Being creative without a Creator

A friend sent me a link to a 20-minute talk on creativity by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the novel Eat, Pray, Love. I’m not a big fan of the book (I got through about 25 eye-rolling pages before giving up and reaching for the remote), but I am a big fan of (my friend) Claire, so I gave it a chance. I was right with her up until 8:30 when she started in on “creative mystery” and an external, supernatural source for creativity, and then the rest was invocations of magic and self-indulgent privileged pap, the likes to which Jim Carrey would be a fervent subscriber.

I do not know if Claire’s intent was to murder my neurons; I doubt that she was trying to lobotomize me through the intarwebz. She did ask me to write about some of my thoughts on the creative process from the perspective of an atheist. I suppose I have some claims to qualifications in this regard, given that I do spend the non-science half of my life playing and creating music. I’d like to share some of my thoughts on this subject, but first I want to address some of the themes that came up in Ms. Gilbert’s talk, which is available below:

Is suffering necessary for creativity?

A commenter on my strangely-popular “I am not my ideas” post from a few months ago brought this up. Some of the greatest artists of all time (think Van Gogh, Beethoven, Vonnegut, the list goes on) have suffered, and from their suffering came their genius. The image of the tormented artist is so common as to have become almost completely cliché. Douglas Adams satirized this phenomenon in his Hitchhiker’s Guide series, in which time travel inadvertently robs the galaxy of one of its greatest works of art by making the artist happy. Of course, we have to remember that Douglas Adams was a creative genius, and was not particularly unhappy. Nor, by all accounts, were Bach, Shakespeare, da Vinci, John Lennon, this list goes on as well. While suffering can yield insight that can bring creativity forth (and in my experience it is much easier to write albums when you’re sad than when everything’s awesome – just ask Matthew Sweet), it is not necessary to suffer in order to bring forth great works.

Is the supernatural the source of creativity?

Ms. Gilbert spends some time talking about daemons or geniuses, supernatural embodiments of inspiration that are the conduits between the artist and the divine. As with all supernatural agents of causality, there’s no evidence for the existence of faeries (which, to her credit, Gilbert admits). Being a musician, I can testify that inspiration does seem to come from nowhere. I’m sure that other artists and musicians have a much more palpable experience of inspiration than I do (things kind of just pop into my head, rather than being overcome by a ghost that demands me to have a pencil in my hand). However, given the diversity of ways in which inspiration strikes people, and the fact that it hits some people more often than others, and that to all appearances it strikes at random, it’s safe to say that inspiration is not likely caused by a supernatural force for which there is no evidence.

Subjective experience vs. objective reality

Our brains make a fundamental error when it comes to subjective and psychosomatic experiences. Because we interpret the outside world through our senses, we confuse sensory experiences with reality. So when, after meditating for an hour, we feel connected to an external loving presence, that does not constitute evidence that that presence exists in reality. Don’t get me wrong – there is a lot of value in subjective experience. Feeling connected to the world, or to nature, or to your fellow human beings can bring you a sense of happiness and motivate you to be a better person. However, to make the leap from feeling something and then assuming that it exists requires non-subjective proof. To wit, just because artists feel an external force driving them to create doesn’t mean that there are muses or daemons or disembodied geniuses that explain it.

Gilbert would like us to return to the days of magical thinking, in which we attribute inspiration to outside ethereal forces. Reality is all well and good, she seems to say, but we’d feel a lot better if we pretended there were invisible spirits whispering in our ears. If we screw up, well it’s the fault of the spirits. When we succeed, attribution to the spirits will prevent us from getting swollen egos. Who cares if it’s all a lie if it makes us feel good? You can probably tell I’m not a big fan of self-deception, even when it’s practical. It might comfort us to lie to ourselves, but the truth is important. It enables us to deal with each other in a way that reflects the world around us, and prevents us from endangering each other through misinterpretations of reality.

So where do I think inspiration comes from?

There’s a common criticism of skeptics and scientific skepticism that we want to strip the majesty and beauty out of life. Apparently, to some people, understanding how something works makes it less beautiful. Of course, having no idea how something works makes you sound like a complete moron, but that may not be the worst thing in the world. That being said, I still reject the idea that familiarity breeds contempt. I’ve known that stars were inconceivably large nuclear reactions happening in space billions of kilometers away since I was a little kid – none of that makes a starlit night any less beautiful. I’ve known that music is caused by vibrations in air resonating tiny bones within the inner ear causing neuron activity since I was in elementary school – none of that makes me enjoy Beethoven’s 6th symphony any less. I’ve known that there are evolutionary roots for familial love since I was in university – none of that makes me love my parents any less. Understanding the processes behind the world around us can lead to deeper and more beautiful understanding of reality.

