Liberal Arts.

I often hear how 'liberal' our universities are, and it's a concern.  Here's a thought on the subject.

(Latin: liberal, "worthy of a free person")

(Not to be confused with being a political liberal) 

Liberal Arts: those subjects or skills that in classical thinking are considered essential.  

(Not to be confused with a 'liberal arts degree')

With subjects that might include literature, languages, philosophy, and the humanities and sciences, we're offered elements of history and perspective, logic and reason, and fact, all of which are perhaps essential for a mature intellect.  Exposure to that broad arena opens opportunity for:

• knowing what you think is true and why.
• understanding what others have thought and what has changed since you first settled on your opinion.
• dealing honestly with doubts and conflicts that arise as they do in everyone.
• a grasp of sciences, cultures, history, and the news, all interrelated, and perhaps more importantly, in conflict as ideas and values change.

There is little clarity of thought or objectivity available without understanding more than just part of an issue.  The tension among positions may or may not deserve to be argued, but there is no progress in the absence of understanding. 

We could just follow the ideas we like, the history that can be summarize in a few heroic tales, and the science that fits our opinions.  It is easier to close our ears to conflicting ideas, and it's perhaps a quieter life, but is it honest?

• Should you sometimes agree with a Democrat (or Republican)?
• Can you see the conflict between politics and ethics?
• Do you understand those who are poor (or rich)?
• Could you joyfully share a meal with an atheist (or a Baptist, or a Catholic)?  Or pray with a Muslim? 

Or are all those doors closed.  

(The 'liberal arts' subjects perhaps offer knowledge and understanding that a person needs in order to be active in civic life, which for Ancient Greece included participation in public debate, defending oneself in court, serving on juries, and most importantly, military service.  It's an ancient but possibly worthwhile goal for our learning.)

That said, not everyone agrees.  Here's an opposing view.

Scholars are of no great help these days. They used to be.  They were supposed to be, as a group, carriers and teachers of the eternal truths and the higher life. 

The goal of humanistic studies was defined as the perception and knowledge of that which is good, beautiful, and true. Such studies were expected to refine our discrimination between what is excellent and what is not (excellence generally being understood to be the true, the good, and the beautiful). They were supposed to inspire the student to the better life, to the higher life, to goodness and virtue. What was truly valuable, Matthew Arnold said, was "the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world."  And no one disagreed with him.  Nor did it need to be spelled out that he meant knowledge of the classics; these were the universally accepted models. 

But in recent years, most humanist scholars and most artists have shared in the general collapse of all traditional values.  When these values collapsed, there were no others readily available as replacements. So today, a large proportion of our artists, novelists, dramatists, critics, literary and historical scholars are disheartened or pessimistic or despairing, and a fair proportion are cynics (nihilists, believing that no "good life" is possible and that the so-called higher values are all a fake).

We can no longer rely on tradition, on cultural habit, on common belief to give us our values. These agreed-upon traditions are all gone. Of course, we never should have rested on tradition - as its failures must have proven to everyone by now - it never was a firm foundation. It was destroyed too easily by truth, by honesty, by the facts, by science, by simple, pragmatic, historical failure. Only truth itself can be our foundation, our base for building. Only empirical, naturalistic knowledge, in its broadest sense, can serve us now.  (Maslow et al., 1968, cheerfully paraphrased for a 12th grade reading level)

Genetically Happy?

Worth or wealth.

Loving or having.

Giving or getting.

Genetic clues...

People who have high levels of eudaimonic well-being - happiness from a deep sense of purpose and meaning (like Mother Teresa, perhaps) - show consistently favorable gene-expression profiles in their immune cells. They have low levels of inflammatory gene expression and strong expression of antiviral and antibody genes.

However, people who have high levels of hedonic well-being - happiness from luxury and self-gratification (like maybe rich people) - actually show just the opposite. They have an adverse expression profile involving high inflammation and low antiviral and antibody gene expression.

Read about the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Questions about genetic determinism have been around for a while. Are we behaviorally shaped by our genes? Are genes the 'cause' and we the 'effect' in the equation, or is there a measure of choice we might have? 

As science continues the inquiry, we find that sometimes, the expected cause and effect are reversed.  Behavior and environment choices often 'cause' genetic expression. Studies have repeatedly shown that extended periods of stress produce a systemic baseline change in genetic activity. It's actually got a name, the conserved transcriptional response to adversity, or CTRA.  The shift is characterized by an increased expression of genes involved in inflammation and a decreased expression of genes involved in antiviral responses. I.e., your health is at increased risk. 

