mentioned, in addition to rejecting religiously based ideas about what’s good for us, Fromm rejected both chauvinistic assertions that our own society’s values are universally good and arguments that values are merely culturally relative. So he refused the “principle of adjustment” – the psychiatric view that people’s needs coincided with the needs of the system in which they lived, such that conformity with or “functioning” in one’s society is indicative of mental well-being and to be valued and encouraged.¹ He also opposed the easy acceptance of slogans of mental health - happiness simplistically defined as “having fun” (which “has very little to do with what in other cultures has been described as happiness,” PoN, KL 570-572), a focus on undefined notions of pleasure (PoN, KL 1672), or well-being seen as a quest for social and economic success or "security" (PoN, KL 601-603).

While he refused to accept ideological arguments about human needs that seemed more suited to encouraging conformity with the system, Fromm held that real needs could be recognized. He was at pains to emphasize that the needs he was talking about were every bit as fundamental as our needs for food and shelter. “There is a general assumption,” he wrote, “that if we have enough to eat or to drink, and enough sleep and enough security, and as Freud would add, a normal sexual satisfaction, if all this is given and not disturbed, then life is no particular problem. But the point is, that is when the problems begin” (PoN, KL 301-303).

It was relatively easy for Fromm to be optimistic that the problem of poverty and physical deprivation could be, and was being, solved, even under capitalism. He thought the high material standard of living in certain countries during the Cold War was inevitably spreading. This optimism did require a certain blindness to realities in the US, particularly when it came to race, as well as an inattention to some of the basic elements of Marx’s thought, by which Fromm was otherwise heavily influenced. But this was true of many progressive (usually white male) thinkers during this era. We can see now that such optimism was misplaced, and that the idea of unfettered “growth” itself was, as he recognized in other contexts, a dangerous illusion.² But it was somewhat more reasonable to believe in this vision in that era. At the same time, and what’s important here, Fromm’s basic point - that humanistic movements can’t just focus on those “material” (the distinction isn’t entirely valid) needs and neglect others - was right.

What are our needs?

Fromm thought that we could discern fundamental human needs and thus establish “objective and valid aims for mental health” (PoN, KL 367-368) on which a social vision, a humanistic psychiatry, and a program of social activism could be based. The essential human needs, according to Fromm, are: relatedness, rootedness, unity, a sense of identity, excitement and stimulation, effectance, transcendence, and a frame of orientation. He believed these were not artificially created or culturally contingent but existential needs – needs stemming from the conditions of our existence as human beings which had to be met, one way or another, by every person and by any society.

Relatedness (and alienation as a problem of relatedness)

Previously, I discussed Fromm’s emphasis on the problem of alienation in contemporary society. On the one hand, we can see this as the result of his working in the Marxist tradition. But Fromm’s concern with alienation went beyond Marx’s. He focused on this problem with such intensity because he saw relatedness as so inescapably necessary to our well-being and growth. If Fromm saw any human need as the unifying core of all of the others, it would be relatedness. He referred to alienation – “alienation from ourselves, from our own feelings, from people and from nature; or, to put it still differently, the alienation between ourselves and the world inside and outside of ourselves” - as “the central problem of mental health” (PoN, KL 625-627).

Fromm expanded on Marx’s idea that the condition of alienation was undesirable for humans to talk about alienation as a lived experience – a psychologically intolerable experience which people will go to great lengths to avoid. Because we in the US are alienated, he argued, “[w]e are starved for any touch with the realities of life” (PoN, KL 454-455). (One significant aspect of the need for relatedness, according to Fromm, is a need for contact with the realities of life and death in the form of dramatic rituals. I’ll discuss this a bit more later.)

The primary result of this alienation is boredom, which Fromm regarded as an enormous psychological, and therefore social, problem:

In a culture wherein we become alienated from ourselves, from others, in which our own human feelings become abstractions, cease to be concrete, we become awfully bored. We lose energy. Life ceases to be exciting in a true sense. I believe that boredom is one of the great evils that can befall man. There are few things which are as terrifying and unbearable as being bored (PoN, KL 823-826).

We speak so often of the evils of life: sickness, mental illness, alcoholism, what not, but I think we are not sufficiently aware that one of the worst sufferings in life is boredom and that people go to any lengths and any effort…to escape it, to cover it up (PoN, KL 308-310).

Both Marx and Fromm would hold that alienation is independent of psychological effects: we’re alienated and unfulfilled/unactualized not only whether we consciously recognize it or not (indeed, we’d expect extreme alienation to be marked by the failure to recognize itself – people so alienated that they’ve lost even the sense that they’re alienated) but independently of whether it has psychological effects on us as individuals.

