Beyond Belief

I’m curious how people become immersed in conspiracy theories – whether in large situations like the American election – or small ones like an unwelcome change in an organization.  I was therefore pleased when the New York Times columnist tackled the subject in a recent column.  One of the benefits of the Times is its continuing support of columnists with both liberal and conservative biases.  I was thus more than casually interested in how Ross Douthat would frame this.

He first debunked the notion that the theories come solely from the supply side – social media and biased press and cable networks. It’s not the fault of a top-down power base. There is a demand from the bottom up to support an already existing belief.  He goes on to describe three mindsets that move participants in the direction of conspiracy theories that make sense.  I wish he had spent more time on the hero worship of celebrity, but perhaps he will do so in the future.

The first group he describes are the “Conspiracy Curious Normies”.  These are not diehards but people who see the lack of transparency in government and institutions all the time and wonder what’s behind the curtain of official secrecy.  The lack of detail can arouse a reasonable skepticism.  Politics, of course, encourages this. The party not in power plays the role of official opposition – seldom a loyal one - and the task is to uncover the “there there”.

The second group are the “Outsider Intellectuals”. Such persons, usually with more than a modicum of formal education, place much of their identity on questioning everything. Sometimes, of course, they get it right.  Because much of the discourse is sincere and now happens in social media, others are quick to pick it up and reinforce it. Any person has the power to gain a following in no time – as Kevin Ashton proved with his fictional consultant, Santiago Swallow and his 85,000 followers.  This is a cautionary tale relating to celebrity culture – but it also shows how the faux outside intellectual can dupe us.

The last group Douthat identifies are the “Recently Radicalized”.  To some extent they are the creatures of the pandemic.  Lockdown has had an effect in my own family where teenagers are studying online while all their parents work from home and an older grandson was hired immediately after graduating from university. Another son teaches graduate students online in Hong Kong. I’ll add myself to make ten people all functioning with their own technology at an optimal level.  How common is that? The contrast of impoverished inner city or rural families in any country is staggering. It is an invitation to mistrust authority. Added to that are unusual events – racial unrest, natural disasters and it reinforces the belief that no one is in charge – and that any who are attempting to be – those who talk about resets – are simply moving to take advantage of the situation and are out to get us.

 Douthat concludes that there is more reason here that we are willing to give credit to. The easy thing is to mock it and laugh it away. The more responsible thing is to ponder ways to rebut it.

For the first group, the conspiracy curious, Douthat suggests avoiding the media coverage and going directly to the sources.  If claims are being made in court, what are the lawyers saying to make their case?  If it is legislation, what does the proposed bill say?  If there is lack of transparency, what can be revealed and what is reasonable to withhold and redact?

For the outsider intellectuals, Douthat suggests that they take a breath and recognize that anomalies might be simple errors rather than dastardly plots.  For the recently radicalized, pandemics do create chaos and ascribing mistakes as overreaching attempts to mislead are unfair.  People do get things wrong because they are human and respond in various ways.  If it appears that no one is in charge, it might be due to complexity of the reaction rather than autocracy.

In the long run what we need to focus on is law making – not story telling.

Gender Violence

Marking the anniversary of the violence against women at the Montreal Polytechnic is an appropriate time to visit this topic and how it affects the environment.  I am indebted as always to Dr. Dennis O’Hara’s presentations for the monthly EcoSabbath and research he does to support his themes.

 He started with an overview

 “Rooted in discriminatory gender norms and laws and shrouded in impunity, gender-based violence (GBV) occurs in all societies as a means of control, subjugation and exploitation that further reinforces gender inequality. …Occurring in all countries, in all communities, at all stages of life and across settings, GBV encompasses many different expressions of violence, including: physical, sexual and emotional abuse sexual harassment; stalking; rape, including “corrective” rape and rape as a tactic of conflict; domestic violence and intimate partner violence; child marriage; human trafficking; and female genital mutilation. It is any violent act, including threats, coercion and the potential for violence, perpetrated against someone’s will and based on gender norms and unequal power dynamics. GBV is the result of long-standing, deeply entrenched discriminatory norms that treat gender inequality with permissibility and further embed these inequalities within societal structures and institutions.” Castañeda Camey et al, “Gender-based violence and environment linkages: The violence of inequality,” ed. J. Wen, (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 2020), xi, 3,

 Here’s a quick look at the extent of the discrimatory norms and laws.

