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Newsela | Teen suicide rates rising, study says social media use could be a factor

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Newsela | World's 85 richest have wealth equal to half the world population

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The fortunes of a few dozen billionaires are equal to the entire wealth of the poorer half of the world's population, the British charity Oxfam reported.

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When you see the president or other politicians use terms like "animals" or, even worse, "infestation" (a term usually reserved for insects), they are engaging in dehumanization. People use dehumanization to justify greed, violence, and abuse. Although dehumanization is most associated with right-wing nationalism, others sometimes use dehumanizing language, too.

Dehumanization is one of eight forms of "moral disengagement" described by the psychologist Albert Bandura. Humans are capable of terrible crimes, and civilization has developed ways to inhibit aggression. However, we have not eliminated violence, in part because of techniques for creating (false) excuses and justifications for immoral behavior. All moral disengagement techniques are tricks to get people to accept behaviors that they would otherwise immediately recognize as unethical and unfair. For example, assuming most people are not big fans of child abuse, dehumanization and other moral disengagement strategies are used to trick people into accepting abuse of some children. The manipulators do it to secure power or financial gain.

Dehumanization involves redefining the targets of prejudice and violence by making them seem less human (that is, less civilized or less sentient) than other people. The classic strategy for this is to use terms like "animals" and "vermin." Referring to people as "illegals" is also dehumanizing. You'll see dehumanization at work in most large-scale atrocities or genocides committed by governments, armies, or terrorists. The main purpose is to get people to accept or even engage in behaviors that they know are wrong.

Dehumanization is not limited to political issues, however. Any time someone reduces a human being to a single characteristic, especially a negative one, they are dehumanizing. " Alcoholic," "addict," "diabetic," and "schizophrenic" all rob people of the full complexity of their lives and reduce them to a symptom or disorder. Even many self-professed humanitarians used dehumanizing (and inaccurate) terms like "superpredator" in the crime scare of the 1990s. All slurs (insults based on race, gender, sexual orientation, health status or other characteristic) are also dehumanizing.

Other Moral Disengagement Strategies

Victim-blaming ("You made me do it!") is a favorite strategy of many perpetrators. Like dehumanization, victim-blaming works by trying to taint and diminish the target of the violence, instead of focusing on the perpetrator as the actual source of wrong-doing.

Some moral disengagement techniques involve pretending that immoral acts are not really bad. Euphemistic labeling is popular with governments, such as when they refer to "collateral damage" instead of the slaughter of civilians, or "tender age shelters" for imprisoning infants and toddlers. Moral justification tries to re-frame the action as a moral good (such as, "The ends justified the means"), while advantageous comparison introduces a moral relativism where you don't have to meet your own standards of goodness, you only have to be better than your enemy ("What they do is much worse"). This latter one has sometimes led people to fight violence with violence, but nonviolentresistance is not only more ethical but also more successful. Distortion of consequences denies that the actions were harmful. For example, when infants and children were taken from their parents, some officials pretended that this was not harmful as long as they were being fed. Just because people survive mistreatment does not mean they were not harmed by it.

Displacement of responsibility, such as claiming they were just following orders, and diffusion of responsibility, where people justify their actions by saying other people do it too, are forms of moral disengagement designed to minimize personal responsibility for immoral actions. Mob behavior is partly caused by these forces, for example when normally law-abiding people loot stores after blackouts or natural disasters. However, the most problematic versions of this are when soldiers, law enforcement officers, or other authority figures use their legal authority to abuse the public.

The Golden Rule: The Opposite of Dehumanization

The opposite of dehumanization is empathy and respect, as perhaps best expressed by the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Some version of that belief is found in virtually all world religions. The Golden Rule is as humanizing as it gets, by calling for everyone to give others the same treatment that you would like to get yourself. The Golden Rule means that there should be no us-them thinking-that all humans, or in some philosophies all living beings, are part of "us."

Causes of Dehumanization and Moral Disengagement

There's less research on the causes of moral disengagement (versus how moral disengagement is a cause of violence and prejudice), but there are some well-established pathways.

The first is manipulation, political or otherwise. In some circumstances, it does not take much to tip people into us-versus-them tribalism.

Second, dehumanization is a component of narcissistic and antisocial personality disorders. Many people with these personality disorders cannot appreciate that other people have inner lives like their own. They are the stars in their own movie, and the rest of us are just props. Fortunately, these cases are relatively rare, they can be dangerous if they get a platform to manipulate others.

Dehumanization can also be part of the cycle of violence. People who were mistreated as children can wall themselves off as a defense against that pain (physical and psychological). Sometimes, what helps abuse victims survive childhood becomes a handicap when they reach adulthood. They may be afraid of experiencing feelings about other victims because that could open the floodgates to all of their bottled-up feelings.

How Can Dehumanization Be Prevented or Reduced?

Another way of thinking about dehumanization is that some people have under-developed skills of empathy and perspective taking, and when you think about it that way, it suggests solutions.

Most of us can become more empathic. For children, many programs improve social and emotional learning (SEL). We now recognize the value of " emotional intelligence" for adults too, and that emotional intelligence can be learned later in life.

In cases related to PTSD, interventions such as cognitive-behavioral therapy or mindfulness can help people handle their feelings and create more space for empathy.

Milgram's famous study on obedience also suggests ways to weaken the diffusion of responsibility. Although many participants could be compelled to give high electrical shocks to a "student" (actually a confederate who was not really getting shocked), it has been noted less often that it was not that easy to get them to do it. For example, if they saw the impact on the victim, or only had indirect exposure to the authority figure (such as receiving instructions over a phone or intercom), these factors greatly reduced their obedience. This is one reason why journalism is so important, because it helps people see what is really going on.

Most importantly, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

You can't fight dehumanization with dehumanization.