But, far more than Marx, Fromm focused on what he saw as alienation’s powerful and inevitable psychological effects. Because he saw relatedness as such a profound need and source of psychological energy, joy, well-being, and identity, he regarded its absence – the condition of alienation – is psychologically devastating. “All this state of abstraction, of being alienated from the concreteness of one’s own experience, has far-reaching consequences for one’s mental health,” he writes, because it means the loss of a principle source of psychic energy - “the energy that springs from our being related to the world, our being concerned” (PoN, KL 804-810):

Joy, energy, happiness, all this depends on the degree to which we are related, to which we are concerned, and that is to say, to which we are in touch with the reality of our feelings, with the reality of other people,… [I]n this process of being related, we experience ourselves as entities, as I who is related to the world. I become one with the world in my relatedness to the world, but I also experience myself as a self, as an individuality, as something unique, because in this process of relatedness, I am at the same time the subject of this activity, of this process, of relating myself (PoN, KL 812-818).

While Fromm emphasizes the psychological experience of alienation, he doesn’t reduce alienation or boredom to a psychological state, a conscious feeling as in many pop cultural portrayals of “alienated youth.” Alienation, like its consequence depression, isn’t something that can be expressed in the form “I’m feeling alienated today.” It’s a lack of active relatedness to the world and our own feelings that results from social circumstances that prevent us from developing genuine, loving, productive relationships.³

Rootedness and Unity

The needs for rootedness in (AoHD, 261) and unity with (AoHD, 262) the world around us are in essence variations on the need for relatedness. Fromm believed that our seeking after unity was the result of the existential split with the nonhuman world resulting from “man’s” nature as “life being aware of itself,” his

awareness of himself, of his fellow man, of his past, and of the possibilities of his future…of himself as a separate entity,…of his own short life span, of the fact that without his will he is born and against his will he dies, that he will die before those whom he loves, or they before him,…of his aloneness and separateness, of his helplessness before the forces of nature and of society... (TAoL, 8).

This condition “would be unbearable could he not establish a sense of unity within himself and with the natural and human world outside,” Fromm argued. “Man, aware of his separateness, needs to find new ties with his fellowman; his very sanity depends on it. Without strong affective ties to the world, he would suffer from utter isolation and lostness” (AoHD, 262). Thus, “[t]he deepest need of man,” in Fromm’s view, “is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness” (TAoL, 9).

Excitement and Stimulation

Disputing the capitalistic idea that workers need external reward and punishment to compel them to work, Fromm argued that the evidence pointed undeniably to our “inherent need for excitement and stimulation” (PoN, KL 1596-1597), our tendency toward “seeking for pleasure and - on a higher level of personality - of being actively interested in people, things, ideas” (PoN, KL 1773-1775). He remarks that “In the psychological field, Karl Bühler (1924) was the first to speak of the intrinsic pleasure in activity and the functioning of the human organism, and called this pleasure Funktionslust (pleasure in function)” (PoN, KL 2073-2074), which is a wonderful word.

Effectiveness

Activity in itself doesn’t satisfy our needs, in Fromm’s view. We need to do creative work that meaningfully affects the world. As he describes: “To effect is the equivalent of: to bring to pass, to accomplish, to realize, to carry out, to fulfill; an effective person is one who has the capacity to do, to effect, to accomplish something. To be able to effect something is the assertion that one is not impotent, but that one is an alive, functioning, human being” (AoHD, 264).

Fromm borrowed Marx’s (highly idealized) example of the medieval artisan as a “productive, original individual” who “enjoyed the process of work, doing things that are beautiful,” though he believed other cultures have also provided opportunities for that kind of creative expression (PoN, KL 464-471). “This kind of skilled work,” he argues, “does not require extrinsic rewards or threats of punishment to be performed. It carries with it the intrinsic reward of interest, the exercise of skill, relating oneself to the world by a creative act, and more than anything else, that of growing and becoming oneself” (PoN, KL 1626-1628). Such work responds to our deep need not just for stimulation or activity itself but for effectance.

Fromm argues that this need has passed unappreciated by many social thinkers, whose social visions are impoverished and misguided by their neglect of these needs. “For thousands of years,” he writes, “writers and utopians in the most moving words have described that the most beautiful aim of life is one in which one spends only a little time working for the necessities to keep alive, in which there is a wealth of commodities and no need.” This idea of fulfillment through maximal leisure and consumption is also part of the capitalist mythology. Fromm’s conception of human needs, though, gives him a different perspective: “[Q]uite realistically, if this life could be achieved for today, one would have to make every effort to avoid it, because it would lead to a real psychic disaster” (PoN, KL 562-567).

