Rational Philosophy

On how and why we can be distracted.

At $3 million per mile, if the Department of Homeland Security meets this year’s target of 690 miles of border fence between the US and Mexico, the construction budget will tally about $2.1 billion, a hefty slice of the overall budget for homeland security. Before the fence project was approved back in 2006, Michael Chertoff, who is in charge of building it, had previously expressed doubts about its effectiveness, especially in remote areas. More recently he’s been criticized for using his waiver of local laws to forge ahead with construction so that his agency can meet the 690 mile target set by the senate.

Since his appointment back in 2005, Chertoff has said that the US should be spending dollars and efforts wisely by sifting out high risk from low risk targets. He’s also admitted recently that the fence doesn’t do much more than deter the least motivated border crossers.

I realize that Chertoff has to do what he’s charged with doing. But here we have a situation in which the man in charge of homeland security clearly has his doubts about whether we should be dedicating so much and effort to building a fence that won’t keep out the more determined, and therefore higher-risk crossers.

Which brings us back to the true reason we’re building a fence. It’s got nothing to do with homeland security. House Republicans pushed the idea of the border fence because they were worried about a backlash from legislation that would give amnesty and legal status to illegal immigrants. They first wanted to do something to strengthen border security. The fence was it.

(As an ironic side note the proposed path of the fence splices the University of Texas campus in two, leaving the technology center and the golf course of the Mexican side of the border.)

Building the fence is incurring huge effort, huge expense, but most importantly is causing huge distraction from the real issues of what we’re trying to achieve and why.

In a characteristically painstaking and relentless investigation of the notorious photographs taken at Abu Ghraib, Errol Morris digs into the history and context of one particular photograph of MP Sabrina Harman smiling next to a corpse:

As Morris argues convincingly, this photograph is dangerously distracting. We find it almost impossible to see past Harman’s smile. We focus on the horror and disgust of the notion that someone would pose and smile for such a picture rather than wondering why the man is dead and what happened to him.

Morris reveals how the administration and the military used our instinctive horror as a ploy to distract us from the abuse, torture, and murder of prisoners. He also reveals that subsequent to this photograph, Harman realized that she’d been lied to that the prisoner, Al Jamadi, had died of a heart attack and went back to take a series of forensic photographs revealing the extensive injuries he’d suffered during interrogation.

Morris also tells us how it is that despite the extensive wrong-doings and crimes that US forces and contractors have committed during the Iraq war, at the implicit and explicit behest of the current administration, there’s been no appropriate accountability: By launching multiple investigations all focused on narrow slices of the big picture, the administration has effectively diffused our attention and blurred evidence of the overall pattern to the wrongdoing. Only the minor characters have been taken to task, the Harman’s of the world.

Morris points out in his article that we can be distracted for many reasons. We mistake Harman’s smile, for instance, for a real smile. But an expert in facial expressions concludes that it is simply a fake smile. A social smile. And we’re typically very poor at recognizing the difference. (Less than one percent of people can naturally detect the small clues that betray these kinds of differences in facial expression.)

Morris asks in his piece why we haven’t evolved to be better at avoiding distraction. The answer given? Because it hasn’t been that useful. But why not? Why isn’t it useful for us to know when we’re focusing on a border fence rather than border security, or seeing a fake smile and not a real smile?

In everyday life, we build up an additive perspective of people and events. We tend to be suspicious of strangers and wary of new circumstances. But over time we build up a consistent picture of our lives and the people in them. A fake smile here or there is immaterial to the greater perception we have of someone and his or her motives.

Whereas, when it comes to events and people in public life, distant from our everyday lives, but nevertheless critical in some ways to the lives we lead, evolution has had far less time to allow us to adapt the kinds of skills we need to make good judgments.

Prior to the advent of democracy, decisions of any broad weight were made by a few people and handed down without any chance for recourse. In a democracy, it’s important for us to understand and act on the reasons and evasions behind the building of a marginally useful border fence, but we’re ill-equipped to crunch all the necessary information and see past the distraction. Similarly to be fully understood, Sabrina Herman’s fake smile has to be studied and interpreted, many people interviewed, information unearthed and brought into focus; a feat only made possible by the modern invention of photography and by the assiduous and dogged attention of a documentary film-maker.