For those of you who are horrified by the dehumanization that has led to children being kept in cages at the border or terrorists mowing down civil rights advocates, it is important to not let that horror slip into dehumanization. For example, some elements of the Antifa movement are also using moral disengagement to justify harassing people. The border patrol agents who are ripping children from parents and the neo-Nazi sympathizers who are advocating for racism are human, too. We can call out their behaviors without calling them "monsters." Their actions might be hateful, greedy, violent, or maybe even monstrous, but they are actions that are being committed by people. Some of them may be victims themselves, others may have grown up in families where they were taught to hate. There are ways to make a bigot, but they are still people, and recognizing their humanity will be essential to reducing dehumanization. If we want a more humane society, we cannot engage in violence and harassment ourselves.

What Can You Do?

There are many specific action steps that can help you become a humanizing force in your community.

1) Do not use dehumanizing language when you criticize others, including people with loathsome political views or who perpetrate terrible crimes. In this article, I made sure that I refer to loathsome views or hateful behaviors and do not call people "monsters" or "Neanderthals" or other terms that suggest they are not human.

2) Use questions or statements to draw out empathic responses. Except for a few people with extreme narcissism or sociopathy, most people are capable of empathy. Try statements such as, "I can only imagine how I'd feel if those were my children," or "Would you be able to rip a screaming child from her mother?" Some all-purpose statements for promoting empathy include "I try to imagine what it would be like to walk a mile in their shoes," or "I always try to find common ground with others," or "I think we all want the same basic things in life." You may get some defensive instead of empathic responses, but if you can get even one person to recognize others' humanity, that would be an important accomplishment.

If you want to engage more deeply, I recommend the podcast episode, "The Talk" by Charles Duhigg, which covers a 3-step process. First, validate the person (not the attitude or behavior), or, in other words, humanize them. Second, name the issue and express some curiosity about the other person's thinking on the issue. Third, tell a personal story about how you developed your own (loving and respectful) position.

3) Avoid posting unfiltered clips of people making dehumanizing claims. Several of my friends have posted clips on social media from dehumanizing pundits with comments such as "Can you believe this???" or "This is insane!!!" It is good to share and post analyses of events on social media, but it is problematic to re-post clips directly from racist or misogynistic sources. You do not want to support these websites with advertising income from clicking and sharing.

Also, not everyone views these clips through the same lens, and you may be inadvertently creating a "backlash" by showing people achieving national media coverage by espousing dehumanizing ideas. This is the same kind of contagion that can lead to increases in school shootings and suicides after media coverage.

The news media is still wrestling with this challenge, but in this new world where even the most despicable views are easily accessed online, we all need to learn how to cope.

4) Remember that the only true way to raise yourself up is by lifting up others, not running them down. Most people recognize the neediness and insecurity behind negative comments that range from petty to fully dehumanizing. Strong people do not need to "punch down" to feel good about themselves. Attacking infants and children is always punching down for adults, but so is attacking anyone who is less privileged than you are. The more authority and power you have, the more care you need to exercise in criticizing others.

5) Be aware of-and speak up about-hidden biases in your work or other settings. Are you and your colleagues modeling inclusiveness? For example, I recently attended a research conference on families where every single invited speaker was white. As a result, there was little consideration of social and cultural differences in families, such as the importance of extended family and the percentage of multi-generational households. We need to do more to be sure that the full spectrum of humanity is represented in all settings.

I mentioned this afterward to the conference organizers, and admittedly that was kind of a tense interaction, but one awkward interaction is a small price to pay for less dehumanization. It also made me realize that I should have done more homework to learn about the program before agreeing to be a speaker.

These are just a few ideas. If you have others, please leave them in the comments! Sometimes, the world can seem overwhelming, but there are ways to counteract dehumanizing forces and you can make a difference by being a force for humanism in your own community.
© 2018 Sherry Hamby. All rights reserved. If you want to learn more about strengths-based approaches to dealing with adversity, come to ResilienceCon.

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When you see the president or other politicians use terms like "animals" or, even worse, "infestation" (a term usually reserved for insects), they are engaging in dehumanization. People use dehumanization to justify greed, violence, and abuse. Although dehumanization is most associated with right-wing nationalism, others sometimes use dehumanizing language, too.

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Dehumanization in the Real and Modern World

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Dehumanization is an issue that has run rampant for centuries. From the Holocaust to the Tiananmen Square Massacre to domestic violence, humans have abused other humans simply because they feel...

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The Dehumanizing Impact of Modern Thought:

Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and Their Followers

by
Richard Weikart
Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who endured the horrors of Auschwitz, astutely commented on the way that modern European thought had helped prepare the way for Nazi atrocities (and his own misery). He stated, "If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone. I became acquainted," Frankl continued, "with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment-or, as the Nazi liked to say, of 'Blood and Soil.' I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers." [1]

As a Christian undergraduate in the 1970s, I was drawn to the study of modern European intellectual history in part by the realization that much modern thought had debased humanity, as Frankl suggested. My concerns were originally stimulated by reading C. S. Lewis, especially The Abolition of Man, and several of Francis Schaeffer's works, but they were reinforced by courses I took in intellectual history and the history of philosophy. In my own private studies, I was dismayed by the vision of humanity sketched out in B. F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, which it seemed to me would lead to dystopias, such as the fictional ones in 1984 and Brave New World or the real one described by Alexander Solzenitsyn in his novels and in The Gulag Archipelago.

A few modern thinkers specifically criticized the "anthropocentric" view that humans are special, made in the image of God. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the famous German Darwinist Ernst Haeckel, for example, blasted Christianity for advancing an "anthropocentric" and dualistic view of humanity. [2] Today the famous bioethicist Peter Singer, along with the atheistic Darwinian biologist Richard Dawkins, argue that based on the Darwinian understanding of human origins, we need to desanctify human life, divesting ourselves of any notion that humans are created in the image of God and thus uniquely valuable. [3] An evolutionary ecologist at the University of Texas, Eric Pianka, fights overtly against anthropocentrism, even expressing the wish that 90% of the human population will be extinguished, perhaps by a pandemic. [4]

Often, however, modern thinkers have masked the dehumanizing impact of their ideas by calling their philosophy "humanism" of one form or another, implying that their views exalt humanity. However, most attempts at exalting humanity have ironically resulted in diminishing humanity, demonstrating the biblical truth: "He who exalts himself will be abased."

