No Aurora, or Parrot paranoia

"А надо  бояться только того, Кто скажет: "Я знаю, как надо!" Гоните его! Не верьте ему! Он врет! Он не знает - как надо!" But fear only the one who'll say, "I know exactly, how." Do not trust in him! Do drive him away! He lies. He does not know how. - Alexander Galich

Economics is not my forte. So I won't talk much of it - but does our ruling Party really think that "command economy", as the Soviet variety used to be called, is the way the US should take? On top of it, do they think financing it with the Barry-Hoodean highway robbery of taxing "the rich" ever more makes it more hopeful?

Why I ask? In my continued discussions with the esteemed colleague from the previous post, he has recently come to what was the logical stage in the development of his "child disease of leftism" (as Lenin termed it, albeit speaking of leftism in communism). As the stages he passes through closely correspond to those of the world view of the Democratic party, it is instructive to mark this one. To wit, in his view, the example for America to follow is China. Not the Republic of China, prosperous despite (or maybe due to) its precarious existence. His beacon of hope is the People's Republic of China, a communist dictatorship that has only relatively recently allowed its citizenry to stop starving - by making them employable by the Western corporations, decentralizing and permitting free enterprise, and making the country the leading exporter in the world. In my colleague's view, however, this inclusion of China in the world economy is not the reason for the current improvement. In his opinion, the reason is that the Chinese government massively subsidizes all that's needed to get ahead.  Because no corporation can compete with the government, the US, with its backward capitalist small-government system, is doomed, as he thinks. Unless, that is, this country follows China's guiding light and gives the reins of the economy fully to the government, growing it more and more. Big government that ensues is thus a necessity, not a burden as we the benighted "conservatives" are misled to think by the "Faux News", having no brain of our own.

You'll say, "Solyndra"? Solyndra-shmolindra - it's just an unfortunate exception. You'll say, "the Soviet Union, which failed with its command economy"? Union-shmunion - and you are paranoid. See, it's completely different. In China, corporations are there, are they not, and they are surely capitalist - but the government is always just exceedingly smart and wise. In contrast to capitalist owners and the market, it knows which corporation is to swim and grow, and which is to drown, and spreads the wealth accordingly. For instance, some corporations are "too big to fail". Like GM, saved by the bailout, i.e., the money robbed... oops, taxed out of you. It does not matter that they may fail because what they make ain't good enough to be bought. My progressive colleague would never buy a GM-made car. They are entitled to be bailed out by the People's money because too many people would suffer if they fail - like Obama's friends from GM management and the UAW that gives him so many votes. It would be unfair and socially unjust to allow them to stand on their own. See, when millions are unemployed and get their checks because of (and sometimes for) not working, it is only just for us the People to pay others for working and making something people don't buy. That's why we the People now own 500 million shares, 26% of the company whose stock is worth less than 40% of what it should be to at least cover the bailout. After all, as my colleague's argument goes, aren't we subsidizing our farmers? Yes, we are - but at least we all eat, while not all of us drive Chevrolets, Cadillacs, and literally fire-breathing Chevy Volts, Cruzes, etc. 

And who indeed says that agricultural subsidies are good? One of their likely results is the catastrophic epidemic of obesity in this country - in part due to low prices on unhealthy subsidized foods. According to CDC, more than one third of the adult population and almost 20% of the young are obese. The latter proportion has tripled since 1980's. The unfair advantage granted to the producers of those staples - soy oil, corn syrup and corn starch, that is junk food (no fruits and vegetables except, very little, apples) - not only distorts the market, but kills. Yes, it is a personal responsibility to control one's food intake. It should not be discounted, however, that humans have not had time to fully evolve mechanisms for adequately dealing with refined and concentrated high-energy nutrients at virtually unlimited availability. This combines with effects of also very recent - on the evolutionary scale - low mobility that cannot be expected to be universally offset by voluntary physical exercise. Not everybody has the means, the time and the knowledge for that. Most importantly, not everybody has the will for that even when critically needed - otherwise there would likely be no obesity to start with. The government would rather try to tax and control people who are addicted to high-calorie foods from their childhood than to change its own agricultural policies that encourage the farmers to produce the enormous surplus of unhealthy food at the cost of healthy nutrition. Unlike drugs, where governmental attempts at supply control are negative and do not work (addiction rates have not decreased in decades), the governmental control of agriculture is positive and works quite well - to our grievous detriment. The government tends to know best - like it used to in the USSR. Or in China, which will eventually be the downfall of the Chinese economy unless they change more. Or may be I am just imagining, and nothing like that has never happened.

