Simon Baron-Cohen in The New York Times:

Is morality innate? In his new book, “Just Babies,” the psychologist Paul Bloom draws from his research at the Yale Infant Cognition Center to argue that “certain moral foundations are not acquired through learning. . . . They are instead the products of biological evolution.” Infants may be notoriously difficult to study (rats and pigeons “can at least run mazes or peck at levers”), but according to Bloom, they are, in fact, “moral creatures.” He describes a study in which 1-year-olds watched a puppet show where a ball is passed to a “nice” puppet (who passes it back) or to a “naughty” puppet (who steals it). Invited to reward or punish the puppets, children took treats away from the “naughty” one. These 1-year-olds seem to be making moral judgments, but is this an inborn ability?

…He also describes remarkable classic experiments, some of which left this reader stunned. One study by the psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark involved presenting black children with black and white dolls. In the segregated South, a ­majority of children preferred the white dolls and used negative attributes to describe the black dolls. Bloom says this study, referred to in the Brown v. Board of Education decision to end school segregation, “might well be the most important developmental psychology finding in American history.” But how it fits into his theory of morality is less clear, since the experiment only really shows that, without exposure to people from different backgrounds, we have a tendency to judge others based on stereotypes.

More here.

Parade

Peter says if you’re going to talk about suffering
you have to mention pleasure too.

Like the way, on the day of the parade, on Forbes Avenue,
one hundred parking tickets flutter
under the windshield wipers of one hundred parked cars.

The accordion band will be along soon,
and the famous Flying Pittsburgettes,
and it’s summer and the sun is shining on the inevitable flags—

Something weird to admire this week on TV:
the handsome face of the white supremacist on trial.
How he looks right back at the lawyers, day after day
—never objecting, never making an apology.

I look at his calm, untroubled face
and think, That motherfucker is going to die white and right,
disappointing everyone like me
who thinks that punishment should be a kind of education.

My attitude is like what God says in the Bible:
Love your brother, or be destroyed.

Then Moses or somebody says back to God,
If I love you,
will you destroy my enemies?
and God says—this is in translation—, No Problemo.

Here, everyone is talking about the price of freedom,
and about how we as a people are united in our down payment.
about how we will fight to the very bottom of our bank account.

And the sky is so blue it looks like it may last forever
and the skinny tuba player goes oompahpah
and everybody cheers.

In the big store window of the travel agency downtown,
a ten-foot sign says, WE WILL NEVER FORGET.

The letters have been cut with scissors out of blue construction paper
and pasted carefully to the sign by someone’s hand.

What I want to know is, who will issue the ticket
for improper use of the collective pronoun?
What I want to know is, who will find and punish the maker
of these impossible promises?

by Tony Hoagland
from What Narcissism Means To me
Greywolf Press, 2003

Jo-Ann Mort in Dissent:

The most excruciating and important chapter in the book, recently excerpted in the New Yorker, is on Lydda. With new research and reporting, Shavit brings light to the “black box” of Israel’s creation, examining the 1948 campaign to expel Arabs from Lydda (now Lod). The story is almost never told, exemplifying the myth that many Jews grew up with—that Israel was “a land without people for a people without a land.” Today, Lod is a profoundly dysfunctional city ridden with crime and drugs, especially in its poor Arab neighborhoods.

Confronting both the past and the present of the Arab population inside Israel (the 20 percent of Israeli citizens who are of Palestinian, Bedouin, Circassian, or Druze origin and live within the “Green Line,” acknowledged internationally as Israel’s border) is one of the major issues facing the contemporary state. And today, a sea change regarding their treatment is underway. Instead of approaching Arab Israelis as a security risk, the government spends billions of shekels on education and employment in order to raise living standards and better integrate the Arab minority into the workforce. But ultimately, the only way to address underlying historical grievances is to find a solution to the occupation on the other side of the 1949 armistice line.