After the waning of Romanticism in mid-nineteenth century Europe, many intellectuals embraced science as the sole arbiter of knowledge, including knowledge about humanity and society. The renowned, but quirky, French thinker Auguste Comte, gained many disciples for his philosophy of positivism, which rejected any knowledge not obtained through empirical, scientific investigation (except, of course, this epistemological claim itself is not subject to empirical demonstration, so it seems to me that his epistemology is self-defeating). Comte hoped to initiate the scientific study of society, coining the term sociology for this endeavor. He was optimistic that a scientific study of humanity would lead humans to practice altruism, another term he coined. Though Comte considered all metaphysics, including religion, unknowable, he wanted to create a religion of humanity, which would place humans on the highest pedestal. Most of Comte's disciples, such as John Stuart Mill, embraced his positivist epistemology, but rejected his religion of humanity, especially in the ludicrous form he presented it in his later writings (which involved many specific religious practices, including praying to a female that one admires).

Though not as prominent as positivism in the nineteenth century, materialism also increased in influence in the mid-nineteenth century. Though positivism rejected all metaphysical claims, including materialist ones, it shared many common features with materialism nonetheless. Both materialists and positivists idolized science as the only path to knowledge. By extending scientific investigation to humanity itself, however, they made assumptions about human nature that were not subject to scientific investigation. Effectively they dismissed body-soul dualism, thus reducing humanity to matter in motion. Also, their insistence that the scientific method could provide knowledge about all features of human life led them to embrace determinism. By the late nineteenth century some prominent thinkers were rebelling against reductionism and determinism, but in the nineteenth century, these views gained currency to such as extent that Francis Galton, the cousin of Darwin and the founder of the eugenics movement, coined the phrase, "nature versus nurture" to frame the intellectual debate over humanity. Galton's phrase is still commonly invoked in intellectual discourse about human behavior.

Galton and many of his contemporaries rejected free will, claiming with circular logic that science had disproven this supposedly antiquated religious conception. (This was circular reasoning because they defined science to exclude free will, and then claimed that science disproved free will). Their insistence on determinism effectively ostracized religious or spiritual conceptions of human nature. The new fields of psychology, sociology, and anthropology, which only became institutionalized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, generally embraced this deterministic view of human behavior. By rejecting free will and embracing determinism, Galton and his contemporaries were left with three main options: humans were either the product of their biological makeup, or they were the product of their environment, or they were the product of some combination of heredity and environment. Either form of determinism (or hybrids thereof) reduces humans to inputs, either from internal or external influences. They deny independent human agency and thus strip humanity of any moral responsibility.

In the mid-nineteenth century environmental determinism was more prominent than biological determinism. The philosopher Maurice Mandelbaum argues that one of the ideas dominating nineteenth-century philosophy was the "malleability of man," i.e., the idea that human nature is shaped largely by external forces, such as culture, education, and training. [5] The father of John Stuart Mill exemplified this perspective, rigorously educating his son from an early age. Mill became a leading voice in Europe touting the power of education and training in shaping human intellect and behavior. Many mid-nineteenth-century liberals and socialists embraced this vision of environmental determinism.

Karl Marx is a prominent example of a socialist committed to environmental determinism. He called his perspective "scientific socialism," because he believed that his analysis was based on immutable economic and social laws. He was convinced that social institutions and even human nature itself were shaped by economic forces. If economic conditions changed, human nature would change accordingly. In Marx's view private property was the source of all the evils in human society, especially the oppression of the urban workers by the bourgeois capitalists. Private property thus spawned a class struggle in every age. Religion, morality, law, political structures, and other institutions and cultural factors were merely tools of the propertied classes to oppress the unpropertied masses.

Marx's primary motivation was not establishing human equality, though his socialist philosophy did militate toward greater equality. Rather Marx's primary concern was liberating humanity from oppression and tyranny. This is a laudable goal, and anyone who has read Marx's Capital or Friedrich Engels' Condition of the Working Class in 1844 should recognize that Marx had legitimate grounds for complaint. Many factory workers, not to mention the unemployed, lived in squalor and misery. Marx rightly criticized the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution. Nonetheless, when we examine the practices of Marxist regimes in the twentieth century, we see incredible oppression and tyranny. The quest for freedom was turned on its head. Why?

I suggest it is largely because of Marx's faulty view of human nature. Neither Lenin nor Stalin nor Mao nor Pol Pot nor Castro nor any other Marxist leader could alter human nature by ridding their society of private property. Changing the economy could not bring about utopia, because human behavior is not determined solely by the economy. Marxist philosophy failed because it denied to humanity its spiritual character, its free will, and also the Christian insistence on original sin. Alexander Solzenitsyn clearly depicted the Soviet problem with altering human nature in his novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. In this novel the prisoners in the Soviet labor camp, who are supposedly being reeducated to become good Soviet citizens, continue to act as capitalists in any way they can, even while incarcerated. The protagonist expressed at one point that the Soviet regime simply could not change his nature.