As I’ll discuss in more detail later on, he further argues that this existential need to effect “expresses itself in interpersonal relations as well as in the relationship to animals, to inanimate nature, and to ideas” (AoHD, 266).

Sense of Identity

The need for a sense of identity is similarly derivative of and dependent upon the core needs for relatedness and effectance:

Man’s awareness of himself as being in a strange and overpowering world, and his consequent sense of impotence could easily overwhelm him. If he experienced himself as entirely passive, a mere object, he would lack a sense of his own will, of his identity. To compensate for this he must acquire a sense of being able to do something, to move somebody, to ‘make a dent’, or, to use the most adequate English word, to be ‘effective’ (AoHD, 264).

Frame of Orientation

The need for a sense of identity is also related to what Fromm believed was a human need for a frame of orientation, in the form of both a frame of reference and an object of devotion around which to organize and direct our actions. The frame of reference is a coherent map of the world, providing an understanding of the world and our place in it:

[W]e have to make some sense of our life. We just cannot stand living, merely eating and drinking and not making sense. We have to give some answer to the problem of living and we have to give some answers theoretically and practically. By this I mean that we need a frame of reference in which we orient ourselves in life, which makes the process of living and our position in it somehow sensible and meaningful…. This is not only an intellectual frame of reference, but we need also an organizing principle of an object of devotion, of something to which we devote our energies beyond those which we need for producing and reproducing (PoN, KL 317-323).

“Man,” Fromm argues,

requires a picture of the world and of his place in it that is structured and has inner cohesion. Man needs a map of his natural and social world, without which he would be confused and unable to act purposefully and consistently. He would have no way of orienting himself and of finding for himself a fixed point that permits him to organize all the impressions that impinge upon him (AoHD, 259).

But beyond this frame of reference, to guide “his” action, “man” needs

a goal that tells him where to go. …an object of total devotion…to be the focal point of all his strivings and the basis for all his effective - and not only proclaimed - values. He needs such an object of devotion for a number of reasons. The object integrates his energies in one direction. It elevates him beyond his isolated existence, with all its doubts and insecurity, and gives meaning to life. In being devoted to a goal beyond his isolated ego, he transcends himself and leaves the prison of absolute egocentricity (AoHD, 260).

Fromm argued that “these two needs are imperative needs and nobody can avoid them.” “In this sense,” he continued, “we all need religion, provided we use the definition of religion in a very general sense, namely a system of orientation and object of devotion, regardless of what the specific contents are.”

Bound to this is our “idealism” – our need for “strivings transcending beyond the routine task of continuing our life and of surviving, and of creating a frame of reference and an object of devotion that transcends our biological survival” (PoN, KL 350-357). We are all, according to Fromm, idealists in this sense: we have a need for transcendence – to transcend “life” – our material conditions of existence - either through creation or through destruction.

Transcendence

Related to all of this is a need Fromm emphasizes in many works: the need for transcendence. Fromm’s description of transcendence here shows how closely related it is to other needs:

The term ‘transcendence’ is traditionally used in a theological frame of reference. Christian thinking takes for granted that man’s transcendence implies transcendence beyond himself to God; thus theology tries to prove the need for belief in God by pointing to man’s need for transcendence. This logic, however, is faulty unless the concept of God is used in a purely symbolic sense standing for ‘not self’. There is a need to transcend one’s self-centered, narcissistic, isolated position to one of being related to others, of openness to the world, escaping the hell of self-centeredness and hence self-imprisonment. Religious systems like Buddhism have postulated this kind of transcendence without any reference to a god or superhuman power... (AoHD, 260, n. 9).

There are several assumptions underlying his case for this alleged need, and a lack of clarity in terms of what it is precisely that we’re supposed to need to transcend, both of which I’ll return to later.

Leaving aside for the time being the matter of whether Fromm is right that these are all really existential, universal human needs, there’s the question of internal consistency. It isn’t necessary that these needs be compatible for them to be real – we can imagine fundamental needs nevertheless coming into conflict - but Fromm presents them as not only compatible but symbiotic. (In productively fulfilling our need for effectance, for instance, we’re fulfilling our need for a sense of identity, and vice versa.) It might already appear from this survey, though, that there’s some inconsistency or tension between some of the alleged needs themselves – specifically, between the relatedness-type needs and the transcendence-type needs. There is, and it becomes more apparent to the extent that Fromm fleshes them out.

