… a shimmering mass of cornelian leaves, dripping and moist with the rain. — Agnes Newton Keith, The Land Below the Wind, 1939
If you are like me you’ve never heard of these two color names before. Never, that is, unless you work in fashion design, own a cherry orchard, are a jeweler or a mineralogist.
Or, for that matter, peruse the Merraim-Webster dictionary, again the source for today’s words.
Carnelian refers to a reddish-orange or brownish-red color, like the colors often found in the quartz by that name. It is a variation of cornelian that is based on Latin carn-, meaning “flesh,” in reference to the flesh-red color that some perceive in the mineral. Cornelian itself is believed to derive from French cornele, the name for the cornel cherry, and so named because of its resemblance in color to the fruit. Both words often get used interchangeably to describe leaves in autumn.
I was thinking about all the weird color names that sound appealing and mysterious when applied to fall coloration. That, in turn, led to re-visit one of the more famous assumptions in the psychology of language, the Sapir – Whorfian Hypothesis.
More than a half-century ago, Whorf argued for a strong claim—that the language people speak has a lifelong impact, determining what people can or cannot think, what ideas they can or cannot consider. So, for example, if your language did not contain separate terms for green and blue, you could not tell the difference. There is an element of truth here, because language can and does shape cognition. But the strong form of the claim has long been debunked: the effects are NOT permanent, and it is not language per se, but your experience (mediated by language) that shapes thought.
Gamboge, can be used to describe the vivid yellows of autumn. The name of the color refers to a gum resin from southeast Asian trees that is used as a yellow pigment in art and as a purgative in medicine.
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Experience is accumulated by what you pay attention to, and here language is one of the guides directing your attention, but only one. In other words, rather than uniquely and directly shaping thought in ways that can never be reversed, language indirectly pulls your attention towards things. If I manage to manipulate your attention in other ways, the outcome can and will be different.
Scarlet was not originally a word for a color but a name for a high-quality cloth, which is believed to have originated in Persia where it was called saqalāt. The word entered English via Anglo-French escarlet—a derivative of the Latin word for the cloth, scarlata—and became associated with bright red colors because the cloth was commonly dyed red
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Color is often used as an example. Papua New Guineans who speak Berinmo make no distinction between “green” and “blue,”and so are never attending to them as separate categories. If you’re an English speaker, your language does make this distinction, and this can draw your attention to what all green objects have in common and what all blue objects have in common. If your attention is drawn to this point again and again, you’ll gain familiarity with the distinction and eventually become better at making the distinction in contrast to Berinmo speakers.
Crimson and carmine, words for deep reds, are doublets from the same Arabic source. The color crimson is a deep purplish red that is found in a dye made from pulverized kermes, or the dried bodies of insects. The name of the color and of the insect has been traced back to qirmiz, the Arabic name for the insect. The word crimson entered English in the 15th century via Old Spanish cremesín.
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If you test both groups in a way that excludes direct language, though, they are much alike in their perception of the central distinctions between green and blue. We English speakers are only better at picking out small differences and remember them, given out years of experiences with grouping them into separate categories. If I inundated you from now on with carnelian, cornelian, crimson and carmine, auburn, maroon, russet, amber, scarlet, sepia and gamboge, guess what? You’ll get better at distinguishing them.
Will it shape you assessment of the beauty of fall? You tell me!
Maroon, as the name for a dark red color, derives from French marron, which is the Spanish name for a chestnut. The earliest examples in English of the word refer to the reddish-brown nut, with the color sense dating from the late-18th century. Before becoming a color name, maroon referred to a loud firework. Supposedly, people associated the noise of a chestnut bursting in a fire to an exploding firework. Most notably, maroons were used during World War I as a warning to take cover because of an approaching air raid.
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PS: You’ve heard the claim that the native peoples of the far north (including the Inuit) have an enormous number of terms for various forms of snow and are correspondingly skilled in discriminating types of snow. It turns out, though, that the initial claim (the number of terms for snow) is wrong; the Inuit have roughly the same number of snow terms as do people living further south. In addition, if the Inuit people are more skilled in discriminating snow types, is this because of the language that they speak? Or is it because their day-to-day lives require that they stay alert to the differences among snow types? (After Roberson, Davies, & Davidoff, 2000)
Amber can describe the dark orange-yellow color of a floating leaf or a substance found floating in the sea. It is derived from Arabic, anbar, which refers to ambergris, a waxy secretion (there’s that word again) of the sperm whale that is used as a spice and in perfumery. In English, amber was originally used as the name for this substance, with the name ambergris developing later in French from ambre and gris (“gray”) to differentiate it from the fossilized tree resin type of amber, which is also found around the shore (of the Baltic Sea, largely).
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PPS: for those interested, here is a fascinating summary of the effects of types of language (strongly gendered or gender-neutral) on creating more or less gendered societies and what that implies for legislation around language use. In German, for example every noun has one of three gender terms attached to it and things are judged correspondingly male, female or neutral. For example the word “key” is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish. The respective speakers attend to very different attributes, correspondingly. Strong and hard comes to mind first for Germans, small and pretty for Spanish speakers.
Music today is a golden brown according to Rimsky-Korsakov who described the key of D major as that color.
Or shall it be purplish-red as Scriabin described the key of E flat major?
The ghastly history of lurid makes it a fitting adjective for dying pale-yellow leaves. It is from luridus, the Latin word for such a color, and in the 17th century, it was used to describe the pale yellowish color of diseased or bruised skin.
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” Mark Twain – (Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events. Edited with an introduction by Bernard DeVoto. 1940)
IF YOU ARE CURIOUS about the world, have the privilege of meeting a lot of different artists, and risk tackling things that are not exactly central to your own expertise, you’ll expand your horizon. When I set out to portray people with my camera and my writing, the encounters are as varied as the artists who I meet. Some evolve into friendships, others are puzzling, some demand hard thinking, many provide nothing but pleasure. The last year alone introduced me to classically trained musicians turned Ukrainian girl-band, puppeteers from Chile, wheelchair-bound choreographers, Mexican political theatre activists, female conductors of sacred music, and numerous printmakers from around the nation. All offered glimpses into worlds different from my own, and in one way or another challenged the way how I view art or the process of creating art.