We know that the brain is incredibly complex. It adapts to novel stimuli, regulates an incredible number of processes simultaneously, all below the level of what it’s most famous for – conscious thought. It is entirely possible that the way some brains are wired permits a type of lateral thinking that pulls together disperse thought processes that come together to form music. The phenomenon known as synesthesia – wherein sensory input of one type is interpreted as another type (seeing sounds, hearing smells) – certainly supports this conjecture. Some brains might just be better-suited to creativity than others, and ‘inspiration’ may ‘strike’ these brains more often. The arrival of such a strike would be experienced in a variety of different ways. This would also explain why creativity is often (but not necessarily) associated with poor mental health – an atypical brain chemistry and structure will have broad-reaching effects.

Without intending to, Elizabeth Gilbert has paralleled my idea of separating one’s ideas from his/her sense of self worth. I have written songs I’m proud of; I’ve written some stinkers that even I don’t like myself (sadly, far more of the latter than the former). I don’t beat myself up for writing crappy songs, or having crappy performances, in the same way I don’t get a swollen head when something I’ve written makes people cheer. It feels good, but I know that it’s not about me, it’s about the song. I don’t think the song was floating around in the ether, waiting for me to pull it in – that view, if anything, is more arrogant than being glad that my brain popped it into my head. I’m not my ideas in the same way that I’m not my songs – I’m just happy to be able to use my brain to say things in a way that people will listen.

So while I think Ms. Gilbert has the right conclusions in thinking that musicians shouldn’t live and die by their success, and that a rejection of the song or book or painting is not the passage of judgment on who the artist is as a person, she spuriously tries to invoke magic and daemons to make this happen. There are better, non-magical, non-woo-woo ways of accomplishing that goal.

TL;DR – Artistic inspiration can be explained through natural processes, and does not require appeals to woo-woo to exist. The non-magical nature of inspiration doesn’t make it any less wonderful or special.

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Movie Friday: Anotherآجر in the دیوار

I don’t often talk about my musical side (I actually had to create a new “music” tag for this post). I’ve been playing since I was a little kid, and I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t banging pots and pans, or singing, or doing something else musical. Music is, quite literally, an integral part of my entire life. I guess I’m lucky I don’t live in Iran, where rock music is banned (and for about a gojillion other reasons). Music isn’t just music. Anyone who knows about Dmitri Shostakovich, or Bob Dylan, or Chuck D knows that music can be, in addition to social commentary, fuel for a revolution. Hip-hop is being picked up by Inuit youth in Northern Canada as protest music against social injustices. Reggae, as many people forget, was equal parts smooth grooves and calls for uprising (think of Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up or Desmond Dekker’s Israelites). As hip-hop is to disenfranchised North American youth, and reggae is to oppressed Caribbeans and Africans, rock and roll is to a generation of Middle-Eastern youth, growing up in a war zone they had no part in building.

Enter Blurred Vision, a Toronto band fronted by two Iranian brothers, who use rock to comment on what is happening in their homeland of Iran. Right now, a single of theirs (a re-imagining of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall (pt. II), is reaching an international audience. Because this is right up my alley, I thought I’d share it with you.

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit it – it’s not Mozart. The thing that struck me about this song is that 30 years after The Wall was released, this song can be perfectly applied, almost unedited, to a country that didn’t exist (in its present, oppressive, theocratic form) at the time. There are themes in music that are timeless, and good music can reach out through the veil of history and resonate within our psyche. So to anyone who brands any type of music as “just noise” or “not really music”, remember that Philistines said the same thing about Pink Floyd back in 1979.

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US government stands up for free speech

Those of you who follow alt-med quackery and science-based-medicine skepticism will be familiar with the absolutely ridiculous jurisprudence that is England’s libel laws. In the US , it is up to the plaintiff in a libel suit to prove that the allegations made against them are false (i.e., if I accuse you of practicing quack medicine, you merely have to show that your standards of practice meet industry regulation to win your libel suit). In the UK, however, defendants must prove their allegations true (i.e., if I sue you for calling me a quack, you have to prove I am one). This may seem like a semantic distinction, or even a more fair system (e.g., you call me a pedophile, you’ve got to prove it or else it’s slander); however, it has repeatedly been used by medical charlatans to silence criticism by skeptics.

A famous example (at least among the health skeptic community) is the case of Simon Singh, a medical journalist who wrote a column critical of the wild claims being made by the British Chiropractic Association. For those of you who don’t know, chiropractic is, at its heart, the belief that all disease (yes, all disease) is caused by misalignments of the spine. Controlled scientific studies of chiropractic have shown that it can be effective for treatment of back pain (as can physiotherapy and massage), but that other claims of being able to cure infectious disease or chronic conditions like asthma are unsubstantiated and false. Simon Singh said as much in his column, and was sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

“So what?” you might be saying “Just go into court, show the judge the studies, no problem!” We are lulled by television into thinking that court cases are decided quickly and cheaply. Even open-and-shut cases can, if the legal teams are unscrupulous enough, drag on for months and cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Simon Singh doesn’t have that kind of money. What the BCA (and those of their ilk) hope when they file these suits is that the defendants will settle out of court and drop the suit because they cannot afford to pay the exorbitant fees (in North America we call such suits ‘Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation’ or SLAPP suits). There are anti-SLAPP laws on the books to prevent large companies from silencing poorer critics.

