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Voting, Cynicism, and Irrational Optimism of Democracy

Act of voting requires us to overcome cynicism

   Andrew Fiala

Originally published Fresno Bee 2012-06-16

Most Californians elected not to vote last week. Statewide voter turnout was less than 30%. Fresno County turnout was around 20%.

It is rational not to vote — especially in an election like this one. There were a couple of referenda where your vote might have made a difference. But in other races, the incumbent had no viable opposition. Republicans already knew that Romney was the party’s choice; and Democrats had no choice at all. It is remarkable that anyone bothered to vote, given the inevitability of much of the ballot.

What is even more remarkable is that some voted for candidates who had no chance of winning, like Ron Paul, who got 10% of the Republican vote. This seems quite irrational. Why vote for a candidate who cannot win? Isn’t it easier to just stay home?

I talked about voting with professor David Schecter, the chair of the Political Science Department at Fresno State. Schecter maintained that democracy is not a spectator sport. We have the opportunity — maybe even an obligation — to get involved and to vote.

Schecter suggested that there are many reasons why people vote. Voting can be an expressive act. When we vote, we affirm solidarity with others who have fought and died to achieve the franchise. When we vote, we act as role models — showing our children what we value. Some may even view voting as a moral obligation or a duty of citizenship, along the same lines as military service or jury duty.

Schecter pointed out, however, that social scientists also explain voting behavior as a matter of habituation. If your parents vote, you are likely to vote. People who voted in previous elections are more likely to vote in the next election than people who have not voted. Political scientists also can predict electoral behavior based upon demographic data.

But we like to believe that there is more to our own decisions than mere habit or demography. Can mere habit explain why we continue to vote when we know our votes don’t matter much? Or why some people vote for candidates who have no chance of winning?

One explanation is hinted at by the American philosopher Josiah Royce and his analysis of “lost causes.”

Royce discusses the spiritual power that is generated by those who persevere in the face of loss. When we remain loyal to a lost cause, we grieve what we’ve lost while renewing our efforts toward the future.

In many cases, it is rational to give up and surrender. But for some people, the lost cause provokes even more effort.

Royce describes a kind of energy and joy that comes from idealistically serving a cause “of which the world, as it is, is not yet ready.”

Royce’s idea helps explain why people remain committed to religious faith. It even helps explain why people keep getting married despite the fact that many marriages end in divorce.

And it explains our irrational faith in electoral politics. We want to believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that our votes count.

Every election season, we somehow find the will to believe that this time things will be different. We set our cynicism aside and go to the polls. Even when we know our votes don’t count for much, we vote. Or we vote for candidates who have no chance of winning.

There is a kind of irrational optimism and idealism among those who vote. Voters express faith in the system when they vote for losing candidates, the lost causes of American politics.

Why bother? The lost-cause voter wants to somehow send a message to someone, hoping that someday the world will be ready for a change.

The act of voting requires us to overcome cynicism with enthusiasm.

Voters were right to conclude that their votes didn’t matter much last week. Chances are that the turnout will be greater in the fall — when there are more choices that really matter. But we might worry that we’ve lost our idealism and given in to cynicism.

The 70% to 80% of voters who stayed home last week may suspect that American politics really is a spectator sport. If that’s the conclusion, then democracy itself is on its way toward becoming a lost cause.

 

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Mean and Irrational Hatred of Homosexuals

Let’s grow beyond our mean-spirited mocking

   Andrew Fiala

Originally published 2012-06-02

The world would be much better off if we could learn to mind our own business and refrain from mocking others. But we are social animals. We meddle and mock as we vie for status in the herd. Unfortunately, it feels good to laugh together with friends while ridiculing others. We enjoy teaming up against the vulnerable.

This has something to do with our fascination with scandalous gossip about the private lives of other people. There is entertainment value in denunciation and condemnation. Many seem to enjoy outrage and indignation, especially when it is directed at marginalized others. We like to tease and torment the weak. Cruelty helps us feel powerful.

Mean-spirited jokes help “us” display power over “them.” The most famous story of jeering ridicule is found in the Christian tradition. Jesus, the marginalized outsider, is given a crown of thorns and taunted as “king of the Jews.” History is full of cruel stories in which the executioners laugh as they murder their victims, desecrating their bodies and dancing on their graves.