This has never been more true than for my most recent conversation with a man who has lived in worlds so distant from mine that they might as well exist in a different universe. I met him by chance in a museum cafe. He had come to Maryhill Museum to pick up paintings that had been on display in a group exhibition of, among others, student work of the Seattle-based Gage Academy of Art, his included. I was there because of my interest in the Exquisite Gorge Project that was in progress across the summer months. We started to talk and agreed to a studio visit, something I finally managed to set up last week.
Charles Burt, artist
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PLATOON SERGEANT FIRST CLASS Charles Burt joined the army when he was 18 years old. He spent more than half of his life there, with a distinguished career in the tank division, multiple deployments to war zones and eventually operating as a drill sergeant and recruiter. The duties of an SFC typically include managing soldiers and tanks in a combat arms role, with responsibilities such as tactical logistics, tactical casualty evacuations, and serving as the senior tactical adviser to the platoon leader.
Born in Michigan, he moved to Texas at age nine, shunned in his middle school years as a “Yankee” in an environment where the Civil War had seemingly never ended. His love of drawing and art in general sustained him throughout his childhood. His mother, struggling after a hostile divorce, found a spiritual home in a fundamentally Christian, evangelical church which became to dominate Burt’s belief system during his formative years.
Charles Burt RespectPreparation of the correct blue for the American Flag
One of the hallmarks of his religious eduction was the demand for literal interpretation of the bible. If the world was created from scratch but some 10.000 years ago, then any science telling us otherwise was a work of the devil, meant to distract us. Dinosaurs did not exist. The concept of evolution was a satanic mirage. Heaven and hell were real places, and anyone not born into or converted to Christianity condemned to fry in the latter for all eternity.
Fast forward to Operation Desert Storm in reaction to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait threatening US oil demands in 1991, with Burt deployed, now in his early twenties. The GulfWar casualties were enormous. Assumed numbers vary, with Les Aspin, then chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, estimating at the time that “at least 65,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed,” and later sources reporting one to two hundred thousand casualties. MEDACT reports on civilian casualties estimate the number of Iraqi deaths caused directly and indirectly by the Gulf War to be between 142,500 and 206,000.
Charles Burt Tank
Burt could not wrap his mind around the fact that all of these people, many innocently caught between the warring parties, would be condemned to eternal life in flames. It seemed amoral to decide that the element of chance – where you were born or what information you had access to – would determine your fate. Cracks appeared in his armor of evangelical convictions, leading to extensive reading and listening to other views offered by the varied mix of people he met in the army and his exposure to a foreign world. Being religious turned to being interested in religions, with faith eventually discarded and the emerging hole filled with learning about science and philosophy. A turn-around requiring enormous amounts of moral courage – matching his physical one – since it meant to leave behind everything that had been a constant in his life, everything that had been his ethical yardstick. Everything, that is, except his interest in art.
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“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.” Hannah Arendt The Human Condition (1958)
WE TALK A LOT that morning we meet at the Atelier where Burt currently finishes his 4th year of art education, after retiring from the army in 2013. At times I find myself holding my breath at the intensity of what he experienced, how every sensory detail is etched into his memory.
“One of the toughest things I had to deal with while in the Army was a Bosnia rotation in 1997. We had to do patrols around towns and weapons inspections as well as patrol the mass grave sites so the UN soldiers could remove the bodies without getting harassed by those who did not want us doing that. I was the gunner on a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) and so I rode in the turret on top, and on our way to one of the mass grave sites I can smell that we were getting close. We had to go through an abandoned demolished village and our interpreter would talk to us about how this was one of the towns where the Serbian army went through and committed their mass genocide. They would drive-through with tanks blasting through houses and she showed us the large holes that were blown through different houses. In the middle of the town is the largest building which was the school and she explained to us how children were brought outside of the school and the Serbian soldiers would pull them out one at a time and she showed us a large indention in one of the walls outside where the children would get executed. The parents would try to come down and then they would shoot the parents that were trying to save the kids. It was a tough thing to hear about and be at this place. We had passed that town so many times and never gave it one thought until our interpreter told us about it. I never looked at the abandoned buildings around the country the same way again. It’s something that still haunts my dreams I am really glad that I did get to experience that and be a part of that. I met some wonderful people while I was there and learned a lot.”
Charles Burt Self Portrait (Reflection in the window of his tank, looking out)
I hear about how it felt to be under mortar attack while stationed in Ramadi Iraq in 2006 during the Sunni Awakening, the Iraqi revolt against al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in which Sunni Arabs partnered with U.S. forces to fight a common enemy. It was a bad place at a bad time. Burt’s small Forward Operating Base (FOB or camp) was under constant sniper and mortar attacks, often so close that the building would rattle and the noise could be heard by his wife with whom he was on the phone; he tells her white lies to protect her, about the generator blowing up or the gas tank rumbling, while his own men sit with pale faces pinned against the shaking walls.
A subsequent PTSD diagnosis captures the horrors of what was lived. His loving, remarkably kind and supportive wife, eases the re-entry.
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GAGE ACADEMY OF ART is a non-profit, extended-learning and contemporary art center, that has provided community-based art instruction for some 30 years in Seattle. It offers public art events, lectures, youth programming and exhibitions, but central to its educational mission is the Atelier program. It promises a path to mastery in drawing, painting or sculpture in a deeply immersive environment under the tutelage of internationally renowned teaching artists.
Live Drawing Class before the lecture begins
The first year of instruction is entirely devoted to drawing, mostly with charcoal. The second year introduces but two colors in oil, and in the third year painting with the full palette is encouraged. The fourth year is dedicated to developing your own portfolio, which will be critiqued at the end of the year by the entire faculty, not just the specific Atelier head who guided you through the years.
