Sorry, Thank You, Yay!

When some people move away from faith, they don't move away from the culture. Many of the Atheists I know are Jewish. The Atheists who were Christian hesitate to say the same thing. Alain De Botton talks about Atheism 2.0. Basically, moving on from the break-up/divorce stage to the co-parenting phase. Raising the importance of 'what is best for the child'. Many of us still live in communities where we have important relationships that bind us, despite intense pain we'd rather be rid of. Where the Escape Hatch isn't there any more. At that point, it isn't a question of who is right. It is a question of 'What is the next best step?'

Today is Yom Kippur. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. A day when you genuinely say sorry to people for the things you have done wrong in the last year. Traditionally, it is attached to a 25 hour fast. As it so happens, fasts are actually good for your stomach. A little like brushing your teeth for the insides. An annual spring clean is a good idea. A day of reflection on your missteps is also a good idea.

Yom Kippur

Another non-religious holiday I have always like the idea of, even if the origins are controversial, is Thanksgiving. Although there are other connections, it dovetailed with the seasonal harvest. An annual celebration giving thanks for what we have. Quite often as the religious tones changed, the holidays survived. Keep the tree, change the decorations. Saying thank you is a good idea no matter what you believe.

Thanksgiving

Another one I love is Diwali. A festival of lights. A celebration of knowledge beating ignorance. A celebration that despite the major struggles we face, we tend to chip away at them. Lights shine if we let them.

Diwali

There are lots of difficulties in the world. Lots of fights and clashes and issues and pain. We don't have to go nuclear on the whole situation though. We don't have to rage, and burn, and slash, and destroy. We can still build on the good bits. See the good bits. As Bruce Lee said, 'Use what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own'.

The Crazies

There are lots of crazies in this world. Fortunately they do not represent the majority. In the past they did. Fifty years from now we may look back and think that today they do. When I look back 50 years now, I am very glad to live in a world that is less violent, less racist, less homophobic, less sexist and more able to have discussion, be friends with, live with and even marry people who are very different from us.

I like the fact that the crazies are allowed to speak. Free Speech is awesome. If someone is free to open their mouth and say, 'Look at me, I am a crazy.' that lets me avoid them. When someone posts a facebook status update that makes my jaw hit the floor, I can be grateful that I have a little insight into a person that allows me to artfully reduce the time in their company.

There is a fascinating story, I think from Freakonomics, which tells the story of how the response to 9/11 increased the circle around an airport where people would rather choose to drive. Driving is far more dangerous than flying. Road accidents are the 8th on the rankings of leading causes of death, not far behind HIV/AIDS. By increasing security the time it takes to fly from A to B increases. This means more people will choose to drive instead. So they choose the more dangerous method to save time. The increased security ironically leads to more deaths.

Like terrorism, sharks and tidal waves, certain stories scare us more. We aren't wired to look at the facts. I think the same is true with free speech and 'crazies'. Trolls on the internet use this approach to hijack conversations and provoke a response. I think the appropriate response when someone says something dodgy is to quietly suck the air out of the room. Secretly, you can be grateful to the troll for letting you know they are a moron. Trolls do not reflect the majority opinion. Increasing the policing of trolls will likely ironically lead to their opinions gaining more value than they deserve.

Megan asked some interesting questions about the consistency of our criticism of some forms of speech in her guest post 'We need to talk about Charlie'. Another issue that often gets brought up in teasing out difficult issues is the creation of 'Safe Spaces'. I find the idea of a safe space appealing in the sense of making even trolls feel comfortable saying what they want to say. That doesn't mean we need to feed them though. I mean comfortable in the sense of a lack of physical attack. They can feel free to say their stuff though. I would say universities and social media are awesome places to be safe spaces in this sense. I think they are terrible places to be safe spaces in terms of providing trigger free retreats for people who are trying to protect themselves as they recover from trauma.

I do think we can create little protected bubbles to protect holy stories. I don't think these places are the places where ideas change or develop though. They are respites. On Bloggingheads TV, Robert Wright and Judith Shulevitz discuss the ideas of safe spaces, free speech, political correctness and whether or not universities are creating a generation of people that are soft by protecting them too much.

Fighting trolls is feeding trolls.

See the talk at Bloggingheads

Holy Objects

To understand why people want to keep objects holy, you can't start with whether or not the holiness is 'true'. In 'The Righteous Mind' Jonathan Haidt looks at the different moral foundations or frames that cultures use,  and tries to understand the impasse between good people. Interestingly, it is often liberal minded people who get angrier and are less accepting of conservative people. This was counter intuitive for me since my understanding of a liberal environment is one of tolerance. I still find it frustrating how angry/bitter some very caring, creative people are. I know it is because they get passionately upset about injustices they see. The anger typically breaks down any chance of changing someone's mind though. Haidt is encouraging people to put the non-polite conversations back on the table. We have been great at breaking down racism, sexism, homophobia, classism etc. It doesn't help if we introduce other tribes that we define ourselves by in order to provide a home for our desire to find someone to target our hatred at.

In 'A Sense of Authenticity', I looked at our ability to tell if someone was parroting something or if it was a part of them. Paul Bloom discusses how important the truth of a story is to us. We feel like somehow a shirt worn by a celebrity is worth more than an identical, but brand new, shirt. When the bubble is burst, the value evaporates. No matter how much pleasure you have got from something, discovering it is a fake will destroy your ability to go forward. Fake when it comes to stories or faith based belief is a little pointless though. There is, by definition, no demonstrable proof for faith. It is personal.

Even those who don't believe in a supernatural power can have holy objects. Objects that remind them of something. Perhaps it is a Kindle. I  love some books. When I finish them, the old book may sit on my bookshelf and I may not read it again for years. When I look at it, I feel pleasure. With a Kindle, the same object gets more and more love each time I read another awesome book. We have other objects we love. Rings. Watches. Stubs from a concert. Momentos that remind us of significant occasions. We look after these objects. They are holy. They are the things we would grab if there was a fire. Those stories can be ruined, and the memories elicited changed. We look after the objects in order to protect them.

Respecting someone's holy objects in public isn't case of deciding whether it is true for you. It is like not starting a phone conversation in a cinema. It is like not loudly swearing like a trooper on a public bus. It is like pausing to wait for someone to take a photo before walking between them and their smiling buddy. Basically, it is just playing nice. It is not illegal to not be nice, but we do have various four letter words to describe those who aren't.

All this falls apart though when your story starts messing with other people. I still think the terrorists are losing. They have to resort to remarkable. Seth Godin talks about how to spread ideas through having stuff that people will talk about.  Terrorists seem to get his message. The thing is, ideas don't spread unless people spread them. As Jon Stewart points out when he was #JeSuisConfused about France's response to an anti-semitic comedian not even a week after millions marched for Free Speech - the best way to respond is to not buy tickets! If you take the bait and reply with angry messages, you are spreading the messages. That is what trolls are on the internet. They get people angry and cause a commotion. Don't waste money prosecuting and jailing them. Don't waste time feeding them. Trolls die when we ignore them.