I’ll argue later that the transcendence-type needs insofar as they don’t merely recapitulate other needs, are out of place – contrary to the others and inconsistent with his larger vision. For now, though, we can just recognize the importance of his founding his humanistic psychiatry – and his humanistic politics generally – on the search for human needs, and consider how, even if we don’t fully accept Fromm’s list, we can arrive at a real understanding of these needs.

¹ While he rejected normality-based definitions of health, he also refused a simplistic, reflexive celebration of the abnormal or oppositional for its own sake, which he saw as equally simplistic and evidence-light.

² Fromm ran into similar problems when he talked about democracy and freedom as having been substantially established in some countries.

³ Fromm also depicts it as in some sense an existential condition, a problem I’ll address at length in future posts.

The ocean's gonna win.

The latest Frontline on PBS is “Climate of Doubt,” about the people and organizations promoting and funding AGW denialism in the US. It’s not the greatest Frontline I’ve seen, especially in its choice of people to feature, but it’s worth watching (best in conjunction with reading Merchants of Doubt).

You can watch it online here, and there’s a participatory live discussion online at 2 PM Eastern Time today.

My post title comes from one of the interviewees, Stanley Riggs, a geology professor at East Carolina University who worked on a commission assessing the probabilities of sea level rise on the North Carolina coast over the next several decades. The Right there has fought efforts to even begin to address sea level rise, even introducing a bill that would limit the evidence base that can be used in policy decisions to historical data. Now efforts are delayed several more years as a new commission, likely including denialists, has to be convened at public expense.

The Frontline episode as a whole shows the denialists crowing about their legislative and propaganda victories in the face of catastrophic transformations of the conditions of life, but Riggs’ comment really drives home the pathetic absurdity of these celebrations. Asked whether he and the other scientists have “lost” in North Carolina, he concludes wryly that political decisions aren't determining. In the long term, of course, “The ocean’s gonna win.”

Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary!

I recently visited the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in New York. I loved it and wish I could visit every day. Here are some pictures of the animals (photographic quality took a backseat to cuteness in some of my choices; I make no apologies). You can learn more about the animals in the pictures here.

Before I visited I read the book by founder Jenny Brown, The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals:

I recommend it if you’re planning to visit, and possibly even more if you’re not.

Economic suicides

“Violence is to work 40 years for peanuts and to wonder if you’ll ever get to retire. . . . Violence is unemployment.” — Savvas Metoikidis, 44, who hanged himself in his father’s warehouse in Thessaloniki on April 21

Compassionate Communities US tour

Farm Sanctuary’s Compassionate Communities Campaign will be hitting the road this fall, traveling to eleven major cities to help kick off the campaign. In each city we’ll be holding a dinner or lunch, a workshop on improving your advocacy skills, and local veg outreach events.

Here are the cities and dates they have listed (details at the link):

Sep 23 to 24: San Francisco

Sep 26 to 27: Portland

Sept 28 to 29: Seattle

Oct 10 to 11: New York City

Oct 12 to 13: Boston

Oct 18 to 20: Atlanta

Oct 21 to 23: Miami

Oct 25 to 26: Chicago

Nov 2 to 3: Washington DC

Nov 8 to 11: Los Angeles

Nov 12 to 13: Phoenix

Public comment on pesticides ending soon

Beyond Pesticides reports that the EPA's public-comment period on suspending use of the pesticide clothianidin will end in just a few days:

On September 25, EPA will close its public comment period for the petition requesting the agency to suspend the bee-killing pesticide clothianidin. The U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has failed to recognize that pollinators face unique hazards from clothianidin, a neonicotinoid pesticide which is linked to disruptions in bee mobility, navigation, and feeding behavior. So far thousands of concerned beekeepers, gardeners, hobbyists and folks like you have told EPA to suspend clothianidin and protect pollinators now!

(instructions at my link)

Additionally,

Beyond Pesticides has joined with the Center for Food Safety and the Sierra Club, along with beekeepers from around the country, in filing a 60-Day Notice letter with them EPA, announcing the intent to jointly sue the agency for Endangered Species Act (ESA) violations. The potential lawsuit highlights EPA’s continuing failure to ensure, through consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, that its numerous product approvals for the neonicotinoid insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam are not likely to jeopardize any federally-listed threatened or endangered species.

...The 60-Day Notice cites several violations of the ESA, all of which address EPA actions that have enabled clothianidin and thiamethoxam to be applied over a vast amount of U.S. farmland and in, or near, a wide range of critical habitats and ecosystems. If the ESA violations are not resolved within 60 days, the letter signers may then sue EPA.