Burt did his research well and chose wisely: he joined Juliette Aristide‘s Atelier which offers fundamental drawing and painting skills with a strong emphasis on observation from life in the tradition of American Classical Realism. Her own description:
“Like the great studios of the past, working from the human figure in life drawing and painting forms a pillar of our program. With that in mind we spend every morning throughout the year in the life room. The afternoons are spent in your studio working through the atelier’s curriculum of cast drawing, master-copy work and still life painting in a step-by-step progression. As you acquire each skill, new and more challenging projects are assigned. Aristides Atelier students are also provided additional classes in perspective, anatomy, composition, painting techniques and color theory.”
The term Classical Realism was coined by Minneapolis painter Richard Lack who founded the first studio patterned after the 19th-century French ateliers in 1967. By the 1980s a significant number of young artists emerged from this educational setting, continuing to spread the tradition. No-one seemed to mind the contradiction in terms: Classicism, after all, is devoted to subject matters, highly idealized, from ancient Greece and Rome. Realism, on the other hand, is devoted to common objects and themes, beautification be damned. No-one cared about the many voices in the art world either, who heaped scorn on what they perceived to be a reactionary movement.
Study objects at the Atelier
Classical Realism has become a living tradition. It finds its roots in both the techniques and the training approaches of the past: deep immersion in technical skill, draftsmanship and composition. A focus on honing perceptual sensitivities, representational devices and creation of harmonious beauty.
Charles Burt, Drawing of Moses Sculpture
Whatever one’s ultimate judgment of the Classical Realism movement, there surely could not be a better fit for Burt than it. For one who’s life has been a continual experience within structure, be it the stark religious corset of the evangelical movement, or the rank and file hierarchy and code of the military, a highly structured teaching of means and methods, now in a nurturing environment, provides some continuity.
Charles Burt Deployment
More significantly, a life once pressed into the scaffold of literal interpretation of imaginary worlds is now devoted to the literal observation of the real one, the here and now in front of our eyes. Burt’s choice of subjects for his portfolio concern two topics, both helping to externalize the internal struggles: objects associated with military and with religious service. While observing him at work in the studio I was reminded of Monet’s phrase linked to Impressionism: “To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.” An inversion seems apt here: To look allows the painter to forget (for a few hours) the things he has seen.
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THE US DEPARTMENT OF VETERAN AFFAIRS has a category of injury sustained in war related to, but distinct from PTSD: Moral injury.
Like psychological trauma, moral injury is a construct that describes extreme and unprecedented life experience including the harmful aftermath of exposure to such events. Events are considered morally injurious if they “transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations”. Thus, the key precondition for moral injury is an act of transgression, which shatters moral and ethical expectations that are rooted in religious or spiritual beliefs, or culture-based, organizational, and group-based rules about fairness, the value of life, and so forth. In the context of war, moral injuries may stem from direct participation in acts of combat, such as killing or harming others, or indirect acts, such as witnessing death or dying, failing to prevent immoral acts of others, or giving or receiving orders that are perceived as gross moral violations. The act may have been carried out by an individual or a group, through a decision made individually or as a response to orders given by leaders.
I could not, of course, ascertain if or to what degree moral injury was sustained above and beyond PTSD. But I saw moral courage in Burt’s creation of paintings that confront his experiences directly and simultaneously slow us down and force us to contemplate parts of someone’s experience with war and the shattering of faith.
The paintings do tell a story, many stories. One series, for example is constructed within a light box with light shining onto the tableaux from different angles. I forget the exact order, but a grouping of Judaic objects is centrally lit, objects related to Christian worship will be lit from a left angle, and those associated with Islam correspondingly from the right. A shared source of light for these Abrahamic religions, tilted into different perspectives.
Life Tableau in the Studio
Military boots serve as a reminder of deployment, now wiped from all traces of foreign contaminated soil, brushed to full shine. Working boots, by tradition put outside the door of the many wives and families waiting for their soldier to come home, alive and limbs intact.
Charles Burt Tanker BootsCharles Burt WorkBoots
Whether these stories will help to bear the sorrow is a question I cannot answer.
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“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection.” Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. I (1776)
CHARLES BURT HAS BEEN DIAGNOSED with early-onset Parkinson Disease (PD). Many of the early symptoms of this disease overlap with those of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Tremors, difficulty sleeping and poor emotional regulation, including anger and/or depression, can be evidence of either PD or PTSD. Parkinson Disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects predominately dopamine-producing (“dopaminergic”) neurons in a specific area of the brain called substantia nigra. Eventually the limbs will be rigid, the gait changes, there will be sensory loss, and cognitive impairment.
Charles Burt’s hands, steadying each other
Parkinson Disease cannot be cured, although science has produced an arsenal of interventions, from dopaminergic medications to surgical treatment providing deep brain stimulation. These treatment options provide symptom relief, but do not cure or halt the progression of the disease. They also need to be carefully timed across an expected life span, since they loose efficacy over time. Science has been dangling alternative approaches – gene therapy, immunotherapy, and cell transplantation, but so far they have not moved beyond the infancy stages of experimentation.
Recent studies point to the possibility that people diagnosed with PTSD have an increased risk of developing not only neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimers, but also Parkinson Disease. The exact causal mechanisms are not yet known. The VA, for lack of causal documentation during his service years, has not acknowledged responsibility for Burt’s condition. There will never be proof that exposure to multiple IED explosions hurt neuronic pathways. There will never be a way to determine if the poisonous air inhaled from the oil fires in Kuwait acted as a precursor to nerve degeneration. Burt certainly remembers how they would be finally served a hot meal out in the open after a sortie and the plate would be covered with black soot particles before they reached the tables, the food inedible.
Charles Burt in front of Easel
Imagine what it means for someone in the early years of their painting career to face this affliction. To wonder when the ability to draw realistically will be impaired by uncontrollably shaking hands, when it will be impossible to paint for lack of coherent, fluid motion. How it will affect growing into a mature artist with a developed style.
Burt lives in the moment. His urge to build a body of work is unstoppable. His passion for the beauty of the world undiminished. “Science is my new religion,” he says, with a gentle smile full of optimism, “something will come along.” Thomas Paine’s words float in my brain, about gathering strength from distress and growing brave from reflection. No reflection needed: this man is a paragon of bravery. Sustained by art.