Indeed, I have more than once heard an opinion that those who came from the now extinct Soviet Union have a distorted perspective of paranoid obsession with the ongoing communist transformation of this country. Like Monty Python's parrot, communism is no more, we are told, it has ceased to be, - even in its own cage. It is even less likely to fly in this free country, and we should not try to sell the dead bird to the enlightened US public. Well, okay, it is possible that so many of us have gone if not postal then Forrestal, at least as the legend of his yelling "The Russians are coming!" goes. There surely have been mass delusions before. Judeophobia, for one, has affected Christian Europe and has been a major component of Islam since Muhammad. Nevertheless, all cases of mass paranoia have been due to intensive indoctrination, usually from a very early age, acquired, as they say in Russia, with one's mother's milk. One may be also prepared for accepting a paranoid cult based on prior prejudice and a lacuna where axiomatic religious feelings should have resided, like in the cases of the Manson family or Adam Gadahn, the American Taliban. We, who grew up in and escaped from the Soviet Union, have successfully withstood communist indoctrination, which not only presented the USSR as the pinnacle of human social achievement, but also depicted the Western society as hell on earth, where the rich and strong devour the weak and the poor, where "millionaires and billionaires" are ready to destroy the world in nuclear fire once promised some profit - never mind how they'd use it in the destroyed world, "stupid" as they are (another favorite term of the progressives). It is highly unlikely that having been immune to the Soviet propaganda, with its virtual monopoly on legal information and the scarcity of any illegal alternative, we'd be driven out of our minds by the weak, inconsistent, and contradictory ideologic information supplied by the "conservative" sources. 

It is much more likely that our dissent from the crowd educated at a comparable level in the US is due to our scale of reference, which is extended far beyond the abstract perceptions of communism that are available to US intelligentsia. This allows us to see the social phenomena not as discrete "line-item" events and occurrences, but as indicators of larger ideological constructs. Unfortunately, it is not (just) the economy, "stupid" (why can't they do without cussing?). Human history, even not so distant, has shown that people are capable of completely disregarding economy and their own material advantage - even their own lives - for an ideology's sake. Sometimes those are self-sacrifices that may be noble, altruistic and indeed result in a better future for others. Very often they are sacrifices of others by the ideologically driven leaders who themselves are doing quite well. It does not matter what this latter category calls itself - Secretary General and the Politburo, or President and his advisors, or Rais and his Authority - the result is the same. They are beyond critique, and they know exactly, how. Naturally, they also rely on unquestioning worship, like that accorded to Stalin, Mao, the Kims, and now - oh miracle! - Obama: watch the horrific Soviet-parroting organized mantric brain-washing of American kids, no different from that in today's North Korea. Those who are brought up worshiping an idol will hate his perceived human enemies - which is everybody who doubts his divinity and divine ideas.

The polarization of the country that took good root in the 1960's, despite apparent changes soon from hippies to yuppies, has created the indoctrination climate. One could say it was not communist indoctrination, even though "commune" was the name in vogue for the hippie groups. Communism as the term had lost much of its shine since Khruschev's denouncement of Stalin and become synonymous with oppression - not a good thing to accept when you preach love. Nevertheless, while not called by the dreaded name, not marching under the sickle and hammer banner, the anti-establishment, anti-capitalist and pacifist ideology was in service if not to communist goals, then to the goals of communists. Telling examples were the Jane "Hanoi" Fonda affair, and the "peace movement", in large part set up and funded by the KGB. No, the yuppified "flower children" generation did not become communist - they fought for peace and human rights. Along with the racism of the prior generation, however, they also rejected its other values - religious and thus ethical. Today, the generations of flower children and grandchildren rule the US and decide our future. It is not by accident that communists, terrorists, America-haters and Mao-worshipers keep popping up among Obama's coterie. Nowadays, it is the time-adjusted communist ideology of the current US government itself that works to destroy the hated capitalist system or, at the very least, to enable the benevolent power of the new Politburo over the "stupid" masses. For this kind of revolution, you don't need any cannonade from the Aurora, the cruiser that gave the signal for starting the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. No shooting, no civil wars - only the soft but firm congealing of power in the Kremlin, oops, the White House. Going by the same book of slogans of fair share, redistribution of wealth, "millionaires and billionaires" (used to be "bourgeoisie") - but with the book cover and the title and "the spectre of communism" cautiously stripped off.