Shavit humanizes the major historical campaigns for peace with well-crafted reporting on key players, along with a short history of the dispute between the Zionist movement and Palestinians. He rightly says that “the real, mainstream Zionist peace movement was born only after the wars of 1967 and 1973”—as was the ideological and fervid movement to further colonize the West Bank and, until 2005, Gaza. Shavit interviews and profiles leaders of the peace camp like former Meretz leader and education minister Yossi Sarid and former justice minister Yossi Beilin, the architect of the Oslo Accords. In all of these interviews, Shavit searches for explanations for why the peace camp failed. He tells Sarid that the doves were “always against. . . . There was not enough love, not enough compassion. And there was too much judgment.” He castigates Sarid at length for not considering the deep animosity that Palestinians felt (and still feel, according to Shavit) toward Israel as a result of the state’s creation:

You were blind to the chilling consequences of Zionism and the partial dispossession of another people that is at the core of the Zionist enterprise. You also failed to realize the gravity of the religious conflict and identity clash between the Western Jewish democratic Israel and the Arab world. You didn’t take into consideration the fact that given our history and our geography, peace is hardly likely.

Yet when he argues with Sarid, he is arguing with himself. “The peace story is also my story.” When Shavit was active in Peace Now in high school and as a student at Hebrew University, the peace for which he yearned was “bogged down by a systematic denial of the brutal reality we live in.” He later came to the conclusion that the Zionist left made a mistake to promise peace, rather than just to end the occupation.

More here.

Lauren Kirchner in Pacific Standard:

Recently, two psychologists teamed up to analyze and identify the emotions that have the most impact on the outcome of jury trials. They had participants in mock trials read scenarios and look at crime-scene evidence, and keep track of their feelings throughout the experiment. The researchers found that anger paired with disgust makes up the powerful mix of emotions that we often call “moral outrage.” The authors also concluded that this particular response—more than sadness, more than the desire for vengeance, more than any other emotion—is the one that most often brings jurors to vote to convict, and to be confident in those convictions.

“Humans intuitively understand what moral outrage is,” said Jessica M. Salernoo, co-author of the study, published in the journal Psychological Science. “However, researchers debate its emotional components. We wanted to investigate the relationships between anger and disgust since emotions tend to co-occur with each other.” Salerno and her co-author, Liana C. Peter-Hagene, note that this mix of emotions is entirely involuntary, and the jurors can often be unaware that they are feeling it—which makes it that much more effective.

After the study concluded, Salerno also suggested that the increasing ubiquity of cameras may mean that this factor will be an increasingly important one in jury trials to come. Personal cameras are cheaper, lighter, and used more frequently than ever; public and private surveillance cameras capture more everyday action than ever before, as well. That means that future prosecutors will be that much more likely to have visual evidence available to them when planning their cases.

More here.

Virginia Morell in Lapham's Quarterly:

Animals have a great advantage over man: they never hear the clock strike, however intelligent they may be; they die without any idea of death; they have no theologians to instruct them…Their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and often objectionable ceremonies; it costs them nothing to be buried; no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

More here.

Ashraf Khalil at Al Jazeera:

Twenty-one schoolgirls from Alexandria, in northwest Egypt, were sentenced to 11 years in prison last month for demonstrating in favor of deposed President Mohammed Morsi and handing out balloons bearing the Muslim Brotherhood's yellow four-fingers symbol. The symbol commemorates the bloody August clearing of a Brotherhood sit-in outside Cairo's Rabaa el-Adaweya Mosque.

“These women and girls should have never been arrested,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, in a postverdict statement. “They are now prisoners of conscience and must be released immediately and unconditionally.”

Though the women's sentences were quickly reduced on appeal in early December — the seven minors received three months' probation, the rest suspended one-year sentences — the incident is perhaps the most disturbing example of a crackdown being carried out against supporters of the former president and his organization, the Muslim Brotherhood.

With much of the Brotherhood's leadership, including Morsi, locked up or in exile, authorities have in recent months rounded up thousands of alleged members in mass arrests.

More here.

Howard Tharsing at Threepenny Review:

When I got out of County Jail following my second arrest, one of the friends I wanted to get in touch with right away was HG. When I texted him the news that I was walking out of the jail at 850 Bryant Street, breathing freely for the first time in ten days, he said the strangest thing in reply: “I don’t know what I should say to you,” he said.