Yesterday I wrote about some reasons why people distrust or outright reject science: contradictory findings are held against the validity of the scientific enterprise, debunked studies are seen as signs of sham proceedings, problems with replicability are justifying overall doubtfulness.
Let’s look at this a bit more closely. Non-replications (which, by the way, happen mostly in the areas where the social and personality variables of are investigated,) and de-bunking are actually signs of a robust health of science, rather than the opposite. People care to get it right. Science is a cumulative enterprise that happens slowly, over time, with careful calibration. It is open to explore where things might have failed or, more likely were dependent on contextual variables that we are unable to re-create.
This is not picked up in news reporting which, for obvious purposes, goes for the latest, the flashy, the new. Nor do you read in the news each and every case of where replications succeeded – far outweighing the opposite cases, but not considered news-worthy. You have a real sampling problem here: I tell you the bad, because it sells the paper – never mind, it sells the on-line ads – but m silent on far more frequent good outcomes.
These are, alas, not the only causes for our view of science as untrustworthy. Science is often met with loud opposition, and those who oppose it know how to manipulate the general population. Think of what vested interest managed to do: if science was a threat to profit it was ignored, dissed, or its results never published. This is true for the tobacco industry, the fracking industry, the pharmaceutical industry – you probably can add considerably to this list. Threatened interests withhold science, they disparage science, they lie about science. (Here is a series of clever articles on the whole issue.)
Then there is the enlistment of “merchants of doubt,” who as willing media create “balanced” debates where, say, one scientist denying the causes and consequences of the climate crisis (or the crisis outright) is confronted with another scientist describing a different picture. Never mind that only a few scientists agree with the former and 99 % of the rest agree with the latter. Just this week 11.ooo of them urged us to change energy, food and reproduction habits or face dire consequences….
Manipulation is all too often willingly received, though, by the public and none of us is exempt. Inconvenient findings might be a threat to our worldview, or a threat to our comfort levels in living our lives, a threat to the status quo that provides longed-for stability and maintenance of status for some of us. Climate science is a good example: acknowledging the physics, the facts about greenhouse gasses, would compete with a system’s need to protect free enterprise, avoid government intervention, compete with a solar power industry overtaking the coal industry, etc.
It would force us to face changing our own behavior from what we eat to if and how we travel, keep the house warm, buy clothes, you name it. Or think mandatory vaccines – g-d forbid the government infers with parents’ rights, (particularly when vaccines concern STD’s and a presumed impact on (to be deterred) sexual behavior is part of the equation.) Thus the public is perfectly happy to listen only to the data that confirm their worldview, or disparage data altogether as untrustworthy if they don’t.
This is true for the opposite side of the political spectrum as well. If you look at the left’s receptivity (or absence thereof) to data about gene manipulation, nano technology, nuclear power or factory farming you see some of the same picture. I am the first to admit my own cherry picking of data: I am following research on Alzheimers, since it is one of the things I dread most in life – loosing my brain. I am way less critical towards studies that bring me comfort, than those that don’t. Case in point: a recent finding that sleep might help to prevent the disease. Well, let’s be more precise: there is the assumption that something that happens during sleep, your brain getting washed, quite literally, with slushing waves of cerebrospinal fluid that takes the gunk in there away, is beneficial to your mental health. Tell that to this passionate sleeper.
New research from Boston University suggests that tonight while you sleep, something amazing will happen within your brain. Your neurons will go quiet. A few seconds later, blood will flow out of your head. Then, a watery liquid called cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) will flow in, washing through your brain in rhythmic, pulsing waves.
Note, this does not allow us to make causal claims, even the correlations are tenuous, there might be a third variable problem, but oh, do I like a study like this, since as a deep sleeper it ever so marginally reduces my fears. Cherry picking, as I said. You will not find me promoting studies that seem to correlate frequent use of Benadryl with Alzheimers, on the other hand, since it would require changing my allergy medication habits…..
One more thing, and then I am done with the bully pulpit:
Science matters. Doing science right matters. Policy issues should be driven by science and not by individual taste or belief or industrial greed. But there is also a case to be made for some policy issues to be independent of science, and we have to be very careful in distinguishing the two. Take, for example, the argument that has been around for a while, that discrimination against the LGTBQ population should be prohibited because science has determined that genetics play a role in who you are and as who you present. What if science turns around and we find out it is all about social construct, not genes? Is it ok to discriminate then?
The point here is that there are moral arguments that should be independent of science, no matter what scientific claims we hold true at any given point in time.
And now, if you excuse me, I am off to catch a few winks of brain washing before I consider writing on morality…. Photographs are of waves, of course.
Never mind magic, miracles, witchcraft, the previous topics of this week. Many people don’t believe in science either, what with all the contradictory findings and and newly debunked studies that ruled the field for decades.
Coffee is bad for you. Coffee is good for you. A glass of wine with dinner will see you happily grow old. A glass of wine with dinner will be your demise! Exercise 20 hours a week and you will live forever. Exercise 20 minutes a week and you reap the same benefits. How often do we read that some previously touted finding is now completely reversed…. why should we ever trust scientific findings?
Note that my examples, the typical examples found in popular science writing you grab in the newspaper or listen to on NPR, do not concern physics, or chemistry, where it would be technically far harder to report something and far less interesting from a human interest point of view. It would also be far more consistent and thus of little interest to announce. The wild swings we read about come from epidemiological studies, research with large groups of people about something affecting their lives based in their life styles.
This is extremely hard science to do since it does not lend itself to one of the basic demands of the scientific method: random assignment of the participants. I cannot divide a random group of 1000 or more people into two, commanding and controlling one half to forgo alcohol for 10 years, while the other is allowed to indulge, and then test for outcomes. Instead, I have to rely on a group that happens to be non-drinkers to compare to those who are. This introduces the possibility that there is something else going on with one or both of the groups that feeds into my results.