In the late nineteenth century, especially by the 1890s, the pendulum swung away from environmental determinism, and biological determinism increased its influence among European thinkers. Galton was a pivotal figure in this development, publishing his seminal work, Hereditary Genius, in 1869. Galton's influence was profound, especially since he convinced his cousin Charles Darwin that heredity was more important than environmental influences in shaping human intellect and behavior. Many Darwinists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came to believe-as Galton and Darwin also did-that many human character traits, such as loyalty, thrift, and diligence (or on the negative side-deceit and laziness), were biologically innate, not malleable moral traits, as most Europeans had previously thought. Darwinists in various fields-especially in biology, medicine, psychiatry, and anthropology-were in the forefront promoting biological determinism. Cesare Lombroso, the famous Italian psychiatrist who founded criminal anthropology, built his ideology on Darwinism. He argued that criminals were atavistic creatures, throwbacks to ancestors in the evolutionary process. He was most famous for promoting the idea that criminality was hereditary, not formed through environmental influence. One of the most prominent popularizers of Darwinism in Germany, the famous materialist Ludwig Buchner, published The Power of Heredity and Its Influence on the Moral and Mental Progress of Humanity in 1882. In the midst of his extended argument for biological determinism of mental and moral traits, Buchner showed where his vision of humanity led. He stated, "In the flow [of time] the individual is nothing, the species is everything; and history, just as nature, marks each of its steps forward, even the smallest, with innumerable piles of corpses." [6]

By the 1890s and especially in the early twentieth century, the eugenics movement gained popularity, especially in medical circles, in Europe and the United States. Eugenics was driven in part by fears that modern institutions had set aside the beneficial aspects of natural selection. Eugenicists continually played on the specter of weak and sickly humans beings preserved through modern medicine, hygiene, and charitable institutions, while the more intelligent and supposedly better human beings were beginning to voluntarily restrict their reproduction. This was producing biological degeneration, according to many eugenicists. Their solution? Introduce artificial selection by restricting the reproduction of the so-called "inferior" and encouraging the "superior" to procreate. Biological determinism permeated the eugenics movement, which pressed for marriage restrictions, compulsory sterilization, and sometimes even involuntary euthanasia for the disabled, because they were deemed biologically inferior.

Another prominent feature of the biological determinism of the early twentieth century was its stress on racial inequality. In Europe racist ideologies proliferated in the 1890s and early 1900s, partly under the influence of Darwinism and biological determinism. Many biologists, anthropologists, and physicians considered black Africans or American Indians less evolved than Europeans. As Europeans colonized vast stretches of the globe, many scientists proclaimed that non-Europeans were culturally inferior to Europeans. Further, they believed that these cultural differences were manifestations of biological inferiority.

By reducing humanity to their biological makeup, these Darwinian-inspired biological determinists contributed to the dehumanization process. Many nineteenth-century Darwinists emphasized the continuities between humans and animals, with Darwin himself arguing that all the differences between humans and animals were quantitative, not qualitative. Darwin even explained the origin of morality as the product of completely naturalistic evolutionary processes. The idea that humans were "created from animals," to use a famous phrase from Darwin, rather than created in the image of God, gained greater currency in the nineteenth century.

Just as one form of environmental determinism-Marxism-produced unfathomable misery for millions of humans, so did biological determinism. Hitler's National Socialism was based on a biological determinist vision of humanity that stressed racial inequality. Nazism endorsed discrimination-and ultimately even death-for those with allegedly inferior biological traits. On the other hand, it hoped to promote evolutionary advance for the human species by fostering higher reproductive levels of those considered superior biologically. Hitler's regime ended up killing about 200,000 disabled Germans, 6 million Jews, and hundreds of thousands of Gypsies in their effort to improve the human race. [7]

While many modern thinkers, especially scientists, psychologists, and social scientists, have embraced one form of determinism or another, many thinkers have followed the nineteenth-century philologist and philosopher Nietzsche in rebelling against determinism. Nietzsche attempted to rescue humanity from scientific reductionism by positing radical individual freedom. He believed that all knowledge and truth are created by humans, not imposed on us by some external reality. We cannot blame the environment, nor biology, nor God for our character and behavior. Nietzsche rejected the idea that humans have fixed natures or essences. Rather, the choices we make as individuals shape our destiny. Many subsequent existentialists and post-modern thinkers have exulted in Nietzsche's liberation from reductionism and determinism.

While Nietzsche's emphasis on free will might seem to rescue humanity from the degrading philosophies of environmental or biological determinism, it does nothing of the sort. It only elevates a small elite of humanity, whom Nietzsche called the Superman, or more literally, Overman. Nietzsche's freedom was freedom only for these Supermen, the creative geniuses (like himself) who would rise above the hoi polloi. He had nothing but disdain for the masses, whom he thought incapable of exercising true freedom. What Nietzsche contemptuously called the herd instinct of the masses fitted them for nothing other than submission to the domination of the Superman.

Despite its stress on freedom, then, Nietzsche's philosophy is really a philosophy that aims at enslavement. Power ultimately decides, not only who rules politically, but also what counts as truth. Nietzsche rejected any form of fixed truth or morality, thus undermining the very notion of humanity and human rights. Nietzsche despised weakness, compassion, and humanitarianism, preferring strength and domination. He was especially vehement in his rejection of Christian ethics, because it catered to the weak and downtrodden. His aristocratic morality aimed at justifying and benefitting the strong and powerful.

In the twentieth century many existentialist philosophers, such as Heidegger and Sartre, embraced the general contours of Nietzsche's philosophy, denying that humans have any fixed essence and stressing radical free will in human decisions. Later in the twentieth century, however, many postmodern thinkers, though heavily influenced by Nietzsche, have reduced the element of individual agency still important to Nietzsche. Many literary scholars emphasized the written text over the author, who disappeared from consideration. Human intent became irrelevant in interpreting human documents. Dehumanization thus spiraled even further downward, as all human values were construed as socially constructed.

Now that I have sketched out in broad strokes some of the dehumanizing influences of modern European thought and culture, I would like to suggest why this should be important to us. Not all environmental determinism leads to Marxism, nor does all biological determinism lead to the Holocaust. Not all existentialism or postmodernism leads to immoral behavior, either. However, false conceptions of humanity can lead to destructive behavior and harmful policies, both by societies and by individuals. It can and does affect the way we treat other human beings. Human rights are meaningless is a world of determinism or social (or individual) constructivism.

The underlying vision of human nature in any society shapes the political and social institutions, the laws, and the entire culture in far-reaching ways. The converse is also true-the political, social, and legal developments in a society influence its view of human nature and the dignity of human life. People who believe that humans are created in the image of God will have different values, ideals, practices, and institutions than those who view humans as merely the sum total of environmental and biological inputs, or those who believe that humans can create whatever truths they desire.

