Why Aren't You Outraged?

Hola mi Gente,

Yesterday was a bad day for the Bernie Sanders campaign. That’s fine; I don’t believe that a movement can be led by one person. My concern is more about what will happen to the many people who have awakened to the reality that here in the United States, we live in an oligarchy.

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Moral Outrage

Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

 -- Joseph Welch to Sen. Joe McCarthy

One of the great moments in TV history, for my money, was when Joseph Welch challenged witch hunter, Sen. Joe McCarthy, with his appeal to moral decency. Have you no sense of decency, he asked. Here's a clip:

I have the same question except that my question is directed to the US public. My question is, Where is your outage? It seems to me that we have reached a point that we have become so anesthetized that we longer have any sense of outrage. We have lost our moral compass. And we watch either ignorant or lulled into inaction to the fact that ours has become a runaway society. 

In social psychology this tendency toward inaction is known as the by stander effect. It refers to the phenomenon in which the greater the numbers of people present, the less likely people are to help a person in crisis. When an emergency situation occurs, observers are more likely to take action if there are few or no other witnesses. It’s as if in a large crowd, everyone is expecting someone else to do something, so no one acts.

One of the most troubling issues of today is the absence of moral outrage in our society. The ongoing revelations of wars justified by fabricated lies, government-sanctioned torture on American soil and abroad, corporate malfeasance, arranged assassinations, the shredding of the Constitution, the state-sanctioned murder and caging of blacks and other people of color people by hyper-militarized police forces and a broken criminal justice system, are greeted with an apathy that is utterly mind-numbing. And that’s just under Obama! It is as if the whole of the American populace is under the thrall of a collective bystander effect.

I’m no hero -- by no stretch of the imagination. In fact, I am as far removed from “hero” as is possible. In addition, I am full of character defects and moral failings. I do have a problem, however. For the life of me, I cannot stay quiet in the face of injustice. If I see something that’s just plain wrong, I can’t let it go, I can’t stay quiet. I have to act. I have been like this as long as I can remember and I have paid a steep price for that particular character defect. But, no, I am no hero... and I’m not being modest. I’m being truthful about myself here.

For me, real heroes are spiritual warriors who are alive with moral outrage and who enter the gladiatorial arena to wrestle with the mystery of evil in its many different disguises. Real heroes are the fierce men and women, rich in wise judgment, who still have thunder and lightning in them. These are not the middle-of-the-road fence sitters. Give me a “hot” investigative reporter like Chris Hedges who call presidents liars, and breathe fire at secret wars and hidden government over any of the “cool” stenographers who report the news and lead discussions as long as the perspectives expressed won’t keep them from access to the very power they should be holding accountable.

While we might have freedom of the (corporate-owned) press, I am continually astounded by how our media can report on the most egregious forms of political and corporate corruption but very little happens. We have a former vice president going on talk shows and bragging about how he ordered torture! We have a sitting president who has no qualms with killing innocent women and children abroad. And we have a current presidential candidate who, as Secretary of State, sold arms to despots who contributed to her “nonprofit” organization. Shit, in terms of freedom of the press, as measured by Reporters Without Borders, the US ranks 41^st.

To be sure, the path of the warrior is full of conflict and contradictions. No individual with an evolved sense of moral reasoning can witness unnecessary suffering, disease, and injustice without feeling outraged and being compelled toward action. Desecration evokes a feeling from deep in the gut that forms into a judgment and grows into an impulse to act.

If our minds and hearts haven’t been anesthetized, we must be outraged by the injustices of the world and realize that if “you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” You have to have a mission in life, something sacred, something larger than your petty needs. It is our responsibility to become protectors of this world, allies of the powerless, and healers of the broken.

These are challenging times for those aspiring to live with compassion and vigor. You have to gird your fucking loins and decide where to enter the struggle against unnecessary suffering, injustice, and poverty. 

Suffering is a fact of the human condition. In the best of all possible worlds, there would still be disease, accident, tragedy, disappointment, loneliness, and death. And there is a certain form of wisdom required in order to accept the things we are powerless to change. But there is suffering and then there is what we add to it. There is another form of wisdom that allows us address the suffering that results from psychological, economic, and political structures that we can change. While I do not subscribe to violent “just wars,” there is a just war of the soul that is against unnecessary suffering, against the impulses of greed, the collective lack of empathy, against those systemic mechanisms that are clearly responsible for the desecration of the earth and the dehumanization of people.