To illustrate paranoid thinking, Robins and Post (1997) in their Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred note that for a paranoid "[w]hile there may be merit to the aphorism 'Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get me,' it is also often true to state 'Because they have been out to get me, I had better trust no one and assume I am surrounded by enemies.'" From this "often true" statement follows that paranoia can also be readily used as a political quasi-diagnosis that dichotomizes a continuous variable of perceived risk, making it easy to assign the individual at a first "symptom" to the affected group and dismiss any legitimate fears any group or its individual members might have. The progressives like to attack their opponents as mental cases. When they are in power, as in the USSR,  punitive psychiatry becomes a method of choice for dealing with political enemies, that is anybody who disagrees. Interestingly, however, it is exactly paranoids who "do not have adversaries or rivals or opponents; they have enemies, and enemies are not to be simply defeated and certainly not to be compromised with or won over. Enemies are to be destroyed" (ibid.). The paranoid log has always been lodged in the progressives' own eye. With Obama and his unconditional supporters, mainstream media filled with sticky-sweet adulation for him and hate for the half the country of enemies, communist demagoguery and deep reach into the control of economy - the parrot is alive and kicking. And it hurts.

Genocidal redefinitions

To be able to murder, to kill not in defense but on purpose, the murderer redefines his victim from a fellow creature into an alien, who  either threatens, or a tool providing sadistic pleasure denoting total power, or both. Nazis redefined the Jews into aliens, adding  biological subhumanity to the usual Christian depiction of the Jews as accursed for deicide and thus inherently and hereditarily evil. Even a small part of the Jewish "blood" was an intolerable threat to them. A Jewish child was a mortal danger to the mighty German nation. Genocidal Islam similarly redefines the Jews on  both biological and spiritual levels into descendants of pigs and monkeys, into which Allah turned Jews as their punishment. To reconcile with continuous Jewish existence, Allah has scripturally promised the Muslims that they would eventually murder every single Jew before ushering in the end of days. As genocide has become a desired goal, Muslims have redefined for themselves the notion of the martyr from one who is murdered for his religion to one who murders because of it. The loss of the terrorist's own life in the process is incidental, because it is redefined into life eternal, as long as the earthly life was lost while murdering Jews. Allah, "most compassionate, most merciful", has taken upon himself the personal torture of "unbelievers", giving a whole new meaning to compassion. Muslims have also redefined the notion of the "prophet". Muhammad, "the Seal of the Prophets", has prophecized nothing but murder, conquest, subjugation, and rape, which he himself indulged in. Islam means "submission", and not merely as the literal translation of the word. It means the strict hierarchy of both physical and spiritual submissions: the man to Allah (read, to whoever wields power under this name), the woman to the man (who is legally worth twice the woman), the Jew (or any "infidel") to any Muslim. Any violation of this hierarchy is punishable - often by death: conversion from Islam, woman's disobedience, Jewish independence.  

The Muslim murderers act from the pragmatic, rather than lofty spiritual, viewpoint, targeting civilians - children, women, the elderly - rather than soldiers. They know that these random murders produce a greater demoralizing impact than a death of a soldier, horrible as it is. A soldier's work is to risk his life, and he dies fighting even if it was in his sleep. Children and women, civilians, are not expected to live their life at the same kind of risk. They are not fighting. Children are supposed to be pampered, not tortured to death. Their parents and relatives are supposed to see them grow, not bury and grieve forever. This is exactly why the murderers choose to kill civilians, transforming everyday life into the expectation of death, thinking they will crash the people's spirit because everybody will be touched by death. The murderers cannot appreciate that they deal with the Jewish spirit, indomitable, inoculated by the millennia of murder and torture by the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, English, Spanish, French, Germans, Poles, Russians, Ukranians, Latvians, Lithuanians - the list can go on. Israelis rank 7th on Gallup's "happiness index" (life as a whole), just below the Netherlands (was above in 2011) and the happy Scandinavians, and higher than the UK, Germany and France. Even in Sderot, under almost ten years of incessant rocket bombardment,  only about a third of the population suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, a number comparable with that in trained combat troops - except that for the children of Sderot there is no "post" in "post-traumatic". The stress has never stopped. 

In all these innumerable slaughters, from a single person to the millions of the Shoah, the reasons have been the same: irrational hatred toward the Jews, to the very name of the Jews regardless of how different it is in different languages, and the permissibility of murdering a Jew, whatever ideology is applied - Christian, Nazi or Muslim. A Jewish baby, impaled on a Cossack's spear or a Nazi's bayonet or having his throat slashed by a Muslim, can be nothing to the murderer but a representation of the name, with all the hate that was connected to the sound and letters of this name by the murderers' parents, teachers, friends, imams and priests. The Poles who tortured to death, beheaded, dismembered, raped, and burned alive hundreds of their Jewish neighbors in the village of Jedwabne, 71 years ago this week, were led only by the name, made hateful to them by the myth of deicide justifying an utter removal of civilizational boundaries on behavior, even those that command humane slaughter of animals. They were driven by the same genocidal hate as their compatriots in many other towns and in Kielce, already after the war, when Nazis could no longer be claimed as the real enforcers of the genocide for their voluntary helpers to hide behind. Whether at the blood libel's pretext, as in Kielce, or at the Nazis' welcome permission, it was the common folk that committed those atrocities. 

