Unknown Structures

All manner of commentators—from Turner’s friend, who chalked up the assault to “clouded judgement” on both [Chanel] Miller and [Brock] Turner’s part, to Malcolm Gladwell, who devoted a chapter in his most recent book to raising doubts about Turner’s culpability—stepped in to share their theories about Turner’s intent and Miller’s desires.
Christina Cauterucci "Why Not Go to the Police?"

I happen to have a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's "most recent book," otherwise known as Talking to Strangers, and, last night, I read the chapter "devoted [...] to raising doubts about Turner's culpability." It's Chapter Eight, "Case Study: The Fraternity Party." It's the last of three chapters that Mr. Gladwell devotes to the ways in which we think that we understand other people, and get it wrong, because we mistakenly think that people are more transparent than they actually are. Brock Turner's rape of Chanel Miller is the backdrop for a quick consideration of consent and then a much larger consideration of alcohol, two factors that, in Mr. Gladwell's telling, result in many of the countless encounters between people at parties going badly awry.

I'd read "Case Study: The Fraternity Party," prepared for the possibility of being disappointed with Mr. Gladwell's analysis. But in the end, it was Ms. Cauterucci's analysis that seemed lacking. There was nothing in the book that was particularly sympathetic to Brock Turner, other than perhaps the acknowledgement that expecting a drunken teenager to correctly read another human being is a bad idea. But what that does is cast Mr. Turner as something other than a deliberate predator, someone who set out to victimize someone that evening, with alcohol as an accomplice.

But when I considered the podcast that Ms. Cauterucci linked to, I saw the basis for her disdain.

By the end of the chapter, Gladwell is arguing that sexual assaults can be basically boiled down to a misunderstanding - a misreading of signals, often between two people too drunk to know what’s really going on.

While I understand the upset, I didn't read it this way. Rather, I felt that the point that he made at the beginning of the chapter was that a misreading of signals between two people too drunk to know what’s really going on often resulted in sexual assaults. The two statements are not equivalent.

The disconnect, however, speaks to differences in the way people see the world, and the differences between the law and the court of public opinion. As a matter of law, rape is sexual contact without consent. And the reasons for that lack of consent go beyond simple unwillingness. "Under California law," Talking to Strangers tells us, "Someone is incapable of giving consent to sexual activity if they are either unconscious or so intoxicated that they are 'prevented from resisting'." But our understanding of "assault" doesn't really concern itself with matters of consent. Lack of consent is taken as a given. It's the perpetrator, and how they behave, that is front and center when the word "assault" is used.

The who of the Brock Turner case was never in doubt. The what was determined by the jury. But that still leaves the why. How did an apparently harmless encounter on a dance floor end in a crime.

This is the question that Mr. Gladwell sets out to answer. For me, as the reader, and I suspect for Mr. Gladwell, as the author, "the why" has no bearing on Brock Turner's culpability. He was caught in the act of sexual activity with someone who was unconscious and so intoxicated they were prevented from resisting. Enough said.

But for the cast of The Waves podcast and to Ms. Cauterucci, "the why" is manifestly important. Because that's where the structural issues that are important to them lie. And casting Brock Turner as simply a sexually aggressive teenager who drank his way into a criminal act sets aside those structural issues. Likewise, when Mr. Gladwell accurately points out that there is no way to know what happened between Brock Turner and Emily Doe/Chanel Miller during their encounter at the Kappa Alpha party, he's likely also thinking of it as unimportant. After all, it has no bearing on whether there was consent to sexual activity later; Emily Doe/Chanel Miller was legally unable to consent, and that was that.

But if you view the crime as a matter of respect or of structural sexism, then what happens is important. But who should it be important to? If I determine that Brock Turner is culpable even though he suffered from self-inflicted, alcohol-induced "clouded judgement" at the time, what does Chanel Miller lose? For me, the understanding that if Brock Turner had been sober, he may not have done what he did does nothing to invalidate any of the criticisms that she made of him or any of the impacts that the assault had on her.

I understand that there is an argument that Chanel Miller does lose something, and that something is invalidated, but I can't access what it is, and so I can't adequately respond. Nor can I really adjust my thinking. I could simply parrot the lines I think are expected of me, but that would be parroting; repeating without genuine comprehension. And, oddly, that seems to be the point behind Talking to Strangers; that there are so many things about other people that we don't know, and maybe can't know, that we have to be wary of thinking that we know them.