I have been often struck by the fact that HG constantly describes himself as driven first and foremost by Jewish guilt. He complains all the time about his mother and her oppressive concern with propriety. (Indeed, as someone whose mother is no longer living, I have found his denigration of her and the bitter feelings he expresses about her make me uncomfortable.)

So at first I took his remark to mean that he felt he needed some formal or conventional words to use on the occasion, that he was searching his mind for something his mother would say to a friend just released from jail. But his mother, no doubt, would not have a friend who had been released from jail because she would not have a friend who was in jail in the first place.

more here.

Michael Saler at The Immanent Frame:

The stern visage of Max Weber looms over discussions of modernity and enchantment, as does the sunnier countenance of Charles Taylor. Perhaps they should be joined by the open faced, bluntly spoken, and allegedly poker wielding Ludwig Wittgenstein. This choice might seem counter-intuitive. Wittgenstein did not write much about enchantment, and is more often considered a disenchanter who used the tools of philosophy to dispel illusions brought about by linguistic misuse. As he wrote, “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”

Nevertheless, enchantment was central to Wittgenstein’s outlook on life. By enchantment he meant a sense of wonder regarding the world. He described wonder as his “experience par excellence…when I have it I wonder at the existence of the world. And I am then inclined to use such phrases as ‘how extraordinary that anything should exist’ or ‘how extraordinary that the world should exist.’” Plato and Aristotle claimed that philosophy begins in wonder, and Wittgenstein’s famous last words—“Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life”—suggests it ends there as well. His later philosophy aimed at re-enchanting the world by re-describing it in new and unexpected ways. In so doing, the world does not change—things remain as they are—but our fundamental orientation to the world changes: “We see, not change of aspect, but change of interpretation.” As a result, one becomes aware of how rich, contingent and variable the world is.

more here.

Meher Ali in Himal Southasian:

I have always had a fascination with old homes. I grew up in one – Abid Manzil in Aligarh, built in 1935. Well-known as the home of Aligarh Muslim University, the town in western Uttar Pradesh saw many Indian Muslims migrate there in the early 1900s from different parts of the erstwhile United Provinces. This included the Muslim zamindar elites who came from neighbouring principalities as well as working-class and middle-class families from eastern Uttar Pradesh. Many wanted to give their children the chance of a good education at the university. These people brought their cultures and histories with them, blending with the Islamic yet liberal intellectual philosophy propagated by AMU and spearheaded by its founder, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. The homes of these people, mostly built in the 1930s, are evidence of this syncretic tradition. On my most recent visit to Aligarh I realised that these pre-Partition houses were gradually disappearing. I met with some of the remaining families, who wanted to talk about the rich history of their homes, the culture and ways of life they embodied, and the measures they were currently taking to secure a future for their homes and themselves. This photo essay tells the story of these homes and the people who live in them.

Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the founder of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was Scheherazade Alim’s paternal great, great-grandfather. She spent her childhood in Aftab Manzil, named after her maternal great-grandfather Aftab Ahmed Khan, who built the house in 1904. Scheherazade Begum studied law at Oxford and became a barrister and has taught law at AMU. After two decades of living and working in Dubai, Scheherazade Begum and her husband Abdul Alim Khan returned to Aligarh and to Aftab Manzil in 1997, and have lived there since. Aftab Manzil saw the comings and goings of influential men and women. One of them was E M Forster. Scheherazade Alim’s grandfather Sir Ross Masood was a close friend of the writer, who dedicated A Passage to India to him. Masood became the Vice Chancellor of AMU in 1929, a position he held for three years. The photograph on the right was taken in Italy in 1911. The photograph on the left shows Scheherazade Begum with Forster. It was taken in England in 1962. She herself cultivated a deep bond with the writer, calling him “Forster Chacha”.

More here. (Note: In memory of our mother, Begum Ali Raza, who grew up in Aligarh, the hub of activity for nineteenth and early twentieth century enlightened Muslims dedicated to modernizing and making higher education available to the common Muslims for the first time)

Rachel Cusk in New Statesman:

Sylvia Plath said that writers are “the most narcissistic people”: whatever the truth of that statement, one can assume at least that her use of the term was correct. Freud bequeathed the modern era a tangled concept in narcissism, and literary culture has shown itself as apt as any other to misappropriate it. Yet it is the fashion to see people increasingly as one of two types – a narcissist, or the victim of one – so perhaps it is worth asking precisely what is meant by the word, which has come to encapsulate a cultural malaise.