NOTES

1. Viktor E. Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), xxvii.

2. Ernst Haeckel, Die Weltrathsel: Gemeinverstandliche Studien uber Monistische Philosophie (Bonn: Emil Strauss, 1903), 11.

3. Peter Singer, Writings on an Ethical Life (New York, 2000), 77-78, 220-21; Richard Dawkins, "The Word Made Flesh," The Guardian (December 27, 2001).

4. Eric Pianka, "Biology 301M. Ecology, Evolution, and Society," at www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/bio301; accessed 4-3-06; "Student Evaluations [for Dr. Pianka]-Spring 2004," at www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/bio357/357evaluations.html, accessed 4-3-06; "Excerpts from Student Evaluations [for Dr. Pianka]-Fall 2004," at www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/bio357/357evaluations.html, accessed 4-3-06. I have hard copies of these sources in my files.

5. Maurice Mandelbaum, History, Man, and Reason: A Study in Nineteenth-CenturyThought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971).

6. Ludwig Buchner, Die Macht der Vererbung und ihr Einfluss auf den moralischen und geistigen Fortschritt der Menschheit (Leipzig: Ernst Gunthers Verlag, 1882), 100.

7. See Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); and my forthcoming book, Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

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by Richard Weikart Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who endured the horrors of Auschwitz, astutely commented on the way that modern European thought had helped prepare the way for Nazi atrocities (and his own misery). He stated, "If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him.

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-Violent
-Obsessed
-People
-Entertainment
-hand to hand combat

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The Dehumanization of Society: Technology has created tremendous opportunities for the world to shrink through communication, collaboration, and cloud-based productivity tools. But it has created immense opportunities for wasting time. On Facebook. On Twitter. On stupid games. Human beings are losing their ability to communicate in person. To smile at each other. To converse. To enjoy a meal together without looking at their smartphones. To look into each other's eyes. To touch. To honor food that someone else has cooked with love and care. To be present in the moment without interruption. This is a tremendous loss that cannot be quantified.

Richard Rauser disagreed with me, and commented:

Thanks, Sramana, for such a thoughtful post and I agree with you on most points, but I couldn't disagree more on the last relating to the "dehumanization of society." This meme seems to rear its head everywhere these days, yet such claims are almost unequivocally unsubstantiated. I would love to see a solid set of empirical evidence that backs up this assertion, because it contrasts so significantly with my own experience.

If anything, technology has allowed me many more opportunities to make and enhance real-world interpersonal connections, whether that be a serendipitous encounter facilitated by social media that might otherwise be missed, the vastly superior efficiencies of using technology to arrange social occasions, sharing experiences captured in photos or video, and myriad other ways. I just don't personally perceive this supposed erosion of human interaction. I only see it greatly augmented and enhanced.

You are right that people are connecting with one another more digitally, and social media, photo sharing, etc. have been good additives in that respect. But my observation is that people don't do as much face to face, in person ... that's what I am calling out.

Actually this is just what I meant. Technology facilitates more face-to-face interaction than I would have in my life otherwise... e.g. the ease with which I can organise social outings via FB, MeetUp, Eventbrite, Whatsapp, etc, the serendipitous real-world encounters created when FB, Swarm, etc let's me know someone else is nearby, or real-world moments shared simply watching videos or sharing photos. I'm just not buying this supposed erosion of face-to-face interaction as the evidence supplied in its favour is almost always anecdotal. It pulls at people's heart strings and makes for a tear-wrenching story of the supposed deterioration of the human condition, but it strikes me as hogwash.

I will give you a trend as a counter example, although, by and large, I do not disagree with you that many more interactions are happening today due to social media than would be possible otherwise.

I've been at many restaurants, including very high-end, Michelin starred ones, where the waiters complain, and I have seen with my own eyes, that a couple sits across from each other, heads down, typing on their smartphones. They are not communicating with each other across the table. (Perhaps they are sending texts to each other, I don't know!) Some take pictures of the food to post online. Meanwhile, the food goes cold. They then call the waiter and complain that the food isn't warm. Well, it was, when it was served. Personally, I find the trend quite annoying.

But like you, I do enjoy the ability to keep in touch with a much larger number of people around the world - friends, family, business contacts - on a semi-regular basis, using social media. I also enjoy the chance encounters and the ability to collaborate widely. My entire business is based on this assumption that we can, indeed, do virtual incubation on a global scale.

So, thank you for the counter points you've made here. They are valid and worth pointing out.

The topic is an important one. I would love to hear more of your thoughts, and learn about the trends you are observing. Please weigh in.

Photo credit: Esther Vargas/Flickr.com.

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The Dehumanization of Society: Technology has created tremendous opportunities for the world to shrink through communication, collaboration, and cloud-based productivity tools. But it has created immense opportunities for wasting time. On Facebook. On Twitter. On stupid games. Human beings are losing their ability to communicate in person. To smile at each other.

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RELATE DEHUMANIZATION TO THE REAL AND MODERN WORLD - slackerswaitingtilllastminute

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Privacy today faces growing threats from a growing surveillance apparatus that is often justified in the name of national security. Numerous government agencies-including the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, and state and local law enforcement agencies-intrude upon the private communications of innocent citizens, amass vast databases of who we call and when, and catalog "suspicious activities" based on the vaguest standards.

The government's collection of this sensitive information is itself an invasion of privacy. But its use of this data is also rife with abuse. Innocuous data is fed into bloated watchlists, with severe consequences-innocent individuals have found themselves unable to board planes, barred from certain types of jobs, shut out of their bank accounts, and repeatedly questioned by authorities. Once information is in the government's hands, it can be shared widely and retained for years, and the rules about access and use can be changed entirely in secret without the public ever knowing.

Our Constitution and democratic system demand that the government be transparent and accountable to the people, not the other way around. History has shown that powerful, secret surveillance tools will almost certainly be abused for political ends and turned disproportionately on disfavored minorities.

