Lies, miscommunication and Change

With so many people lying and so much miscommunication how do we get along at all and how can we make it better?

“There are people who exaggerate so much that they can't tell the truth without lying.”

-Mark Twain

“The lie is a condition of life.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

I think it is odd when people are surprised by a lie. I also think it is interesting when people miscommunicate. People tend to get louder and repeat themselves when they feel they aren’t being understood or they tend to become uncomfortable, confused or withdrawn when social conventions are not adhered to.  Non-verbal communication is a major source of miscommunication in daily conversations.  It is known that more than 90% of communication is non-verbal but we do not have classes about reading these kinds of cues in school and so we are not very adept at understanding them. We think others are mad when they are confused or we think others are rude when they are just trying to help us feel more comfortable but it is all a symptom of misinterpretation and miscommunication.

There are many studies on the amount of lying that people engage in in everyday life and these studies all report that people lie a lot. The following quotation is from a study done by the University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman:

“The study, published in the journal's June issue, found that 60 percent of people lied at least once during a 10-minute conversation and told an average of two to three lies.” (Here is the link to this article: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-06/uoma-urf061002.php)

Little white lies permeate our conversations with each other and I venture to guess that they exist even when we speak to ourselves. We tell ourselves that we are smart, funny, fat, skinny, talented, etc… but we do not take the time to step back from our own situation and examine ourselves more objectively. Even when we come to a personal realization and feel a sense of internal honesty it is often so painful or discouraging that we abandon the notion because a lie is more comforting.

 In our conversations with others we do the same thing. We tell others they are smart, fat, funny, etc... Or we talk about things in exaggerated ways; or events are told with gaping holes or with added conjecture, we forget but think we remember, or a million other common place misleadings occur everyday. And there are also purposeful lies where manipulation, control or any number of selfish reasons are the goal.  People lie to save face, feign innocence, spread a rumor, or simply survive an extreme situation.  These are very common and a much more deliberate than other types of lying and they are often seen as less ethical or at least the person lying is seen as more culpable. None of these activities lead to a more peacful or productive society and it is the job of scoiety to address these problems.

Three ways to fight miscommunication: 

1.       Honesty

The first way to fight miscommunication is to have a high standard for our own thinking and communicating. By having a higher standard for ourselves we can then expect a higher standard for others.  Also, by being more honest with ourselves we can better learn what honest feels like and how to identify lies. Feeling free to be wrong and to be able to say things like “I don’t know” frees our conversations and allows them to express better the realities of the current situation and learn from each other.  Placing humility and honesty highest among our social values, teaching children the importance of integrity and accepting others as imperfect creatures are great places to start to communicate with each other more effectively.

2.       Education

Communication starts in the brain and makes its way outward to the world and so we must educate ourselves and each other about how to better communicate. We need to use current scientific and social research to inform our educational practices and make communication a priority.  Teaching different languages, cultural practices, non-verbal idiosyncrasies as well as emotional universals are all important as our social world becomes more diverse and fast paced.

3.       Patience and Clarity

In an increasingly fast paced, technology enriched and capitalistic world our interactions are often times with people we have never met and in situations we have never encountered.  These interactions can be very volatile and can lead to the worst communication but one of the best things one can do in this type of situation is to have patience and work for clarity. Taking the time to re-explain something, or say something differently or getting someone who knows better will help both people come to a reasonable conclusion. People need to realize the priority of the situation and the only time you should yell is when there is an emergency. 

But how do we accomplish these goals if they are not made a priority in every aspect of our culture? What is more important or useful than a better understanding of each other and ourselves and leading more fulfilling lives?