Scornful joking continues to plague us. Last year at this time, comedian Tracy Morgan said that if his son were gay, he would stab him to death. Morgan later apologized, saying he was just joking. Earlier this month, a pastor from North Carolina, Sean Harris, said that if your 4-year-old son behaved effeminately you should squash that behavior “like a cockroach.” Harris continued: “Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. OK? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male.” Harris later claimed he was joking–about the violence; but not about God’s condemnation of homosexuality.

It is difficult to understand why people hate homosexuals enough to joke about stabbing or beating them; or why anyone would think such jokes are funny. There are much more important things to worry about than other people’s sexuality. If anything falls into the “none of your business” category, it is other people’s sex lives.

But people are obsessed with the sex of others. Another North Carolina minister, Charles Worley, recently preached that homosexuals should be rounded up behind electrified fences where they would die out because they can’t reproduce. He went on to say, “It makes me pukin’ sick to think about … can you imagine kissing some man?” The obvious solution is not to imagine it, if you don’t like it. But we can’t seem to keep our imaginations to ourselves.

Some might blame our hypermediated culture and a degeneration of morals. Our culture does promote voyeuristic mockery as a spectator sport. Everywhere we turn there are comedians and pundits judging, condemning and ridiculing. Electronic communication makes it easier for us to deride and jeer each other behind the anonymity of a phony screen name.

But the problem of gossip, mockery and meddling has a long history. Some verses in the Bible condemn “idle talk.” The Stoic philosophers taught that it was wise to learn to hold your tongue. The Buddhists encouraged “right speech” and the virtue of silence.

There is also a virtue in minding your own business. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius explained, in good Stoic fashion, that it is difficult enough to tend to your own affairs. The hard work of ensuring that your own life is honorable leaves little time for gossip and meddling. He wrote, “To wonder what so-and-so is doing and why means a loss of opportunity for some other task.”

Social animals compete for status within the herd. They push the weak specimens around in a game of power. They laugh and bray and howl together. And as anyone who has a dog can confirm, they have a hard time keeping their noses out of each other’s private parts.

Of course, we ought to aspire to be better than animals. We are reasonable beings who can control our imaginations and our laughter. We don’t have to be cruel. We can hold our tongues and keep silent. And we really ought to keep our noses out of other people’s business.

 

 

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Animal Play, Religion, and Poverty

All children deserve time to play

   Andrew Fiala

Originally published Fresno Bee 2012-05-19

Most mammals play. We even play with members of different species — as we do with our pets. This is an odd development in a world in which species are supposed to struggle for existence against one another.

Animals at play are not struggling to survive. Rather, they are engaged in imaginative and empathetic activity. Some nonhuman animals even appear to have a basic idea of “fair play.”

At least that is what Robert Bellah claims. Bellah, one of the most important scholars of religion in the U.S., gave a lecture last week at Fresno State on his new book, “Religion in Human Evolution.” The book explains the evolutionary roots of ethics, religion and philosophy.

Bellah argues that play is an important source of these higher goods. Play occurs in a “relaxed field,” when we are not focused on mere existence. Religious rituals, for example, are examples of rule-governed play. Philosophy, art and science develop as we play with ideas. These activities are meaningful on their own, without reference to the struggle to survive. And they provide solace and satisfaction, as a break from the labor of living.

One could argue that a fully human life is one in which there are ample opportunities for enjoying playful and empathetic activity, outside of the concerns of work and survival. All work and no play makes us dull animals — as the saying might go. Bellah suggests that this is true of many species. Animals thrive when they are free to explore, relax and socialize.

The importance of leisure and play is found in our dreams of a perfect world. Our utopian ideals and religious paradises describe a world without labor, struggle or conflict. Christians dream of lions lying down with lambs. And Plato imagined a peaceful world in which we would play at pastimes — “sacrificing, singing and dancing.”

It makes sense that intelligent animals would imagine an ideal world in which the struggle for existence was overcome. We lament the hard work of life. We aspire to freedom from want. We even imagine that after the toils of life, we may be rewarded by resting in peace without the need to labor.

Surplus resources and physical security make it possible for us to play, reflect, explore and create. Bellah explains that even in nonhuman species, play behavior is made possible by protective parents who provide for basic needs. Nurturing parents allow the young to experiment and romp without fear of predators or hunger. This sort of nurturance allows the animal to take a break from feeding and fighting in order to frolic.

