The Winding Path

John over at Technology for Living recently tagged me in his post titled The Bravest Thing I’ve Done, as part of a request from Lorraine over at Powerful Living to tell everyone what gives us courage. I first encountered Lorraine’s request when Jenny wrote about the bravest thing she’s done, and I was glad that Jenny didn’t tag me because, as Lorraine mentioned is common, I haven’t really considered anything that I’ve done to be especially courageous.

But in the end it didn’t take long for me to realise that one general thing I’ve done most of my life, and what I’m continually trying to improve upon, could be considered courageous. This specific example could also be considered foolish, but I’ll leave that for you to decide. To illustrate I’ll tell you about what is the only truly illegitimate aspect of my past. Conveniently, this also allows me to reveal a little more about why I’m interested in neuroscience.

Around seven or eight years ago, right after I graduated from high school, I became involved in the electronic music scene. Electronic music had been a great love of mine since I was around 14, but it wasn’t until after high school that I got involved in the whole sub-culture, including an introduction to the world of illicit drugs. Initially I was hesitant; the media had done a good job of instilling fear of drugs in me. Yet at that age I was cynical and distrustful of the media who seemed far less reliable than my friends. But I didn’t blindly go along with my friends. I acknowledged the potential danger, but also acknowledged the apparent lack of negative consequences; my friends hadn’t suffered, as the media said they would.

I wanted to get a more complete picture of both sides of the story. Naturally, since I wanted to be a scientist even during primary school, I turned to research on the effects of drugs. I found quite a few great resources including Maps, Erowid and Lycaeum. What I found out lead to a fascination with the workings of the brain, right down to the molecular level, and I’m looking forward to learning much more when I begin studying neuroscience.

Buffered by a wealth of knowledge I prepared myself before getting too involved in drugs, doing all I’d learnt about to minimise the potential harm. While most of my experiences were amazing, I suffered the single-most mentally painful experience of my life when I tried LSD for the first time. An experience made all the worse because it was entirely self-inflicted; no one had forced it upon me and it was within my power to avoid. Once I’d recovered (which took about a month), I decided that not only was I not going to make the same mistake again, but that no-one else should need to make that mistake either. At the same time I’d found a forum which many people from the Melbourne electronic music scene frequented. It was a forum dedicated to harm minimisation, perfect for what I wanted to achieve. I joined the forum, participated in the discussions, and shared as much helpful info as I could with those exploring the world of illicit substances.

Through the forum I came across a reporter from a respected national current affairs show who was looking for people to participate in a documentary about the Australian dance music scene. I knew the tendency of those shows to highlight the negative sides of whatever story they presented, and the possibility of them using anything I said against me, but I decided to take the chance despite those fears and my great fear of public speaking. When I volunteered I also knew that it would mean revealing to my entire family that I took drugs. Not to mention my work colleagues.

My family’s reaction was ultimately supportive. My Mum cried, but both her and my Dad trusted me to not do anything which was certain to endanger myself or others. But equally importantly they respected my decision to go on TV to spread the word about harm minimisation. The huge numbers of people around the world taking drugs shows that prohibition doesn’t work. Neither does the head-in-the-sand approach. Leading by example may work, eventually, but when teenagers are surrounded by many examples of people enjoying drugs without significant consequences, examples of abstinence are not effective. Ultimately it is not drug use which does harm, but drug abuse, and there is more than enough information out there on ways to ensure use does not turn into abuse. The key to eliminating the harm through drug abuse is a multi-faceted approach which includes getting that information to those who need it. So I considered spreading the harm minimisation message far more important than what people might think of me.

So my 15 minutes of fame risked ostracising me from my family, might have cost me my job, and ensured that I’ll never be a politician. They’ll also now bar me from entering the U.S., and will possibly leave a negative impression with anyone who googles my name. So I apologise to my friends over there whom I won’t be able to visit, but I can’t claim an iota of integrity if I allowed those risks to deter me. Nor the risk of alienating many of my readers. Though at least that latter risk is small, because I respect you enough to judge me not by my past practices, especially considering where they lead me.

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Over at edge earlier this month they published an article by Jonathan Haidt entitled “Moral psychology and the misunderstanding of religion”.

He gives a comprehensive analysis of what morality is, summarised by this definition:

Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.