Poles would never call their neighbors "Poles of Mosaic persuasion", nor would the Russians call the Jews "Russians". In fact, the Russian language distinguishes between the ethnic Russians and those whose citizenship is Russian. The former are called by the noun "Russkiy" (sing. masculine; "Russkaya", sing. fem.; "Russkiye", plural), which is also the adjective that means belonging to the Russian nation, the meaning of "nationality" in Russia. Those who are citizens of Russia but do not belong to the Russian nation are called semi-informally "Rossiyanin", i.e., only belonging to (but not "in") Rossiya-Russia rather than being of Russia like the language, which is "Russkiy". The Jews would always be alien in Russia or elsewhere in East Europe, under the fickle protection of the state, which, along with the church, would keep the hate fire going.  The East Europeans' condoning and participating in the genocide is not canceled by some Poles' and Russians' having risked their lives to save Jews, and by the fact that millions of ethnic Poles and Russians themselves were murdered by the Germans. Bulgaria, a country relatively recently liberated from Islamic yoke, was the only exception during WW2 where the church authority intervened on Jewish behalf. But we Jews coming from East Europe are now called "Poles" and "Russians" by the naive Americans and Israelis, who have a very vague notion of ethnicity.

Islam, in its foundational scripture, openly justifies the same treatment of the Jews as that allotted to them by the Nazi Germans and their many European helpers. The editor of Der Stuermer was the only non-governmental Nazi hanged in Nuremberg, executed for his speech. If not for his inhuman efforts, there would perhaps be fewer "willing executioners" (by Goldhagen's term), although it's just as likely that somebody else would have happily and as efficiently replaced him. The multitude of the Muslim Streichers, however, - from Muhammad the "prophet" himself to today's imams - are not only unpunished, but threaten the rest of the world with punishment, this time by nuclear fire. The Iranian mullahs, who head the whole branch of Islam, Shi'a, have promised to exterminate Israel - before they get to defeat the Great Satan, the US. The leaders of Sunni Islam, the other main branch of the "religion of peace", have many times called for the bloody "liberation of Palestine", celebrating terror, and blessing and glorifying the murderers. Nevertheless, nobody prosecutes their ongoing crimes against humanity, the very same for which Streicher was executed by the Allies. On the contrary, it is Israelis who are being demonized by the "world community" when they try to defend themselves - even when the defense is as passive as a fence separating the murderers from their desired prey. The same world community -  a generation back - not only cared nothing about the Jews murdered wholesale, but participated in that murder - by commission or omission. There are still old murderers that survive - but the slaughter of Jews has had no break. It seems nothing can invoke the world's outrage when Jews are slaughtered - not pregnant Tali Hatuel and her four lttle daughters killed point-blank by head shots. Not two-month old Shalhevet Pass, killed by an Arab sniper's shot in the head. Not the Fogel family, with three children aged from three months to 11 years and both parents, butchered by Arabs in their beds. No number of Jewish deaths can overcome the world's serenity - until this calm is broken into a million of screaming media pieces when the Jews attempt to hold the murderers at arm's length of checkpoints, delaying their reaching their final destinations. Unfortunately, those among whom the murderers live are also slowed down when they want to cross to the territory of Israel they hate so much but keep coming to.

The Fogel family slaughter was not viewed as worth mentioning by the leading news agencies like BBC. The priority was too low. Iran's promise to exterminate Israel is not viewed as a violation of the UN charter incompatible with membership. It's considered innocuous rhetoric, unworthy mentioning in negotiations. Jews building a house on their ancestral land, which nobody but them can legitimately claim, are called "settlers", like the British who came to colonize America. In fact, in contrast to those British, whom nobody has since been expecting to leave, the Jewish "settlers", the Natives of the land, are expected to give up their houses and orchards they grew on that land the first time in millennia - give it all up to the descendants of Arab conquerors whose names indicate their origins from Egypt, Syria, or other places subjugated by those invaders.  The Jews are not to get anything in return - except, perhaps, for another fake promise of "peace", that is of the end of terror murders that otherwise are viewed as legitimate by the world. "Palestine" is redefined from the Roman name invented to replace Judea - into the name of a future Arab state, with Arabs automatically attaining a new avatar - from the land they stole from Jews and Christians to the name they usurped. The whole world supports creation of the 23rd Arab state, despite terror that Arabs conduct under the pretense of desperately needing that state, all offers for which they have rejected. One wonders how many states would support the single Jewish state in 1948 if any Jews, for the sake of their national idea, blew themselves up in a British market and shot British children.   