Snow

i was new
and so was
the snow
befuddled
i went out
and caught a flake
took it in
then began
the examination

not wanting
to give up
its secrets
to a stranger
it melted
in my hand.
.

by Rudyard Fearon
from SPIN, 2004

Nicholas Lemann in the Times Literary Supplement:

People tend to have little sympathy with accounts of crisis in a trade or profession. It comes across as evidence of excessive self-preoccupation, or as a prelude to special pleading before government. Journalism’s difficulties seem to be drawing this kind of reaction from many people who aren’t journalists. Isn’t the press still a swaggering, even power-abusing actor in politics and society? Doesn’t it command vast attention and resources? Isn’t more news being read by more people than ever before?

Out of Print: Newspapers, journalism and the business of news in the digital age shows that something really has changed quite suddenly and dramatically in the press industry. George Brock is a veteran newspaperman, and his main concern in this clear-headed, synoptic and never whiny book is with the institutions where he has spent most of his career. In the United States, newspaper advertising revenue – the main source of economic support by far – was $63.5 billion in 2000. By 2012 it had fallen to $19 billion. (During the same period, advertising revenue at Google went from zero to $46.5 billion.) Employment in the American newspaper industry fell by 44 per cent between 2001 and 2011. In the European Union, newspaper revenue is falling by more than 10 per cent a year. In the UK, newspaper circulation has dropped by more than 25 per cent during the twenty-first century. It would be hard to think of another industry that is going through such a sudden collapse.

More here.

Melinda Taub in McSweeney's:

Dear friends, family, and Austrian nobility,

Captain Von Trapp and I are very sorry to inform you that we no longer plan to wed. We offer our deepest apologies to those of you who have already made plans to travel to Salzburg this summer.

Those of you on the Captain’s side of the guest list are probably aware of the reason for the change of plans. I’m sure by now you have received that charming “Save the date!” card in the shape of a mountain goat from the Captain and his new fiancée, Maria.

I must confess to being rather blindsided by the end of our relationship. It seems Captain Von Trapp and I misunderstood each other. I assumed he was looking for a wife of taste and sophistication, who was a dead ringer for Tippi Hedren; instead he wanted to marry a curtain-wearing religious fanatic who shouts every word she says.

More here. [Thanks to Feisal Naqvi.]

Monica Corcoran in National Geographic:

During the month of November, National Geographic magazine invited photographers from around the world to submit photos in three categories: People, Places and Nature. We received more than 7,000 entries from over 150 countries, with amateur and professional photographers across the globe participating. You can view all of the winning images here.

We asked Senior Photo Editor Susan Welchman, and National Geographiccontributing photographers Stephanie Sinclair and Ed Kashi to judge this year’s photo contest at the Society’s headquarters in Washington, DC, on December 9th.

Imagine a darkened room with images projected on a huge screen, and almost total silence except for the ‘yeas’ and ‘nays’ of the judges and the occasional discussion over specific photos. Several hours later, after multiple rounds of editing, the finalists became clear and the real debate began.

Ultimately, the judges unanimously agreed the Grand Prize should be awarded to Paul Souders for his image of a polar bear lurking beneath melting sea ice in Hudson Bay, Canada. After realizing the photographer had won an award in another contest for a very similar photo, we thought it would be interesting to hear from Paul directly.

More here.

Virginia Morrell at Lapham's Quarterly:

It is often said that our understanding and knowledge of death separates the human animal from all other animals. We alone know that we will die—that one day, suddenly or slowly, our life, our loves, our dreams will end. Surely this awareness sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, we say, pointing to some of our greatest art, music, and literature—all inspired by what we know: that death awaits every living being. And yet, how very odd it is that we should be the only animal to know what life ultimately has in store for us. We share biological histories and physiologies DNA, eyes, muscles, nerves, neurons, hormones—with other animals, and these may lead to similar behaviors, thought processes, and emotions—even about death.