I'd urge people to read further on this important matter.

The Vermont Soteria Project

Since the psych rights history article I linked to in my previous post mentioned a long-ago conference in Burlington, VT, I was reminded to mention an exciting development there - the establishment of Soteria Vermont:

Soteria Vermont is a project of the Vermont state government, which seeks to be a leader in mental healthcare. When Hurricane Irene washed away Vermont’s state mental hospital, Vermont’s government chose to replace it with a network of smaller, community-based and alternative approaches to mental health care. Citizens of Vermont are legally entitled to alternatives to psychiatric medication; Soteria Vermont will be the second replication in the United States (after Alaska’s) of Loren Mosher’s Soteria project which demonstrated in the 1970′s the efficacy of housing people experiencing first psychotic breaks with sympathetic non-professionals as housemates, in the style of R.D. Laing’s Kingsley Hall. The original Soteria was dedicated to using little or no psychiatric medication, and to using that only in the short term to stabilize a crisis. Repeated analyses of its records show extremely robust and long-lasting recovery from even the most extreme psychotic states.

Here's project Director Steven Morgan (who's not at all what you'd expect ;)) talking about their approach:

And here's a site with background on Loren Mosher and Soteria.

Occupy the APA - October 6, NYC

I'm working on a multi-part series on problems in the arguments of Erich Fromm, which is itself a preliminary to another multi-part series expanding his revolutionary ideas about science and "the art of loving" to nonhuman beings, which all in turn is but part of a much larger project, so I'll just post some quick announcements and short pieces for a bit.

An Occupy the APA rally/march is planned for the 6th of October in New York. Here's the announcement with basic information (contact information at the link):

HUMAN RIGHTS RALLY & MARCH

Saturday October 6th, 2012, 12:00 P.M., New York City

Rally & March from the United Nations

to

American Psychiatric Association Meeting!

Freedom from Forced Treatment and Abuse in the Mental Health System!

End Psychiatric Treatment That Denies Human Rights!

Every day, people young and old are forced into harmful treatment that they don't want and that they don't need. Join The Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (CHRUSP), MindFreedom Int’l, PsychRights, The Icarus Project, We The People and more to rally for human rights in mental health treatment, policy, and culture!

Listen to some of most powerful voices from the psychiatric survivors movement and get inspired to stand up for human rights in psychiatry!

What do we want? Human Rights!

When do we want Them? Now!

Saturday, Oct. 06, 2012

12pm - Across the Street from the UN (1 UN Plaza)

2pm – Solidarity March to the APA mtg. (7th & 53rd)

In honor of people held in forced treatment settings!

For anyone interested - a little history of the psych rights movement.

On differences: a reply to James Croft

Sometime around my short vacation, I happened upon this post from PZ and the reply from James Croft of the Humanist Chaplaincy of Harvard. Croft, yet again, suggests that they (the Harvard Humanists) and we (atheism+ proponents or sympathizers and the gnus of whom many of the A+ people are a subset – gnus/+?) essentially share the same goals and only differ in terms of tactics and tone and the specific ranking of our priorities. He asks how atheism+ - the label for the subset of atheists who “officially” distinguish themselves in terms of their social justice concerns - differs from his or the HCH’s humanist program.*

This is all a bit frustrating given that I and others have previously carried on extended discussions with Croft and explained quite clearly, in response to his repeated insistence that there are no differences, how our goals and priorities differ fundamentally from theirs. (This has itself been irritating as it’s contradictory for them to insist that we don’t have different goals while at the same time questioning and criticizing our goals. If you want to argue about goals, as I see it, that’s fine, but you first have to acknowledge that we have a different position, and they seem unable to do this consistently.) So really I’m just summarizing what I’ve written in the past in scattered forms here and elsewhere. But it’s a useful exercise, so why not?

So…

Croft asks:

But what is the relationship of Humanism with religion, and are these critics (most of whom are expressing their personal perceptions of the term “Humanism”, to which they are perfectly entitled) giving Humanism a fair shot? Is it really true that there is a signifiant difference in view between Atheism+ people and Humanists like myself in this regard?

As PZ and others have pointed out, already there’s a problem. The criticisms I’ve read are not of humanism – the pompous capitalization still grates – but of the particular flavor practiced by the HCH group. (Croft changed his post to better reflect the fact that he was presenting his own views and not trying to speak for all of humanism. I’m not trying to speak for everyone in the gnu/+ camp, but I will write generally, and people are welcome to tell me if they think I’m inaccurately describing the movement.)

