Eucatastrophe Reader

"It is not good for man to be alone"

Solitary Confinement

The National Georgraphic Society of the United States is one of the greatest sources of research and understanding in our country and maybe the world. Every month, it publishes a magazine that exposes to the public mind some specific place, subject, time, or theme relating to world geography. Similarly, they produce and broadcast scores of documentaries every year.

Tonight, in the interest of getting a better feeling for the experience of the man in Anton Checkov’s The Bet, a story I am discussing with students in Jordan this week, I watched a fifty minute documentary on the subject of solitary confinement in American high security prisons. America has, believe it or not, something like 80,000 people locked up in solitary confinement at any given time. In almost all cases, it is either because of the violence of their crimes or because of the danger they have proven to pose to fellow inmates in the “normal prisons.” Some will be in solitary confinement for a period of years, a few – those who continue to attack prison guards or defy prison safety rules, can wind up there for over a decade.

The documentary interviewed many of these prisoners. In some cases, the first real conversation that they may have had in a year or two. One man was being released the day the documentary was being filmed. He had been in solitary confinement for five years. You should have seen the hug that he gave his mother. Many in the documentary argued that the treatment itself was what was making the inmates more violent.

In the story, The Bet, the lawyer believes that he can postpone gratification long enough to collect a large sum of money. He is not aware that it will be more than just self-denial but a loneliness of positive pain. I read a study in the book, The Art of Choosing recently that was done several decades ago and that involved children. They were brought into a room with treats and told that the experimenter was leaving them alone. If they wished to ring a bell, he would come back and give them one (but only one). If they did not ring the bell and waited for him to come back of his own accord, they would be given two.

What would cause some children to have the fortitude to wait? Is it character? Or just an ability to distract oneself from desire? Is it a question of intellect, emotion, determination, personality? Makes me wonder just what character is.

And glad I don’t have to be in solitary confinement to learn what mine is.

Phil

What Dreams May Come

Nova: What are Dreams?

I wonder sometimes if my dream journals will ever wind up in some Doctoral research on dreaming. Silly idea I am sure. I had one last night the involved an old friend of mine whose last name was Manion peeling a layer of skin off himself. The name MANION sounds like a combination of "MAN" and "ONION" and it was interesting that he was peeling off a layer just like you might an onion. In the dream, I became this person and I was looking down at myself as I took this layer of dry shiny skin off in a big sheet and then rolled it up in a ball and tried to decide if I could eat it or if it was too big.

There was more to the dream but these details should indicate that I personally believe that dreams are the consequence of a desire to create meaning intended to be decoded and understood. It is entirely possible that meaning id FOUND in randomness that contains no meaning but I tend to doubt it. I think there to be too much intelligence in that chaos rather than in the intelligence I might posess conciously to derive meaning from chaos.

What do you think?

"My father is no different than any powerful man"

Michael Corleone: My father is no different than any powerful man, any man with power, like a president or senator.
Kay Adams: Do you know how naive you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don't have men killed.
Michael Corleone:  Oh. Who's being naive, Kay?

The movie, The Godfather, came out in U.S. theaters in March of 1972. Two months later, the nation would later learn, the Democratic National committee offices in the Watergate building were broken into and the stage was set for the eventual resignation of President Nixon.

One might argue that the film was a manifestation of a cultural trend towards empathizing with enemies and suspecting ones own leaders. In 1967, Martin Luther King had come out against the Vietnam War and argued in his speech, A Time to Break the Silence that one owed it to their enemies to consider their views. “Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies,” he said,

“Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”

In the Godfather, we get to practice this advice. Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Copula explore the world of some of America’s most notorious law-breakers and give us what might be regarded as a sympathetic portrayal. “I have a sentimental weakness for my children and I spoil them, as you can see.” Says Mafia family leader, Don Corleone. “They talk when they should listen.” We can imagine the words of this thug being spoken by our doting grandfathers. These are killers perhaps, but they are family men. “Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you,” says Michael Corleone, “But don't ever take sides with anyone against the family again. Ever.” Don Corleone wants to know if those in his organization are good family men “because a man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.”

This was an age when it became possible for the Viet Cong to be considered decent people, driven to violence by the need to take care of their families. It was an age when it became possible to believe that one’s own President was a crook. This was a time when the line between good and evil got seriously blurred and where it became more and more difficult to assert that it ran down the middle of some ethnic, religious, or national divide. “Noth Vietnamese are bad. South Vietnamese are good.” This was not going to fly any more. When Michael Corleone insists that his father “is no different than any powerful man, any man with power, like a president or senator” you might argue that he is suggesting that the difference between Ho Chi Mihn and Richard Nixon was not as substantial as one might think. Further, one could argue that each and every American who supported violence on the scale of the Vietnam War (for the sake of their families) was not entirely innocent either?

Does the fact that you are doing something for your family – for your clan – for your people legitimatize any violence that you commit? Should this violence, so long as it serves the interests of your family be condoned? The Godfather’s final scene puts us in the place of Michael Corleone’s wife as she must decide what to do with her husband’s ascension to the leadership of the Corleone family. Like Richard Nixon who had swept into office on the promise of ending the Vietnam War and bringing about a lasting peace among warring “clans” Michael Corleone had promised her that the Corleone family business would be “clean” and legitimate within five years.

And yet, Michael’s first act is to “take out” all his rivals – the heads of the five families of the New York mob. His second is to have his brother-in-law strangled for his disloyalty and for setting up Michael Corleone’s brother’s murder. Michael’s sister accuses him of ordering the assassination in front of Michael’s wife.