The UK, however, is a haven for such suits, allowing defendants to be placed on trial in British courts, and making non-Brits subject to the rulings of those courts. If the defendants do even the smallest amount of business in the UK, they can be sued under UK libel statutes.

Luckily, the US government has stepped in and made that a thing of the past:

President Barack Obama has signed into law new legislation protecting US writers from foreign libel judgements. The Speech Act, recently passed by Congress, makes foreign libel rulings virtually unenforceable in US courts. The act targets “libel tourists” who launch cases in countries whose legal systems are considered far more claimant-friendly, such as the UK.

This is good news for skeptics in the States who want to speak out against quacks in the UK. Canada has similar libel statutes to the UK (our entire judicial system is cribbed from England’s, so this should come as no surprise), but luckily the Supreme Court of Canada recently passed anti-SLAPP legislation, and Ontario appears poised to follow Quebec’s lead and enact provincial laws to do the same. Free speech shouldn’t be held up by spurious lawsuits designed to silence criticism. Of course, as Orac pointed out to me in an e-mail, this doesn’t protect US writers from being sued, nor does it prevent those judgments from being enforced in the UK (essentially barring convicted defendants from traveling anywhere in the UK). All it does is protect American courts from having to enforce the results of foreign libel suits.

It’s at least a step in the right direction.

Tim Wise – not just a name

I’m floored.

I’m stunned.

Flabbergasted am I.

Over the past couple of days, a debate has popped up on the comment thread of this Monday’s think-piece about my strategies to combat racism. In brief, I stated three concrete approaches that I think will, over time, markedly improve racial dialogue and equality. A commenter expressed his feeling that while he thought my overall outline was good, that the philosophy underpinning it was false and counter-productive:

“But when we have 3 generations of emotional, white guilt laden liberals dominating the debate with no end in sight, sadly this will never happen. The systemic views of those who believe we live in a hugely unjust world will not allow it.”

The commenter was very adamant in his position that the reason for racial disparities was the fault of liberal policies and the mindset that non-white people face systematic discrimination the puts them immediately behind the 8-ball from the get-go.

“Once you realize that most Conservatives couldn’t give a damn about what race you are, and dont see things through the blinders of race/gender/class, the sooner you’ll realize that we could be closer to a society with completely marginalized racism.”

Ah yes, the old “just ignore race and it will go away” canard that I’ve been railing against since I first started posting about race. Well aside from the fact that conservatives do give a damn (take a trip to any conservative-voting part of the country, you’ll see what I mean), even if they didn’t it wouldn’t matter. Racial prejudice is real, and it’s neither enlightened nor noble to pretend as though it’s not.

Why am I so surprised? Because that’s exactly what Tim Wise thinks:

After all, to deny that people of color face unequal opportunities in America—due either to the legacy of past racism, the persistence of racism today, or some other set of structural barriers—is to leave explanations for racial achievement gaps that are racist by definition. If black folks really do have equal opportunity and yet still don’t achieve at levels equal to their white counterparts, then there must be something wrong with them as black people. Either genetically or culturally they must be inferior to whites. There is no other possible explanation.

I can’t recommend to you enough that you take the time and read this article. If you have enjoyed reading any of my previous discussions on race and race issues, this guy hits all of the high points.

But lest you and I on the left feel too smugly superior, Tim follows up with an absolutely brilliant examination of liberal racism (or what I term “polite racism”)

Beyond the personal biases that exist to some extent within all of us (including those who are progressive), liberals and those on the left operate within institutional spaces and even in our political activism in ways that contribute to systemic racial inequity. This we do through four primary mechanisms. The first is a well-intended but destructive form of colorblindness. The second is an equally destructive colormuteness. These mean, quite literally, a tendency among many on the white liberal-left to neither see nor give voice to race and racism as central issues in our communities and the institutions where we operate, or their connection to and interrelationship with other issues. Both liberal/left colorblindness and colormuteness perpetuate the marginalization of people of color and their concerns, in the larger society and within progressive formations for social change.

Tim expresses everything in these two articles that I’ll try to flesh out over the next however many years I can keep blogging. This is required reading, folks. If you’ve ever said “I want racism to go away” and meant it, these two articles are a great place to start. But of course… you should keep reading here too 😛

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Singapore struggles with free speech

“Oh here’s Crommunist, harping on free speech again!”

Yes. Here I am. Harping on free speech. Again.

Despite the fact that it perhaps isn’t as sexy as racist beatings or mockeries of religion, I reassert my commitment to highlighting issues of free speech. I don’t talk about it because it brings a whole shit-ton of traffic my way (it really doesn’t) or because the ladies think that a man with an obsession with Charter rights is sexy (they really don’t), I do it because free speech is the cornerstone of free society. Without the ability to freely criticize the government or powerful non-governmental groups (churches, corporations, labour unions, etc.) we lose the ability to spur the kind of public support that can enact changes by these groups. Democracy is designed to be self-limiting – a sufficiently large group of people can create legislative changes to protect safety or preserve freedoms (or, in some cases, do some really stupid things, but that’s why we have courts). Without free speech, that’s the ballgame – no free society.

Singapore is learning this lesson:

“Once A Jolly Hangman – Singapore Justice in the Dock” is a critique of the way the death penalty is applied in the city state. It alleges double standards and a lack of impartiality. That has prompted Singapore’s attorney general to charge the 75-year-old Briton (author Alan Shadrake) with contempt, arguing that passages of the book “scandalise the Singapore judiciary” and “undermine the authority of the courts”.

Singapore is a rare success story in continental Asia. It has modern technology, cleaner streets than Canada, and a top-notch health care system (notable for being almost entirely private – a rare success story of this type). The country has achieved this at the price of civil liberties – police have broad powers, misdemeanor offenses are punishable by jail or whippings, and the government heavily censors dissent. Alan Shadrake is a high-profile (by virtue of being European) example of where free speech ranks on the priorities list in Singapore.

But critics say there is a price to be paid. People are expected to conform. It is as if there is an unspoken but clearly understood deal between citizen and state: the system will look after you, as long as you do not question it

There are few issues, it seems, that the political left and right can agree on (especially since the right’s position seems to be to undermine whatever the left thinks is important – must be nice not to have to bother with ‘principles’ or ‘justice’, just resort to ‘fuck the other guy’). However, we can all get together under the banner of free speech. Free speech is what allows gay rights activists to hold parades and rallies. Free speech is what lets Ann Coulter publish books. Free speech is what lets me go online and talk shit about Robert Mugabe (who, incidentally, masturbates to pictures of shirtless, hairy, obese men.

Not so in Singapore. In Singapore, criticism of the government lands you in jail. For the moment, it seems that the government is taking good care of its people – perhaps a benevolent dictatorship. The problem comes when the will of the people stands opposed to government interest, as it is for bloggers like Seelan Palay (featured in the story) and authors like Alan Shadrake. When you can be imprisoned, without trial, simply for the act of criticizing the ruling policy, it retards change and progress in your society. Abrogation of human rights is too high a price to pay for high-speed trains, hospitals and litter-free streets.

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UBC brings in biomass generator

No point to be made here, I just think this is a really cool thing:

The technology converts wood waste into a combustible gas called syngas, which is typically a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and ash. That will be used to drive a gas engine made by General Electric to produce two megawatts of electricity. The waste heat will be used to produce steam that is expected to offset about 15 per cent of the natural gas currently used for heating at UBC.

I’m a sucker for technology. To me it embodies the idea that human diligence, careful consideration, and ingenuity can solve major problems. It’s what keeps me from looking at the state of the world and thinking “it’s all going to shit.” When we put our minds to work, we can do amazing things.

Huh… maybe there IS a point to be made here 😛

Here’s a picture of an otter:

Phillipine sexy-time for Catholic Church

There is a fundamental issue I have discovered (in my many many years of life :P) when it comes to resolving an argument. There are often ideological positions on both sides. Some of them are logically flawed from the start, and such flaws can be pointed out easily. Other times they boil down to differences in value judgments – for example, I place a higher value on the utility and efficiency of social programs than I do on the slight amount that my privacy is compromised by the census. Others clearly do not. These kinds of arguments are intractable, since they boil down to what a person thinks is important, and the best you can hope for is to find some common ground.

However, more often than not, disagreements boil down to conflicts that can be resolved by simply looking at data. Will raising taxes on cigarettes reduce use? Does capital punishment work as a crime deterrent? Do people become happier with more money in their pocket? Those are questions that are about observable, measurable phenomena, and we can (and have) evaluate them.

Same goes for “does sex education lead to promiscuity?” The evidence is very clear: again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again the literature is explicit that sex education programs are effective at imparting useful and valuable knowledge about sex and reproduction, without turning kids into bang-happy sluts (any more than they were when they started, at least). Comprehensive programs on safe sex actually seem to, paradoxically, reduce the rate at which kids have sex – at the very worst they are no more likely to have sex when armed with information.

(Click for full-sized image)

It seems painfully obvious in this case that a simple, cursory glance at the mountains of evidence would be enough to settle the debate. We may not like our kids having sex, but teaching them about it doesn’t make them more likely to do it, it just means they’re more likely to do it safely if and when they do.

But of course, if you want to strip reason, logic and evidence right out the argument, all you have to do is talk to the Catholic Church:

In the Philippines, a conservative, predominantly Catholic country, even older students learn little about how to make babies, or – of more urgency according to many officials and health workers – how to prevent making babies. But despite stiff opposition from the Catholic Church, this could be about to change.

In yet another example of religion’s pre-occupation with sex; ironic, since all of these bishops and priests are celibate, the Church has taken up the cause against teaching kids things. Knowing things leads, as everyone knows, to doing things. The first thing I did when I learned about particle physics, after all, was go out and build a nuclear bomb (I named it ‘Shroom’). It’s no surprise to me, having been raised Catholic, to see the Church be wrong, yet again, both in terms of public policy and science. What does surprise me, however, is the secular response. Similar to what took place in Argentina and Venezuela, the secular authority is telling the Church to go anoint itself:

Recently, the education department decided to launch a pilot scheme introducing sex education into the school curriculum from the ages of 11 onwards. The former education secretary, Mona Valisno, who has just left office because of a change of government, spearheaded the campaign, saying it would empower schoolchildren to “make informed choices and decisions”.

Sadly, the Whore of Babylon still has some power to exert over lawmakers:

According to Mrs Valisno, there will be no mention of abortion, or even contraception, during any of the new lessons. She said the scheme was not designed to emphasise the actual sex act, but to promote personal hygiene and interpersonal relationships.

This is doing no favours at all for the poor in the Phillipines, who are the most in need of real instruction. I have no doubt that when the program, with all of the useful information taken out of it, fails to reduce unwanted pregnancies and STIs, the Church will crow about how education doesn’t work.

“Children are fragile creatures. The [education] department should be very, very careful not to teach children about matters they will imitate the following day,” said Monsignor Pedro Quitorio, a spokesman for the highly influential Catholic Bishops Conference.

The shocking hypocrisy and complete lack of human decency inherent in a Catholic spokesperson arguing to protect the fragility of childhood leaves me cold. The stupidity of not wanting children to imitate the positive things they learn in school about protecting themselves from disease and unwanted pregnancy leaves me wondering why anyone with any kind of moral instinct would listen to a single word this organization has to say about values.

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CFI Vancouver presents Dr. Christopher DiCarlo: We Are All African

It was another big weekend for Vancouver skeptics. We hosted Dr. Christopher DiCarlo for a discussion of human origins in Africa, and we once again handed out flyers at a reading by self-proclaimed ‘psychic medium’ John Edward.

On Friday, August 13th 2010, Centre for Inquiry Vancouver hosted a talk by Dr. Christopher DiCarlo entitled “We Are All African”. In the presentation, Dr. DiCarlo discussed the anthropological evidence for speciation of homo sapiens in Africa, and some of the potential implications this knowledge might have.

Of course I was thrilled to attend this talk – African origin of humanity has long been a given to me, but I’d never really examined the evidence. Being both recently descended from Africa and interested in racial issues, this presentation was right up my alley. I will not do a full writeup of the talk, since this is not a science blog, but I thought I would share a small portion of the presentation that particularly resonated with me. As before with Dr. PZ Myers, I am declining to post the entire lecture, but I will put up this one slice. CFI will post the videos soon (having decentralized the process, so now we can work on them here and post to the CFI YouTube channel), and when they are up, I will link you.

Dr. DiCarlo hits my absolute favourite point at the :50 mark – the idea of in-group and out-group biases (the heckler is his wife, incidentally apparently a random drunk roaming through UBC campus – my bad :P). Regular readers will remember that I talked about this type of bias as the defining feature of racism, and that when we re-draw our tribal maps, we eliminate the “us vs. them” kind of mentality. Dr. DiCarlo suggests that perhaps the fact of common African ancestry could become a way of ultimately doing away with the arbitrary borders we draw around our groups.

We went out for beers after the talk, and I got a chance to chat briefly with our speaker. He had told us a story about how he lost was denied a tenured position at Wilfred Laurier University, seemingly due to complaints from students that his teachings were religiously insensitive. After inviting an Aboriginal student (in his critical thinking class) who had expressed her incredulity at the accuracy of the science to present her own evidence, so as to spark class discussion:

The tone was not sarcastic but, rather, a sincere attempt to perform the function for which the University employs him — to teach students about critical thinking. The woman never returned to his classroom. Instead, she complained to the University, along with two other students who were opposed to his “religiously insensitive” position on evolution. The objections apparently focused on Dr diCarlo’s comments on religion and evolution, but also indicated concern about fair grading and “talking about sex in class.”

While this is an incredibly unfortunate incident, it reveals that some people are not willing to accept those facts that conflict with their world view. A group particularly ill-suited to receive the implications of this kind of information is evangelical/fundamentalist Christian groups (though conservative Muslim or Jewish groups would be similarly resistant). I suggested to Dr. DiCarlo that it might be an interesting experiment to present these findings to black evangelical Christian churches, of which there are a number in the Toronto area. My thinking was that for a group of people who already buy in to the idea of African origin, these people would have a unique perspective, and it may be a way of introducing the idea of evolution as a positive thing, rather than a subject to be resisted at all costs.

All in all I enjoyed both the talk and the reception immensely. Once the video is up, you’ll have the chance to check it out, and I highly recommend that you do.

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CFI Vancouver Skeptics ‘welcome’ John Edward

It was another big weekend for Vancouver skeptics. We hosted Dr. Christopher DiCarlo for a discussion of human origins in Africa, and we once again handed out flyers at a reading by self-proclaimed ‘psychic medium’ John Edward.

On Sunday, August 15th, our fair city of Vancouver played host to self-proclaimed psychic medium John Edward. Mr. Edward is perhaps most famous for his television show Crossing Over with John Edward, a half-hour show in which he claims to speak to the deceased relatives of audience members. In his show, he reveals intimate and personal information about those who have “passed to the other side”. Like other mediums, Mr. Edward claims to be a vessel through which information passes from the realm of the dead to the living.

The problem, of course, is that there is no evidence whatsoever that Mr. Edward can actually do what he claims. His approach is nearly indistinguishable from a well-known technique of manipulation called ‘cold reading‘. Basically, a ‘psychic’ cold reads a mark by initially using words or phrases that are so vague as to apply to anyone. Once a mark responds, the psychic hones in and sends progressively more specific probing phrases and words until the mark is completely convinced. At this point, the psychic can make claims about the feelings and wishes of the dead person with full buy-in from both the mark and the audience, who by this time are also staunch believers. A better explanation and illustration can be found here.

Why were we there?

A handful of volunteers from the Centre for Inquiry – Vancouver were present at the event to hand out some informative flyers to audience members (a pdf of the flyer can be seen here). As we have done previously with Deepak Chopra, we stood on the sidewalk outside the venue, and handed flyers to people as they came in. I must admit a bit of deception on my own part, as I asked people if they were here to see the John Edward show, and if they affirmed, I told them that we had flyers for them. While I did not lie (more on this in a bit), I didn’t dissuade them of the impression that I was working for the show.

Once again, we were not there to tell people they were stupid, or gullible, or uneducated. We weren’t there to feel smarter, or a smug sense of satisfaction at ‘educating the rubes’, nor were we there to ‘convert’ people to skepticism. It is my personal belief that most people are skeptical about some things, but seem to be readily willing to accept other things at face value.

We had two primary goals – first, to encourage people to be skeptical of claims by showing them some of the techniques ‘psychics’ use to trick people; and second, to engender a discussion of critical thinking and skepticism in a group of people who are likely not skeptics. We wanted people to be asking themselves ‘does this really make sense?’ We hoped that by showing people what the techniques were, we would prime them to ask real questions about what they were seeing.

How did it go?

Most people took a flyer and looked over it as they walked in. Some people asked for multiple flyers for their friends who were inside in line. We didn’t have a particular target for how many flyers we wanted to distribute, but we estimate our output at just under 100. The room in which the event was held has a 300-person capacity, meaning we missed more than we hit. We weren’t exactly thrilled that we didn’t get everyone, but we had a few hitches.

When we first arrived, we learned that many people had already gone inside the venue and were waiting in line for the doors to open. We ventured inside and up the stairs, and were suddenly face to face with 60-70 people, most of whom were much older than we were. A number of attendees were in wheelchairs and walkers. Standing there, faced with a group that outnumbered us 12:1, standing patiently waiting to speak to their dead relatives, we quickly lost courage and beat a hasty retreat to the Starbucks across the street to rethink our strategy.

We decided to stick to the sidewalk and get people coming in. This was decided for a few reasons. First, we felt a bit dickish going to people waiting in line and putting flyers in their hands. It felt opportunistic and mean. Second (and probably most importantly), it was scary. I kept having visions of a growing angry murmur going through the crowd, followed by a stampede of wheelchairs thirsting for our blood. On the sidewalk at least, we rationalized over frappuccinos, people had the opportunity to ignore us, or engage us, without having to face a giant crowd. Yes we’d miss the die-hards who showed up early, but they’d probably reject us out of hand anyway.

Overall, we walked away happy that at least we had done something, even if we didn’t shake up the world.

My personal experience

One woman offered us an extra ticket, and I jumped at the chance to get some intel from inside. When I went to talk to her, she asked me if I liked John Edward. I told her I’d never met him. The rest of the conversation went thusly:

Her: But do you like his work?

Me: No, not really.

Her: Why not?

Me: The world is a complicated place, and there are serious questions we have to ask ourselves. Whenever someone offers easy answers to difficult questions, I’m immediately skeptical. In the course of my skepticism, I’ve learned there are much better explanations for why John Edward can do what he does than believing he can talk to ghosts.

Her: Well then I’m afraid you can’t have the ticket.

Me: Oh, okay.

Her: If you bring negative energy in, it will prevent the spirits from speaking to him.

Me: Surely they wouldn’t be afraid of me. I’m just a guy.

Her: They aren’t afraid, they just require you to have an open mind.

I thanked her for the offer, and she thanked me for my honesty. I wasn’t about to take this woman’s money (tickets ran over $200) based on a lie. As much as I would have loved to get the inside scoop for you, there was no way I was going to do it through deception. She really believed in the supposed powers that Edward claims to have, so much so that the presence of even one person who didn’t believe would chase away all of the ghosts. This kind of insular environment allows Edward to prey on people, where not even one dissenting voice will be tolerated (although I suppose I could have just bought a ticket – even $25 would have been too much in my opinion).

The low point, of course, was high-tailing it out of the hotel at our first pass. I was amazed at how powerful the normative pressure was. Nobody was staring or being aggressive, yet as soon as we saw the line I could feel the pressure to run away. I’m not a shy person – I have no problem talking to strangers or approaching people in social settings; however, I was petrified by this situation. I have a bit more appreciation for people who are afraid of public speaking after failing in our first attempt.

The highlight for me was meeting Debbie, an attendee who came outside to ask us why we were there. Debbie felt that we were being uncharitable, and calling people stupid for not doing the research themselves. She told me that until you’ve had a supernatural experience, you have no right to criticize someone else’s search for truth. I told Debbie that I had indeed had several experiences that I attributed to supernatural causes, but once I had been exposed to better information and given the opportunity to make up my mind, I was grateful to have learned something. I also pointed out that we were no more calling people stupid than a public health campaign for hand-washing was calling people stupid – we are merely presenting people with information that we think could help them. She was not entirely swayed by my argument, although she did laud us on our non-confrontational style and general affability.

It is easy to dismiss the positions of those who disagree with you, especially when they are paying money to see a well-known fraud, but if we want to gain allies in the skeptical movement, we have to take criticism from all sides and evaluate it on its own merit. Debbie may have had a point – who were we to take away people’s false hope? My response to that as always is that the truth is important. We need to get as close to objective truth as we can in order to deal with each other honestly, and to allow humankind to progress. Permitting nonsense and charlatanry like John Edward to pass us by uncontested is an invitation for more deception, and a betrayal of the ideals of humanism. Things like this should be discussed and criticized, and people should not be allowed to defraud each other simply because “everyone is entitled to their opinion“. We have a duty to the truth, and ought to talk about it openly.

Hopefully our exercise in “skeptivism” encouraged a few people to think critically about what they were hearing. As we continue to do these events (James van Praagh, another ghoul who preys on the grief and credulousness of an non-skeptical public, will be in Richmond at the end of September), we invite members of the skeptical and non-skeptical community to give us commentary on how we can be more effective, and/or less offensive to those who buy in.

Welcome to all those here from Pharyngula!

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Three steps towards ending black-white racism

Feeling like I had been picking on religion a bit too much, I decided to re-post a series of notes I wrote during Black History Month in February, 2010. This is the 6th and final installment of that series. Next week I will go back to frothing at the mouth about how stupid everyone who disagrees with my outlook on religion is.

This post originally appeared on Facebook on Friday, February 19th, 2010.

Racism is still alive and well, as I established in previous posts. We’re not out of the woods yet when it comes to discussions about race and the role that it plays in our society. However, I think we’ve been going about it the wrong way. As I said earlier, it used to be child’s play to identify the racists in our society. They were burning crosses (and apparently still are in Nova Scotia), they were using racist language, they were actively discriminating against black people. Those days are, thankfully, over. Aside from a few incidents that bubble up from time to time, black people don’t face the kinds of brutal treatment they did just decades ago.

But racism’s not done. Like a herpes infection, just because it’s been fought down to sub-symptomatic levels doesn’t mean it can’t come back with a vengeance. As I outlined previously, we can still see some residual effects of racism apparent in the makeup of our economic and political leaders, job discrimination – both as unregulated restrictions by individual employers and in the form of well-intentioned, necessary, but ultimately fundamentally racist programs like Affirmative Action – and our portrayal in popular media. Behaving as though racism is no longer a problem only allows the infection to persist and become more deeply entrenched.

In order to completely eradicate racism, important steps need to be taken. In my mind, these steps fall into three main categories. The first is that black people need to move into prominent positions of power and authority. The second is that we take some ownership of our society, including the negative parts, and realize that racism is everyone’s problem, not just white people’s. Finally, white people need to start talking about race, racism, and their own fears and concerns without fear of reprisal. I will elaborate on each of these in order.

First, I think it’s of primary importance that black people be highly visible in positive, influential places. Stereotypes about what “blackness” is stem not only from old-time racism, but from the perpetuation of those same roles in popular media. BET and other music stations are prime culprits, FOX News is about as guilty as an organization can get before donning a white hood, but we’re doing it to ourselves too. The next step, I believe, is to change the connotative understanding of what it is to be “black”. It’s hard to say “black people are lazy criminals” when you work next to, or for, an intelligent black person. It’s even harder when most of the black people you know are strong and successful in your own field. I’ve tried my best, and continue to try, to enact this in my own field where there aren’t very many black people (although, hilariously, my manager and one of the senior scientists on the 9-person team here are also black).

Part of this movement has to be being competent and intelligent, definitely, but a similarly important component is that we have to be visible. Not just present in photographs, or around at meetings, but we have to wear our blackness on our sleeves, forcing those around us to confront the cognitive dissonance that, ultimately, destroys stereotypes. Barack Obama, Neil Degrasse-Tyson, and Will Smith are three examples that readily come to mind of people who don’t hide their race and are anti-stereotypical and prominent in their respective fields. This step will have the unintended benefit of providing positive role modeling to black kids who otherwise wouldn’t have examples to look to in their own communities.

Second, I think it’s time to drop the adversarial “us versus them” mindset. A lot of things are legitimately the fault of racism, or oppression by a majority group. The more we circle the wagons and cry “racism wolf” every time there’s an issue, we dilute real complaints. It’s similar to comparisons to Nazi-ism. There are real honest-to-spaghetti-monster Nazis out there in the world. Every time we draw a Hitler mustache on a picture of Bush, or give a police officer who tells you to pour out your beer the Fascist salute, we move a serious problem further away from the shock and outrage it deserves, and indirectly make serious threats seem less scary.

More important than that, however, is that we need to start recognizing that we are part of the system just as much as any white person is. We perpetuate our own stereotypes by conforming to racial roles, we ostracize those who behave like an outsider. Instead, we need to embrace the idea that our distinctiveness is part of the larger culture. This goes hand-in-hand with the first point – it’s harder to hate someone who is an active part of your own in-group. I am not, by any means, saying that we stop being different, but instead that we put the difference in context of those things we have in common with other groups of people.

Finally, and this is the only one that I haven’t heard other people say a thousand times before me, we need to let white people come to the table. White people are, understandably, scared and unsure about how to approach the topic of racism. For generations, white people ran this country. Gradually, however, more and more non-white faces began popping up in the landscape. While some reacted with open hostility, the rest were left with the uneasy feeling of watching as their power and influence slowly melted away. For an illustration of this, cruise the Craigslist “Rants and Raves” section for Vancouver. There are some REALLY angry white people on that forum, and the majority of them are saying the same thing: “this is our turf, stop taking away our power.” Of course they’re factually incorrect about whose land this is and who built this country, but the fact remains that being white doesn’t carry as much currency as it used to. Couple that with accusations of racism, bigotry and malicious ignorance every time you make any statement about race, and you are suddenly made to feel guilty and responsible for the existence of a system that you were born into without any idea of how to make it better.

Someone needs to start speaking up on behalf of white people. They are victims of the same system, regardless of the fact that it was largely the responsibility of their ancestors. So what? They hurt too. They are made to feel as though they have sinned, but are given few, if any, workable options of how to ameliorate the situation. I’d imagine that most white people hate racism just as much as black people do, even though they are rarely the victims. Not only that, but white people have legitimate beefs and concerns of their own related to race. Let’s remember that even MLK always made a point of acknowledging the role that white brothers and sisters played in the civil rights movement. Conversely, white people have no MLK or Malcolm or Jesse Jackson. Right now the only people speaking on behalf of white people’s issues are demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and far-right militant movements like the KKK and other White Power groups, which puts even legitimate criticism of the treatment of whites in the same category as white supremacy (not only that, but if they’re the only ones speaking for me, then I’m perhaps inclined to agree with them on a few other things). This is not to say that the races are “equal” in political standing, economic influence, or even how we think of them colloquially. However, if we are going to move forward together it’s important that we all have a voice in the progress.

So, like Al Gore at the end of An Inconvenient Truth I’m trying to lay out a concrete map of how to take ourselves back from the brink of crisis and move into a better, brighter future for all people. First, we need to redefine “black” – pushing it out, in a positive way, into the limelight by having prominent and well-placed black people talk about race. Second, we need to take an active part in the society at large, taking ownership of our important role in shaping the culture. Third, white people need to start talking about race, and non-white people need to start listening and discussing. Done properly, these steps will ensure that we can actually have a “post-racial” world, rather than just sticking our heads in the sand and pretending.

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