When we read Morris’s account of Sabrina Harman’s photographic record we’re persuaded that rather than being contemptible, she has actually been quite a brave figure. Under difficult conditions she opened her eyes to the bad acts of the war and captured them in a way that makes us feel more than a little uncomfortable about what we’ve personally done or not done to bring our leaders to account.

On the rise in America’s prison population, execution, and administrative wrongdoing.

The United States has a prison population far higher than anywhere else in the world. This is a recent phenomenon. About thirty years ago the US prison population started to climb and now other countries regard the US’s penal system as shocking.

The Supreme Court just upheld the use of a lethal cocktail injection for the administration of the death penalty, citing case law supporting the idea that the mere possibility of cruel and painful death isn’t a reason to put a stop to lethal injection. The constitutionality of capital punishment distracts us from whether it is a punishment worthy of an enlightened society.

And slowly but surely details of the Bush administration’s disregard for human rights and US law continue to emerge. Bush and his senior team spent a good deal of time and energy devising mechanisms that would allow them to torture detainees. (Of course, the administration’s blatant disregard for appropriate justification wasn’t limited to the abuse of prisoners. It has been a consistent pattern.)

These three examples seem to indicate a disturbing trend. Most disturbing, the Bush administration’s conviction that it is above the law, simply because it believes it is right. While Europe (much scoffed at by the likes of Bush) has moved inexorably and bumpily toward cooperation and enlightenment, the US has veered off on its own, deluded by the idea of itself as a nation that can remain fixed, or fixate, on the idea of itself as infallible.

As we’ve seen with the Catholic church in recent years, the infallible have a lot to learn. Errors of national ego punctuate the history of civilization like buckshot. The only thing that can save us from even worse transgressions and further isolation is a healthy dose of humility.

On the logic or otherwise of war, protest, and reaction.

Today’s current events drew me to think about the philosophy of conflict in all its forms. Further reports of the violent and brutal repression of protests in Kenya, sparked by a reaction against the election results there, university protests against the Catholic church in Rome, Canadian condemnation (through its torture watch list) of inhumane detention and interrogation techniques being used by the US government, and the growing call for shoring up the economy with a stimulus package.

(Putting the economic stimulus package on this list may seem odd. But I deliberately want to stretch the idea of conflict to include “intervention” since it seems to me that the concept of conflict may be subordinate to the concept of intervention. (Another story I could have used as an example discusses Google’s philanthropic appendage — Google.org.))

The Kenyan troubles provide two philosophical questions: Can we logically and rationally examine whether violent protest is justified and under what conditions? And, secondly, can we logically and rationally examine whether harsh and violent suppression of protest is justified and, if so, under what conditions?

Emotionally, if we sense that a group has been wronged, we tend to sympathize with it in its protests. And if the protests meet with harsh suppression, we may even tend to sympathize with some level of violence on the part of the protesters. (This is why Ghandi’s philosophy of passive resistance caused such a stir and continues to stand out in people’s minds. It struck us as odd.) Conversely, if we feel that the group hasn’t been wronged in proportion to the protest, and that general order and safety is threatened by the protesters, we tend to sympathize with the use of some force (short of unwarranted violence) in maintaining order. I realize I’m not speaking for all of society in saying this, but just painting an emotional picture.

Rationally, though, can we justify violent protests or violent action against protests?

The student protests in Rome against the Catholic church raise a similar question without the violence. The Italian protests revolve around some of the incumbent Pope’s ill-chosen and perhaps ill-meant words.

And Canada’s arm’s-length but telling criticism of the US’s recent human rights record by putting the US on its torture watch list provides an example of confrontation that is charged because of the statement it makes rather than the mechanism it employs.

Which brings us to the sluggish economy and the growing support for some kind of stimulus package. Action, reaction. Situation, confrontation.

The concepts involved in confrontation seem to be 1. dissatisfaction with the status quo, and 2. judgment that it is right to act to effect some change to the status quo.

A conscious actors, human beings have gone beyond the simple response to stimuli that governs the actions of non-conscious creatures. Consciousness gives us the power to act against a stimulated response. In other words, we may be dissatisfied with a situation but decide to do nothing to change it. When an animal is moved to anger, it’s natural response may be to act aggressively. As human beings we can choose to act on this response or not.

