What constitutes moral courage?

That is the question posed by The Mark contributor Zachary Kuehner:

Professor Manji is the founder of the “Moral Courage Project at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, which aspires to “teach young leaders to break silences for the greater good.” She has gained significant notoriety for speaking out against radical Islam and for encouraging citizens, both within and outside the Muslim community, to confront and oppose extremist elements that conflict with the basic values that western democracies hold dear. It is, I admit, rather easy to agree with her. Many of her arguments – judging cultural traditions by their impact on a community’s most vulnerable members instead of simply taking the word of self-appointed “community leaders”, for instance – are both practical and compelling. But despite her commendable efforts and passionate rhetoric, something didn’t sit quite right.

For one, the definition of “moral courage,” according to the project’s official website, is: “…the willingness to be original, unique, and different from everyone else in your group.” Perhaps I’m dwelling on a distinction without a difference, but I would submit that contrarian or oppositional views are not in themselves necessarily courageous or moral – to say nothing of originality, uniqueness, or different-ness. Of course opposition to one’s “group” can be dangerous (in the social sense and, often, in the physical sense) and thus require a certain amount of “chutzpah.” But neither of these conditions is sufficient to call something morally courageous. David Irving’s historical revision of the Holocaust certainly goes against his “group” and could therefore be considered a courageous position, but who would claim that this makes it morally so?

It’s a worthy and thought-provoking piece that you should go check out (The Mark is actually a great source of opinion-based journalism). I will respond below the fold: [Read more…]

Does being an atheist make you more charitable?

So it’s entirely possible that you’ve heard the latest ‘groundbreaking’ finding in the religious/atheist culture war, suggesting that religion is negatively associated with compassionate prosocial behaviour:

“Love thy neighbor” is preached from many a pulpit. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people.

In three experiments, social scientists found that compassion consistently drove less religious people to be more generous. For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were, according to the findings which are published in the most recent online issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

I don’t think anyone who’s been reading this blog for longer than, say, two weeks would have any trouble pinning down where I am on the believer/non-believer scale: I am doing pull-ups from the far side of the non-believer scale, encouraging others to jump off as I dangle over the edge. I am, in fact, an unapologetic anti-theist – I think that religious faith is an inherently harmful byproduct of bad brains and lack of intellectual curiosity. That being said, I am reflexively skeptical of any scientific finding that seems too good to be true. This is definitely one of them.

So, as I have before, I am taking my super skepty powers to the paper (frustratingly behind a paywall) to see if I can spot any errors. [Read more…]

Okay so this is just awesome

This morning I decried the culture of police abuse that allows individual officers to flaunt their authority at the expense of civilians. I also warned, in soothsayer-like tones, of what happens when you lose the trust of the people you were ostensibly sworn to serve and protect. I didn’t really think I’d find such an awesomely direct example:

An elderly woman got the last word after locking a police officer in her basement, and later suing the police.  Venus Green, who was 87 when she was handcuffed, roughed up and injured by police, will receive $95,000 as part of a settlement with Baltimore City. The city chose to settle the case instead of taking a chance in front of a jury.

In July 2009, Green’s grandson, Tallie, was shot and wounded. Tallie said he was shot at a convenience store, but police insisted it happened inside Green’s house and that the shooter was either Tallie or Green. “Police kept questioning him. They wouldn’t let the ambulance attendant treat him,” Green said. “So, I got up and said, ‘Sir, would you please let the attendants treat him? He’s in pain,'” Green said.

Green said the officer said to her, “Oh, you did it, come on, let’s go inside. I’ll prove where that blood is. You did it.” Police wanted to go the basement, where Tallie lived, but Green refused on the basis that the police did not have a warrant. “I said, ‘No, you don’t have a warrant. You don’t go down in my house like that. He wasn’t shot in here.'” Green said the officer replied, “I’m going to find that gun. I’m going to prove that you did it.”

A struggle ensued between a male officer and Green. “He dragged me, threw me across the chair, put handcuffs on me and just started calling me the ‘b’ name. He ridiculed me,” Green said. An officer went into the basement and Green locked him inside.

Stewart and Colbert approve

So let this be a lesson to police everywhere: don’t fuck with old ladies from Baltimore. They’ll fuck with you right back.

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Trust unworthy

As I learn more about the world, I become more and more deeply skeptical of explanations of phenomena that are fixated on ‘personal responsibility’ narratives. If psychology teaches us anything it’s that people behave in ways that not only can they not predict beforehand, but that they cannot even explain afterward. Getting obsessed over laying blame on a lack of character is a temptingly easy but ultimately unsatisfactory approach, because it suggests absolutely no ways of making change (not to mention the fact that it is often demonstrably incorrect).

Yesterday was May Day, where Occupy protesters in New York City (and a handful of other cities – there wasn’t a peep out of Vancouver, which made me very upset) focussed less on blaming a few individuals for the problems facing our current political/economic system, but the factors that made it so corrupt. Predictably, those who staunchly refused to engage with Occupy to begin with will respond by complaining that the protesters are “blaming the rich for being successful”. In the same way, this kind of explanation is so wildly off base as to completely obscure the issues under discussion. Indeed, blaming individuals makes no sense – that’s why nobody’s doing it.

So we have to be careful when we are confronted by a fact like this: [Read more…]

Woodworth? ABORT! ABORT!