And now it appears that our values affect our genetic activity as well.  From the studies, at least some of our genetic equipment waits for us to decide how and if it will become active within us.  Who knew?

It's worth noting that the environment in which we raise our children is a parental opportunity to make a difference that can last a lifetime. The values we pass on to our children  ... less conflict, more grace, less materialism, more generosity, and voilà!  We shoulda seen that one coming.  :)

There's more on the horizon, of course.  Much more.  As scientific progress continues, what fascinating and useful things will emerge?

Fleeing for their lives

Nasra tells the story of her escape.

We were living in Syria, we were happy.  My husband was working hard to provide for our needs.  But when the war started, there was less work.  One morning, my husband went out to find food for us  He went out, but he never came back.  For days, we searched for him.  My children kept asking me, where is father?  There was no food, no water, no electricity; we were desperate, and then the bombs were falling near us.  There was no safety, no other place we could go.  This is why we fled.  

Nasra and her children live in a hut made of scrounged material in Lebanon.  Nasra was later told her husband had been captured and killed along with a group of prisoners.  She hopes it's not true, that someday she will return to Syria and perhaps find her husband alive.  For now, she and her children survive, and nothing more.  She's been in the camp for five months.  Others have been there for more than two years.  Nasra reminds us that she and her family are just one of many in such distress.

So far, four million have fled the country with just the clothes on their backs and what they could carry.  More than half of those are children.  The world now struggles to provide help.  There are difficulties associated with receiving and assisting refugees.

MEDIA NONSENSE

Here in America, it's difficult to get an objective view from mainstream media.  Exaggeration and deliberate polarization is the rule, perhaps.  During an interview, NJ Governor Christie was pressed by the interviewer to make policy on camera.  The governor, semi-politely, explained that one might  choose a host of little examples, but what he was calling for was appropriate safeguards in the process of receiving refugees into the country.  The snipped that made it to the public was taken out of context.  As usual.

The typical response from the list of governors who've been headlined as opposing the refugees is actually just a call for due diligence in the process.  From MD Gov Hogan, "... until the U.S. government can provide appropriate assurances that refugees from Syria pose no threat to public safety."  Reasonable, and in line with DHS recommendations as well as public concerns.  That's not the media's portrayal, however.

From CNN under their headline:

More than half the nation's governors say Syrian refugees not welcome

Actually that's not what they said.  Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said the state would "put on hold our efforts to accept new refugees." "Michigan is a welcoming state and we are proud of our rich history of immigration. But our first priority is protecting the safety of our residents," he said in a statement.

According to CNN, Governor Snyder demanded that the Department of Homeland Security review its security procedures ....  No he didn't demand anything,  That's the media spin.  From his actual statement,  "My primary responsibility is to keep the people of Michigan safe.  That’s why I’ve asked to pause our efforts to bring more refugees to Michigan and requested the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to take a full review of the security clearances and procedures for all refugees who have the potential to be placed in Michigan."

"It's also important to remember that these attacks are the efforts of extremists and do not reflect the peaceful ways of people of Middle Eastern descent here and around the world," Snyder said.

It's discouraging that this too would be portrayed as a left-right contest, a Christian-Muslim conflict, a Rep-Dem issue, as though we all weren't of similar mind and heart.  We all agree that security is threatened.  We all agree that innocents are being killed.  We all agree that those fleeing for their lives need our help.  We all agree, when we have those moments of clarity, that as a nation, we can and will do our best in this complex world circumstance, to do what's right and just and necessary.  If we're wise, we'll do so with courage and principle, we'll rise above fear and selfishness to do our part, thoughtfully and with a good conscience. 

The Last Thirty Days

13 NOV 2015: In the last thirty days, these terrorist acts were perpetrated by Islamic militants, fundamentalists, and radical adherents.

The difficult question for the western mind, is this Islam expressing itself?  Or is it individuals who chose criminal behavior for personal advantage?  Should our outrage be expressed against all Muslims or solely against the violent?

There are perhaps 1,600,000,000 Muslims in the world today.  About 85% are Sunni, and the remainder are Shia.  There's tension between the sects, similar to Protestants vs. Catholics in Northern Ireland in the last century, and violence has similarly followed.  

For the great majority, though, would every Muslim stone his daughter if she refused a marriage proposal?  Of course not.  Would every Muslim carry a suicide bomb into a rival temple?   No.

How many among the world's Muslims would actually do violence like that described in the list?