These discriminatory measures also relate to the environment:

 We are starting to hear about food insecurity in our own country during the pandemic. The numbers are appalling in other parts of the world. They are affected by all our assaults on the environment.  The above report went on to say that the rnvironmental discussion needs to address gender disparities as follows:

 “A Feminist Green New Deal would center the right of access to clean air, water and land for all. It must remediate gendered food insecurity and nutritional disparities by bolstering social safety nets that include healthy food access as a human right. It would invest in regenerative agriculture and food provision strategies that transition away from extractive land practices that only fuel environmental degradation. Programs focused on shifting the cultural conversation around gender-based violence should also be developed; include participation and education of all members of society; ensure engagement of children, extended family, and the wider community; and target institutional and political structures as well.”

 The video below is not totally complete with surtitles – but the energy of the participants sends a message that we all need to hear.  As is so often the case, those among us with less teach us to care more for the life of the total planet.

Anti-Social Media

As someone always interested in new technology, I set up a Facebook account first -then LinkedIn, then Twitter and then Instagram and Pinterest over the last twelve years.  I still visit the first from time to time and Twitter even less often, and the others hardly ever.  Distant family members draw me to the first two.  My followers are modest in number.  As places for either information or stimulation, the word for these sites that comes to mind in my personal experience is bland.  Canadians offer the odd “tut-tut” comment about life within and beyond their borders but few comments there affect my blood pressure – because, of course, I agree with them.

 I still read one newspaper on a tablet in the morning and scan the headlines of two leading American ones every day. I switch between two Canadian news networks, CNN and PBS in the evening.  Am I in a bubble?  Of course.  Do I know what is going on in other bubbles?  Only what my existing sources tell me.  I have a colleague whom I have talked to for years – who told me recently that he refuses to follow any traditional sources for his news.  He recently joined Facebook – and by linking up with his alternate news sources he now is pleased to have 2300 “friends”. While I am one of them, the algorithms never allow his posts to reach me.  It’s just as well, perhaps, since he says Facebook occasionally shuts down his account for a  few days.

 I came across an article by Charles Warzel, an opinion writer for the Washington Post, who has followed the divisions within social media for years.  He recently decided on an interesting way to experience the divided worlds firsthand. He asked two people to give him the passwords to their Facebook accounts for three weeks leading up to and immediately following the US election. He wanted them to be typical older Americans - not conspiracy theorists - who nevertheless received more news via Facebook than they did in the past.  Both had been mildly conservative but were drifting toward more progressive politics and both voted for Biden because they thought he had more capacity to reach across the aisle.

 The 62- year -old male first saw a picture of grandparents admiring the new baby. Next was a picture of Joe Biden with a For Sale sign photoshopped on top. Then an image of a Democrat wearing a tutu giving the viewer a middle finger, Then images of a dingy hospital, an inner city store with empty shelves, a politician’s palatial residence – all labeled “ SOCIALISM”.  These continued with no context and were interspersed with the usual feed items of the dogs and cooking prowess of friends.

Like many of us, this viewer joined FaceBook some years ago to keep in touch with friends. He took early retirement and when the Covid pandemic struck he found himself with even more spare time and glued to his phone. It started harmlessly but soon he found himself arguing with friends he hadn’t seen for years, whose political views now shocked him. While it started with mild expressions of disagreements and attempts to fact-check sources, he became more involved and addicted to the discourse. He discovered that the anger expressed actually scared him. Post-election claims of fraud were even more frequent and without sources. There were accusations that one should not trust fact checkers. Democrats were linked with Satan.