Maybe non-drinkers are poorer and thus not buying wine, so other aspects of poverty affect the (negative) outcome. Maybe abstinent people are more health-conscious, reflected in additional healthy behavior, that is really at the core of the (positive) outcome. Maybe drinkers are in general a more social bunch, and the social aspects of their lives influence (positive) outcome. Maybe drinkers have underlying depression for which they self-medicate with alcohol and that affects the (negative) outcome. You get the idea. The conclusions – alcohol is good/bad for you – might be influenced by factors that have nothing to do with your beverage of choice after all and vary from study to study since these factors crop up in different populations. I might hope to control for all of these variables, but it is more or less impossible with self-selected populations.
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Then there is the furious debate over the non-replicability of standard scientific studies and the discovery of scientific data massaging, or in worse cases, scientific fraud. I was reminded of that when I learned that a study I had taught for decades to great theatrical effect is now partially debunked. On being Sane in Insane Places by David Rosenhan came out in 1973 in the highly respected journal Science. Eight healthy participants went to local psychiatric hospitals, claiming they heard voices saying: “Hollow, empty, thud.” (Imagine my dramatic re-enactment in front of the college classroom.) The study reported that all of them were diagnosed with mental illness, in many cases schizophrenia, based on this symptom alone, and kept in hospital, up to 52 days, leaving eventually against the advisement of the doctors. A total of 2,100 pills — serious psychiatric drugs — were claimed to be prescribed to these otherwise pseudo patients.
A new book by Susan Callahan, The Great Pretender, unravels all that went wrong with the set-up and the representation of the results of this study, while at the same time examining the pitfalls of a broken mental health-care system, and acknowledging that mistaken labeling in psychiatric care is all too real. However, inventing data about it is not going to help the cause. The same seems to be the case for Phil Zimbardo’s famous Stanford Prison Study, with criticism delivered here.
And here is one last example, a study of gender bias, “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of ‘Blind’ Auditions on Female Musicians,” by Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse, that has been cited over 1500 times and even referenced by Justice Bader-Ginsburg in one or another dissent.
Two subsequent critics have taken apart the statistics used to arrive at these conclusion. Here is a summary report (short video clip) by Christina Hoff Sommers, who wrote on this for the Wall Street Journal implying that our mistaken efforts towards political correctness propelled this supposedly flawed paper into mainstream discourse.
My immediate reaction: why on earth would I trust an author from the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, known for her critique of contemporary feminism in her diatribes on The Factual Feminist? More on that tomorrow when Distrust in Science continues!
Photographs today echo public sentiment of science as feather weight.
Music today with a female conductor who broke the all too real glass ceiling: Marin Alsop.
Let me end this week devoted to issues of discrimination and how to combat them by looking at a recent scientific experiment that I found thought-provoking.
A group of political scientists from Penn and UCBerkeley went out to investigate parochialism – the way we favor members of our own group at the expense of members of other groups – to understand processes of discrimination in a world were intergroup conflict is on the rise. Donhyun Danny Choi and his colleagues wondered if encounters with a person of a migrant background who acts in ways that show they have integrated our cultural norms would diminish discrimination against them.
Concretely: if you encounter a young woman who is in need of help, and she is either looking like you, an average white person, or looking like an immigrant, or identified as a Muslim by wearing a headscarf, who do you think you’d help?
What if she has shown that she cares about them same norms as you do before she needs help, would that change anything?
Here is the set-up: you have a crew of confederates going to numerous German train stations and enacting the following scenario: Male actor throws a used coffee cup onto the floor. Female actor who is either German or not, identified as Muslima or not, either scolds him or not. She then accidentally drops a bag of oranges and we measure how the bystanders (close to 7000 by the end of the trials) – the German citizens who were privy to the previous events) decide to help her pick up the fruit.
Why Germany? Strongly internalized, widely accepted cultural norm of non-littering that can serve as an indicator of integration if the migrant appeals to it. Also pretty homogenous subject pool of who is waiting around at train stations, adding no noisy variables to the design.
So what you think happened? Was the degree of assistance offered to strangers the same in all groups?
Did immigrants receive less assistance than natives and did religious identity markers (hijabs) that increase the difference (social distance) between natives and immigrants decrease assistance? The answer is: yes. Immigrants were helped less often, and particularly refused help if they were identified as Muslim. The effect was almost double the size in East Germany (the current location of most widely spread White supremacist and nationalist ideology) compared to West Germany.
Did the condition where the immigrant showed adherence to social norms (she scolds the guy for littering) offset the negative bias towards immigrants, indicating that good integration will lead to less discrimination? The answer is yes, but…. it does a little bit, but it does not eliminate bias in its entirety.
Visibly shared norms, then, form a potential basis for a reduction in discrimination and improved cooperation. But the effectiveness of adhering to norms, signaling shared values, is constrained by the salience of intergroup differences. In plain English: no matter how you act like the host culture, if you look quite different, triggering a particular negative stereotype, you’ll be discriminated against.
Note that the non-German actress had still pretty European features. I wonder if they would find more ethnic discrimination than they did with someone who is a black person; even more so if they ran the experiment in the US…although what would the internalized cultural norm be here, that could be appealed to?
A salient religious symbol signaling cultural difference can, theoretically, be removed. Black skin can’t.
My focus this week is on strength in the face of an onslaught of discrimination. What better opportunity to re-introduce some of the most resilient people I know, the performers of and contributors to PHAME, Portland’s fine and performing arts academy serving adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I have previously written about different aspects of their work here, here, and here.
Choir Rehearsal for Phame’s Rockopera The Poet’s Shadow
Today I feel compelled to write because PHAME‘s current project, a Rock Opera titled The Poet’s Shadow, prepared in conjunction with Portland Opera, and directed by Bruce Hostetler, artistic director of Portland Revels, is well underway. I have had the privilege to document the rehearsal process photographically. Portraits of truly talented folks. They wrote the libretto, the music, they designed the costumes and the advertising posters, they dance to the choreography of Wobbly Dance, they sing in the choir, they play the music on iPads, they have five principals with demanding roles.
It is exceptional.