During his visit to Fresno, Bellah returned several times to the issue of poverty and injustice. The sad fact is that there are many human beings who are not free to play — people who have little time or energy for singing, dancing, science, art, religion or philosophy. This is unfair, especially when others enjoy substantial luxury.

The idea of social justice, as found in the world’s great religious and philosophical traditions, develops from this basic idea of fairness. Philosophers and prophets have long criticized injustice and inequality. Bellah suggests that fairness itself may have roots in animal evolution. He claims that some animals seem to show a sense of “fair play.” Dogs will take turns, for example, chasing each other.

Bellah connects play with childhood. But he notes that in some parts of the world the play of childhood remains a privilege of the wealthy, unavailable for poor children. Across the globe, millions of children go hungry, while Americans spend more than $50 billion per year on pet food and animal care.

Bellah writes that one way of describing unfairness is to say that “while some work, others play.” We might add that there is something unfair about a world in which dogs are well-fed, while children starve.

We flatter ourselves in thinking we are more highly evolved than the other animals. But a species that fails to provide for its own children is not clearly superior. Bellah’s evolutionary account of religion reminds us that there is still a long way to go to make sure that all human children have the opportunity to live as well as our dogs do.

 

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Animal Freedom and Cosmopolitan Human Borders

Wildlife knows no man-made political boundaries

   Andrew Fiala

Originally published Fresno Bee 2012-05-05

Editor’s note: Andrew Fiala has just returned from sabbatical, which took him to Israel and Greece.

Birds and other migratory animals are cosmopolitan. They move across borders, following the seasons. Migratory animals remind us that no species owns the world or a particular place. We pass through the world. We don’t possess it. And we share the earth with other humans and species.

Before I returned to Fresno, I visited a Greek wildlife hospital, which treats and houses dozens of injured birds from a variety of species: storks, pelicans, eagles, including many endangered species. These birds fly through Greece from Europe to Africa and back. Even though Greece has many safe havens for such birds — isolated mountains and uninhabited islands — many birds are killed for sport by hunters or inadvertently poisoned. The wildlife refuge houses a sad population of once- beautiful animals who have been permanently disabled by human ignorance.

Healthy birds make amazingly long migrations that take them across heavily contested borders. Every season hundreds of millions of birds pass through Israel and the Palestinian territories. These birds cross borders, which the humans below them cannot cross.

Another important migratory flyway traverses the politically fragmented island of Cyprus, in the eastern Mediterranean. Millions of migratory birds pass over the border that divides Greek and Turkish parts of the island. Unfortunately, many of them are trapped and eaten in a yearly slaughter that appalls bird lovers.

I had a conversation with some Greeks about the conflict in Cyprus and remaining tensions with Turkey. One woman said that she hoped that the Greeks would eventually take back Constantinople — using the Greek name for the city that is now called Istanbul. People around the world continue to hold dangerous ideas about borders, possessions and national pride.

From the standpoint of the animals that roam the earth such things are irrelevant. The great animal migrations existed long before humans invented cities and nations. In fact, we were once migratory animals, following the herds out of Africa. It is only fairly recently, a few millennia, that we have created the borders that corral us into nation-states.

A number of philosophers have been trying to imagine a world without borders, arguing that such a world would be more natural, less violent and more just. The cosmopolitan vision wants justice to apply equally to all people across the globe. Cosmopolitans want to address global problems such as world hunger, poverty and inequality. A cosmopolitan world would be open to migration, allowing laborers to move across borders to find jobs. And it would be less inclined toward nationalism and war.

The cosmopolitan idea has roots in ancient Greek philosophy. The word “cosmopolitan” comes from the Greek. It can be literally translated as “citizen of the world.” Cosmopolitanism is focused on the common interests of the human species, instead of on narrow national and cultural identifications.

One source for this idea is the ancient philosopher Diogenes the Cynic. Diogenes maintained, “the only true commonwealth was one that was as wide as the universe.” Diogenes chose to live according to nature — renouncing the trappings of civilization. His critics said he lived like a dog (the word “cynic” is related to the ancient Greek name for dog). Diogenes claimed that our cultural, religious, and political ideas make us unhappy and unnecessarily confine us.