Rally

I am an amateur Evolutionist. Not having cared about how this or that species came to be since I was a sophomore in high school, I have allowed my understanding of the current Theory of Evolution to grow old and dusty, and all sorts of layman's misperceptions and odd outlooks on things have crept in over the years, resulting in an odd hodgepodge of science, personal understanding and outright inanity. (Having read Darwin is of little help here; On the Origin of Species is quite dated at this point.) And, not being a scientist, I don't maintain any sort of rigor in my approach to such things - if it makes sense, I go with it, and let someone else sort it out for me later. And I am careful to make way when presented with evidence, one way or the other, and keep and open mind.

I am also an amateur Atheist. Being your average random American, I was raised Christian; Roman Catholic, to be precise. I was told that there is a God, and that he sent his only son down to Earth to die for our sins, and that there is a Devil, who makes people do bad things because he wants them to go to Hell; apparently, he gets off on torturing souls and God doesn't mind him having a hobby to keep him off the streets. Somewhere in there was always the faintly disturbing idea that Communion at Sunday mass was this magical form of cannibalism, with what you thought was red wine and cardboard-tasting wafers actually being the body and blood of Jesus. Anyway, I also quit caring about religion when I was in high-school; having come to the realization that my classmates weren't mean-spirited because "the Devil made them do it," but because they were simply bastards. There might be a God - there might not. I don't know, and frankly, I don't find the truth of it to important to my daily life. Being a bastard is being a bastard, come Heaven, Hell or basketball court; and therefore to be avoided.

But if there's one thing about a Roman Catholic education, it's that the church, having repented of hounding Galileo, doesn't bother to take issue with science, per se. Sure, they might not like this discovery, or that procedure, but they're cool with science overall. Father Phillip, my biology teacher, firmly believed in Evolution. He had a chart on his classroom door; at the top of the chart was God. Below that, were quarks. And it kept going until you arrived at mankind. For him, there was no conflict between Evolution and God. Sometimes, though, I'm convinced that he's in the minority.

Recently, I encountered an Evangelical critic of both evolution and atheism who offered me an "obvious reason" for "Darwin's lack of appeal," as he stated it. It's that, to their mind: "no one lives as if Darwinism is true." He went on to say, effectively, "If you really believe in evolution, you can do whatever you want to any living thing." The implicit sub-text here is clear: The only sources of an ethical/moral sense in humans are a divine power and/or a sincere belief in same. And that a belief in the Theory of Evolution directly precludes a belief in such a power, or even the acceptance of the possibility of its existence. Humans otherwise lack an intrinsic ability to internalize values and mores that are beneficial to anyone other than themselves as individuals, and possibly those they care about. Our conversation eventually reached this admonition: "Leave compassion and moral judgment only to those who believe human life is more than an accidental collection of amino acids." Explicit in this statement is that those who believe that humanity arose from the vastness of the Universe unbidden by the divine have no right to act in a manner that believers find compassionate or moral - they are commanded to abandon such behaviors. The critic denounces such actions by those who believe in Evolution as "irrational and contradictory," even though he still appears to appreciate the acts themselves. This is a common enough stance that I encounter it every two to three years in general conversation, and so it's unsurprising to hear it

For many Evangelicals, and those who hold similar beliefs, to be religious, and therefore, to be moral, good and/or just, is to subscribe to the idea that the Bible is a literal history of the events that it purports to chronicle. In the Christian Broadcasting Network's "Operation Supreme Court Freedom," one of the Prayer Points is to: "Pray that those who oppose biblical truth would retire from the Supreme Court and be replaced by those who honor God's law." It's pretty clear from this statement that as far as the CBN is concerned, you cannot honor God's law without accepting "biblical truth." And if you cannot honor God's law, you lose any claim to virtue.

The confluence of ideas that states that one must chose between God and Evolution, and that to chose Evolution is to reject the concepts of Good and Evil, is a faith-based one. As such, it can continue even in the face of a lack of proof. Which it does; its basis in reality is tenuous at best. While many people honestly believe that those who believe in Evolution leave themselves an "out" when it comes to ethics and morality, and may deliberately make such a choice precisely to obtain that "out," how many people can point, off the tops of their heads, to people who cite "survival of the fittest," "natural selection" or "evolutionary pressures" as a motive for the crimes they commit? Yes, there are a few high-profile mass murderers and hate-mongers, spouting corrupted Nietzsche as moral cover. But when was the last time you heard a mugger fall back on Darwin? Or a corporate executive, fresh off the "perp walk," quoting from On the Origin of Species for justification?

