December 10, 2020

So I just completed reading "Why Truth Matters" by Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom. My blog today is not a jeremiad. Though I have had angst over how so many millions of our country have supported a president who declares facts for his opinions and lies, uses all his powers to stifle any criticism of his administration within his loose domain, calls upon military and civilian soldiers and law enforcement officials to attack our legitimately aroused citizens who demonstrate against him, call upon opposition groups to counter demonstrate and use force to stop demonstrations against his policies and police brutality, gives false advice to  our citizens about the pandemic downplaying its severity, suggesting unproven remedies that could be harmful, poo pooing social distancing and mask wearing to prevent transmission, and admitting to lying about facts shared to him in February 2020 about the severity and contagious qualities of the virus. He attempts to overwhelm the courts, various people in state and federal government, and public opinion that he has won the election though all his attempts have been laughed out of court, criticized by some of his parties elected officials, and analyzed results of the election so far have revealed no basis for his conclusions that the election was stolen from him. He does have his rallies with participants that appear to be enraptured by his meandering polemics and off the wall comments. Some of those who have been in his camp have been victims of sexual assault who hear him say that he will prevent the country from having potential immigrant rapist enter the country. On the other hand, others victimized and traumatized sexually are turned off by his comments objectifying and bragging about his sexual exploits. He promises his followers he will support the 2nd amendment so they can protect themselves from criminals intent on invading their privacy. Some of these people were victimized, assaulted, and otherwise threatened. He promises not to engage in foreign wars and alliances that undermine the U.S.A. integrity which appeals to people traumatized by our foreign misadventures and conflicts so they support him. He characterizes his opponents as demented, crooked, socialist and communist appealing to another set of voters. This type of rhetoric is there every day in his tweets and misinformation posts in various "news" outlets. It's not that there is some modicum of truth is some of his rants it's that fact checking has gone out the window so facts that modify or disputes some of his assertions are disregarded as opinions of opposition rather than fact. Conspiracy theories then seem to mushroom and followers of fringe groups such as Qanon has press and influence his followers. 

The Illuminati were a group starting in Bavaria founded May 1, 1776 as an enlightened secret society with the goals to oppose superstition obscurantism, and religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power. They and the Free Masons were outlawed and persecuted by religious organizations, the monarchy, and others but myths cropped up about their continued existence but now they were like a shadow government who infiltrated legitimate governments to pursue nefarious ends. Qanon is just a more modern version of this conspiracy theory. I can not recall if I wrote about my own experience in which I suddenly felt very fearful so I needed to escape. I had been on Oahu working as a psychiatrist at the Diamondhead Mental Health Center 1972. I heard about a Kahuna having his gathering place and more sacred place back in the woods behind Haiku Plantation residential community towards where the H-3 tunnel now exists in the valley floor. I managed to talk with the Kahuna and he agreed that I could visit him. So I bought some apples and went up the trails finally arriving at a shack. We had a pleasant conversation at the beginning while his young very fit muscular male accolades listened nearby. I was interested in discussing mental health issues and learning if I could how our mental health centers awareness of Hawaiian cultural practices could help us better serve this population. He told me that he had severe diabetes mellitus and was under a doctors care. He looked intensely at me and told me that he would share with me why there is so much trouble in Hawaii. He declared that the Jewish power brokers of the world have dominated Hawaii and badly influenced the life here. As he continued in this rant the chill and fear in myself mounted and I made my excuses claiming that dusk was upon us and I needed to take the trail back to my car. I exited safely. So our president now declares himself a winner, that democrats have stolen the election, that Republican officials who have given contrary and factual refutation of his claims should feel the scorn of his followers, and the very far right white supremacists who he says are nice people should stand down for now!  

Well, opinions are not facts. Conspiracy theories are like science fiction interesting and exciting in part to ponder especially if you  feel marginalized, in fear of losing all you have, are recently unemployed and hold onto a status of being more important as a group from the black or other racial and ethnic outsiders who may achieve more status than you. I recall the Scientologists in the 1980's and on had a thing against psychiatrists who gave ECT treatments to some severely depressed. They attempted to get the procedure outlawed and wanted psychiatrists to come forward to ask for absolution of there sins of administering ECT. I won't go into the scientific studies that show that ECT is not overused, not used to coerce or subjugate others, but used with strict criteria to benefit many with severe depression. I have copied Wikipedia "      

Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a business or a new religious movement.^[9] Hubbard initially developed a set of ideas which he represented as a form of therapy, called Dianetics. This he promoted through various publications, and through the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, which he established in 1950. The foundation soon entered bankruptcy, and Hubbard lost the rights to his book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1952. He then recharacterized the subject as a religion and renamed it Scientology,^[6][10][11] retaining the terminology, doctrines, and the practice of "auditing".^[12][13] Within a year, he regained the rights to Dianetics and retained both subjects under the umbrella of the Church of Scientology.^[20]

Scientology followers believe that a human is an immortal, spiritual being (thetan) that is resident in a physical body. The thetan has had innumerable past lives and it is observed in advanced (and – within the movement – secret) Scientology texts that lives preceding the thetan's arrival on Earth were lived in extraterrestrial cultures. Scientology doctrine states that any Scientologist undergoing auditing will eventually come across and recount a common series of events. Hubbard described the etymology of the word "Scientology" as coming from the Latin word scio, meaning know or distinguish, and the Greek word logos, meaning "the word or outward form by which the inward thought is expressed and made known". Hubbard wrote that "Scientology means knowing about knowing, or the science of knowledge".^[21]

From soon after their formation, Hubbard's groups have generated considerable opposition and controversy, in some instances due to their illegal activities.^[22] In January 1951, the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners brought proceedings against the Dianetic Research Foundation on the charge of teaching medicine without a license.^[23] During the 1970s Hubbard's followers engaged in a program of criminal infiltration of the U.S. government, resulting in several executives of the organization being convicted and imprisoned for multiple offenses by a U.S. Federal Court.^[24][25][26] In 1992, a court in Canada convicted the Scientology Church in Toronto of spying on law enforcement and government agencies, and criminal breach of trust, later upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal.^[27][28] The Church of Scientology was convicted of fraud by a French court in 2009, a decision upheld by the supreme Court of Cassation in 2013.^[29]

The Church of Scientology has been described by government inquiries, international parliamentary bodies, scholars, law lords, and numerous superior court judgements as both a dangerous cult and a manipulative profit-making business.^[36] Germany classifies Scientology groups as an "anti-constitutional sect",^[37][38] while in France the government classify the group as a dangerous cult.^[39][40] Following extensive litigation in a number of countries, the organization has managed to attain a legal recognition as a religious organization in some jurisdictions.^{[citation needed]}      

I'm sure you get the idea. A man Ron Hubbard cobble together from various sources a science fiction fantasy as a cult and the organization continues today as a religion. The history of Millerism in modern dress. Now we have a president doing the same thing with followers who support him for various personal reasons some associated with threatened status concerns, economic anomie (Durkheim), and subterfuge and rhetoric so opinions are substitutes for facts. 

Academic circles have polemics concerning this very same thing. Jacques Derrida a philosopher write about deconstructionism. This is a process in which you take what your attention is focus on and change it into its essences and then reconstruct them. Except that my last sentence does not make any sense and is words obscuring what you may view as real. In academic circle he was very popular but the obscureness of his ideas were problematic for researchers who relied on evidence, data, associations of causes, and research into deeper understanding of their discipline. Academia had a divided faculty interested in obfuscation and obscure concepts. Academic controversies in more modern times associated with these controversies included ethnic studies, anthropology, and history. So some academics opined that Aristotle and the Greek philosophers found their writings from Egypt which had a library in Alexandria and other places with these very same ideas. The people who developed these ideas were black so the black people have a great heritage. So when academic researchers and writers attempted to point out that 1) the timeline was wrong and 2) the people  who lived at the time the libraries in Egypt were forming were not black the proponents of the contrary opinion were outraged and the university was full of conflict, controversy, angered student groups, and a sometimes cowed administration. Henry Louis Gates,Jr. helped popularize the achievements of the black civilizations in Africa with data and scientific analysis not needing to reify an opinion about history in Egypt to fact. Jared Diamond in his book Guns, Germs and Steel points out that the geography and topography of Africa is related in part to it's people lack of progress into the Enlightenment era. Similarly when some researchers in anthropology romanticized their immersion in the cultures they were studying great academic controversy raged obfuscating the facts. Myth, superstition, and native practices were venerated and contrary information about the data were ignored. Japanese textbooks for public school greatly misrepresent the atrocities of the Japanese occupation of parts of China in the 1930s and 1940s.  For example, the Nanking atrocities are mention without the severity of the rapes and killings. In India the destruction Aodhya mosque by Hindu zealots was based on nationalistic opinions about history that may be false and misleading. The academic communities have had a hard time correcting the zealots propaganda. Turkey continues to deny the genocide of over one million Armenians by its own people. The Holocaust deniers persist in some academic fringe writing to deny the death camps and the Final Solution. Academic departments continue to have controversies in Palestinian and Zionist history swapping facts for "politically correct" opinions. These few example, represent attempts by counter Enlightenment forces to negate accepted scientific and academic research methods so there is a rejection of "reason,enquiry, logic and evidence, in favour of tradition, religion, instinct, blood, and soil" (p121). So the right appear to be comfortable with rhetoric and opinions without factual basis while the authors of Why Truth Matters warns the left especially in academia not to do the same to throw out reason in order to bolster what they want to believe. They go onto to write "Too much attention to points of view with little skepticism can get innocent people convicted of crimes, on the basis of testimony from people with points of view but no evidence. A number of US court cases dealing with putative recovered memory, Satanic ritual abuse and child abuse in day-care facilities have achieved just such a result in the past two decades: law-enforcement officials and juries were solemnly instructed to listen to children; and long prison sentences were handed out to people who were not, in fact, Satanists or secret-child murderers." (p173) The Darwinian theory has withstood a number of polemic attacks including a well publicized Scopes trial in 1925 with the alternative idea that there is a grand designer pulling the strings. The attempts to deny or diminish this theories importance is related to our human problem in appreciating the time frames involved and then the history of myths and religion concerning creation. Nevertheless, for those more comfortable with tradition and myth facts don't matter. Rebecca's brother and six children and wife are Jehovah's Witness. They visited twice and stayed with us for one week each. I did not know much about their beliefs so they helped me learn some. We never got into any discussion regarding facts versus beliefs though they were well aware of Darwinian theory and geological controversies related to their beliefs. My understanding was that their following the strict dictates of their religion worked for them, they were happy, and they were not interested in proselytizing while visiting with us. So different lifestyles and beliefs are not causing our conflicts with each other since we all value freedom of choice (which I have discussed in other blogs). 