No human treatment norm has been viewed by the Christian and Muslim world as fully applicable to the Jews - that is by the Christians who only recently have started changing their perception of the Jews as devil's inhuman kindred, and by the Muslims who do not consider even their own women human. Unless this changes, until civilized humanity rectifies and consistently applies its terms and definitions, our species' definition as human is false. We have a long way to go before "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Leviticus 19:18), as the Torah commands to humans.

Playing with totalitarian symbols, or Why I quit the American Association for the Advancement of Science

12-10-2010. - Today is a sad day. After being a member of the AAAS  for many years, I have decided not to renew my membership upon receiving the notice that it has expired. Although the $146/year membership has not provided me with a tangible benefit, with Science magazine it publishes available to me online through my University's subscription, that is not the reason for my saying 'No' to the last and "Urgent!" AAAS Membership Renewal Certificate. I have felt fine supporting the Association, even though I have not needed any of the benefits of individual membership. I do not know exactly what it does, apart from publishing Science, but that was not an issue either. I have been satisfied with its general description as an "organization dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association". I no longer am. I no longer feel it can do that service well.

Strange as it may seem, my dissociation from the Association results from the call to renew my membership. Not from its simple substance, which is donating money to some science-related activities and staff supporting them, but from the form. And from the results of my discussion of that form with individuals who are responsible for it - Mr. Ian King, the AAAS Director of Marketing, and Dr. Alan Leshner, the CEO of the AAAS. The contents of that discussion are presented below. I wish my concerns were shared by the community, but I see no reason not to believe Mr. King, the marketing director, who said I had been the only one to raise them. Nevertheless, don't hesitate to comment this way or another.

Notice anything out of order? Perhaps you can't clearly see the image I scanned. The renewal certificate offers an incredibly attractive deal: in addition to Science, some bonus subscriptions and member savings on the AAAS annual meeting I've never attended, I'd get - for 2-year membership - a "FREE Darwin T-shirt!" I cannot know if Darwin would be thrilled by knowing that his likeness serves as a marketing tool, even though his known modesty makes that doubtful. We can, however, safely guess that he, who considered belief in G-d "ennobling" and connected the Golden Rule as the "foundation of morality" with natural human social instincts (see The Descent of Man), would not want to be associated with the bloody revolutionary, Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

These thoughts forced me to send emails to the AAAS staff, the last of which was to its CEO:

Alan I. Leshner
Chief Executive Officer
Executive Publisher, Science
American Association for the
Advancement of Science
Voice: 202-326-6639
FAX: 202-371-9526

11/23/2010 7:33 PM

Dear Dr. Leshner:


As many others, I have received a promotional AAAS membership renewal
certificate, including an offer of a "FREE Darwin T-shirt" bonus. The
T-shirt bears a picture of Darwin on it, which is fashioned after the
well-known portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara with a paraphrased slogan
related to the same portrait, "¡Viva La Evolución!".

I doubt this allusion is appropriate for a non-political scientific
organization such as AAAS. Whatever romantic qualities might have been
ascribed to Guevara by pop culture, he was a brutal Communist
revolutionary who ordered executions of, personally executed and
tortured his alleged "enemies". Placing Darwin in any connection with
Guevara is as fitting as adorning him with Lenin's cap or Stalin's pipe,
and is an insult to Darwin who is unable to object personally. It is in
bad taste, to put it mildly, especially for those who, like myself, have
had experience with Communist regimes. In the Soviet Union, we could not
read Science in the original. I am not sure whether its publishers and
authors were aware of that, but Science was reprinted, with all articles
that could offend a Soviet censor removed and their titles blotted out
in the table of contents. This is, of course, nothing compared to "Che"
Guevara's crimes.

I have attempted to receive AAAS's reassurance that this T-shirt was a
mistake to be corrected and is not indicative of the society's position
on totalitarian ideologies. The Society's Marketing Director, Mr. Ian
King, was kind enough to reply to my request and discuss the issue with
his colleagues (I am not sure with whom). The decision they took was
"phasing out the Darwin T-shirt, beginning in September, meaning [they]
will no longer be offering it in [their] renewals, or from [their] trade
show booth for new members". Nevertheless, they did not accept my
request to make a public announcement regarding that, e.g., on the AAAS
website, indicating that the use of Guevara imagery was erroneous. I
still think, however, that it is important not to be silent and merely
withdraw the shirt, which could be done with any marketing device, never
noticed by anybody. The image, which has been seen by many, suggests the
AAAS's sympathies toward totalitarian regimes and their symbols such as
Guevara, or at least readiness to popularize such images by using them
as marketing tools - impressions that I am sure are both unwelcome and
false.

Until the public announcement is made admitting that marketing error, I
cannot in good conscience renew my AAAS membership, due to expire soon.