The iPad ensemble directed by Matthew Gailey
“The rock opera brings to fruition an 18-month collaboration between PHAME Academy and Portland Opera. In addition to lending PHAME the use of their Hampton Opera Center for the production’s performances, Portland Opera has taught opera-related classes at PHAME and has provided one-on-one vocal coaching to lead actors. The production also partners with Portland’s acclaimed dance duo Wobbly Dance, who will be choreographing the movement chorus, and with Metropolitan Youth Symphony, whose students will join PHAME’s iPad musicians in making up the production’s orchestra.” (https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/11-features/435217-345460-phame-and-portland-opera-rock-new-show)
Choreographers Yulia Arakelyan and Erik Ferguson from Wobbly The movement group rehearsing the monster
Equally timely, though, is the need to spell out some of the darkest aspects that come with our society’s ignorance about, ideology around and treatment of disability.
Tess Raunig, principal role of Elizabeth
I am not even thinking about the extremes: White supremacists, say, who try to disenfranchise marginalized groups, disabled people included, by recourse to an ideology enshrined in Eugenics and Race science. (After all the Nazis were inspired and crafted their laws after American Jim Crow and extended them to the disabled population.)
Aaron Hobson, principal role of Beautiful Love
Not thinking about people enabling that ideology by implying mental illness is at the root of violent excess, rather than domestic radicalization, something repeatedly experienced in the wake of mass shootings, as the recent one in El Paso, Tx.
Anne-Marie Plass, principal role of The Rose
Not thinking about the ideology of some of the highest judges in the land (Kavanaugh’s record on disability issues is hair-raising), or the assault on the rights of people living with disability, including undermining the Affordable Care Act.
Lea Mulligan, principal role of Mrs. Peacock
No, I am thinking of the daily volume of violence that is par for the course for this population living in a society bent on ableism – discrimination in favor of able-bodied people – in addition to all of the other obstacles thrown in their way, from problems with physical access and barriers to lack of employment opportunities creating a feedback loop between poverty and assumptions that disability is a sign of cognitive inferiority.
Maxwell Rochette, principal role of The Fairyguide
The statistics are staggering. For a succinct overview (with research references) go here. Here are summary quotes from the linked article:
Violent crimes are three times more likely to victimize disabled people than those living without disability (and the data exclude people who are institutionalized, not covered by the research. Numbers of victims there are expected to be significantly higher.)
Then there is law enforcement. “Police violence comprises so much violence against disabled people that we constitute up to half of those killed by law enforcement officers. They are quick to view disability, from deafness to neurodivergence to physical disabilities, as noncompliance—and even quicker to use that perceived noncompliance to justify excessive force.”
Schools: “Of the nearly 50,000 US students who were physically restrained during the 2013–2014 school year, more than 75%were students who received disability accommodations. This is absurdly disproportionate given that these students represented just 14% of the student population.“
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Members of the iPad ensemble
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The added value of organizations like PHAME lies not just in providing opportunities for talented artists and performers to be seen and heard or to be integrated into a community, lessening social isolation. The quality of the projects, of what they as individuals and as a group accomplish, reveals how wrong we are in our assumptions about a population many of us have little contact with. The imperative of full integration into the lives we all share is and should be, of course, independent of quality of performance or creative achievement. But having the public view accomplishments like these will help undermine our deeply rooted stereotypes. If this leads to changes in views around employability or independent housing or the degree of openness to interact on a level playing field, much will be gained.
In the meantime I suggest you do yourself a favor and buy tickets to “The Poet’s Shadow.” You will be moved beyond words.
Continuing from yesterday, here is another long take on what to do about fake news.
Yesterday I offered some suggestions why propaganda and other big lies are so successful in manipulating all of us. Some of us – those prone towards delusion, dogmatism, religious fundamentalism or lacking analytic thinking skills – are more vulnerable to manipulation than others. But all of us are in the same boat when it comes to cognitive overload: if we are flooded with information, particularly contradictory information, we often feel overwhelmed, don’t know who to trust and eventually decide not to believe anything at all. Or we decide it is just too much effort to dig deep into analysis and/or not worth it to expand so much mental energy.
The second point – is it really worth the effort? – is where a mix of self service and poor calibration determines how much you are likely to buy into falsehoods. If you really hate a claim, then you’re motivated to challenge and undermine the claim, so maybe you do the work. If the claim aligns with your prior beliefs, confirmation bias will make you lazy. Calibration suffers because people are often poor in judging how well established a claim is — i.e., how good the evidence is. As a result, they often regard strong claims as only weakly established (and so they waste time challenging the claim), and often regard weak claims as well established (and so, mistakenly, don’t bother to scrutinize the evidence). If you look at how social media influence your assessment of “well established” by the sheer number of likes or retweets or linked Hashtags, it is easy to understand why we are increasingly bad at calibration.
Recent research in Europe has shown that people intent on manipulation are quite aware of these factors and form entire troll bands to sway public opinion towards their right-wing or neo-fascist directions by sheer volume of clicks. There are now movements to oppose this tendency, under the hashtag #Iamhere. Private individuals, more than 10.000 in Germany alone, although the initiative started in Sweden, are fighting hate speech on FaceBook. They don’t argue directly with extremists. Instead they collectively inject discussions with facts and reasonable viewpoints. The idea is to provide balance so that other social media users see that there are alternative perspectives beyond the ones offered up by the trolls. FB supports this here.
The big difference between US and European approaches to free speech, hate speech and lies, however, is not happening in the private sector but in European legislation. Germany, with its fascist past, is particularly alert to the dangers associated with hate speech. Free speech is acknowledged to be a fundamental right and a basic constituent for democracy. But it is seen as something to be balanced with other factors necessary to maintain a democracy, which can restrict certain contents of speech if deemed a danger to democracy. (It is part of a concept of militant democracy, held by German government since the establishment of the republic, more on that another time.)
The German criminal code contains 22 statutes that prohibit and punish actions deemed a threat in this regard. They include inciting hatred, racist insulting of particular groups and Holocaust denial; forming terrorist organizations, the use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations, defamation of religions, religious and ideological associations in a manner that is capable of disturbing the public peace, and forgery of data intended to provide proof, among others.