But OK, now we can get into the substance:

In order to try to answer this question I’m going to attempt to make a series of statements regarding how I understand the relationship between Humanism and religion, and I invite self-identified Atheism+ people to come give their views on the same points. Perhaps there is a real difference if view here, but perhaps the differences are overstated.

Humanists I see religion as human-made

Humanists see religion as a human-made phenomenon. Religious texts were written by human hands, religious ideas were generated by human minds, religious practices developed in human communities. There’s not a jot of divine revelation anywhere. We made this.

Humanists I reject all supernatural elements of religious beliefs

Humanism is an explicitly naturalistic worldview which rejects all supernatural elements of religious beliefs. Prayers don’t do anything magic, faith healing doesn’t work, meditation doesn’t alter your consciousness in a wooish way, your spirit doesn’t have an aura, dancing cannot bring the rain.

So far, so good…kind of. Gnu atheists(+) see religion as human-made, but I don’t see much point in specifying “supernatural elements of religious beliefs.” The word “supernatural” is a distraction here. I oppose the holding of beliefs that people don’t have a good reason to believe – faith in any form. I don’t have to worry about isolating the “supernatural” elements of religious beliefs specifically. The defining feature of a religious belief is that it’s held despite (and often because of) the fact that it can’t be defended. That’s what makes it religious. This is what leads to the heart of the difference between me/us and Croft/HCH:

Humanists I believe that many religious beliefs and practices are harmful

Many religious beliefs and practices are inhumane and damaging. Homophobia in the USA is significantly worsened by religious beliefs regarding homosexuality, just as sexism is worsened by religious beliefs about women. People are concretely harmed by religious beliefs regarding vaccination and blood transfusion. Millions have been harmed by the Catholic Church’s stance on the use of condoms. Religious groups can be seen at the forefront of pretty much every regressive social movement around today, from opposition to gay rights and reproductive rights to opposition to proper science education and sex education in schools.

Humanists believe that it is their responsibility to challenge these beliefs and practices in order to prevent the harm they cause. Humanists have been staunch religious critics since the start of modern Humanism, and many of the most widely recognized religious critics of the 21st Century identify as Humanists: Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, for example. [my emphasis]

Here, as I’ve noted in the past, is where we get to the crux of the matter. As I said above, we – and there’s nothing particularly new about this, either – are not only interested in challenging the most plainly harmful beliefs, but bad belief. (That’s why I’ve long thought that we’re more of an epistemic movement, although this doesn’t seem to lend itself well to a catchy name. …epists? epists+?) The idea that our criticism of religion is criticism of specific damaging, bigoted beliefs assumes – mistakenly and dangerously – that belief itself is neutral. Believing is not a neutral act: not ethically, not psychologically, and not socially or politically. My position, and the gnu position as I understand it, is that all faith, all believing which isn’t empirically supported/supportable or defended/defensible, all manner of arriving at beliefs that isn’t reason/evidence-based, is inherently harmful. (Perhaps it would help to lose the distinction between beliefs and practices and approach faith as a defining religious practice….)

Ethically, as I’ve discussed on many occasions, citing Allen Wood at every possible opportunity, faith can’t be justified. We have, as Wood says, an ethical duty to believe according to the evidence. (I’ve also written about the contradiction between the two attempted evasions of Wood’s argument.) I’m not going to recreate that argument again; just read his piece.

Regarding our own development, I wrote a series recently in part about some of the little-recognized psychological effects of faith: how it damages our relationships with – alienates us from - others and the world around us by interfering with our ability to respect and to know them. Faith is harmful to our psychological well-being and our actualization as people. This sort of believing is narcissistic, allowing and even encouraging us to project ourselves, our desires, and our prejudices onto other entities. It’s profoundly disrespectful and can lead us to act toward other beings in harmful ways (often with a clear conscience), but it’s also psychologically harmful to us ourselves in that our failing to understand them on their own terms means our knowledge of ourselves, and thus our psychological development, remains shallow and circumscribed.

This is why I argued in that series that science, approached correctly and with humility, is one form or element of love. Faith masquerades as loving, but it can’t really be love or form the basis for love because it disrespects that which it treats and subverts genuine knowledge. In order to appreciate this, you need to understand science and faith as distinct and incompatible forms of relationships we have with others and the rest of the world. Faith is an alienated relationship which proves destructive in many ways. Whatever apparent solace faith offers comes at the expense of our relationships, our knowledge, our capacity to act effectively, and our human development.

I’ve also talked at some length before about the political effects of faith, citing for example Alan Sokal. Sokal, who unfortunately is often embraced and misrepresented by people on the Right, is very clear that faith – that promoted by religion and even more so that promoted by governments and corporations – is a central political problem. You can see the talk at my link, but why faith is a tool of conservatives should be fairly obvious.