But identifying the enemy is always a dangerous exercise. Self-righteousness can easily grow to dominate our judgments. It’s easy to condemn pollution while we continue to use a gas-guzzler to go the corner store. In order to guard against self-righteousness, I have to remind myself constantly that I am part of the problem I am trying to solve. I embody many of the wrongs I must fight. For example, as a man, I have a tendency to view the world from a male-dominated perspective. As a straight man, I have to be vigilant of any bias I have regarding my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. In other words, the demons of greed, cruelty, and fear must be fought from within as much from without.

The collective bystander effect-- the heart that has become hardened -- is both individual and systemic, both mine and my enemy’s. The moral outrage that sets me at odds with institutional embodiments of evil also sets me in conflict with my own greed and apathy. A person who does not know how to fight a just fight, first within and then with systems, has no values worth defending, no ideals worth aspiring to, no awareness of the disease of which he might be healed.

And nobody -- at least nobody with some cojones -- should be "OK" with the status quo.

We may not be heroes, but we all owe it to ourselves and to others to become warriors of the soul. And when we become warriors, we do so with the knowledge that the battle is never to be won intellectually or politically. There is no answer, no methodology, no way of understanding that eliminates the harm evil poses to the human spirit. We do not live in a world that satisfies our demand for moral explanations. But it also true that a few of us know what must be done, if not to eradicate oppression, at least lessen it, or not add to it. Perhaps we cannot prevent being in a world where the rights of our fellow human beings aren’t violated. But we must fight. In the end, I fight fascists not because I want to win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.

If you’re not feeling outraged today, you have lost your very soul, or whatever it is that makes you human.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Hillary Clinton and Social Proof

Hola mi Gente,
Yesterday, I came across the following headline:

More than 2 MILLION of Hillary Clinton's Twitter followers are fake or never tweet -- and she's already under fire for “buying” fake Facebook fans

The article went on to document how two different online audit tools show that no more than 44% of Hillary's 3.6 million Twitter fans are real people who participate in the platform. In addition, the presidential candidate is fending off accusations that her Facebook page is full of fake “likes” and that her Facebook fan base includes more people from Baghdad, Iraq than any US city. When she was secretary of state, the article states, her agency paid $630,000 to bulk up its Facebook likes, but pledged to stop after she left.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the neoliberal politician's career and her tendency toward fabrication (see here). What is interesting here is Hillary’s use of the marketing strategy of social proof in order to dupe the electorate... 

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Social Proof & the Myth of the Cold Society

Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.

-- Walter Lippman

There is a powerful weapon of influence called social proof. The principle of social proof (sometimes called the bystander effect) is that one way we determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. This principle applies especially to the way we decide what makes up correct behavior. We view a behavior more correct to the degree that we see others performing it. Whether the issue is what to do with a piece of garbage, how fast to drive on a highway, how to use a utensil at a formal dinner party, or even what to buy, the actions of those around us will be important in determining our behavior.

 Of course, in the internet world, we’re all free thinkers and the principle of social proof doesn’t apply to you. Hold on, I need to sneeze… 

ACHOOOOBULLSHIT!

Thank you.

Where was I? Yes, social proof.

Perhaps you’ve waited on a long line to see a movie? Or maybe you came upon a crowd looking up toward the sky. You looked up too, right? Part of it was curiosity, but you did that mostly because of the principle of social proof. The tendency to see an action as more appropriate when others are doing it is quite normal and it often serves a good purpose. As a rule, we make fewer mistakes when acting in agreement with evidence than when we act contrary to it. Usually, when many people are doing something, it is the right thing to do. However, this is both a strength and a weakness. While social proof offers a shortcut for determining correct behavior, at the same time it makes us vulnerable to those who would exploit it for profit or evil.

Our tendency to see an action more appropriate if others are doing it is exploited in a number of settings. Bartenders often “prime” their tip jars with a few dollars bills to give the impression of tips left by previous customers. Church ushers do the same with their collection baskets. Evangelical preachers are known to seed their audience with co-conspirators who are rehearsed to come at a specific time to give witness and donations. In one interesting experiment, several researchers infiltrated crusader Billy Graham’s organization and reported on such tactics. “By the time Graham arrives in town and makes his altar call, an army of six thousand wait with instructions on when to come forward to create the impression of a spontaneous mass outpouring.”

Advertisers love to tell us their product is the “fastest-growing” or “largest-selling” because they don’t have to convince us directly about the worth of their product.

However, principles of influence and persuasion work best under certain conditions. Social proof works best at a time of uncertainty, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear. It is during these times that we rely more on others and see their reactions as correct. But in relying on examining the reactions of others, we overlook one simple fact: that those people are probably looking for social evidence also. This phenomenon helps to explain what has been called a national disgrace: the failure of entire groups of bystanders to aid victims in excruciating need of help.