These restrictions are justified by assuming that propaganda would create racist majorities, could lead to violence and discrimination and could cause resentment that in turn destabilizes the democratic order. Not many of these statutes would stand the test of the US 1st amendment; the differences are really based on a fundamentally opposed understanding of government: Here, in our mistrust of government and celebration of individualism, we seek the least amount of intervention possible. In Germany, pluralism is valued above individualism, and the government is seen as a protector of minorities, of tolerance, of the good of the whole, rather than of individuals only or foremost.
And from the other side of the political spectrum:
Free speech, folks.
In this spirit, as of 2018, Germans also ratified a Network Enforcement Act (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz or NetzDG) that holds social media platforms responsible for enforcing the statutes mentioned above.
NetzDG targets large social network platforms, with more than 2 million users located in Germany. It requires these platforms to provide a mechanism for users to submit complaints about illegal content. Once they receive a complaint, platforms must investigate whether the content is illegal. If the content is “manifestly unlawful,” platforms must remove it within 24 hours. Other illegal content must be taken down within 7 days. Platforms that fail to comply risk fines of up to €50 million.
Serious criticism of this hate speech law can be found here
Most importantly, you have a restriction of free speech enshrined in the German constitution: Art. 18 states that anyone who abuses freedom of expression (or any number of other important freedoms cited within) in a way to undermine a freedom-oriented democratic system cannot invoke this fundamental right. They have learned their lesson, it seems.
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Photographs today are from the Esplanade during this year’s Rose Festival. Free speech reigned, as did disgusting visuals, and I would have given a lot to have the military personnel talk to me about their views of democracy…..
Here is a wonderful essay on Beethoven and democracy – let’s go for the 9th in 1989! Such hope then.
“…. this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true in itself – that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”
Yes, I am going to ruin your perfectly fine Monday with a quote from a source that until January 2016, could not be purchased in Germany: Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Why would I dare to cite an early autobiographical statement made in reference to Jews and lies before he came to power, but perfectly applied for his own agenda once he was in power?
Because I am thinking through issues of free speech, fake news and the consequences of trying to make the truth irrelevant for a talk tomorrow sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute and the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education that I was asked to join as a panelist. The topic of the evening is a comparison between the similarities and differences of fake news now and in the 1930s, and before you can say “That sounds interesting,” the event is sold out. I feel the pressure already….. what you read today, then, is an attempt to sort my thoughts at a snail’s pace into some semblance of a structured argument. Thank you in advance for your patience! (Never mind that snails’ slime triggers associations to fake news…)
I think we have to distinguish, first of all, how the term “Fake News” and “Big Lie” can be construed. Fake news is often used in the context of the press, when the powers that are do not like what is reported in the media. This started in Germany even before the Nazis came to power, with efforts to discredit the international press during WW I. Lügenpresse was a term and a concept then happily adopted by the Nazis, often in association with conspiracies that the press was ruled by Jews who were trying to usurp power. Creating the impression of a lying press led to first restrictions and eventual a shut-down of the critical media, and worse fates for individual journalists.
The Big Lie on the other hand, is what regimes have used since time immemorial to manipulate or confound public opinion. I do not need to give examples of our own recent history here in the US that confirms the conscious use of lies to promote political goals.
A take-over of the press, in turn, allows an easy spread of state propaganda. Not that we, in 2019, need official state outlets (although we have one that is one but in name, Fox News, and maybe being an official news channel lends gravitas to its lies): the internet channels offer a free-for-all that allows lies and incitement of hatred to spread at the speed of light and in numbers comparable to that of the stars, to stick with metaphors borrowed from the universe.
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The psychological factors why people might fall for the Big Lie are likely the same for then and now, the assumption that people would not believe anyone would dare to lie BIG being the least of them. Cutting edge psychological research shows that the belief in Fake News (here interchangeably used with big lies) is associated with delusionality, dogmatism, religious fundamentalism, and reduced analytic thinking. See details in the link above.
Some of these personality variables are of course linked to structural factors: if public education is systematically weakened and so no longer teaches analytic or critical thinking skills, people are more easily manipulated. If religious schools are preferred to run-down public schools, fundamental values are more easily transmitted.
If a loss in status through unemployment, or an ascendance of previously less valued groups like women or minorities, threatens identity, a motivated belief in lies about the causes of the threat can keep you going. If the 16 billion (!) dollar Advertising business on something like YouTube allows for relentless flooding with lies, the repetition alone will make it hard to question the core of the messages.
Another general psychological factor might be our wish to defend ourselves from an unwanted truth, and so we buy into a lie because the truth is unacceptable. Many 1930s Germans thought themselves to be “the good guys”, from a line of poets and thinkers (Dichter und Denker) dedicated to enlightenment values, simply not willing to acknowledge that something insanely inhumane and atrocious could happen in their country. I fear the same is true for all of us here, who have bought into the concept of American exceptionalism, the shining beacon on the hill, or, to put it more simply, the wearer of the white cowboy hats…. we could not possibly have prison camps for children here, deny legal assistance and adopt out to childless Christian couples before you blink, could we? We are not the kind of people who put people behind bars for 20 years because they distribute water and food to starving refugees in the desert, are we?
And I think this is the core motivator for the relentless onslaught of lies told in public by government officials while simultaneously questioning the truth of reports critical of them: if there is so much falsehood out there, so many conspiracy theories, how could we possibly discern what is truth and what not? If we want to avoid knowing the truth because it would be too horrific to know, all we have to do is tell ourselves we can’t possibly know what is true or not – case closed, propaganda succeeded. Motivation to believe what we want to believe is also exploited by the fabricators of lies in the ways that they choose the content of those lies: it is no coincidence, for example, that lies are told about migrants taking away your jobs, when you fear unemployment and have already been steeped in racist sentiments. I’m sure you can think of plenty of those kinds of examples.
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Last point today (and yes, this will be continued tomorrow): perhaps now more so than during the Weimar Republic some people are aware of the Big Lies – and perfectly happy to run with it. “Let them spread those lies if it serves a larger goal: keep us in power for just a bit longer, stop those fetuses from dying, allow us basking in reflected glory of those who so brilliantly give the finger to our enemies…and accumulate capital while it lasts. ”
Photos by iPhone walking as slowly as thinking….