I would greatly appreciate your response on this matter.

Sincerely, etc.

The response that followed was prompt:

From: Alan Leshner <aleshner@aaas.org>;
To: Michael Vanyukov <mmv@pitt.edu>;
Date: Nov 24 2010 - 2:13pm
We can certainly understand and sympathize with your perspective. We in
        no way meant for this t-shirt to be construed as an endorsement of the
        policies or practices of Che Guevara. Indeed our human rights group here
        at AAAS is well aware of the oppressive nature of the former communist
        regimes, a practice which we know continues in those remaining communist
        countries today. As you may know we no longer distribute this t-shirt.
        We believe to call attention to this product on the web site now and
        revisit the "Che" symbol would be counter-productive to your overriding
        concerns. It is our belief that the t-shirts, like the "Che" character,
        are best left to fade away.

        We hope you will reconsider your membership as we value your opinions
        and unique point-of-view

        With best wishes,

        Alan Leshner

Obviously, I  disagree that somebody should know better what better serves my "overriding concerns" while I am still sane. This is especially so when this judgment is offered by people who have been willing - for two years, by Mr. King's admission - to use an image of a mass murderer who has long been a symbol of communist regimes. Despite the AAAS human rights group's alleged awareness of communist oppression. One of those overriding concerns of mine is exactly that my point of view is considered "unique". In fact, the image of Guevara is so popular in the US universities that the AAAS decided, in the words of its marketing director, "to play off of the Guevara T-shirts that one often sees on college campuses and other places. It was intended to parody that piece of pop culture while serving as a statement of support for the continued preeminence of Darwin's theories." The AAAS's mindless willingness to employ the Guevara chic and laissez-faire attitude to its meaning will contribute to the perpetuation and rise of his popularity, with his and Darwin's images now merged thanks to the AAAS t-shirt. 

No wonder the evolutionary theory - the guiding light of biology - scares those who have not got a chance to get higher education. Education does not make one immune from moral confusion, and sometimes is associated with arrogance preventing timely correction of moral lapses. Neither this confusion nor "the 'Che' character" are likely to "fade away" soon.

An obscure folio, evolution, and Islam

Rabbi Hillel first introduced the Golden Rule - in its negative and feasible form, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow" (Jesus, many years later, reportedly put the rule in its positive form). R. Hillel considered this main rule of social behavior to be as important as to summarize the entirety of the Torah. He also famously said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" (Pirke Avot, 1:14). As befits a true genius, these sayings have universal applicability. That is probably why they also apply to the half-selfish topic of this entry. It concerns a monograph, The Science, Treatment, and Prevention of Antisocial Behaviors (Vol. 2), published six years ago. The monograph is not advertised - there is not even an editorial review on Amazon.com (and it was not originally sold there) - because, as the publisher once explained to me, the book does not target general audience but is intended for policy makers, experts, etc. I am not sure whether this is the best policy even for the alleged target audience. The book ranks 3,163,794 in Amazon.com sales, which likely means that it sells less than one copy a year - and there should definitely be more interested  experts than that.

How do I know? Why should I worry? And how R. Hillel's maxims are relevant? It is obvious that antisociality contradicts the Golden Rule. As for Hillel's triad, I contributed a chapter to that book, and it's about time another couple of people found out about it. Admittedly, it is not popular science, but it is not a trigonometry textbook either, and some information in it may be of interest to an educated reader. 

The chapter (Chapter 4) has a vague, or rather too generic, title, Evolution, Genes, and Environment - Neurobiological Outcomes. It does deal, however briefly, with all these areas as pertains to antisocial behavior. What the title does not immediately reflect, however, is one of the sections, which is germane to the general direction of this blog. The section is titled Logic of Suicide, Mass Murder, and Altruism. In addition to the general issues relating evolution to these titular phenomena (it is not straightforward and requires some discourse, for instance, how suicide can be "beneficial" from the evolutionary standpoint), it includes a discussion of Muslim "martyrdom". The discussion addresses the role of the uniquely human function of the human brain, metaphoric thinking, truly amalgamated in the Muslim tradition with reality, in simulating reproductive benefits in the acts of self-destruction. Considering that this amalgamation results in the suspension of the powerful self-preservation instinct in shahids, the murderous "martyrs", it is not surprising that regular human sympathies are suspended as well. That point is highlighted by the scarcely noted in the media but telling story of how schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia were forced to die in fire by the "religious" police: the girls were pushed back into their burning school because they did not have a chance to put on their abayas, black robes worn over dresses. The text explains sex differences in suicidal terrorism and the mechanisms of xenophobic indoctrination. It compares the eusocial behavior of Hymenoptera insects (such as bees) and the boundaries of altruism in humans, relaxed to malignancy by both Islamic metaphors and material gains of the families of suicidal murderers. Some attention is paid to the contribution of the media in poisoning the information space with lethal misinformation that cannot in principle be remedied by truth even if it were to follow, which it seldom does. 