Truth matters so facts rather than opinions about the atrocities in Nanking in 1937, the murders of over one million of Armenian people citizens of Turkey and Armenia in 1915,  the true facts leading up to the trials of innocent people in day care centers due to mass hysteria prevail. We don't need a Rube Goldberg contraption of conspiracy theory and rhetoric obfuscating lies for personal and political gain to rule the day. "enquiry, curiosity, interest, investigation, explanation-seeking, are hugely important components of human happiness" (p179). Some of the Romantic poets and artists had the opinion that science devalues our reality is cold, unfeeling, and maybe boring. But my experience is the opposite. Art, story telling, narrative fiction, religious experiences are human activities which science does not devalue. I do recall early in my post college years trying to understand Einstein. His special theory is quite approachable  and does not require special math training. His thought experiments are fun to approach and experience. As long as we understand that when we read a science fiction novel for example maybe Ron Hubbard's we don't conclude that his fiction is fact. This tendency of our citizen's to be drawn to rhetoric and fantasy substituting as fact had many roots related to our ethnicity if important to us, our status especially if under threat due to economic and self esteem issues, our history with concerns over pain, victimization, abuse, and trauma, and other mental health issues to name a few roots. Finding our way when influenced by these more narrative, fast thinking, possibly Darwinian brain based small group theory of mind influences may be difficult but is worth the journey. 

Is it a matter of our education training and practice in thinking deductively? Many people have little exposure to scientific enquiry. Graphs, data analysis, unbiased double blinded experiment exposure, peer review of data analysis and theory analysis may be very foreign and maybe intimidating so appeals from authority figures to just accept their conclusions may be tempting. Loyalty to an authority figure trumps careful analysis of the facts versus opinions and rhetoric of the authority figure. 

My son Joshua just sent me an article related to this. The authors take a more neurological brain functioning point of view.  For example, certain areas of the brain damaged leads to the individual convinced that the people close to him or her are impostors (Capras Syndrome). In another form of brain damage more involving the frontal lobes the individual is very optimistic believing they have won the lottery so miss spending their money (Frontal lobe Dementia).  In other forms, the person is paranoid convinced people are stealing from them various Dementias including Alzheimer's disease). All these examples, the affected persons are very wrong but can not be shaken from their perceptions and beliefs. Certainly those of us never exposed to deductive reasoning and scientific enquiry may lack the cognitive tools required to understand the research and data. The authors of the article suggest that education and training in the sciences may change the brain's functioning so that the information is now understandable and accessible for consideration. This may be an appealing argument for some to understand our political democracy crisis but such conclusions leave us to assume that those with an opposing viewpoint may lack cognitive capabilities that we fortunate ones have. I'll stay away from this viewpoint. 

Leonard

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