Haidt uses that definition, and his analysis of morality, to argue how atheists, while attempting to bring rigorous scientific reasoning to their analysis of religion, are significantly influenced by their own moral psychology.

Haidt argues that

every longstanding ideology and way of life contains some wisdom, some insights into ways of suppressing selfishness, enhancing cooperation, and ultimately enhancing human flourishing

but suggests that people can lose sight of that wisdom when their or their opponent’s ideologies are attacked.

I agree, we might forget that those ideologies can provide some benefit. But I also think that many don’t realise those benefits can be provided without having to adopt those ideologies. Where adopting those ideologies also requires adopting their failings, surely we’re not expected to ignore those failings, considering them all part of the package?

Haidt also says

surveys have long shown that religious believers in the United States are happier, healthier, longer-lived, and more generous to charity and to each other than are secular people. Most of these effects have been documented in Europe too. If you believe that morality is about happiness and suffering, then I think you are obligated to take a close look at the way religious people actually live and ask what they are doing right.

The comments on PZ Myers’ blog provide anecdotal evidence that not everyone who attends church is happy doing so, including Keith’s story of the waiter who noted that the church-going Sunday lunch crowd is often surly and don’t tip well. This example can be used to highlight one of the problems with anecdotal evidence. It considers a smattering of cases which tend to agree with each other, leading to a perception which is not necessarily anything close to what would be seen if all possible cases were considered. This is why scientists do studies with large, randomised samples. Could all the happy church-going families have gone home for their Sunday lunch together? Might the waiter have been more aware of surly customers who don’t tip well?

So if we don’t look to anecdotal evidence, but we still need to take a close look, where do we look? We non-scientists generally don’t have the skills and resources to look as closely as necessary to be able to reach a firm conclusion. But there are scientists who can, and have. Anton Mates had a look at the results and said:

In support of this view, pretty much all the studies I’ve seen on the subject (such as those summarized here) find that regular religious attendance is correlated with happiness and health and giving. This has, so far as I can see, absolutely nothing to do with religious belief, other that in some cultures belief is a strong motivator for attendance. Studies such as this one provide evidence that belief, in itself, is a negative factor–countries with higher rates of belief also have higher rates of early mortality, homicide, STDs, abortions, and so forth.

I’m all for learning from religion, and for the benefit religious beliefs can provide individuals and society, but I’m not in favour of adopting it entirely, warts and all, for the sake of those positives. Particularly when all of those positives can be had without adopting those beliefs. We can learn from the ancient Greek gods, or the Norse gods, or any other gods now bereft of worshipers, without adopting all the practices which those gods required and which their worshipers willingly performed. Why should current gods and religions be approached any differently?

But I don’t believe Haidt is saying they should be approached differently. His final two sentences show he is simply warning against taking opposing ideologies to similar extremes:

A militant form of atheism that claims the backing of science and encourages “brights” to take up arms may perhaps advance atheism. But it may also backfire, polluting the scientific study of religion with moralistic dogma and damaging the prestige of science in the process.

I certainly agree to that. We don’t need to stamp out religion entirely. But I see no good in yielding to any form of harmful ideological dogmatism, religious, scientific, moralistic, or otherwise.

Here are some more responses to Haidt’s article

Science Daily recently published an article describing a study which looked into why we feel guilty. I noticed it because of Erin’s recent post asking why we criticise ourselves so often.

The study shows a push and pull effect; the “push” of guilt makes us feel sad or anxious, and the “pull” of guilt makes us feel motivated or keen to act. The research shows that guilt directs us to regulate our behaviour in line with social expectations, “pushing” us away from behaviour we learn is unwelcome, and “pulling” us towards corrective or beneficial behaviour.

So, if the same applies to other emotions, perhaps Erin’s answer is that our emotions drive us to align with the societal principles and values we choose to adopt, and that drive manifests as critical self-talk. I suspect that the more off-track our behaviour, the more we self-criticise.

Interesting stuff but I’m pretty sure the article is talking it up a little when it says the “research presents a new idea of emotions serving a dynamic motivational function for regulating behavior.” As far as I knew there was nothing new about the idea that emotions serve to dynamically regulate behaviour.

[Note: "Sidetracked" just means that I'm not going into detail with this post, so don't be mislead into thinking you're going to get an in-depth explanation of the topic. I'll do this with any interesting articles I come across which I don't discuss in-depth.]