Despite the rather grim picture arising from this discussion, the conclusion is cautiously positive: "the history of cultural evolution leaves some hopes for the future of sociality. In particular, one of the trends that has expressed itself in the religious codes corresponds to the extension of inclusive fitness to the group, tribe, state and alliance levels. Torah in Leviticus (19:18) commands, “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; I am the Lord”—the word “neighbor” covers all humans (Hertz, 1980). The same metaphor that allows inclusive fitness [the summary effect of all factors that promote or hinder reproduction of the individual's genes] to cover non-relatives in aggression and underlies xenophobia, can thus be turned into its [truly] prosocial form. This creates an opportunity for the fulfillment of Darwin's dream of humans' extending their “social instincts and sympathies” to “all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him,” and then to “the men of all nations and races” (The Descent of Man). We may soon find out whether this conclusion is too optimistic and a much darker evolutionary outcome is on the horizon.

“Scientific” Atheism

The popular (bestselling!) book, “The God Delusion”, tells more, and definitely more convincingly, about its author, Richard Dawkins (and so many others of his mindset), than of its purported subject. Inconsequential as it is from the enlightenment standpoint, it is definitely not The Guide for the Perplexed. If anything, it may add to the confusion of Dawkins's audience, adolescents, who are biologically driven to distance themselves from parents and therefore their beliefs. Because of that, and since nobody asked me to write a formal review of this book (no surprise here), I’ll just have some thoughts about and around it.

Scientists are primates (in case you had doubts)
Scientists' supposedly high intelligence is but a thin veneer on their human, primate, nature, sometimes making that nature shine all the brighter. As other humans, they are often vain and petty - and not just with their pet theories, which are proffered with intensity fitting a prophet, regardless of how small their impact could be. My statistics professor found nothing better on which to focus than on his long-lasting conflict with a colleague, who, in his obstinate benightedness, used x bar to denote average, whereas our esteemed teacher wisely used capital M. Talk about Lilliput and the Big- vs. Little-Endian conflict. Methods in research, when only possible, are as subject to fashion as dimensions of pants at some royal court, which everybody was supposed to maintain if he were to have a chance of being 'in'. I’d list some funny examples of the changing vogue from genetic research, my field, if they were not so boring and banal at the same time. A researcher's attainment of a position in academia frequently imbues him with the sense of infallibility - not just in his scientific judgments, but in anything where a lack of knowledge may pass unnoticed among the like minds - e.g., politics, international relations, religion. (Yes, I may be afflicted as well).

Dawkins the prophet

Which brings me back to Dawkins. Rarely have I seen such sincere and unchecked infantile messianism as in that book of his. It does not matter whether the new prophet rejects "religion" (it's his business); what matters is that he "hope[s] that nobody who reads this book will be able to say, 'I didn't know I could'." Oy-vey! This is the same  hope, nay, confidence, that Muhammad had - you remember, the one whose pictures may leave you headless. Surely, in that other "prophet" case the repercussions for humanity have been more drastic: because it is not possible, after he blessed humankind with the Koran, to say, "I didn't know", there is no other way than the global acceptance of Islam. Muhammad's jihad against non-believers is certainly deadlier than Dawkins's disdain for them (oops, his non-believers are "religious"). This, however, doesn't change the essence of this primate behavior: the desire to dominate - if not over body then over mind. Any doubts are verboten.

As would any "prophet" who has just been blessed with epiphany, he demands of his followers purity of the doctrine, relegating, as did Muhammad, the rest to the hypocrite category. The only options he entertains for those infidels are either their lack of intelligence, or their acting cynically to get the Templeton prize (as Dawkins half-jokingly cites a half-joke of Dennett that he should do that if he falls on "hard times"), or, at best, their self-deception while deceiving others. The first option becomes less likely if you are in the select group of "elite scientists". But then you simply are a statistically negligible case, still likely to merely "sound Christian" while most likely being atheistic in reality. In any event, Dawkins knows better: he even "satirically" imputes thoughts to Dyson, one of the "elite", who had the dishonesty or stupidity, if you believe Dawkins, to accept the prize (Dawkins condescends that "Freeman Dyson is way above being corrupted", clearly meaning the opposite).

Logic
Dawkins decides which arguments are worth considering, what attributes of God to dismiss, and how this term should be defined for this 'scientist' to better disabuse the public of such a preposterous notion. Intellectual dishonesty is always characteristic of false prophets. Dawkins invited himself to be not only judge and jury, but prosecutor and defense attorney. This allows him to safely but fruitlessly argue without an opponent. This is a game of chess with himself, with the outcome preset. Surely he can defeat any argument of the 'opponent', straw men sitting at the table with red herrings – logical fallacies abound. Among those, there is repeated appeal to authority, i.e., to "elite" scientists, many of whom did not endorse some poll's statement about a personal god. Correlation (of high intelligence with doubts of this nature) does not mean causation and, least of all, objective support for atheism. Not only scientists are prone to mistakes in anything that is not their immediate domain (and in that too, by the way), but they may be more prone to some of them than a common Joe Blow is.

The ability to believe is necessary for information transfer. Those who produce information (scientists nowadays) should be less likely to uncritically accept anything, especially something that they cannot in principle verify by commonly available scientific means. Clearly, the proportion of information producents has always been small - ever since some of them (surprise, priests) separated from the crowd. The role of priests, who were the original scientists (Mendel, the founder of genetics, included :)), was the same as today's scientists'. This is probably why some of the latter, when immature like Dawkins, have Oedipal fantasies toward the “religious” or simply are anxious because of perceived competition.

Rhinoceros horn

Spinning Darwinism to satisfy his agenda, Dawkins applies at will, when it suits him, obnoxiously conceited and banal value judgments to phenomena deserving much better, particularly in the evolutionary context. For instance, the native legend that the horn has aphrodisiac properties is 'fatuous' to him, despite his earlier citings about the placebo mechanisms of homeopathy, which make it thus very different from 'magic' he invokes. Were he not so ideologically engaged, it would not take him much to infer a clear evolutionary benefit to the human ability to employ effective placebo mechanisms in the absence of other means to deal with disease, grief, stress, etc. He would also see that a placebo effect does not rule out the real one, which can be even further augmented by the placebo effect. This, however, would require exercising some logic.

...ex machina
For all the absolute rejection of religion, professed by Dawkins, he could find nothing better to offer than the expression of what he calls "our consensual ethics" (p. 298), which, in his opinion, "has no obvious connection with religion". Well, except for the name, "New Ten Commandments", and a little detail that the first commandment is the negative Golden Rule (do not do unto others...) as formulated by the great Jewish sage, Rabbi Hillel. That was a century before the same rule, but in its positive form (do unto others...), is said to have been pronounced by Jesus. Hillel formulated that rule in response to a question about the essence of Torah (Judaism) as can be taught while the student stands on one foot. "This is the whole Torah," he said, "the rest is commentary. Go and learn."

The "New Ten", written by a plagiarizing "ordinary web logger" (definitely no sage, to see which the reader does not need Dawkins's comment), are either redundant or trivial. Dawkins qualifies as neither a new Moses nor a new Hillel by adding to those ten his own 'progressive' four, the first being his order to enjoy one's sex life. He cautiously (probably so that it would not be perceived as sanctioning rape for those who like it) adds, "as long as it damages nobody else", leaving the reader under impression that one's sex life inevitably damages at least him/her, if not more people.

It is hard to imagine that Dawkins does not know the origin of the Rule, again illustrating his dishonesty or, at best, ignorance. The Bible-plagiarizing Moral Code of the Builder of Communism in the atheist Soviet Union was another example of “consensual ethics”, apparently coming from nowhere. At least the communists did not plagiarize the title.

It is simply not interesting to see his tried and tired and recycled Marxian spiel, his Old Worldian comme il faut derision for America, and newly fashionable antisemitism (the ominous influence of the nefarious Jewish lobby - he does not even attempt to gentrify it by its 'Israel' moniker). In general, unless you are a Dawkins, another man’s faith is not of your concern - as long as it does not drive him to change yours or kill you. Whatever your faith is, mine, Judaism, says it’s the deeds that matter. As Maimonides wrote (translation in Am J Psychiatry, 2008, 165, p. 426),

As for religious commandments, however, the harm and benefit that they bring are not evident in this world. The fool might, therefore, imagine to himself that everything that is said to be harmful is not harmful, and everything that is said to be beneficial is not beneficial, because these things are not clearly evident to him. For this reason religious law compels one to practice good and punishes for doing evil, for the good and evil will only become apparent in the world-to-come. All this is benevolence toward us, a favor to us in light of our foolishness, mercy upon us owing to the weakness of our understanding.

Dawkins will not change anybody’s faith with his arguments, much as he tries. Naïve, they are so much alike those we heard during classes in 'Scientific Atheism', which were mandatory for every student – back in the USSR.
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03/27/2018. An update: Dawkins has finally been scared by Islam into lamenting Europe's atheism, https://www.christianpost.com/news/atheist-richard-dawkins-warns-against-celebrating-demise-of-relatively-benign-christianity-in-europe-221909/