The Cynics were on to something. From the vantage point of nature, our political differences do not matter much. We often forget that all human beings are members of the same species. Just as we often forget that we share the earth with a variety of other species with whom we ought to learn to co-exist.

Human borders enclose temporary settlements. The ancient Greeks gave way to Romans, Christians and Turks. And now the Eurozone is teetering. Civilizations rise and fall. But the birds and butterflies continue their yearly journey. These migrations will persist long after our civilization is forgotten — unless we kill the animals first.

Human beings like to believe that we are smarter than the other critters roaming the earth. But are we? If we were really smart, we’d stop fighting about names and borders and learn to cooperate with the other citizens of the world. Truly rational animals would strive to live in harmony with all the animals — human and nonhuman — with whom we share this small, fragile planet.

 

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Hope and the Wreckage of Civilization

Remember and honor sacrifices before us

   Andrew Fiala

Originally published Fresno Bee 2012-04-21

Editor’s note: Andrew Fiala contributed this column from Greece, where he is doing research while on sabbatical.

Sometimes hope is hard to find. Times are tough. Jesus was crucified. Socrates was killed. And so it goes.

My experience in Israel left me pessimistic. I asked nearly everyone I met — Israelis and Arabs — whether they were hopeful about the future. The vast majority admitted that they were not. A few confessed that they hadn’t felt hopeful since the Prime Minister, Yitzakh Rabin, was assassinated in 1995 by a right-wing radical who was opposed to the Oslo peace plan. That’s a long time to live without hope.

And the turmoil continues, with rocket attacks, missile strikes, protests, arrests, hunger strikes and rattling sabers. One Israeli confessed that he had obtained European passports for his children — just in case.

But Europe is not much better. The economy is so bad in some places that suicide rates are climbing and journalists have described a new phenomenon, “suicide by economic crisis.” Things look particularly bleak in Greece, where I’m concluding my sabbatical research. One in five Greeks is unemployed. There is more austerity to come.

On April 4, just as I arrived here, a 77-year-old pensioner, Dimitris Christoulas, killed himself in Athens in front of Parliament. His suicide was not merely an act of despair. It was a political act. Christoulas left a note calling on people to take up arms and “hang the traitors of this country.” Riots erupted the next day in Athens. And so it goes.

The day after the riots in Athens, I visited the Parthenon, the massive temple to Athena that sits on the hill overlooking the city. Later, I had a conversation about the economic crisis with a Greek woman I had met. I told her I visited the Parthenon. She scowled. She said she hates the Parthenon. “It was built by slaves,” she said, “a symbol of oppression.”

It is possible to draw a dark conclusion from the history of the world. In the end there are only ruins and graves. And much of what is left was built on the backs of slaves who worked and died in obscurity. And so it goes.

I’ve been surprised to discover that many archaeological sites are littered with unfiltered shards and uncounted fragments. There are too many broken pieces of the past to collect them all. The remnants are too small, too insignificant. In many places, crumbling columns and shattered pottery lie piled in heaps, covered with weeds.

The earth is littered with the wreckage of proud ancient civilizations that have vanished. The saddest cases are the relics of cultures whose languages remain un-deciphered, whose rituals and gods and slaves are gone forever.

This can leave you feeling hopeless. The American novelist Kurt Vonnegut once asked, “what can a thoughtful man hope for, given the experience of the past million years?” He answered: “nothing.” But we must be careful with this conclusion and the apathetic shrug of “and so it goes.”

It is better to listen to the words of Rabin, the murdered Israeli Prime Minister: “We will not let up. We will not give in. Peace will triumph over all our enemies, because the alternative is grim for us all.”

If you don’t have hope, why bother to complain — what difference would it make? If you give up hope, then the grim alternative comes true. Hope is an act of solidarity, a protest against evil, and a rebuke to the indifference of the universe.

The American philosopher William James once explained — in an essay called “Is Life Worth Living?” — that a sense of honor and gratitude toward all of those who have lived and died before us should give us a reason to keep working for a better world. He said that we must do some self-denying service in return for all those lives upon which our own is built.

The ruins and violence in Athens and Jerusalem remind us of the long struggle of humanity. How many millions have lived and fought and died so that the world could be a better place? When things look dark, it’s important to remember the sacrifices of those who came before: the prophets, politicians, philosophers, and slaves upon whose shoulders we stand.