Take the case of Thomas, a nine-year-old chimpanzee who died in 2010 at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust in Zambia, home to more than one hundred chimps. Research scientists filmed the reactions of one community of forty-three chimpanzees to Thomas’ corpse; thirty-eight of them gathered around and stayed by his side for almost twenty minutes. During that time, some of the chimps gently touched his body, smelled and studied him closely.

more here.

By chance, I was having a late dinner in Brooklyn with a Sri Lankan friend at the moment the tsunami struck Sri Lanka nine years ago today but we remained blissfully unaware of what had happened until the next morning. We also did not know at the time what had just happened to our mutual friend Sonali Deraniyagala and her family who were vacationing on a beach in Sri Lanka.

This is from NPR:

Economist Sonali Deraniyagala lost her husband, parents and two young sons in the terrifying Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. They had been vacationing on the southern coast of her home country Sri Lanka when the wave struck. Wave is her brutal but lyrically written account of the awful moment and the grief-crazed months after, as she learned to live with her almost unbearable losses — and allow herself to remember details of her previous life. In this scene, Deraniyagala revists both the house of her parents in Colombo, which has been emptied and closed up since the tsunami, and Yala National Park, where she was when the wave struck.

[Excerpt from 'Wave' By Sonali Deraniyagala:]

Someone had removed the brass plate with my father's name on it from the gray front wall. It had his name etched in black italics. I sat in the passenger seat of my friend Mary-Anne's car, my eyes clinging to the holes in the wall where that brass plate was once nailed.

This had been my parents' home in Colombo for some thirty-five years, and my childhood home. For my sons it was their home in Sri Lanka. They were giddy with excitement when we visited every summer and Christmas. Vik took his first steps here, and Malli, when younger, called the house “Sri Lanka.” And in our last year, 2004, when Steve and I had sabbaticals from our jobs and the four of us spent nine months in Colombo until September, this house was the hub of our children's lives.

This was where we were to return to on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth of December. My mother had already given Saroja, our cook, the menu for dinner. This was where they didn't come back to. Now, six months after the wave, I dared to set eyes on this house.

I was wary as I sat in Mary-Anne's car, which was parked by our front wall. I didn't want to look around. I was afraid of seeing too much. But I couldn't help myself, I peeked.

More here. Also see this. Wave is also on the New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2013 list.

Christopher Hart at Literary Review:

Erik Satie may have worn chestnut-coloured velvet suits, eaten thirty-egg omelettes and founded the Church of Jesus Christ the Conductor, but this was just bohemian decoration. He also walked 12 miles into and out of Paris every day, composing all the way. In his introduction to this wonderfully entertaining little book, Mason Currey quotes V S Pritchett: 'Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.'

It should come as no surprise, perhaps, that most high-achieving creative people who have given something permanent to the world are not really in the slightest bit bohemian. They discover for themselves Flaubert's famous advice that one should live like a bourgeois and put one's bohemianism into one's work.

Food is often of little importance, mere brain fuel. Patricia Highsmith lived on vodka, cereal and bacon and eggs. For lunch Ingmar Bergman ate a revolting sort of baby food made up of yoghurt and strawberry jam which he mixed in with cornflakes. In the evening he enjoyed watching Dallas.

more here.

Massimo Pigliucci in Rationally Speaking:

I am not particularly friendly to the so-called New Atheism. While I respect (and often respectfully disagree with) Dan Dennett, I have been a fairly strong critic of Dawkins, Harris, and the late Hitchens(not to mention other NA’s, such as Jerry Coyne). I have even written a technical paper analyzing the NA movement from a philosophical perspective.

So it was with some interest that I recently read a piece by David V. Johnson at 3QuarksDaily, entitled “A refutation of the undergraduate atheists,” which promised to deliver some guilty pleasure for my weekend readings. It did deliver, but only in part. In the following I will outline Johnson’s arguments and where, I think, he goes astray. I have also invited him to respond here at Rationally Speaking, and he has graciously agreed, so stay tuned for a follow up.

Johnson adopts the (obviously derisive) language of philosopher Mark Johnston, referring to the NA as “undergraduate atheists” (notice that while Johnson seems to be some kind of deist, Johnson is an atheist). Since the NA’s themselves are notorious for their, shall we say, aggressive sarcasm, I think that’s a fair enough shot.

More here.