According Brigitte Gabriel, a favorite of conservative media, "The radicals are estimated to be between 15 to 25 percent, according to all intelligence services around the world."  That was her answer, in part, when asked by an American University headscarf wearing law student about waging an ideological war with Muslims. "You're looking at 180 million to 300 million people dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization...."  That's a particularly vicious misstatement and perhaps deliberate since the correct information is easily acquired from publically available sources.

Western European intelligence agencies estimate that less than one percent of the Muslim population living within their borders are at risk for becoming radicals.  For now, they are not radicalized, and more importantly, they are not violent and have no intent of becoming so.  The estimate is based on affiliations with fundamentalist congregations or groups advocating a Sharia legal system, etc.

Terrorism today involving Islamic players is primarily Sunni vs Shia Muslims. In order of incident prevalence, we find Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria as the target locales; more than a thousand incidents each year. There continue to be a smaller number of acts by radical Islamists targeting Hindu, Jew, and Christian victims. In Europe, however, 98% of terrorist incidents were by non-Muslim groups during the most recent 5 years. To keep things in context, homicide takes 40 times more lives than terrorism. Islam isn't the end of the world, it's not even on the list of problems we face.  Terrorism is, however.  

While it's easy to make simplistic statements about Islam and Muslims, we might note that the conflicts we observe make the headlines rather than the more prevalent peace that is typical of the great majority.

The conflict we do see among Muslims is much like that which exploded between Catholics and Protestant Christians in Northern Ireland. The issue was not religion but discrimination and power. Elsewhere in the world, peaceful coexistence was the norm.

Today's clash between Sunni and Shia can be traced to similar discrimination and oppression, again more political than religious. The spillover attacks against western powers are similarly traceable. Religion provides a unifying name for the angry disenfranchised, but it isn't the cause any more than Christianity caused the Crusades or the slave trade or the slaughter of native Americans. In each case, the objective was power and dominion.

Modern terrorism does in fact have roots from which violent behavior emerges.  Such behavior is chosen for advantage, and labels are added to justify the choice.  The root is and perhaps has always been injustice, inequality, oppression, and a lack of representation.

Between 2004-2013, the UK suffered 400 terrorist attacks, mostly in Northern Ireland, and most of them were non-lethal. The US suffered 131 attacks, fewer than 20 of which were lethal.  France suffered 47 attacks. But in Iraq, there were 12,000 attacks and 8,000 of them were lethal.

From the Global Terrorism Index 2014 Report:

• 17,958 people were killed in terrorist attacks last year, that’s 61% more than the previous year.
• 82% of all deaths from terrorist attack occur in just 5 countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria.
• Last year terrorism was dominated by four groups: the Taliban, Boko Haram, ISIL, and al Qa’ida.
• More than 90% of all terrorist attacks occur in countries that have gross human rights violations.

The report said the three main factors found globally to correlate with terrorism were:

• High social hostilities between different ethnic, religious and linguistic groups
• The presence of state-sponsored violence such as extrajudicial killings and human rights abuses
• High levels of overall violence, such as deaths from organised conflict or high levels of violent crime

Seeing Islamic terrorism in the larger context doesn't make it inconsequential, but perhaps we might see a little more clearly.  Objectivity is needed for the years ahead.

FYI:  ISIS Roots and Terror's Roots
Also:  What is a Nation?

ISIS Roots

ISIS was not unexpected.  From Defense Intelligence Agency Chief Michael Flynn, we hear that the White House decided to support armed rebels in Syria despite intelligence warnings forecasting the rise of the Islamic State.  See the Foreign Policy Journal article

In a DIA report 05 AUG 12, specific warnings are given regarding the rise of the Islamic State in eastern Syria.  Detailed analysis of the situation and participants were included plus warning about IS.Iraq extending affiliation with Al Qaeda and Salafist groups in a unified jihadist organization.  That's what happened.   Russia and Iran supported the murderous Assad regime; Turkey, Jordan, and the Gulf States supported the opposition, as did the U.S..  The conflict quickly spawned ISIS, and the country has been devastated.   Twenty percent of citizens have fled the country, another thirty-five percent are displaced from their homes but remain within the country.  The death toll is between 198,000 and 330,000, depending on the reporting source.

Syria's war: A 5-minute history of the conflict
ISIS, which has claimed responsibility for Friday's terror attacks in Paris, has its origins in Iraq, but the group as we know it today is in many ways a product of Syria's civil war.
Posted by Vox on Saturday, November 14, 2015

In retrospect, western funding and equipping of the opposition forces has had questionable results.  We were indeed warned of the likely rise of ISIS, but the Syrian conflict is not just two sides; there are perhaps six or so with little agreement about who is fighting who.    The human cost is immeasurable, inexcusable.  Is there another path we might have taken?