People don’t develop their own idiosyncratic faithy notions about gods and politics. They form their faith-beliefs based on what they’re told by religious and political authorities. So faith is part and parcel of authoritarian social arrangements, and authoritarian institutions, although sometimes bitter competitors, work together to promote these practices. Given this, it should also be obvious why science and a genuinely scientific approach to the world are essential to social justice movements of all stripes. Encouraging people to evaluate claims and beliefs empirically, and even more important teaching them how to do it, is incredibly dangerous to authoritarian systems. This has been appreciated by humanists for some time. It’s also long been understood by those whose power rests on faith, as the Republican opposition to critical-thinking programs in schools demonstrates with shocking candor.

By the time Croft gets to the next item, then, he’s already missed the boat, because when the political implications of faith as a sociopolitical practice and relation are taken into account, we see that, just as harmful and harmless faith-beliefs can’t really be distinguished, neither can forms of oppression be cleanly isolated. Faith practices and relationships are integral to oppression in every realm:

Humanists I recognize that there are forms of oppression and sources of harm which are not religious

As strong as the Humanist commitment to religious skepticism and criticism is, Humanists recognize that there are other forms of oppression in the world which demand our attention. In our desire to promote human welfare we may sometimes prioritize critique of religious forms of harm, while at other times concerning ourselves with other matters. Religion is not always the problem, and there are forms of injustice and harm which are not most closely caused by religion. Humanists have a responsibility to balance our commitment to religious skepticism against other moral commitments in an intelligent way, such that religious criticism does not become the only form of social activism we engage in.

More differences. First, comparatively speaking, when HCH people talk about confronting oppression, it seems clear that they’re placing themselves towards the charitable-service rather than the radical-social-change end of the spectrum. This isn’t particularly relevant to this discussion except in that whatever complications arise for them are likely to be distinct from those encountered by people engaged in very different forms of activism. Second, I’ll note that the people forming and sympathetic to gnu/+ are not new to engagement with other forms of social activism. I’m not sure if that is what’s being implied here, but it would be silly even to suggest that A+ is just now coming around to HCH’s priorities, having previously focused exclusively on religion. Just not true.

Third, I think I’ve been frank that from my perspective their “commitment to religious skepticism and criticism” isn’t all that strong. Religious groups aren't alone in promoting faith-belief - faith as an epistemic practice intersects across various spheres and institutions - but they’re especially harmful in that they make it a virtue to believe things you have no good reason to. Doing so, I’ve argued, is contrary to morality, psychological well-being and development, democracy, and social justice, in addition of course to the advance of scientific knowledge and thus our capacity for effective positive action.

This is why epistemic practices and specifically faith itself have to be priorities for A+ or any humanistic or social justice movement. Sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, all forms of political-economic conservatism, speciesism, anti-environmentalism, imperialism, and all forms and institutions of oppression have long relied on faith-belief. Further, addressing today’s problems – e.g., AGW, resource depletion, pandemics - requires a humble, respectful scientific approach that isn’t distorted by our projections and is thus anti-faith. This necessarily alters the calculus. If you recognize faith itself as a moral, psychological, and political problem inherent in but not limited to religion, your priorities are different. Opposing faith itself and promoting and teaching critical, scientific practices are urgent goals, not just in any individual sphere but comprehensively.

Humanists I believe in secular government

Humanists believe in democratic governance and a secular society in which religious arguments are not privileged in any way above nonreligious ones. We do not believe that religious perspectives should be entirely excluded from the public square – that would be an unacceptable infringement on the right of free speech – but we do believe that public policy should be based on secular reasoning accessible, in principle, to all people regardless of their religious perspective. “Because my religion says so” is insufficient reason to impose one’s view on others.

I agree with this. See above, though, about faith-belief and politics. The fact that faith is inherently authoritarian, even when it appears superficially or immediately to be working in the service of social justice, makes it an important priority for humanist social-justice and democratic activists.

Humanists I believe that people can derive experiences of real value from religious communities

Humanists recognize that some religious communities can provide valuable and life-enhancing experiences for their congregants, even though those experiences are surrounded by a metaphysical framework we consider to be inaccurate. Since religion is human-created it is not surprising that some aspects of religious practice respond effectively to real human needs. These needs do not necessary disappear once people give up the religious beliefs which grew up around them.