As to the concept of dissatisfaction, we cannot control it. An adverse situation will either lead to dissatisfaction or it won’t.

Then there’s the question of whether it is right to confront the situation that has caused our disatissfaction, and how we judge this.

To put it simply, in the non-conscious world it is always right to respond according to the stimulus. Whereas, in the conscious world, it may not be right to respond to the stimulus.

The Fed and the politicians concerned about the slump must judge whether it is wiser in the long term to stimulate the economy than to leave it alone. The judgment on whether to confront the slowing economy should rightly take into account the long term economic impact. A confrontation based only on short term fears about a recession would be misguided.

In Rome, the protesters seem to have forgotten about the value of freedom of speech by forcing the Pope to cancel his visit. Their confrontation seems to be based simply on short term anger at his visit rather than long term consideration of what’s best for the country. Perhaps they’d do more for separation of church and state by letting the sinister Ratzinger visit and countering his dubious social theories with elegant rebuttals.

But what of the philosophy of violent protest or suppression of violent protest? Again, it seems that, however abhorrent violence may be, the long term good or ill to society of violence must be weighed against the ill to society of the status quo. From the perspective of the good of humanity it was right and good for the nations of Europe and the US to fight the Nazis. The long term good to the world warranted the violence and loss of life incurred.

In Kenya, is more being gained through the protests than would be gained without them? If I understand the situation, the Kenyan protesters are confronting not just the election of a president they don’t like, but the suspicion of electoral fraud. In which case, for them, the very basis of civilized society is at stake. In which case, if they have good reason for their suspicions, it seems that their confrontation, meeting violence with violence if need be could be judged to be warranted.

Which is not to say that peaceful means of protest in Kenya or elsewhere should be disregarded or abandoned as either weak or ineffective. Far from it. As Ghandi showed, sometimes non-violence can be far more dramatic and dramatically effective than violence.

�

Former CIA agent John Kiriakou demonstrates the difficulty of sifting through and applying conflicting principles. Kiriakou feels that waterboarding of suspected terrorists saved lives by eliciting information that wouldn’t have otherwise been forthcoming (and while his evidence for making this claim isn’t irrefutable, neither does it seem to be readily dismissed). And yet he finds himself repelled by the technique and feels that it’s no longer necessary. The Bush administration has found itself struggling to uphold severe interrogation techniques as useful and lawful, while wanting to claim that America does not torture.

Similarly, as the battle rages over male foreskins, one could say that parents face a similar dissonance when deciding whether to have a child circumcised. If one believes the claims for better adult health, but one feels that circumcision deprives the male child his natural dominion over his foreskin, how does one decide?

The philosophical problem at work in such matters seems to be the way that we separate out then synthesize the particular concepts and value hierarchies.

In the matter of torture, two fundamental concepts seem to be involved — The concept of eliciting information that may be critical to saving lives. And the concept of following a code of conduct that respects certain inviolable principles about human rights.

The difficulty arises because these concepts rest on very different frameworks. The first requires a straightforward cost benefit calculation. Is torture an effective way to get the information we want with acceptable practical consequences (such as retribution or backlash)? The second requires that we set aside practical implications, making them irrelevant, and commit to a course of humane conduct that would apply under any conditions.

Likewise a very similar dissonance exists for parents considering circumcision. Do they apply the abstract principle that the child has certain rights over his body, or do they make a decision based on the practical benefits or otherwise of circumcision?

Can we in fact synthesize the two sides of such dissonant questions? I believe we can.

First we need to raise the question up a level: In the case of torture, we would frame this higher question as follows: Do I believe that a set of principles grounded in human rights should supersede any practical implications of such principles? Or, in other words, do I consider human rights so important that I would uphold them even when other lives may be risked?

I realize that in one sense we’ve simply put the dissonance at arms length, but now we have a question that we can sink our teeth into. Principles reflect not the moment and circumstances at hand, but something perpetual and far reaching. If we choose to adhere to principles it is because we have concluded that these principles reflect something constant and worthy — such as human rights. It’s in the nature of a principle that it shouldn’t be deflected by the press of the current situation.