Here is the final scene between Michael and his wife Kay

Michael: All right. This one time I'll let you ask me about my affairs.
Kay: Is it true? Is it?
Michael: No.
[Kay smiles and walks into his arms]
Kay: I guess we both need a drink, huh?
[Kay goes to the kitchen to fix a drink, but sees Peter Clemenza, Rocco Lampone and Al Neri enter Michael's office]
Clemenza: Don Corleone.
[Clemenza kisses Michael's hand, and Neri shuts the door in her face... ]

Kay must decide now if she will accept the lie. If she will believe that her husband, Michael Corleone, is different from his father. I have no doubt that Copula intends for his viewers to consider that they were standing in the same place with respect to Nixon and Vietnam. It is brilliant really. The irony is that Michael Corleone is not one who will allow himself to be lied to as he desires his wife to agree to doing. “Only don't tell me that you're innocent,” he says to his brother-in-law before having him strangled, “because it insults my intelligence and it makes me very angry.”

I can picture the scene in my mind where Richard Nixon stands in front of the nation’s television cameras and says “I am not a crook.” Nixon. Michael Corleone. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Tom Hagen (The Consigliari). It all relates if I don’t miss my guess. “You think you know your husband?” Connie Corleone asks Michael’s wife, accusingly. “you think you know your husband?”

This was going to be the age of distrusting authority and exploring the possible rightness of those once defined as enemies.

Cinema doing what it does best.

Question for Comment: Have you ever agreed to be lied to? Why?

“It is our choices that show what we truly are far more than our abilities”

The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar

Sheena Iyengar is trying to take us into the world of research and experiment to help us ask better questions about the role that choice plays in our lives. In many cases, she is simply helping us to arrive at better answers to questions that are already very good. But here are some examples of some of the experiments she highlights.

Researchers put rats in water filled jars to see how long they will struggle before drowning (this is not a book for rat-lovers). Why, they ask, do some struggle and swim for many many hours while others give up in minutes? To help answer that question, they rescue a bunch of them several times so that all the rats in the experiment have the experience of being rescued before they are given the “real test”. Result, almost all of the rats will struggle and swim until they are exhausted. Conclusion. Rats chose to give up or not give up based on their perception of their experience it seems. Implications for you?

A second set of studies called “The Whitehall Studies” looks at the health of British bureaucrats as it is affected by their perception of control over their work. Conclusions? That when people have no control over their work lives – or no perceived control, their blood pressure goes up and over time, their life expectancy goes down. The same is true in studies done with people in nursing homes. Take away their autonomy and you take away something that extends life. In short, if you have to choose between a pay raise and autonomy, you might be better served by taking the later.

A third study – this one by two researches in India who wanted to look at the long term impact of arranged vrs. Love-based marriages. What they discovered is that when couples in the study married for love, they were happier at first but over time, their happiness with each other decreases. When couples are brought together by the rational process of two families who know them, their contentment with the arrangement starts low but eventually supersedes the contentment of those who found their “true loves” themselves. One has to challenge this finding by asking if it would be true in other cultures. Could, for example, an American parent really know their child’s unique personality and worldview (after they have been to college) well enough to make an informed choice for them?

In another research assignment the author conducted, she asked American and Japanese students to write what life choices they would want to make for themselves on one side of a card and what life choices they would want someone else making for them on the other. Without exception, she says, the American students fill up the side of the card that makes them the masters of their fate and can barely think of anything to write on the other side. Japanese college students distribute the volitional tasks much more evenly.

In her discussion of research she has done in Eastern Europe, she uncovers the difference between various definitions of freedom. There is freedom FROM coercion and freedom TO actualize and these are not always granted synonymously in society. What I conclude from her writing is that contentment is contingent on the ratio between those two types of freedom. If you have no one forcing you to go to a particular place on vacation, that is good. But if you do not have the economic freedom to go anywhere, is that freedom really benefiting you? She compares America, where something like 10% of the GDP goes to subsidies and transfers to European countries where something like 21% of the GDP is redistributed to provide choice for a wider spectrum of society. In short, in America, some people have way more choices. In Europe, more people have fewer as a general rule.

There is a good portion of the book that is devoted to explaining how people generally will conform their choices to their narratives of life or conform their narratives to their choices.. It can go either way. Why some choose to make the conversion one way and not the other is a matter of some interest to me and was essentially at the heart of my own Master’s Thesis research on American missionaries in the Ottoman Empire.

Another experiment I found intriguing (“The Marshmallow Studies” had to do with the way that children deal with dissonance. Experimenters brought children into a room with treats and asked them what their favorite was. After divulging, the children were told that they could have their favorite if they rang a bell after the experimenter left if they wanted but that they would get two if they waited for the experimenter to return without being called. Talk about torture. Follow up studies showed that the children with more control over their “I-want-it-NOW” impulses did better in life generally and were healthier, wealthier, and wiser in many ways. (One wants to argue with this study).

Another study I found interesting had participants playing a computer game that presented them with three doors to click. Clicking once, opened a door and clicking again allowed you to win or lose money. Each door allowed you to win or loose different amounts but each of them averaged out to a three cent gain each click. A participant was only given 100 clicks. The best strategy would be to open one door, any door, and use all ninety-nine remaining clicks in it. The catch was that every time you clicked in a door, the other doors would get smaller and begin to disappear. If you kept clicking in one door, your options would disappear and many people would waste many clicks keeping their options open.

A good part of the later half of the book is about consumer behavior and I think I have written enough to give you a taste of what the book has to offer if you CHOOSE to read it.

Question for Comment: What choices are you having a difficult time with right now? Why?