This morning I recounted the somewhat bizarre tale of a Republican North Party member of Parliament who tabled a private member’s bill to, in a semi-oblique way, spark debate over access to abortion in Canada. To my sincere surprise, the bill’s author (Stephen Woodworth of Kitchener) was rebuked by all parties in Parliament, including by a high-ranking member of his own party. Considering the fact that a sizeable proportion of the RNP voting base is anti-choice, it seemed odd for the government to come down so heavily on its own MPs motion, especially to have a high-ranking member dish out the tongue-lashing.

As I said in this morning’s post, all that really matters is that women’s reproductive autonomy is preserved and appears to be well-safeguarded from Parliamentary interference, even under this government. However, what I am profoundly unclear on is why this motion – doomed to fail as it was – even saw the light of day. There are a number of potential explanations I can think of, and I will spend a little time on each one.

1. The obvious one: everything is exactly as it seems [Read more…]

Something… weird happened last week

Anyone who is at least passingly familiar with the political landscape of the United States right now knows that the Republican Party has declared open season on women’s reproductive rights. From the much-derided all-male hearing on women’s contraception (and the resulting Limbaugh clusterfuck) to the very serious breaches of both personal autonomy and medical ethics happening in various states, there seems to be a concerted effort to roll back women’s access to health care. Add to that the fact that the government was nearly shut down because Republicans refused to allow any federal funding to go to Planned Parenthood, their reluctance to recertify the Violence Against Women Act, and the picture becomes pretty clear: Republicans have decided that American women are on their own.

Of course we have our own version of the Republicans forming the government here in Canada. As I noted shortly after the election, the Republican North Party is actually a stiched-together and very uneasy coalition of actual legitimate fiscal conservatives and the backwoods knee-jerk reactionaries that exist in every country to some degree, and said this: [Read more…]

Certainly uncertain

I’ve been using Twitter a lot recently. I was deeply cynical about the platform when I first learned about it. To be certain, some of my cynicism was justified: there are a lot of people who do seriously just post whatever pops into their heads. I am sad to say that I am quickly becoming one of ‘those people’ in a sense, especially when I spend my Sundays on quiet introspection and wandering around. The funny thing is, whether by coincidence or as a function of how people use social media, my number of subscribers has increased since I have become a more frequent Tweeter

If you look at my description, I describe myself as (among other things) an “anti-racist”. I came across that term rather recently. Before I began seriously delving into issues of race and trying to engage with other people, I didn’t bother with trying to classify what was going on inside my head. Racism was, like history and psychology and philosophy and any number of other things, something that I was interested in thinking about. Of course, it had the added component about being relevant to my own day-to-day experiences.

It wasn’t until I started talking about racism that I began to cast about for useful ways of cementing my scattered thoughts on race into relatable, recognizable forms. Such forms required terminology, and the people who I found whose viewpoints were close to my own called themselves “anti-racist”, so I decided to run with it. Due to the diversity of approaches I’ve seen with this label, I have given little thought to what that term “actually” means beyond a very superficial definition. Generally, it is a critical stance on race and racism… and it doesn’t approve. [Read more…]

Movie Friday: Bonus self-promotion

So this week I “rediscovered” the joys of performing at open mic nights. Back in my grad school days, solo open mic performance was one of my favourite leisure activities. Since moving to Vancouver, it has been a much more rare occasion to see me perform without the aid of my band-mates (even before Even Handed Odds formed, Stu and I used to hold down open mics as a duo). In an effort to boost the band, however, I went to a open mic this past Monday and was once again bitten by the bug. While I definitely prefer to play music with other people, there really is something about being up on that stage by yourself.

Anyway, this Wednesday I picked up my guitar and tromped to a local spot that does open mic. I had a buddy there, who filmed this song for me:

I was a little rusty – I’ll probably take a run at this again sometime. Once again, apologies for the sound quality. Here’s the original if you’ve been trapped under a rock for the past 15 or so years and haven’t heard it. Also, one of the greatest music videos of all time:

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Movie Friday: Clint Eastwood

So last week I mentioned that my band does a cover of ‘Clint Eastwood’ by the Gorillaz. The cool thing about this song is that it features the rhyming of Del tha Funkee Homosapien, so covering it gives me a chance to rap, and provides the audience with something you don’t often see at a pub night. I said I’d get a recording for ya, so here it is:

I wish I could do something about the sound, but the microphone on my mobile doesn’t handle noise too well. If anyone knows a ‘fix’ for that I’d greatly appreciate it. If you’d like to contrast my performance with the original, here it is:

The self-aggrandizement continues!

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Movie Friday: All About Vaccines

So last weekend you may recall that I was in Kelowna, acting as a guest moderator for a panel on vaccines, hosted by the Centre for Inquiry. I had a great time there, and the panel was very informative. It ran loooong though. I’m not sure what it is about having a PhD and/or MD that makes you unable to tell time, but most of the presentations went twice as long as allotted. However, if you were ever looking for authoritative information about vaccines, these videos provide a valuable resource.

The rest of them can be seen here.

I really enjoyed my time in Kelowna, and am looking forward to being invited there again. There’s also the possibility of being invited to the new branch in Nelson – CFI West Kootenays. Nelson is a beautiful place, and I’d love to visit sometime. Let me know how I did in the into and Q&A sections.

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