Music today is a musical lie, a big one, indeed, in response to the threat by an authoritarian ruler, a symphony seemingly contrite and yet full of subversive hints, if I can trust the experts. So hard to know the truth these days. Joke.
The term widow-maker probably means different things to different people. The uninitiated older-than-35-year-old set who has never heard of, much less played the video game Overcraft, is probably oblivious to the fact that the term refers to an assassin also known as Amélie Lacroix. The unconcerned younger-than-35-year-old set will have no idea that it is the informal term for a deadly heart attack that involves 100 percent blockage in the left anterior descending (LAD) artery. And all of us in the overlap of those sets will probably be blissfully unaware that it is a term used in conjunction with dreadful accidents in forestry.
The reason this came to mind was a conversation with a person who happened to come by when I stood in front of the tree below – or what’s left of it – on Monday. A large part of the tree had come down last year, luckily falling when no-one was around. The remaining stump, still taller than a person, seemed solid enough, but all of a sudden in the last few days all of its bark, huge pieces of it, had come down at once, forming a large pile.
I was wondering out loud if someone or something had attacked it, it looked so violent. The guy explained: this is a widow-maker. I learned that diseased or old trees not only have limbs that break off, hang in the crowns and topple down when forestry workers try to fell the trees. They often spontaneously shed their entire bark when shaken by wind or axes, and those can kill the people underneath. The passer-by had indeed a friend who met that fate while working in the Oregon forestry industry.
Walking home, I was thinking of how many of those trees I encounter in my regular wanderings, here in Tryon Creek, Forest park, Oaks Bottom and out in the Gorge. How much depends on luck, not to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. And how overthinking of the possibilities can lead to levels of anxiety that would make it impossible to explore my world. This in turn lead me to remember a psych paper I read (with the advisory that the research area of personality is often subject to non-replication problems.) But here is the argument, a theoretically interesting one, in a nutshell (all research details and data sources can be found in the link below):
People have different attachment styles, some being secure, others less so. This leads to different advantages and disadvantages when it comes to how we function in life in general and face threats and dangers in particular. A third of us are securely attached and faring fine, the other two thirds not so much, being either highly anxious or avoidant. Why would evolution tolerate such a mix? It seems that independently of what it means for an individual to be anxious, or avoidant, or securely integrated, these differences in style might have huge positive implications for the social groups we live in.
For example, people who are close with their family members are less likely to react to noises or alarms indicating impending danger, like a fire. They only react to unambiguous signs, like flames and smokes, when precious time is already running short. Highly anxious people, on the other hand, are like the canary in the coal mine, sentinels who signal early warning.
Avoidant people are also late to realize danger, but then act quite decisively to rescue themselves, and their protective action signals to others the presence of danger as well as potential escape routes. The avoidant person’s survival behavior then might also, if unintentionally, save other people’s lives.
Now, all of this might be of no relevance if I walk alone in the woods, but it is reassuring to think that we as a social species have evolved to help each other out in social situations with present danger, whether consciously or not. Probably won’t be my last thought, though, when that branch hits……
Music today seems to beckon for Dvorack’s Silent Woods…..
This week I will try to convey how singular examples can bring a point home, and sometimes pave the way to understand a larger pattern. At least they do so for me. often provoking thoughts about how we are repeating history in one way or another.
I will start with the case of Ota Benga, a Congolese pygmy of the Mbuti tribe, who was bought by an American explorer from African slave traders in 1904. After having been displayed at the St Louis World Fair, he was brought to the Bronx zoo. Together with his pet chimpanzee he was locked in the Orangutan cage and exhibited to visitors as a kind of animal, his teeth filed to sharp pints by the zoo keepers and with bones added to the cage to hint at cannibalism.
Clergy eventually protested and had him moved to an orphanage for non-white children. By 1910 he was forced to work at a tobacco company in Lynchburg, VA where he later killed himself, having built his own pyre beforehand, with a stolen gun.
Treating someone who looks different from the white norm as subhuman has not stopped, even if we don’t put exemplars in the zoo these days. We still put them behind bars, in large numbers, caging them for the purported fear of their wild, dangerous impulses. We call them animal names – remember George Allen, Republican Senator from Virginia, who called Indians at his rallies Macaques? Or Roseanne Barr decrying Valerie Jarrett as the child of an ape? Or he who shall not be named calling Omarosa Manigault a dog?? And if you are a soccer fan you’ll know about the 1000s of European fans making monkey noises in stadiums when the scoring opposing-team player is a black person.
Psychological research, originally looking into Nazi use of dehumanizing language in preparation for the Holocaust, has shown that merely listening to it increases the willingness to use violence; some international agencies even consider that kind of naming a precursor to genocide. Once a class of people is dehumanized, the usual compassion and empathy that we extend to fellow human beings is weakened. The part of your brain that controls social relations becomes less active, a physiologically measurable effect when you are exposed to this kind of language. The door to systematic mistreatment is then wide open.
One of the ways we try to expose the past and help overcome it, is by creating museum exhibits that show the consequences of racist behavior. Case in point is the The Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice , a public memorial of the lynching of Black people in Alabama. By all reports – I have not been there – it is an astoundingly emotional site that brings the relevant points home. At a cost, though, that few of us probably considered.
Kunta Kinte – Alex Haley – Roots Memorial
The disturbing article attached below talks about the re-opening of wounds for those who lost family members to lynching. More generally, it describes how watching the exhibits can become itself a kind of voyeurism, or entertainment for those taking selfies with the displays. “This memorial, intentionally or not, reproduces the opportunity for white onlookers to engage in the spectacle of lynching.”
It makes you really wonder, what can be done to provoke change. One thing we can start with, I think, is to watch our own language and eradicate the spontaneous use of animal terms during denigrating fits – myself included.
Photographs today from Annapolis, Maryland, where a memorial celebrates the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall.
And Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday, in commemoration of the lynchings.