The religious left, even though they are, by all accounts, a clear majority of the Liberal movement, seems to sit and fret in silence. They are, evidently, hoping to avoid being thought of as "backwards religionists," unfit to wear the label of "rational human being." This should end. Anyone who can manage to hold in their heads the idea that humanity, could have evolved from less-advanced animals, and still manage to be ethical, caring, just and devout should feel free to speak up; long, loudly and often, and request their opponents prove them hostile to religion, to the divine, to kindness and/or to the well-being of their fellows. And the secular left errs when it attempts to demonstrate, however correctly, that the God-fearing are capable of the same hienous acts as those who acknowledge no divinities. More productive would be working to show that the Agnostic, Atheist and even the Anti-Theistic among them can be just as upstanding and forthright as the most pious clergyman. As the saying goes, "hope is not a strategy," and hoping that people will come around to the "right way" of looking at the world is a lost cause. If we accept the idea that hostility to Evolution is (at least in part) a reaction to the idea that Darwinism (directly or indirectly) equals Moral Anarchy, then everyone who understands that notion to be false would do well to marshal their evidence, stand up for the truth as they see it and place their opposition in the position of needing to discredit them.

I was taught that the process of Evolution was the hand of God shaping mankind; not out of clay, but from organic materials. And not in the first days of Creation, but billions of years after God sparked a tiny mote into the infinite vastness that stretches away from me in all directions, expanding ever farther with each passing moment. This was presented as a matter of faith. The hand of God faded with the final demise of my religious beliefs, but contrary to the charges of Evangelicals, a desire to keep others down didn't become Evolution's new bedfellow in its absence. When I donate money for disaster relief, or give twenty dollars to the single mother sitting by the expressway entrance, it's because I genuinely feel that what I'm doing is right, not because I'm insane, or taken leave of my senses. It is my job to demonstrate that, and when required defend it, and force others to prove me wrong, or to acknowledge the falseness of denying my ethics.

Another Autumn

The start of a clear, cool morning in Autumn. Autumn in the Puget Sound area is strange. Many of the trees are from elsewhere, it seems, and so respond to differnt signals for them to turn and lose their leaves. So some trees are bare, while others are bright with colors and yet others are still green. And, then, of course, there are the evergreens, which are indifferent to the turning of the seasons.

The Right Tool

From time to time I read Seth Godin's blog. Which is unsurprising, I suppose, given that I link to it from here. In any event, I popped over today and read his post on tools, "All or nothing." The basic point, that it's better to buy the right tool for the job, and complete the job, than to buy the wrong tool, and leave the job unfinished, out of being penny wise but pound foolish, is sound. But while it may be better to spend more than one initially expected to obtain the correct tool, what most people are on the lookout for is spending more than they need to.

And I think where most people run into problems is in attempting to gauge how much they need to spend to get the job done. Because while it's correct that the results of tool use are not linear, that works both ways. While spending too little to obtain any result at all is a waste of time and money, spending the money to buy a tool that is significantly better than what's needed can also be a waste of money; once the job is done, all of it, there's nothing more to do. So a tool that can produce results that go above and beyond the call of duty is only useful if there is value in going above and beyond. Which creates a more complex calibration problem than simply making sure that the slope from undone to done is successfully surmounted.

And I think that the problem that most people have is that the extra expenditure that goes into purchasing a tool that's more right for the job than it needs to be becomes an expense, rather than an investment. And so it's better for them to use a tool that just gets the task done than, and skip the cost of the better tool.

There are, of course, multiple solutions to the problem (to the degree that it is a problem). Being expert at making the calibration is one solution; having a plan to increase the level of job tackled in the future is another. And I'm sure that there are others; these are just the two that immediately occur to me. And I think that it's these skills that people need. Most people who use tools understand the risks of leaving the job undone. But they also understand the risks of overpaying to complete the job. Mitigating the second also mitigates the first.

Scrubbing Bubbles

On my list of words that I would like to remove from everyday English is "brainwashed." Mainly because, at least in my experience, it's become a moral distinction, rather than a simple description. While no-one likes to be deceived, it's generally possible to describe someone as having been fooled by a person or a circumstance without really calling them out as being morally lacking. But the term "brainwashed" carried no such forbearance, being loaded with not only the idea that the person doing the persuasion is malevolent, but clearly so; being brainwashed by someone is usually a mark of a level of credulity that's outside the norm (even when the supposed brainwashing is said to have happened to large numbers of people).

Not that the term doesn't have its legitimate uses, but I often encounter it as a term of derision for those that the speaker has decided are too stupid (another term that's more a moral differentiator than description) to remain right-thinking in the face of obvious falsehood. And it's this lack of compassion or understanding for other people that rankles me. Yes, I realize that expecting compassion or understanding from people is my first mistake. But still, given their potential to improve the world we live in, removing some of the barriers to them, especially linguistic ones, would be nice.