Some people find truly welcoming communities in religious spaces, when they have been rejected elsewhere (this is true of many LGBTQ people I know, for instance). Some people value the opportunity to explore moral questions which a weekly sermon provides. Some use their religious community as a base for activism and social change. Others simply enjoy the experience of a weekly set of practices which take them out of their work and home life.

While Humanists need not embrace the exact nature or justification of these practices, we recognize that some people do derive legitimate satisfaction and value from them. This does not mean we should withhold principled criticism, but it does mean that we should recognize that there is some value for some people in certain religious practices. If there are ways of secularizing the practices of religion which people find value, extracting any Inhumane elements while maintaining pieces of value, then Humanists recognize this as a legitimate choice for some. We also understand that many will not wish to do this, which is also a legitimate choice.

I think several other people have dealt with this already. I’ll just point out there have long been secular versions of all of the worthwhile practices of religion, and we can and should draw from the widest range of practices and activities that have existed. Further, I think the best practices, and those that really meet people’s needs, are those that local groups develop organically over time by chance or based on the specific interests of those involved. Let creativity run free.

Humanists I approach collaboration with the religious in a way consistent with other Humanist values

Humanists do not take a one-size-fits-all approach to collaboration with the religious. Rather we assess each situation on its merits, understanding that on some occasions it may advance Humanist aims to collaborate with religious people or organizations, while on others it will not. If Humanists can collaborate in ways which promote compassion – marching together in a gay pride rally, for instance – it makes sense to do so. If collaboration would traduce Humanist principles, however, we would not seek to participate.

I don’t disagree with this (and I doubt many do).

In sum, yes, there are differences. If this conversation is to proceed and if there's going to be a possibility of collaborative efforts, the anti-faith position has to be fully recognized and treated respectfully (which doesn’t mean uncritically). It has to be engaged. If you continue to ignore the various arguments about the ethical, psychological, and sociopolitical aspects of faith and the arguments for why, even when the specific content of a particular belief seems harmless or positive, faith itself is inherently harmful, we can’t really have a conversation.

As we’ve seen in action recently, there are certainly atheists, including many gnus, who view the promotion of atheism and skeptical thinking and the criticism of religion as largely a means to polish their superior self-image and to sneer at others. But there’s also a large group of people who have solid reasons for prioritizing faith (and religion, which is defined by and champions it) and science generally and for considering this struggle to be significant in all compassionate social justice activism. If you refuse to recognize this, you’ll continue to misrepresent us and you’ll continue to fail to understand why we don’t confine ourselves and our “But is it true? How do you know?” demands to only the most plainly oppressive and harmful claims, why we regard even liberal faith as complicit with fanaticism in an important sense, why we reject the promotion of faith (e.g., by referring to themselves as a faith tradition or a part of interfaith coalitions) by groups ostensibly aligned with us, and why we reject the idea that it’s generally more ethical and compassionate to leave seemingly psychologically comforting faith-belief unchallenged.

The question of the relationship between epist activism and other forms of social justice work (including the most radical movements for social change), to the extent that these can even be disentangled, has always been and continues to be huge and complex. It’s naturally not the case that one can be reduced to the other, such that if people just adopt a scientific worldview oppression will fade away or that if social justice movements are successful faith will be abandoned. But the relationship is clearly a positive one, and neither can succeed without the other. The matter has to be worked out in discussions and action as these movements go forward, but it can’t and shouldn’t be denied.

*It’s not the case that A+ is a new set of atheists distinct from gnu atheists who’ve come around to thinking about these issues. On the contrary, these matters have long been important within the gnu community, and there’s significant – though not perfect - overlap between the set of gnus and the A+ supporters and sympathizers. So much so that I think it’s valid to talk about differences between Croft’s views and those of gnu atheism+ generally. If that’s not too confusing. Which it might be. But I do want to head off the suggestion that Croft might be making (especially in addressing his questions to A+ people specifically) that A+ is an attempt to break off from gnu atheism and come closer to HCH-style humanism. If that’s not too confusing. Which it might be. But the HCH group has had a tendency to use issues like this for self-promotion, in the course of which they tend to misrepresent gnu atheists as uniformly fixated on religion and unconcerned with allegedly non-religious oppression or exploitation. One last note: I consider myself, and I know that I’m speaking for very few others in the gnu/+ camp, a post-humanist or post-speciesist humanist, so already there’s a considerable difference between my views and those – at least those I’ve encountered – of the HCH. But I recognize that on this matter I’m, unfortunately, not representative. And I pretty much agree with Crommunist.

Interlude - behind the popular song

I'm overwhelmed by the backlog of posts and thoughts.

My last interlude reminded me of Joni Mitchell, so here: