Banter 53: Evolutionary Psychology (of Shame, of Love, of Empathy...; as a faux science?; etc.)

Sunday, December 8th at 3pm
Host:  Chris Holdhusen 

We went with the broad topic of Evolutionary Psychology but hope that you'll each help narrow this based on what you are interested in within evolutionary psychology, or in showing the problematic aspects of evolutionary psychology.  The associated contribution you make (article, chapter, podcast, reflections of your own, TED talk, etc.) will facilitate this.  Please send your contribution to Sabine via email by Dec. 1.  Those contributions will be posted below.

Some preliminary ideas to get us started thinking about this topic: 

Lecture:  "Evolutionary Psychology: An Introduction" - Dr. Diana Fleischman

Article: "Seven Key Misconceptions about Evolutionary Psychology" by Laith Al-Shawaf, Ph.D.
             https://areomagazine.com/2019/08/20/seven-key-misconceptions-about-   evolutionary-psychology/


From Sabine:

After having followed an array of pretty solid academic trains of thought (incl. entertaining articles & conversations with a couple of UM profs - Abhishek and also his friend Nathan, a neurobiologist) that debunk evolutionary psychology, I do still have interest in it, but more so from the perspective of what the field might do next to bring itself more up to speed with the methodology that biology and the other sciences assume as standard fare.  I'm also very interested in how a couple of women (well-respected even by the naysayers of EP) are contributing to EP from an interdisciplinary approach.  One is a philosopher, Janet Radcliffe Richards, and the other is  an anthropologist and primatologist, Sara Blaffer Hrdy. Richards says EP isn't all bad, but is certainly asking the wrong questions, but that asking the questions it is at all will help us come up with better questions to ask. Hrdy is a hands on researcher interested in getting at, among other things, becoming more precise as to the sources of human propensity for working together/empathy/sharing; she attests that it has been wrongly assumed by the social sciences for too long that our empathetic/social human wiring derives from survival due to warring conditions that made humans work together in order to succeed more, which led to brains wired to work together more via evolutionary selection, and so on. Hrdy says that our empathy/social human wiring likely derives first from the way early humans raised their children, making us and our predecessors much more like tamarins and marmosets than like chimpanzees and gorillas. Sadly/interestingly, she finds that like tamarins and marmosets we are in such need for social support and shared care of raising children (alloparenting), that when we don't have it, abandoning of newborns, etc. occurs also in humans.  This has never been observed to happen in other primates, except for tamarins and marmosets. Hrdy concedes that warring conditions later in our human history perhaps further solidified this already present social wiring.

One of EP's biggest critics is PZ Myers who is worth listening to here to understand the ways it seems that evolutionary psychologists seem to be often misusing or misunderstanding key principles of evolution. His talk (linked in previous sentence) is long, but I think useful to listen to for a primer in evolution.  Perhaps it would have been best for our group to dive first into readings on evolution, historically and contemporarily, and then take on evolutionary psychology so as to be able to weigh in more informedly on how EPs are using/misusing evolution in their field.  I know that I don't understand evolution enough, particularly where the field of evolutionary research is now, to use it to critique or weigh in on how the evolutionary psychologists are or aren't misusing it.  Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish"concept is helpful in reviewing key concepts of evolution as well, and works particularly well for me since I generally disdain the humancentric approach of all fields, thinking us something special or fairly removed from the line of animals from which we've descended, brain/language/emotions/opposable thumbs/relationships included. PBS did a series on Shubin's concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ttoKGxEKc

I'm throwing a lot at you here, so if you only have time for a couple of my contributions, these below are the voices I most wish you to hear:

Take a listen to Richards here via some Oxford lectures she gave on sexuality, particularly lecture #3 has to do with evolutionary psychology: http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/12/janet-radcliffe-richards-on-the-past-present-and-future-of-sex-part-3/

And, watch Hrdy here giving a short lecture on her book Mothers and Others, which traces why and how humans came to be wired as socially oriented as we are, much more so than other primates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsuuPMUIMEE

For those of you not keen on videos/audio, looking up papers or books by both Richards and Hrdy would be a great approach to hearing them weigh in on this topic too.


Mitch's Submission:

I must start by saying that I’m quite certain that I don’t have a very good grasp on evolutionary psychology. I have read, watched and listened to almost all of Sabine’s extensive background content but may, now, be more confused about what this field is than when I started. My thoughts, below, are, likely, naive, fallacious and full of biases and incorrect assumptions. I am looking forward to learning more on this topic from the better studied in our group.

I haven’t studied evolutionary psychology much. I find some of it fascinating but something about it also makes me queasy.  The focus on nature over nurture. The confusion of correlation and causation. The broad generalizations and uncomfortable, maybe incorrect, conclusions.

Something about it reminds me of the great Douglas Adam’s puddle analogy, which he uses to refute the fine tuning argument for religion, below. It is very short and worth the watch. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8mJr4c66bs

In the case of evolutionary psychology, the merging of those two sciences requires some leaps of faith to the level that it could be used in place of religion in Adam's analogy. Is psychology the puddle, incorrectly believing that it fits perfectly in the evolutionary hole?

Psychology is endlessly exciting, if not a little heavy on conjecture and broad generalizations. Evolution, too, is fascinating, but very linear, logical and lacking some of the creative  passion of its more bubbly extroverted cousin. Combining these sciences is intoxicating, initially.  Like a classical cover of a heavy metal song, it interesting, at first listen. Over time, the novelty wears off and you realize that  the beauty and complexity of the classical, and the power and adrenaline of the metal, are both watered down and worse off with the genre merge. 

It must admit that my discomfort might just be me obstinately holding onto beliefs and desires that I am not yet ready to part with. Many of the concepts of evolutionary psychology seem to circle around questions of free will. It is probably not correct, but I like to think that creatures with complex cognitive abilities are more than the sum of their parts (Not ants. Ants are just biological machines….I am special).  I want to believe that each creature is unique being with a one of a kind personality and the ability to consciously make choices.  I don’t believe in eternal ’souls’ but I like the idea that there is a fire inside of us that, while living at least, is not composed solely of cells and genes and predictable chemical interactions.  The fact that I evolved from an ape doesn’t bother me in the least, it’s kind of cool.  I’m even OK with the concept that every great ape has genetically instinctual fears (e.g., snakes), but the idea that ALL of my thoughts, dreams, desires, passions and fears are similarly evolved disturbs me. Possibly worse, I fear that, in writing that, it is transparent to all that I am making hasty generalizations and may be rejecting an entire valid field of science only because it makes me uncomfortable.

I can’t close without bringing this last item up. I do feel like some of the concepts in evolutionary psychology could be dangerous.  The more uncomfortable conclusions remind me of how the pseudoscience of phrenology was used to fuel racism. 

I try to watch news and opinion from sources with viewpoints different than my own.  In those, I have seen concepts of evolutionary psychology used to justify racism, in particular, but, also, sexual preference and gender discrimination. It’s possible that some groups are putting a dishonest spin on the research to give their bigotry a veil of scientific validity…but they don’t have to stretch as far as I would hope. Dr. Fleishman’s discussion about how narcissism and psychopathy are expected and natural evolutionary adaptations for success in today's world, even if true, is something that society should try to overpower.  If a society can ‘choose’ to overcome individual psychological ‘adaptations’, then is this really evolution at all, or just psychology and sociology?  We could, maybe, hijack the evolutionary process and genetically engineer wings so we can fly…but we can’t think our way into that adaptation.

There is a lot of material out there to discuss on evolutionary psychology and racism, and it’s almost all depressing but, if you are interested, this is a short primer: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201801/the-psychology-racism

Skepticism and curmudgeonliness aside, I do find the topic fascinating.  Who couldn’t like a good mix of psychology, anthropology, biology, sociology and evolution?  The Dr. Diana Fleishman video had excellent content and ideas and I fell, instantly, for her bravery and ability to talk about almost any taboo subject.  I got a chuckle when, about halfway through her presentation, she mentioned that her specialty was ‘disgust research’…well, that explains things. Anyway, I’m looking forward to learning more about this topic from the banter team.


From Isaac:

"Empathy is Tearing Us Apart" - https://www.wired.com/story/empathy-is-tearing-us-apart/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=wired&utm_social-type=earned&fbclid=IwAR0QhO7mucZVlD-1zPB_8khiN0s4CL5lsILM8VtwjhTVEtlHOB-YgjUEfks

Patricia Churchland podcast episode:  
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/06/10/episode-50-patricia-churchland-on-conscience-morality-and-the-brain/

From Jivan:

EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY IN A NUTSHELL

"Our psychology has definitely evolved over the millions of years.  Now we are stuck with it.  

Origins of anger and fear.  Long ago it was necessary for our survival to distinguish between an animal to run away from and animal to eat .  If it was an animal to run away from we got scared and ran.  "Oh what do I see in the bushes.  It has ears. Oh.  I remember that animal.  It's a tiger.  I'm scared."  Run away!  If it is an animal to eat if it was a and kill it.  "There is a small edible animal.  What kind is it?  It is a Gazelle.  Run after it.  Get It!  I'm hungry."  If it another human in 

our territory we get angry and think,  "Kill him!  That guy is going to eat my food.  Kill him!"

Origin of love.  You learn to get along with other members of your tribe so you suppress feelings you don't like about them and express feelings you like about them.  This is the beginning of politics.  With individuals it's the same.  I'm attracted to that person.  If I want benefits, I better do the game of suppressing my feelings I don't like about him or her.  This is love.

Origin of empathy.  Empathy is in a different category all together.  It is a beginning of getting unstuck with the way our minds have evolved.  True empathy is not measurable.  If you try to measure empathy you are only measuring what it has to do with what a person is feeling and thinking.  True empathy takes place before feeling and thinking takes over perception.  It happens before we get stuck in the casket of concepts that have evolved.  For example, a sadist knows the other persons thoughts and feelings but has somehow gotten stuck and loves torturing others. Does anyone know how we can experience true empathy?"

From Chris:

http://www.bec.ucla.edu/papers/Fessler_4-11-05.pdf

Banter 52: Shame

Topic:  Shame
Friday, Nov. 15th at 6:30pm
Host:  at Mitch's apartment

The topic began as a suggestion for a shame performance night, and then settled into simply shame (or possibly shame vs. guilt); do feel welcome to perform your shame if you'd like though, amid the varied threads of discussion.

Here are some tidbits to get us started:

Shame Culture vs. Guilt Culture:   https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/opinion/the-shame-culture.html

Brene Brown on shame; TED talk

Materials from members of the group will be forthcoming and posted below the week before we meet.


From Sabine:

I'm interested in so many angles from which we might look at the idea and feelings of shame.  I hope some of the others of you will pull in collective/societal shame, psychology of shame, etc.  What I'll focus on is the way we work out our societal and individual shame via the arts. Sometimes the only thing to ease the absolute, oppressive, crushing nature of shame in the body and psyche is to stop holding it in, give it voice.  Whether as a writer, a visual artist, a performance artist, or the reader/audience taking it in so much shame has been aired out and the awful, lonely, scary feelings of shame validated, and perhaps made less crushing by the arts.  How lucky are we to have these platforms as humans to deal with ourselves and all we are capable of feeling and making others feel.

Read this first:  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/08/top-10-books-about-guilt

Then read this, which was first experienced, then drowned under, then penned into a book of rough-hewn poems as a method of survival, some of which have been performed on a stage in front of several hundred via theatrical monologue, which completed the cycle of this shame (along with beginning tentative healing), and some of which are still in draft form (with associated shame awaiting its turn for revision too):

Poem for the Bunnies (draft iii)

for Naya

by Sabine Brigette (orig. April 27, 2016, audio)

I.

There is a scene in The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies where Mr. MacGregor scoops in his palm each of the flopsy bunnies out of the hay pile, or grass clippings pile, rather.  And he does it so gently. 

II.

There’s this tender tenderness to the scooping.  But, of course, his intentions are not kind.  The tenderness of scooping a sleeping, cozy, sure little rabbit out of one area and tucking it into another area safely—well, in this case, it is not safe, it is a sack, and the sack is headed to his kitchen; the threat was real for us too—I suppose that’s my interest in the scene.

III.

I wish I could remember scooping you from the walled in scene we found ourselves.  My hands cupped so you would have slept through his scary + my mute, and through my collapse after.  Oh that I could have sheltered more, carried the darkened wholly myself, and delivered you safely from it to soft-hued light and a bird song ending. 

IV.

You and your sister and me, we are safe now.  We delivered ourselves, though you remember all of it, and she, none of it.  And so, for you + me, the lingering hollow still follows from that chapter.  There were two objects that I actually could have scooped to safety in my two cupped hands, but they were the very things that I absolutely did not, and that I personally delivered to harm, the bunnies.  In this case, not the sweetly drawn flopsy bunnies held in a book for the first time by your chubby 3-year old hands on an airplane back from Bangkok, but our Mr. MacGregor and our Strawberry, our own wee flopsy bunnies.  The Holland lop-eared rabbits you showed at the fair when you were eleven.

V.

Elder daughter, whose arms got bruised, who I left alone in all that heat, builder of ladders, if I could, believe me, I would reach back—like added pages of drawings to a children’s story—my two hands into that chapter that runs my blood cold. The very first thing I would scoop are your bunnies, right out of the forest.  Let them have one hour there for a few glorious leaps of joy, then reach down, scoop, and deliver them safely to our yard to you.  Wake you now, soon to leave, and tell you the good news of who came home before you go.

VI.

But the bunnies are the ones that got left behind. It is an unscoopable thing that I carry like a burden sack.  Yet, childlike, when I hike in those woods with the dogs, I look for them still.  Then on the way back across the river where we dug their carrot-lined warren I try to set the shame down before I return home.  I remind myself of all the times he said how they’d taste for dinner, and how he sounded when he said he could do what he wanted with any of us. Like you, I know what he is capable of.  I often thought we would all get left behind, not just them strewn with weasel-punctured necks in a forest.  When I grow brave and visit the empty warren, agitated by my own hope, I recall your shriek and my firm voice for you not to look, not to look, and hugging you and hugging you.  Maybe it was another rabbit who lay lifeless in leaves, I had said.  Your faith in me heart-breakingly unshaken, you did not look.  Fact is we both know for certain that one of the bunnies did not make it past a full day.  Other fact is I felt safer in the woods that day, despite your sorrow in my arms at what I’d done, than I had or would for years. 

VII.

I had been trying to build us all a safe warren to huddle in together, away from predators, as I scooped out the dirt by hand in their warren to reveal a beautiful tree-root ceiling the week before.  The boards I placed at their entryway were with loving hands that had only ever held them gently.  The moss and straw I laid inside, winter coming, I imagined keeping us warm too from the cold our life had become.  The carrots and rabbit pellets I heaped in their imagined kitchen, their own start to Watership Down, more chance than we would have for a good life when we had to leave the quiet of the woods beside trickling stream, where water would be plentiful for them, even if they woke in winter.  I was in a sack and could see very little in the dark of it. But for keeping hold of your hand and hers, I lost hold of everything else.

VIII.

They were deeply loved.

IX.

You were so little and had no say. I am so very sorry.

X.

Remember “happy baby,” the way they leaped the first time we let them into our backyard as babies?  I do. And when I can’t, I try to.

Mitch's Contribution:

This is a heavy topic so I looked for something short and funny.

Apologies that it's an advertisement.

Public humiliation is different than shame, but there is nothing more cringe worthy for me to see.  When I speak or perform and it doesn't go well, it leads to incredible, lifelong personal feelings of shame for me...I have terrible stage fright for that reason.  That said, I guess inducing shame (humorously) for a good cause (the environment) can be beneficial...at least I thought this ad was a form of 'positive shaming', if there is such a thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll22B4VcGPQ

Banter 51: Motherhood and Defeasible Duties to Benefit

Thursday, October 17th at 6:30pm
at Annette's and Kirk's house

Motherhood and defeasible duties to benefit is a philosophical and cultural problem that contemporary philosopher Fiona Woollard is concerned with in her current research and writing.  


(A quasi comedic, short lecture of Woollard's at a comedy club about this topic.)

I had the good luck of attending a lecture of hers in Oxford this past April (due to picking up a newspaper blowing past in a park as Edel played and seeing the event began in 45 minutes). It was fascinating to note the discomfort of various audience members around me for having dragged my six-year old to the lecture (a familiar feeling in Oxford, for last time I'd been there I had a 9-10 year old Naya hanging onto my apron-strings with confused onlookers at formal dinners in Christ Church hall, etc.); what kind of mother was I, what kind of mothering was I offering, shouldn't this child's needs come first, shouldn't the adult-oriented event come first above this mother's needs to attend if no childcare is at hand; or, perhaps they squirmed and stared in our direction for other reasons, wishing they'd or others had brought their children too (doubtful, though Edel did hang in there pulling off her childhood duties to benefit her mother, haha). Fiona, however, stared at Edel or alternately at me for lengthy periods when making various points about her argument, and seemed to have a soft set to her face in so doing, one of fascination and philosophical observation perhaps.  Risking an egocentric take on her gaze, it did please me greatly to think of her mind to be the sort that would connect these obvious dots.

Woollard summarizes:

"A recurring mistake influences discussion of the behaviour of pregnant women and mothers.  The mistake in question is the assumption that a mother who fails to do something that might benefit her child must be able to provide over-riding countervailing considerations to justify her decision.  It is assumed that in the absence of such a justification the mother is liable for moral criticism.  We see this assumption operating in academic literature, medical advice given to mothers, mainstream media and social media.  

I argue that this mistaken assumption involves attributing to the mother a defeasible duty to perform each action that might benefit her child.  This attribution is supported by implicit appeal to two arguments, both of which are initially appealing but ultimately unsound.

My first paper on this topic, which lays out the general philosophical issues is called 'Motherhood and Mistakes about Defeasible Duties to Benefit'.  It has been published at Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.  If you don't have access to PPR, you can download a author's draft of the paper at Publications and Works in Progress." (click on links embedded in this previous line)

It may help to review the concepts of defeasible reasoning also here:  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-defeasible/#DefeConvComm

For this banter session, we can start with perhaps the specifics of what Woollard is concerned with and then expand outward or sideways to include other related issues as the group is interested in about defeasible duties, cultural/societal expectations that are constricting, motherhood, our own limiting ideas on our own duties or the duties of others. 

Banter 50: Our Relationship With Animals

Saturday, September 28th at 7:00 PM at Chris' house in Whitefish.

Banter 50! Wow. Quite the ongoing tradition.This is Mitch writing this up as a placeholder for Sabine who likely has better insight and her typical great introductory ruminations that provide such good fodder for discussion. The topic speaks for itself, I suppose...what are your thoughts on human interactions with other animal species?

                                   

Mitch's Submission.

If I make this banter, it will be because the weather was lousy and I couldn't go to the cabin. Since there is a chance I'll miss it, I'll keep this short.

My first thought was that humans are animals.  When I am in the presence of other hairless monkeys, I often find that fact hard to remember (having non-human animals around, wild or tame, is a great reminder of this). I found some decent long form videos on the topic of why we consciously or subconsciously separate ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom, with lots of conjecture on why (fear of mortality, feeling 'dirty' or 'uncivilized' etc.).  It was all pretty long and heady stuff so, instead, I am posting some short videos you can peruse of human animals artistically and with reverence mimicking other non-human animals through body paint and contortions. One could overanalyze the art to make it fit the topic but, really, I just think it's pretty cool.

Link to several short videos here.

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Isaac's contribution:

This had some interesting discussion of the evolution of empathy as an outgrowth of maternal instincts
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/06/10/episode-50-patricia-churchland-on-conscience-morality-and-the-brain/
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Kirk Bryan's contribution:

Here is a documentary that sums up his
message in "Homo Deus"
    
Homo Deus also deals with the relation of people and animals.
                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ChHc5jhZxs

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Sabine's contribution:

Still not fully knowing our topic (though thanks hugely Mitch for posting above!! just seeing this today 9/25/19), or whether we've even agreed on one topic or are showing up split between two topics, I've sort of just been mulling over humans, the eras we've been part of on the earth, and the one we are dragging (have dragged) the other animals into along with our various habits and neuroses, the Anthropocene.  This concept seems it may kind of bridge the Homo Deus topic (which I haven't gotten a copy of yet via an awaited library hold) and the relationship with other animals topic.
Greta Thunberg's emotion-laden face from her speech yesterday comes to mind too; I've spent many days since I was her age with that chest-fallen feeling & a screwed-tight face about to burst into tears for feeling viscerally what we are doing to the ice that polar bears need to continue to exist, for the most beautiful, pupil-dilating ecosystems that would be vastly intact without our continual chiseling, for snow geese that would never have to confuse a safe body of water with an unsafe one (Butte) were it not for us, and a thousand other examples that make me fold in half sometimes with a sorrow that shouldn't really be shakeable and set down to get on with one's day best one can.  Go Greta; don't set it down and get on with your day (much like Jane Goodall did not, has not - thanks for incl. her pic here, Mitch!). 

I sometimes (to get through the day) will weigh my whole sense of humans not having wrecked it all based on particular geese flying overhead above Whitefish that I've seen leave on the same routes this time of year again and again.  I concern my poetry with ecocriticism concerns at times, such as a couple published a while back  called "Comfort Food" (has a geese migration line) and "Dialogue Between Species" (wolf/human dialogue).  I hang seed from my roofline for birds like it offsets the whole house I occupy like a bully (filled with cats!) in a fragile ecosystem.  I watch the songbirds sit at said feeder from inside on the coldest negative days in February and worry at the way a particular one will linger, fluff himself best he can, and lean against the glass, peering in (so it seems to my anthropomorphizing mind) at the fire. I say my soul mate, should such a thing exist, was a big bouncy black Newfoundland by the name of Ladybug who I know I made incredibly happy and who made me so incredibly too, in addition to aiding me to see the point of life & the point of not being morose so many times.  What do I do without these animals to make me feel better about myself and about humans not being powerful enough to wreck a whole planet of lovelier systems?  So, human absorbed, even my sorrows over this!

Yammerings aside, I wish to hear from Trista, our resident geologist in the group, if this working definition of Anthropocene has any merit among actual geologists, or is merely a popular term / concept at the moment only relevant to certain echo chambers:  Noun: "t

he current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Example:

"Some geologists argue that the Anthropocene began with the Industrial Revolution."  Apparently it was first made popular by the atmospheric chemist and Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen in 2000 (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-is-the-anthropocene-and-are-we-in-it-164801414/).  Also, I'd like to read this book I came across in sleuthing for podcasts or articles for this blog contribution:  Wildlife in the Anthropocene by Jamie Lorimer. And I think this article is interesting, but perhaps too reassuring as to what the anthropocene actually should feel to us: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170801-the-animals-thriving-in-the-anthropocene   The photo of this tiger at the head of this last article (http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/07/when-human-wildlife-conflict-is-about-so-much-more/), brings to mind my concern and question for the evening, do we in the Anthropocene era need to assist wildlife differently in certain situations and ecosystems than our previous wildlife policies of hands off / let nature take its course (drowning polar bears, for example; drought-laden elephant herds that die far from the old water sources, etc.).  If nature cannot take its course due to our impacts, other than extinction, do we still let nature take that course to try to keep hands off from the wildness & wild genius of our fellow animals we've doomed (polar bears, penguins, ocean life, and so on)?  Does this relationship we have with wild animals need to remain the same when it was created under the conditions where we presumed nature could survive us? How awful if our lesser minds (in regard to wildness and being part of a natural system) end up, even in our compassion, erasing the migration paths from the geese's minds, erasing the paths of survival through the Arctic once known for so long by bears who handed it down to other bears.  Do we keep them alive by making them all more like us, and less like they had been?  Or, do we let them die off, along with their lovely oldest paths that won't be followed or known any more?

These are my cheery fall thoughts,
Sabine

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  Pre-meeting Doodle Poll: https://doodle.com/poll/hia6pg8rgau7285p

Banter 49: Skepticism & the paranormal/preternatural (anyhow)

Thursday, July 25th at 7pm
at Chris' house in Whitefish (on the deck)

At the end of the Woolf "On Being Ill" discussion, we sat around Mitch's kitchen tossing out next topic ideas, and came up with a hefty list (Homo Deus, Factfulness, Shelley's Frankenstein, a follow up reading related to V. Woolf or the Bloomsbury group, extroverts vs. introverts, enneagrams & people's fascination with...).  But then we thought of summer and being out on Chris' deck for the next session, and the idea of some mutual amusement and quasi-lighheartedness seemed appealing, so a few of us fell upon The Paranormal.  As we sat trying to define it amongst ourselves, as well as admitting the various ways a group of atheists/skeptics have some gray areas with reason when running up certain basement stairs, etc., then we felt this must be our July summer deck topic.  So we'll table the others for now for a future Doodle poll vote (& also bring other ideas at the next banter) for an upcoming August/September banter night.

So, our topic: 

Where do you lose your sense of skepticism and find yourself butting up against the paranormal/preternatural?

Mull this over.  Track some of your present irrational (or perhaps not so irrational) behavior/actions/thoughts/feelings that are related to the paranormal or preternatural.  This could bring up something as silly as fleeing from basement stairs or something as fascinating as your personal hopes for quantum entanglement (not to say that actual spooky action at a distance is paranormal).  Find an associated bit of material and email that to me to post on the blog - a podcast, an article, a lecture, a documentary, a chapter, creepy photographs, a field trip to some spooky basement stairs or perhaps to the Ferry Steps!, an old Ouija board, a personal narrative, and so on.  Also, please send a sentence or two describing your gray areas with the paranormal (i.e. when your general reason seems to crack slightly). Please email me your materials a week before we meet so we all have time to spend with them before the 25th.

NPR's take on the topic: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/549547848/snap-judgment-presents-spooked

(Wikipedia: "The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1901–1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907–1986), two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 9. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of The Strand Magazine. Doyle, as a spiritualist, was enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the images as genuine, others believed that they had been faked.

Interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both girls married and lived abroad for a time after they grew up, yet the photographs continued to hold the public imagination. In 1966 a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper traced Elsie, who had by then returned to the UK. Elsie left open the possibility that she believed she had photographed her thoughts, and the media once again became interested in the story.

In the early 1980s Elsie and Frances admitted that the photographs were faked, using cardboard cutouts of fairies copied from a popular children's book of the time, but Frances maintained that the fifth and final photograph was genuine. The photographs and two of the cameras used are on display in the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, England. 

In a 1985 interview on Yorkshire Television's Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers, Elsie said that she and Frances were too embarrassed to admit the truth after fooling Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes: "Two village kids and a brilliant man like Conan Doyle – well, we could only keep quiet." In the same interview Frances said: "I never even thought of it as being a fraud – it was just Elsie and I having a bit of fun and I can't understand to this day why they were taken in – they wanted to be taken in.")

Some basic Wikipedia definitions to start us off:

Paranormal: Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as beyond normal experience or scientific explanation. Proposals regarding the paranormal are different from scientific hypotheses or speculations extrapolated from scientific evidence because scientific ideas are grounded in empirical observations and experimental data gained through the scientific method. In contrast, those who argue for the existence of the paranormal explicitly do not base their arguments on empirical evidence but rather on anecdote, testimony, and suspicion. 

Preternatural: beyond what is normal or natural. In Catholic theology, preternatural refers to properties of creatures like angels, while supernatural refers to properties of God alone. It is "suspended between the mundane and the miraculous". In theology, the term is often used to distinguish marvels or deceptive trickery, often attributed to witchcraft or demons, from the purely divine power of the genuinely supernatural to violate the laws of nature. In the early modern period, the term was used by scientists to refer to abnormalities and strange phenomena of various kinds that seemed to depart from the norms of nature. 

(actual water funnel cloud in Florida)

Parapsychology:  the study of paranormal and psychic phenomena, including telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, synchronicity, reincarnation, apparitional experiences, and other paranormal claims. It is considered to be pseudoscience by a vast majority of mainstream scientists.

(seriously tangled hair)

Quantum entanglement: Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the state of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance. 

(Andy Goldsworthy)

(Brooklyn-based artist Caledonia Curry, better known as Swoon, who focuses on a near death experience she had via her art.)

From Mitch:

Wow! Sabine covered a lot of good ground there.

I’m not going to post any external reading or video material…just a few thoughts.

I searched around, online, and happily found out that there are many, many skeptics that don’t see any evidence for the supernatural, but that kind of want to believe in it (well, some of it).

The skeptic journey is relatively knew to me. Overall, I am happy with how it has helped me to mature and learn, but I do miss many of my old superstitions. I like mysteries and find it, oddly, nice that some supernatural claims are unfalsifiable. As frustrating as those kind of ‘Russell’s teapot' fallacies can be, they do make for fun stories.

It’s a common accusation against skeptics that they are dour and unhappy, with nothing to believe in and no magic in their lives. Admitting to wishing that I could believe in some supernatural things seems traitorous.

What I hope to hear from this banter is stories and answers from the group on some of the following questions:

1) What supernatural things do you truly believe in (or, at least, that science cannot explain)? No judgement.

2) What is your best story of an unexplained phenomenon that you, personally, experienced.

3) What aspects of the supernatural do you know can be explained away by science, but that you you wish you could believe in? Why?

4) Conversely, what supernatural beliefs have you lost that you are glad to no longer have?

5) What has changed about how you felt about the supernatural as a child until now and why do you think it has?

6) Do you hold on to any supernatural beliefs that you experienced personally, because the debunking explanation comes down to hallucinations, ideomotor effects or something that makes you feel like you’d have to admit to being crazy, disingenuous or naive?

7) When someone you are close to believes in something supernatural that you don’t, how do respond to the conversation? How does the response change by person, topic or situation?

Since the supernatural is anything that cannot be explained, this is a very big topic.  Below is a short list of a few supernatural things that I believed in, at some point in my life…a few of which I still do believe (or really, really want to for various reasons) and, most, which I am glad to be rid of.

Satanic backmasking in music

Ouija boards run by spirits

Interventionist God

Ghosts

Psychic abilities

Sixth sense

Guardian angels

Demonic possession

Aliens

Karma

Dousing

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More from Sabine:

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-07-25/love-quantum-physics-and-entanglement

Listen to the above NPR story or read; then find a way for us to watch Both/And by Patrick Gabridge, pretty please?  I've been wanting to watch it on stage or a film of the staged production of for a couple of years now. How lovely to watch it with our collective.

I'll address Mitch's other great questions at the banter night itself, but I will chime in on his #1/#3 which are much the same to me in regard to my example:  I admire the Christian surety (as well as other religious surety) that assures an afterlife complete with reuniting with loved ones.  I admire it like I admire Edel's tender letter writing to Santa.  I don't want it to be something that is ever burst for either of them, and I wish I had that too without any doubt arising in my head sometimes.  Atheist or Christian or Buddhist or..., the wishing not to ever be separated from a beloved is a fundamental part of loving and attaching. Translating this wishing to surety is not a big leap really, and I understand it, though I can't make the leap into a concrete bridge as they seem to, and the pain of that upon parting from a beloved who ceases to exist is so exquisite as to again make me glad for those who have a comfie blankie or concrete bridge of surety to wrap themselves in.  However, I blur some lines in regard to love & entanglement, telling myself we don't really know how atoms disperse/recombine/impact those atoms most attached; I do this to the point of not quite believing that I'll never ever never be near my Oma Brunhilde again, nor near Naya's dad Joe again, nor near my beloved Ladybug again, nor near my children after we part, nor near those I've held or hold now with truest affection and pure pupil-dilating fascination that they could possibly exist and possibly cross my path at all in this huge place we hang amid vastness in.  I feel that I might somehow not be free of them or wholly separate right now (as in where I begin and they end feels a bit less defined than my sense of our physical forms), and that I might therefore not be free of them indefinitely after their or my breathing stops.  I hope for this, but the hope gives way to really wanting it sometimes, and I most notice that in the long shadow of their absence of course (such as this whole year since Ladybug died), but also when I stumble across entanglement concepts or plays or poems that blur lines about time/love/etc.  

At most logical, I reason out that they don't cease so long as love and pining for / joy for continue on in my body/heart/mind/attachment for them.  At my least logical, I imagine we are quantumly entangled in some way, and so surely have not just lucked out the one time in crossing paths in this massive place, but will luck out indefinitely.  I love them so incredibly that my reason can't/won't imagine this not to be true, or doesn't wish to give way to a type of love that doesn't allow for that at least.  I also have to fight the worried sense at times that Ladybug feels lost somewhere out in that vast universe, and wonders where I am; this is an awful trick of my mind to play on me, and I wish it would stop.  I have done similar things with other loved ones who've died, mostly through repetitive dreams.  I can also get very gray about the gills over it all too, and start thinking very flatly, "you're going to die, and you're going to die, and we're all going to die" as a dark cautionary to myself to stop attaching and loving - this happened most acutely after Naya's dad died when he was 29 and I was 24.  Interestingly, the day or two before I fell into that mode, I was at my most irrational when I had to write his obituary one night, and 1-yr old Naya was asleep in her crib in the next room, and the people who'd been hanging around me since he drowned had all gone home. I kept picking up the pen to write words about him onto a paper, and then collapsing into a heap on top of the paper in the chair I was in.  I simply felt I couldn't do this act, shouldn't have to, and so could not.  Then, like a clear inner voice in my head, paired with a sensation like two hands sliding down my arms, his voice seemed to say, "Pick up the pen, we're going to write this together."  Then I picked up the pen and I wrote it in one session, no need for editing later, as it came out nicely written & how it needed to.  I soon knew (within a day or two) that this was a really great coping mechanism my mind/emotions/body had allowed me to experience to get through that.  Yet, it remains hard still (despite not believing a bit about intact spirits, non-disbursed atoms/energy after death) to fully discount how that felt in that chair, and how much it helped. I know he didn't help me pick up a pen, but letting myself quasi entertain that maybe some particles of his impacted some particles of mine or so on, well, I like letting myself quasi entertain that, and not be so concretely sure his particles had absolutely nothing to do with that.  So, since then I've been much more tolerant and apt to kindly look upon those who are in such a desperate state as to need that kind of comfort to that extent, or to the extent of people who feel 100% sure that those they loved who died first will be waiting around the death bed to take you into their spirity, loving arms.  It is hard stuff to do without that; it is hard stuff to do with it. I don't necessarily see the good in being cold and clinical about it, even if much of my mind is in fact cold and clinical about it; when my mind doesn't want to be, and wants quantum entanglement (i.e., wants to misuse the term "quantum entanglement" to have to do with love), I let it. 

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From Jared:

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2016/10/29/13301590/how-ouija-boards-work-debunked-ideomotor-effect

My skepticism has lately been sealing its cracks, but one remains. I see our brains as a translation matrix between our spirits and our bodies, and brain damage interferes with the spirit's ability to manifest in the physical world. I haven't found anything else that bridges that divide. 

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From Isaac:

"Let's see. I seem to recall that you wanted us to just send a paragraph or two about our personal spooky experience.

I remember magnets were pretty darn neat to me when I was young...

And then hearing about that there were people walking around on the other side of the world and that was kind of weird and hard to imagine ... Maybe it's just a matter of having to imagine the size of the Earth to make it work.

At some point I thought about whether the right hemisphere was kind of having its own whole separate Consciousness and just not telling me about it.

At some point I began to notice parts of myself physically rebelling against my intended course of action , that was interesting, maybe spooky...

The idea that purely causal Universe might mean that we were trapped and forced to do with the chain of cause-and-effect demanded felt a little suffocated... Until I silence that I wasn't trapped in the chain, but rather a active part of the chain... Will I still get trapped with it but also an active agent which makes it different dot-dot-dot without having to be the ultimate originator of anything. Julian Jaynes' whole idea of Consciousness itself being essentially a type of hallucination that makes other hallucinations something other than hallucination was kind of spooky." _______________________________________________________________ From Annette: "Hello!
This topic is loaded for me.  I still, though having moved away from
many beliefs and the structure of those beliefs, experience an element
of surprise when encountering this topic all the myriad
interpretations. The word paranormal has historically invoked thoughts
of ghosts and almost silliness to me.  Most definitely it had invoked
a feeling of not-quite-right-ness.  I was raised, not in my family
alone (and definitely not to the degree of my church) to believe that
the spiritual world was something very real and serious and not to be
thought of lightly.  It was hardly even noted as "supernatural" but
more as "the spiritual realm".  In my life the world unseen was almost
given more weight than the physical one. It is hard to parse out was
was taught to me and how I interpreted those teachings.  Life with the
spirit world had to do with a  very real and constant battle for the
soul of every person.  My experience was scary and meaningful and
frought and never, ever, silly or fun.  The thought of a horror movie
or "messing around" with a ouija board was not entertained or
entertaining.  The explanation of that fear was that my life had big
purpose, therefore big wars waged.  I include this link as a small
window, though fictional, into the midst of those around me.  In the
mid eighties there was a thing called "the Satanic Panic" that not
only was prevalent in church but also in the secular realm.
Back-masking was spoken of frequently and angels and demons were an
ever-present part of conversation.  I find this topic difficult
because I still don't even know the difference (thank you Webster and
Sabine) between all the definitions so closely related to the "spirit
world". It is difficult to condense my thoughts on it, because it was
absolutely integral to my daily life, to its core, for more than 25
years and still creeps in in disturbing and difficult ways.  When life
is described and experienced as ONE WAY for so long, making those
changes takes more than time.  I am very much looking forward to other
people's interpretations of this topic and beg patience for mine.

A window- When This Present Darkness came out, I was 11 years old and read it
front to back while being the main cook at my dad's logging job on
McGregor Lake.  I was super into all the alternative music of the time
(and even in that I did not like to get into the too too dark of it)
and a bit averse to the sun.  Hanging out in my cabin (super luxurious
for a logging job, mind you) and soaking in the supernatural world AS
FICTION something that I dealt with every day.  Lost many years of
sleep over, both prior and for years to come.  I hate that
indoctrination and fiction fed the grotesque when maybe, maybe,
someone was trying to say "Look! Isn't it great that God triumphs over
all of this darkness?".  You are important, therefor, you should be
afraid and also confident.  Purposeful.  I have so many things to say
about this, but will adhere to the rules (thank goodness!! ha!), in
keeping my thoughts concise at Banter and listening very openly.
My thoughts and experiences with mental health education and diagnosis
have shed great light and given room to many questions regarding the
world unseen.  Of course the world, our own individual worlds, are not
only flesh and bone and brain and matter, but how that is explained is
still a vast mystery and one I am glad is not so dripping with fear to
me as it once was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Present_Darkness

Also an important note-when asked at Junior Miss (the only competition
of it's sort I was ever involved in) what I wanted to see in the
world, my answer was "a real, live fairy".  I would still very much
like that."