The ACLU has been at the forefront of the struggle to prevent the entrenchment of a surveillance state by challenging the secrecy of the government's surveillance and watchlisting practices; its violations of our rights to privacy, free speech, due process, and association; and its stigmatization of minority communities and activists disproportionately targeted by surveillance.

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Privacy and Surveillance | American Civil Liberties Union

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The ACLU works in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.

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On May 20, 2013, a young government contractor with an EFF sticker on his laptop disembarked a plane in Hong Kong carrying with him evidence confirming, among other things, that the United States government had been conducting mass surveillance on a global scale. What came next were weeks of disclosures-and...

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The US government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in massive, illegal dragnet surveillance of the domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001.

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By Erin Herro, Volunteer Fellow at AIUSA's Security With Human Rights Program
Today Amnesty International launched #UnfollowMe - a campaign demanding an end to mass surveillance. And we released the results of a global poll of more than 13,000 people across every continent.

What'd we find? More than 70% of respondents worldwide are strongly opposed to the U.S. government monitoring their internet use. And in the United States, less than a quarter of U.S. citizens approve of their government spying on them.

Now is a defining moment for the future of human rights online. The right to privacy is being systematically violated by governments that are increasingly employing sophisticated new mass surveillance technologies to spy on people's private communications.

We know you have questions about why it matters - here are our answers.
1. I am not doing anything wrong, so why should I care?
Would you care if the government installed voice recorders and cameras in your home, recorded every conversation you have with a friend over a coffee, or followed you wherever you go? Those actions are the physical-world equivalent of online mass surveillance.

Isn't the better question: I'm not doing anything wrong, so why should they care? If our privacy is taken away without a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, then the assumption is that everyone is potentially guilty until proven innocent.

In the wrong hands, private data can be used to target journalists, persecute activists, and crack down on free speech. Oppressive governments will use surveillance to control opposition. If you don't think this can happen where you live, remember that all it takes is a change of government.
2. Corporations already know everything about me, so what's the difference?
There's a big difference: providing your data to corporations is voluntary and optional. You disclose information about yourself when you sign up for a social network, email account, or with a telecom company. The difference is: you decided to do that, you are aware that you're doing it, and you can cancel your account.

Unlike that voluntary collection, only 20% of Americans approve of the U.S. government intercepting internet and mobile use of U.S. citizens.
3. Isn't this a necessary sacrifice to stop terrorism?
There is no evidence that mass surveillance helps to prevent terrorism. Mass surveillance actually increases the risk that intelligence and law enforcement agencies will miss real, credible threats as they are distracted by false positives. Intelligence comes out of mass surveillance programs like a firehose - and you can't get a sip from a fire hose.

Governments already had more than adequate means for legitimate law enforcement and intelligence gathering purpose. The fact is they are gathering information that they couldn't have dreamed of a decade ago and they will always tell us they need more.

4. It's just metadata, not content, so who cares?

If metadata was not a useful source of information about people, would it be collected?

Analyzing metadata -where you go and who you talk to-provides an efficient way to gain a lot of information amount about people's lives.

To make this intrusion into our daily lives more palpable, Snowden says, "The people looking at this data are looking for criminals." "You could be the most innocent person in the world, but if somebody programmed to see patterns of criminality looks at your data, they're not going to find you - they're going to find a criminal."
5. How can I protect myself from surveillance online?
There are many practical things you can do. For example, Electronic Frontier Foundation has very useful tips and tools for safer online communications as well as a handy scorecard for messaging apps. Also, check out security-in-a-box and guides from Access.

But we must make sure that there are strong legal protections against mass surveillance.
Take action - Tell President Obama: It's time to end secret spying.

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#UnfollowMe: 5 Reasons We Should All Be Concerned About Government Surveillance

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By Erin Herro, Volunteer Fellow at AIUSA's Security With Human Rights Program Today Amnesty International launched #UnfollowMe - a campaign demanding an end to mass surveillance. And we released the results of a global poll of more than 13,000 people across every continent. What'd we find?

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FiveThirtyEight is tracking Donald Trump's approval ratings throughout his presidency.

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Newsela | Campaign insults about weight hurt kids struggling with body image

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Body shaming is a big problem. After a presidential candidate insulted a beauty queen, mental health experts said we need to reassure kids they're more than their looks.

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donald trump still shows some strength in the midwest heading into 2020 - cnnpolitics

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Donald Trump still shows some strength in the Midwest heading into 2020

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First things first: The theme song of the week is Thank You for Being A Friend from the show The Golden Girls written by Andrew Gold and sung by Cynthia Fee.

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-Wages
-Economy
- rich to poor
-Property
-Government

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Newsela | The wealthy charter planes, but the poor settle for any ride in Irma exodus

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In an opinion piece for The New York Times just before this year's presidential election, Mr. Stanley wrote that Donald J. Trump "engaged in rhetorical tactics unprecedented in recent American electoral history": that he "repeatedly endorsed obviously false claims" and made many "odd comments, retractions, semi-retractions and outright false statements" - and in the process promoted a willfully dystopian (and distorted) portrait of America as a dysfunctional country reeling from violence and crime that needed him to restore law and order.

Denouncing Mr. Trump "as a liar," Mr. Stanley argued, "misses the point of authoritarian propaganda altogether. Authoritarian propagandists are attempting to convey power by defining reality. The reality they offer is very simple. It is offered with the goal of switching voters' value systems to the authoritarian value system of the leader."

In this volume (originally published in hardcover in 2015), Mr. Stanley does not grapple directly with Mr. Trump's rhetoric, or the role that "fake news" played in the 2016 election. But his book does provide some useful insights into the dangers of propaganda - and its reliance upon mangled facts; false claims; and reductive, Manichaean storytelling. He observes that demagogic speech in democracies often uses language that purports to support liberal democratic ideals (liberty, equality and objective reason) in "the service of undermining these ideals." He points out that propaganda frequently raises fears that are likely to curtail rational debate - for instance "linking Saddam Hussein to international terrorism" after Sept. 11 - and that it may play upon deeper prejudices toward ethnic or religious groups that rob "us of the capacity for empathy toward them."