You might appreciate:  What ISIS Really Wants

Terror's Root

Yesterday's attack in Paris appears to have been orchestrated by ISIS (they've claimed responsibility), and one of the attackers had a Syrian passport.  What might be their motivation?  On CNN this morning, "It is the ideology that drives these attacks."  But why the ideology?  It's primarily political and event driven over time, is it not?  The root question ... did ISIS spring up from nothing?

The area westerners call
the Middle East

We and the world are faced with challenges from the Arab world.  ISIS, Al Qaeda, Ansar al-Sharia, Hezbollah.  They are extraordinarily violent radical groups.  Curious where they originated?

The secret Sykes-Picot map
 of 1916 (two years before the
war ended): Area 'A' would
go to France, 'B' to Britain.
The map was made without
consulting representatives
from the affected region.

Why would Islamic terrorists target the U.K. or France?  Or the U.S.  Or other Arabs, as is most often the case?

One early trigger point for the current trend was imposed boundaries. The Middle East countries were defined and established by outsiders. At the end of WWI, the Ottoman Empire was partitioned under French and British mandates; the borders of Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine were drawn on a map with a straightedge.  Syria and Lebanon were created similarly.  The countries remained under foreign domination for decades despite prior promises of independence and self-determination.

"The newly created borders did not correspond to the actual sectarian, tribal, or ethnic distinctions on the ground."  

Political oppression and disenfranchisement followed as dictatorial rulers were emplaced by external players.

Israel was established and successfully defended its borders in 1948.  "Following Israel's 1967 defeat of Arab forces, Palestinian leaders realized that the Arab world was unable to militarily confront Israel.  At the same time, lessons drawn from revolutionary movements in Latin America, North Africa, Southeast Asia as well as during the Jewish struggle against Britain in Palestine, saw the Palestinians move away from classic guerrilla, typically rural-based, warfare toward urban terrorism." ~Tarek Osman

By the 70's, the U.S. was the emerging influence in the region.  As oil rose in strategic significance, tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union extended into the region as each tried to bend the nations in their own favor.  Support from the two Cold War opponents exaggerated and polarized discontent.  Arms were supplied to both sides along with military training.

For years, the several ideologies in the Arab world were suppressed by strong leaders.  Saddam Hussein and Hafez Assad were murderously brutal as was Muammar Gaddafi in northern Africa.  The factions persisted despite the repression (persecution), however, and later emerged violently as the regimes began to weaken.  They were never effectively assimilated nor adequately represented in the culture.  Turkey has had 250+ internal incidents since the 70's; they're a 90% Muslim population.

"Radical Palestinians took advantage of modern communication and transportation systems to internationalize their struggle. They launched a series of hijackings, kidnappings, bombings, and shootings, culminating in the kidnapping and subsequent deaths of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympic games.

These Palestinian groups became a model for numerous secular militants, and offered lessons for subsequent ethnic and religious movements. Palestinians created an extensive transnational extremist network -- tied into which were various state sponsors such as the Soviet Union, certain Arab states, as well as traditional criminal organizations. By the end of the 1970s, the Palestinian secular network was a major channel for the spread of terrorist techniques worldwide." ~Tarek Osman

'Terrorism' was a label originally applied to governments and their mistreatment of the citizenry.  The term transitioned to actions by non-government groups in the last forty years.

Acts of terrorism can be categorized by ideology and target.  The majority (56%) of recent acts have been by Islamic extremists (Sunni) primarily targeting Arabs in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Syria.  Terrorist attacks in the Western Hemisphere are a small percentage of the world's total with most being ascribed to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Yesterday's brutal attack in Paris appears to have been orchestrated by ISIS (they've claimed responsibility), and one of the attackers had a Syrian passport.  The criminal perpetrators must indeed be dealt with, but do we understand them?  On CNN this morning, "It is the ideology that drives these attacks."  But why the ideology?  It's primarily political and event driven as it evolves over time, is it not?

Do we understand those individuals at the core of the problem?*  Are there additional measures besides the necessary confrontation of criminal acts that might begin addressing the underlying rationale?

Countering violent extremism (CVE) is a programmatic approach, and perhaps a beginning. (Refs: DoS, DHS, White House, and critical review by Al Jazeera)  

Terrorism is the symptom but not the cause.  It appears to rise as a response to political repression rather than religious differences.  Our concern is perhaps larger than just the Middle East and religious extremists.

See ISIS Roots.
*See the Smithsonian Magazine's A Lesson in Hate for the twisted path to fanaticism and Osama bin Laden.