 The feed of the other baby boomer, a 55 year old woman, was different. She never questioned anything political and consequently had far fewer political entries. Most simply endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket.  Even so, she was distressed by the issues that were debated and the polarization expressed. While Warzel saw little of this on her news feed, she explained that she had left Facebook after it started. She shared how she felt disturbed in the same way that the male viewer was, by seeing old friends and acquaintances espousing conspiracy theories full of hate and meanness.

 Warzel came out of the experience with some learning:

• The worst part of social media is in the comments section. That’s where the infighting is most intense with no attention to content and where the vitriol flies. These are what often get shared and go viral.  Comments are not subject to either moderation or fact checking. One of his colleagues terms it the “Town Hall for Fighting”. 

• We don’t think often about the people whom we admitted into our lives as digital “friends”. At the beginning we are pleased to discover people at a distance or people we knew from past contexts, but they are acquaintances at best. We are often invited to add friends of friends – and suddenly we are part of a network of people who are communicating with us in ways we have never intended.

 Warzel quotes Joan Donovan of Harvards’s Kennedy school describing this as an “economy of engagement’.  We are giving our time and emotional energy to those on our self-created platform.  The cost in some cases may be watching our friends lose touch with reality.  This is not my personal experience of the social platforms I follow but it is easier after hearing these stories, to understand the experience of my American contemporaries.

 But in a recent experience, just through Email, I saw a similar pattern.  People in one of my communities received news that they initially responded to with shock and anger. The immediate response to shoot the messenger, and to scapegoat the perceived henchpersons was remarkable – and reinforced by the ease of sharing gut feelings.  Few perceived that this was perhaps enhanced by our being locked down in a pandemic and giving it more energy and time than we could normally afford.  When a requested public meeting online was set, and when the agenda became a different one, it was not at all unreasonable for some participants to be even more upset, but the result was very much like a social media name calling which now involved bystanders who watched members and long term friends within the community turn on one another.

 How do we recover socially in poisoned environments?  A wise counselor in that situation suggested two ways in a parting address.  He told the story of his own background of participation in a world body with thousands in attendance, where views were so deeply divided that some participants would not even attend. It affected him deeply enough that he proposed a small forum of participants from around the world to meet in person following the gathering.  

The large body met again ten years later, and the difference was palpable.  Some of those taking part in the small discussions had listened to other views with respect and realized that they could hear other perspectives without having to accept them.  The processes followed the South African one called Indaba. Indaba is an African Zulu cultural process for engaging different points of view on a shared concern. It involves listening to the stories and experiences of others and how they came to be where they are.

Over time those who participated in Indaba process became more knowledgeable of others’ views.  It did not result in a melting pot, where everyone now felt the same way. The difference was respect for the reality that we don’t all think the same way. As another wise counselor commented brightly when dealing with two strong opposing views in another situation, “Isn’t it interesting how different we are”.

 The engaging American Episcopal presiding bishop Michael Curry who recently spoke at my College’s annual Larkin-Stewart lecture, perhaps has the last word.

 “We will either live together as brother and sisters (Siblings) or we will perish together as fools – either community or chaos – the choice is ours.”

An elder comments.

If there was ever a person worthy of being called an Elder of the environmental movement it is Bill McKibben, who I heard speak at the Bader Theatre in Toronto more than a year ago to a packed house.  In his 60th year he has been writing about climate change for thirty of them. As well as teaching at Middlebury College in New York, he writes regularly for the New Yorker Newsletter and here are some excerpts leading up to the US Election.  Did people listen?