In a section on derogatory language, Mr. Stanley writes that "standard slurs for ethnic groups are too widely recognized as slurs to occur in political debate in a liberal democracy" (though "as liberal democracy breaks down, as in the case of modern-day Hungary," he adds, "explicit slurs become more acceptable"). At the same time, "apparently innocent words" or phrases - like welfare, work ethic, illegal immigrant - can take on negative connotations as they become "imbued, by a mechanism of repeated association, with problematic images or stereotypes."

Stereotypes are potent tools for propagandists and demagogues because they provide, in Mr. Stanley's words, "social scripts that guide us through the world, make sense of it, and legitimate our actions within it." They affect "the information we acquire via perception," and they resist revision (by the presentation of contradictory facts or logical argument) because they are emotionally "connected to our identity" and help legitimate previously held beliefs.

This is why propaganda - which provides a simple, convenient and seemingly coherent narrative architecture for processing events - thrives in a polarized environment in which truth is regarded as relativistic and facts are treated as fungible. And it's how reality-distorting propaganda undermines the reasoned deliberation that is so essential to democracy.

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'How Propaganda Works' Is a Timely Reminder for a Post-Truth Age

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In an opinion piece for The New York Times just before this year's presidential election, Mr. Stanley wrote that Donald J.

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Newsela | Opinion: Telling kids to focus on their weight instead of their health is dangerous

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alleging that trump kissed her without consent - cnnpolitics

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Former Trump campaign staffer sues, alleging that Trump kissed her without consent

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A former Trump campaign staffer is suing President Donald Trump and his campaign, alleging that the then-Republican presidential candidate kissed her without her consent during the 2016 race. She's also suing over equal pay -- claiming that she was paid less for her work based on race and gender.

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A lawyer for the Trump Organization has asked the House Judiciary Committee to stop any and all investigations into the company, arguing that there is an alleged conflict of interest with one of the lawyers consulting with the Democratic-led panel, The Washington Post reported.

Lawyer Alan Futerfas reportedly asserted in a letter on Monday that the panel must "cease and desist from any and all activities that are adverse to the Company" because it hired Berry Berke, a lawyer who works for a law firm that has previously represented the Trump Organization on a range of matters. This crossover, Futerfas argues, disqualifies the probe from investigating the company.

"This state of affairs violates recognized ethical obligations and irreparably taints the Committee's work," Futerfas wrote Monday in a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the Post reported.

Earlier this month, Nadler announced the addition of Berke and Norman Eisen - two vocal critics of President Trump Donald John Trump Spike Lee urges Oscars viewers to vote in 2020: 'Let's all be in the right side of history' José Andrés honors immigrants, women in Oscars speech Javier Bardem knocks 'borders,' 'walls' during Oscars speech in Spanish MORE - to the committee legal staff. Both are viewed as top attorneys who will help Democrats act as a check on an administration.

Berke has written extensively with Eisen on obstruction of justice and other potential legal exposures involving Trump. He is seen as a powerful litigator with vast experience.

Nadler said at the time that the pair will help examine a "range of issues" tied to the president and his administration, including possible corruption, ethics violations and obstruction of justice.

A spokesman for Nadler did not immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment. Futerfas also demanded that Nadler fire Berke as well as turn over any of his correspondence with the panel, the Post reported.

Berke's law firm, Kramer Levin, pushed back on Futerfas, calling his the assertion "baseless."

"Mr. Berke's work for the Committee is in his personal capacity and not on behalf of the firm, which will receive no compensation for Mr. Berke's services or provide any legal or other support," the law firm said in a statement to the Post, adding that Berke's consulting work for the panel "complies fully with all applicable ethical rules, does not pose any conflicts of interest and respects any obligations the firm may have."

Kramer Levin also told the newspaper that there is no crossover between the work Berke is doing and the work the law firm has previously done for the company.

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Trump Org. asks Judiciary panel to cease investigations: report

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A lawyer for the Trump Organization has asked the House Judiciary Committee to stop any and all investigations into the company, arguing that there is an alleged conflict of interest with one of the lawyers consulting with the Democratic-led panel, The Washington Post reported.

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Newsela | False statements on migrant caravan spark political controversy

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Users of Facebook and Twitter post information on topics like the migrant caravan in Mexico and bombs mailed to Democrat officials. However, some information that is shared is actually not true.

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Propaganda, which has been around for many centuries, is a term commonly used to describe deceptive persuasive techniques to change people's beliefs and attitudes.

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Newsela | Research shows low-skilled workers hurt the most by globalization

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Economic globalization has hurt manufacturing workers in the U.S.

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Society has been basing the definition of beauty on looks for as long as mankind can remember. We take a look at someone and immediately judge what we see. This is dangerous, especially for women, because of the emotional and physical chaos it brings. We are feeding into the lies that society brings to the table. Corporations and companies are brainwashing our perspectives and our bodies while God is laying out something completely different for us.

As I was doing a speech on beauty for a college speech class, I looked up the definition of beauty. According to Google, beauty is defined as "a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight." The simple fact that the definition only has physical qualities is a problem. Basing someone's beauty on their shape, color and form? Where are the qualities of a woman's personality? Not only are women listening to this definition, but men are as well. More than likely a man judges whether you are beautiful or not by taking one look. As a society, we are doing everything we can to achieve this standard of looking beautiful.

Even corporations are falling into this trap. Photoshopping is prevalent in today's world. You cannot flip through a magazine without a photoshopped image on every single page. You cannot sit down and watch TV without photoshopped commercials. Is natural beauty not good enough to be on the cover of a magazine, or in a TV ad? Surveys taken all over the world are coming up with crazy statistics about women wanting to change their bodies. One done by Allure magazine showed that 85 percent of women say they want their hips narrower, 93 percent of women say that the pressure to look younger is greater now that it has ever been and 97 percent of women said they wanted to weigh less. Why? So you can be "beautiful"? The definition of beauty has dangerously twisted how we see ourselves and one another.