Nowhere is this better illustrated as in the case of the murder Catherine Genovese in March 1964. The details of Ms. Genovese’s death are gruesome and beg an explanation. Catherine Genovese, known to her friends and family as Kitty, had not experienced a quick, muted death. It had been a long, loud, tortured, public event. According to reports of her death at the time, her assailant had chased and attacked her in the street three times over a thirty-five minute period before his knife finally silenced her cries for help. Unbelievably, thirty-eight of her neighbors watched the events of her death unfold from the safety of their apartment windows without so much as lifting a finger to call the police. (Years later, studies showed that many of the newspaper accounts wildly exaggerated the incident. Neighbors did try to help and one even cradled Kitty Genovese in her arms -- at great personal risk -- as she lay dying, for example).

The series of stories that arose from this incident shocked a nation. Eventually, the horrific slaying of Catherine Genovese would come to symbolize both an uncaring an apathetic New York City and our society in general. How could thirty-eight “good people” fail to act under those circumstances? No one could understand it. Even the witnesses themselves were confused. “I don’t know,” they answered. “I just don’t know.” A few offered weak excuses, explaining that they were “afraid” or “did not want to get involved.” But these reasons don’t stand scrutiny. An anonymous call could have saved Catherine Genovese without putting the witness in danger. It wasn’t fear or apathy that was at work, there was something else going on that even they could not understand.

But confusion doesn’t sell newspapers or TV commercials, so the media emphasized the only explanation available at the time: the witnesses, no different from many of us, hadn’t cared enough to get involved. We had become a nation of selfish insensitive people. Modern life, especially life in New York City, had hardened us. We were becoming “The Cold Society,” unfeeling, and indifferent to the suffering of others.

The Genovese story grew. In addition to a book by A.M. Rosenthal, it also became the focus of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, several TV documentaries, and even an Off-Broadway play. It also attracted the interest of two new York-based social psychologists, Bibb Latane and John Darley and they came up with the most unlikely explanation of all -- it was that thirty-eight witnesses were present. In contrast to earlier reports emphasizing that no action was taken, even though thirty-eight witnesses had looked on, Latane and Darley suggested that no one had helped precisely because there were so many observers.

They offered two interesting reasons for why a bystander would not respond to an emergency when there are other bystanders present. The first reason is fairly intuitive. With several potential helpers around, the personal responsibility of each individual is lessened: “Perhaps someone else will give a call for help, perhaps someone already has.” So with everyone thinking someone else will help, no one does.

The second reason is more interesting, it is founded on the principle of social proof. Very often an emergency is not obviously an emergency. Is the man lying in the alley a heart-attack victim or a drunk sleeping it off? Are the sharp sounds from the street gunshots or a truck backfiring? Is the argument next door an assault needing a call to the police or an especially loud marital spat where intervention would be inappropriate and uncalled for? What is going on?

In times of uncertainty, the natural tendency is to look around at the actions of others for cues for appropriate behavior. We try to surmise, from the reactions of others whether the event is an emergency. What is easy to forget is that everybody else observing the event is likely to be looking for social proof too. Therefore, everybody is likely to see everyone else looking unruffled and failing to act. By the principle of social proof, the event will be interpreted as a non-emergency. This state of collective non-action, called pluralistic ignorance by social psychologists, is a state “in which each person decides that since nobody is concerned, nothing is wrong. Meanwhile, the danger may be mounting to the point where a single individual, influenced by the seeming calm of others, would react.”

The upshot of Latane’s and Darly’s research is that someone in need of aid stands a better chance of survival if a single bystander, rather than a crowd, is present. To test this unusual supposition, Darley, Latane, and some of their students performed a series of research that produced clear findings. The basic set up was to stage emergency events that were observed either by a single individual or by a group of people. They then recorded the number of times the emergency victim received help.

In the first experiment, a New York college student who appeared to be having an epileptic seizure received help 85 per cent of the time when there was a single bystander present but only 31 per cent of the time with five bystanders present.

After more than decades of subsequent research the overly simplistic argument that ours is “The cold society” where no one cares for suffering others is difficult to maintain -- at least if you’re an intelligent person.

First, once witnesses are convinced that emergency exists, aid is very likely. Under these conditions, the numbers of bystanders who either get involved or call for help is clearly very high. The situation becomes different when, as in many cases, bystanders cannot be sure that the event they are witnessing is an emergency. The fact is that the same circumstances that reduce the chances of aid exist in city life. However, it doesn’t follow that we have become a nation of callous, unfeeling people.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…