 “Authorities told all forty million people in California to be prepared to evacuate—indeed, they told them to park their cars facing out of the driveway, in case they had to leave in seconds. But the pandemic has made evacuation more complicated, because heading to a shelter might carry its own dangers, and it has left California’s firefighting force depleted, because the state relies on prison inmates, a group that has been hit especially hard by covid-19, to fill out its ranks. And that’s just California. The flooding crisis in China intensified again last week, as record amounts of water poured into the reservoir behind Three Gorges Dam.”    (August 28, 2020)

 “. . . we need people fully committed to the task of building out solar and wind power as fast as possible. Those technologies are much cheaper now than they were thirty years ago, which helps change the game. (Indeed, news came last week that ExxonMobil, not long ago the most valuable corporation in the world, now had a market cap smaller than a big solar-and-wind company.) As the credit-rating agency Moody’s pointed out in an analysis released last week, natural-gas pipelines are now an unwise financial bet, partly because activists have become adept at blocking them. The pincers created by the confluence of cheap clean tech and a stronger environmental movement should give Biden the opportunity to move far more nimbly than any President before him. “  (October 7, 2020)

 “Heat waves widen the achievement gap between students of color and white students, mostly because the latter are far more likely to be in buildings with air-conditioning.” (Oct 14, 2020)

 “It is clear, first, that regulation is going to be essential to bring greenhouse gases under control, and, second, that it’s going to have to happen fast. The world’s climate scientists have stated plainly that the next decade represents the critical time frame: without fundamental transformation by 2030, the chances of meeting the Paris accord’s climate targets are nil. Given Barrett’s performance at her hearings, it seems doubtful that she’ll let America play its role—if you’re not even clear that climate change is real, how much latitude will you give government agencies to attack it? As with so many things about climate change, the problem is ultimately mathematical. Joe Biden, should he be elected, acting not out of anger but out of sorrow at Republican gamesmanship, could make sure that the will of the people, not just the will of Charles Koch, is represented on the bench. The composition of the Supreme Court has varied over time from five Justices to ten; eleven seems like the right number for 2021. Or maybe thirteen.”  (October 21, 2020)

“In 1959, when humans began measuring the carbon-dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, there was still some margin. That first instrument, set up on the side of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano, showed that the air contained about three hundred and fifteen parts per million of CO2, up from two hundred and eighty p.p.m. before the Industrial Revolution. Worrisome, but not yet critical. In 1988, when the nasa scientist James Hansen first alerted the public to the climate crisis, that number had grown to three hundred and fifty p.p.m., which we’ve since learned is about the upper safe limit. Even then, though, we had a little margin, at least of time: the full effects of the heating had not yet begun to manifest in ways that altered our lives. If we’d acted swiftly, we could have limited the damage dramatically.

 We didn’t, of course, and we have poured more carbon into the atmosphere since 1988 than in all the years before. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has topped four hundred and fifteen p.p.m.—that’s much too high, something that we know from a thousand indicators.

 . . . . If November 3rd doesn’t mark the start of a mighty effort at transformation, subsequent November Tuesdays will be less important, not more—our leverage will shrink, our chance at really affecting the outcome will diminish. This is it. Climate change “is the No. 1 issue facing humanity, and it’s the No. 1 issue for me,” Biden said in an interview on Saturday. With luck, we’ll get a chance to find out if the second half of that statement is true. The first half is already clear.”  (October 28, 2020)

About Oil

Justin Worland writes a good occasional newsletter for Time called One-Five Everything Climate and a recent one focuses on the fact that large oil companies are waking up to the fact that the engine that has fueled them for decades may have to address climate change.

He points out both how oil is damaging the environment and at the same time has brought us all the prosperity we value. We blame oil companies for their disinformation and at the same time savour all the benefits they bring us. He quotes Daniel Yergin’s book, The Prize which links both democracy and the rise of capitalism. But Blowout by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow takes a different stance, noting both its importance and its questionable governance. She calls it “the least well governed industry in the history of mankind.” She stresses its political power as historian Timothy Mitchell does in his book, Carbon Demoocracy. He stresses the importance of oil to the economy. He also notices how it can also enforce authoritarian governance as it has in the Middle East.

All recent - and all providing food for thought.