This is also where eating disorders come into play. Now, eating disorders are not always a result of a woman being unhappy with her body. Some do so for various reasons. But studies show that the result of being unhappy with your body and wanting to look thinner makes a huge contribution to the illness of eating disorders. Anorexia Nervosa is the most common cause of death in women ages 15-24. There are 4.7 million women struggling with Bulimia, and Binge Eating is the most common eating disorder in the United Sates. Overall, 10 million females are struggling with an eating disorder in the United States. We are trying to fit into the unrealistic standard of what society says beauty is. A prime example of this is Barbie. If Barbie were a real woman, she would be 5'9", have a 39" bust, an 18" waist, 33" hips, weigh 110 pounds and have a size three shoe! Barbie would be considered anorexic. Society is lying to us and showing women unrealistic definitions of beauty. Why do we keep listening?

Next, we are going to look at what God says about beauty. In 1 Samuel 16, Samuel is choosing who will rule over Israel next. He goes to the house of Jesse and analyzes each of his sons trying to choose the next king. Samuel was looking only at the physical qualities of each man. The Lord ended up speaking to Samuel saying, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." If the Lord Almighty isn't even judging based on outward appearance, what makes us think we have the right to? God doesn't stop there. For women specifically, the Lord says in Proverbs 31:30 that "charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." Fearing the Lord has nothing to do with outward appearance, but everything to do with the heart. Beauty will fade no matter how much work you get done, or how much time you spend making yourself look good. Again, God does not stop there. Even more specifically, God says, "Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight" (1 Peter 3:3-4). I'm not sure how He could've been more specific. He lays it out for us that our beauty should not come from the outside. The inner self and the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit is what is important. But of course, this is the opposite of what society is telling us with their definition. It becomes dangerous because women often listen to society and completely ignore God telling them and showing them that they are already beautiful and stray into a different path. If God so specifically lays out in the Bible what is beautiful, then why are women and men still seeking something else?

Do not be brainwashed anymore by society and its lies. We are all beautiful in our own ways, but do not base that solely on what you see.

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Society's Definition Of Beauty Is Dangerous

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Society has been basing the definition of beauty on looks for as long as mankind can remember. We take a look at someone and immediately judge what we see. This is dangerous, especially for women, because of the emotional and physical chaos it brings. We are feeding into the lies that society brings to the table.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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This is also true to some extent with the way we react to people. By this I don't mean that we're more interested in and think more highly of attractive people (though research suggests both are true). Rather, I mean that our expectations of others are triggered by not only how they look but how they present themselves overall (what clothes they're wearing, whether they're clean-shaven, their accent, and so on). This wouldn't be a problem by itself, however, if it weren't also true that we're so often more influenced by our own biases than we are by actual evidence. When we have a powerfully positive or negative emotional reaction to someone upon first meeting them-often due to their overall presentation-it powerfully affects our reaction to the "content" we find inside, meaning their personality and character. As Proust famously wrote:

We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds, these ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognize and to which we listen.

We all carry around with us conclusions we've drawn about other people through which we filter everything they say and do. Certainly over time a person's actual personality and character alter these conclusions, but even then our conclusions often remain highly biased. Further, we seem to err mostly on the side of overestimation, thinking people far worse-are far better-than they actually are. It's the rare person, in my experience, who looks more skeptically at his beliefs about someone than at any evidence he observes that contradicts them.

But that, I would argue, is exactly what we should do. It takes more cognitive work-which is undoubtedly part of the reason so many of us are so reluctant to do it (as Daniel Kahneman famously asserted, we're all cognitively lazy)-but people are not only more nuanced than we typically acknowledge, but also change more often than we realize. If we really want to understand our fellow human beings accurately, we must allow them to surprise us, to contradict what we think we know about them. Like good scientists, we should cling to our theories about people only loosely and always be willing to revise them in light of new data. The package in which people come to us may be attractive or repulsive, but if we exert a little effort-like opening a book and browsing its contents before deciding whether to buy it-we can see past our visual biases to the truth. That way, we'll be far less likely to exclude from our lives not only a quality person-but also a quality book

Check out Dr. Lickerman's new book The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self. Read a sample chapter and visit Amazon or Barnes & Noble to pre-order your copy today!

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This is also true to some extent with the way we react to people. By this I don't mean that we're more interested in and think more highly of attractive people (though research suggests both are true).

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I Am Sick And Tired of Being The Fat Girl

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | For many of the world's poor, drinking water can kill

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Sipping water, brushing your teeth and taking a shower are all healthy habits, right? But what if doing any of those things could kill you?

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Newsela | Inmates strike to protest poor treatment and low wages in prisons

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NAIROBI (Reuters) - Tax systems that put a high burden on the poor mean public services are underfunded, stretching the gap between rich and poor and fueling global public anger, Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, said on Monday.

The Nairobi-headquarted charity said in a report that a new billionaire was created every two days last year, just as the poorest half of the world's population saw their wealth decline by 11 percent.

The report, released on Monday as political and business leaders gather for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said governments are increasingly underfunding public services and failing to clamp down on tax dodging.

"Poor people suffer twice from being deprived of basic services and also paying a higher burden of taxation," Byanyima said in an interview.

Billionaire fortunes increased by 12 percent last year, or $2.5 billion a day, while the 3.8 billion poorest people saw their wealth drop $500 million every day, Byanyima added.

The charity said tax rates for the rich and corporations had been cut in recent decades. And when governments fail to tax the wealthy, they pass the tax burden on to poor people through consumer levies like value added tax, Byanyima said.

"An indirect tax like that, that taxes salt, sugar or soap, the basics that people need ... then poor people pay relatively more out of their income than rich people," she said.

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advocacy groups / pressure groups / lobbies

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Gap between rich and poor growing, fueling global anger: Oxfam

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NAIROBI (Reuters) - Tax systems that put a high burden on the poor mean public services are underfunded, stretching the gap between rich and poor and fueling global public anger, Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, said on Monday.

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My Mom Put Me On A Diet And I Became Anorexic