What this kind of analysis makes clear is that expedient or plastic principles are not principles at all but simply become part of the cost benefit calculation. When Bush redefines torture so that he can say he upholds the principles of human rights but supports severe interrogation, he is fooling himself. He has simply incorporated the cost benefit analysis of skirting the torture issue into his decision about whether to permit and condone torture. The matter becomes a sliding scale — what level of benefit justifies torture?

Saying that something is against one’s principles, but not in this case because the stakes are too high, is the same as having no principles on the matter whatsoever.

The New York Times article today on Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations is both appalling and fascinating in its thorough exposure of the administration’s dogged efforts to encourage and enable the CIA to use a wide range and combination of brutal interrogation techniques without having to worry about their legality. But beyond the pertinent questions of what constitutes torture and in what ways the administration blurred the line between branches of government, and, once again, abused its executive power, I was struck by the universal themes of courage and cowardice that sprang out of the circumstances of the story.

The Times reports on a White House meeting involving James Comey, deputy attorney general: “Mr. Comey stated that “no lawyer” would endorse Mr. Yoo’s justification for the N.S.A. program, Mr. Addington demurred, saying he was a lawyer and found it convincing. Mr. Comey shot back: “No good lawyer,” according to someone present.”

Sitting at home reading the newspaper or watching events on TV it’s easy to regard the administration as laughable and not worthy of respect. But to be in its midst, as Comey was, surrounded by powerful supporters of the White House, with your job on the line, his boldness took real courage.

The Times also reports that within the circle of unswervingly loyal Bush insiders “there was a sense that Comey was a wimp” on national security matters.

I’m reminded of Plato’s Socratic dialogues. In criticizing Comey’s moral stance, the administration defines a specific instance of “courage” as the ability to follow through on severe methods of interrogation in order to get valuable information. Socrates would never let them get away with that kind of rhetorical sleight of hand.

It’s notable that at no point in the several years that this story has been unfolding has the administration appeared to betray any compunction about using severe interrogation methods. This may be an extreme thing to say, but one gets the impression that the administration does not view the detainees as human or deserving of human rights, and, therefore, feels that torturing the detainees couldn’t possibly be inhuman.

And perhaps this is their true perspective. It would explain a great deal.

Let’s suppose for a moment that some within the administration don’t feel that the detainees retain any human rights; that any form of torture is justified if it achieves results. Is this a form of cowardice? Is it courageous?

Courage and cowardice are concepts. They have meaning only as formulated through mental processes. A tree is not courageous because it holds fast against the wind (unless it appears in a poem, at which point it becomes a conceptual tree).

The concept of courage is directly opposed to the concept of cowardice. And the concept of courage has as its root two other concepts — fear or an awareness of risk, and strength — holding one’s course despite the fear. Fear is a direct emotional response to a situation of real or perceived danger. Strength or resistence to fear is a result of our conscious faculty, holding back our natural urge to give in to the fear, the power of the conscious mind to control our more immediate fight or flight responses.

Cowardice, in contrast, arises from the concepts of fear and capitulation. We feel fear, we are aware that we do not want to or should not give in to the fear, yet we give in to it anyway.

Going back to my working premise that maybe some in the administration don’t view the detainees as deserving of human rights. If this is correct, then to condone and enable torture of the detainees requires no courage on their part. But neither is it, in itself, cowardly. (Since they are not, in holding this stance, capiltulating to any fear; they feel no fear of the consequences of this approach.)

However, at the risk of extending my conjecture too far, the perspective I’m presuming exists in Cheney and others itself rests on cowardice. — Whenever we decide on a course of action and act, we risk error. If we don’t recognize the possibility for error, it is because we are afraid we will have to admit our failure. Refusing to admit failure, of course, is a hallmark of the current administration. This then, is cowardice at a deeper level.

To build this logic back up: The White House chooses to pursue a policy of severe interrogation that denies the detainees their human rights. The White House refuses to accept that this premise and the course of action being followed may be wrong. In refusing to accept that it may be wrong, the White House acts out of cowardice.

Others in the story betray a more simple and obvious form of cowardice: Gonzalez and Yoo, for instance, who defend the administration’s tactics for their own ends, to please their masters, or just so they don’t have to say ‘no.’