Consciousness: Illusion of control…

Consciousness: Illusion of control…

I think the evolution of consciousness is a tricky subject because consciousness exists in the brain and the brain is super complex. There are millions of neurons coordinating, activating and communicating with endless results and most of the actions that happen in the brain have nothing to do with consciousness as we understand it.  The idea that humans are the only animal with a form of consciousness is highly debated but I would like to be open to the fact that many other animals have a similar set of brain states that, if we could analyze them, would be called consciousness.  Consciousness to me is the inner monologue and overall processing that produces recallable memories as well as a linear basis for the continuity that allows for the notion of a self. Consciousness is the ability to communicate with ourselves and with others. Consciousness is the NOW that we are constantly working to understand and legitimize through to create a workable space to live in and consciousness is, to me, the illusion of control.  

                A long time ago in our evolution something changed in our biological ability to communicate in a way that would lead to a major change in our social lives. Primates are social animals and rely on social cooperation to succeed in surviving and propagating the species.  Animals learn in many different ways and I believe that humans began to learn by means of verbal and visual communication strategies. These began as simple grunts and gestures and then evolved slowly to include more variability in individual sounds to represent more and more real world ideas.  As language progressed humans began to draw pictures to teach other about practical things such as solving problems like hunting or determining when to go to safety. The teaching and communicating of ideas is what I think led to our eventual formation of complex language and to what we call consciousness.

                So what happened in humans to create this major change in social development? I think it was a combination of a biological singularity that allowed humans the possibility to use an excess of neurons for more and more novel uses and an environment that promoted rapid adaptation and social cooperation. Also, the close proximity of young to their parents in primates living in a harsh environment may have led to the opportunity and need to teach children in more and more effective ways, thus drawing and clarifying language may be a product of these types of interacting circumstances.  

                As language developed in ancient humans the growing complexity of individual representations used in language would necessitate memorization and practice to ensure the continuation of teaching strategies from generation to generation. Through this memorization and practice the brain may have become better and better at internalizing these language parts and utilizing part of the brain’s processing faculties to this task and therefore a stream of consciousness developed. Now I can imagine that once the ability to memorize language and think internally about the world might allow for a revolution in humanity because now an individual with a good grasp of the language could better teach new things they learned as well as make plans about the future. The ability to plan things and think about the world on a timeline is thought of as a characteristic of human consciousness and something that separates us from the rest of animals and I think that it was the need for communication that led to all of humanities new abilities.

                So where does control come in to play and what about free will? Well, I think that we take free will for granted but it is not such a simple concept. While I admit that we are responsible for our actions we are completely limited by our current environment and our biological proclivities. We only have free will as long as we do not expect to be free to do anything at all. We have the ability to make a limited number of choices based on a limited numbers of current possibilities.  This is where determinism comes from and the idea that if we knew all the factors down to the individual relationships between atoms and physical forces we could determine every possible outcome and therefore nothing is really free.  I believe there is truth is the concept of determinism but what I think is more important is the idea of quantum chaos or the law of uncertainty that makes a rift between the possibilities we can postulate and the actual happenings in reality.

There is a level of unpredictability to everything but we still have the unending need to create patterns and consistencies to understand and navigate the world. We attempt to focus our thinking and simplify the data to make decisions and we are often rushed or do not have the time to really contemplate the reality of our predicaments. So when we make decisions we have already predicted the outcome and due to the limited number of possibilities we are often times correct, which goes to reify the concept of control as well as reinforcing the strategy used in the previous prediction. Also, we concentrate on outcomes that are consistent with our predictions and gloss over the outcomes that are confusing or otherwise unpredicted which only furthers the idea that we have control because we disregard this useless information.  This illusion of control also leads to self-confidence, which is one of the most attractive traits to humans, which suggests how it is evolutionarily positive to use language to predict and manage life’s problems and to advertise one’s own predictive abilities.

So, there is a lot going on in the conscious mind of men and women but it is not necessarily important for humans to have free will in the classical sense. I think that biological creatures such as humans are products of three things: the environment, the individual’s biology and chemistry, and the constant process of data acquisition, filtration and analyzation of information. Consciousness is now a super complex form of a once simple tool for communication but control is a kind of useful illusion to give meaning to events and allow for patterns to emerge from very complicated circumstances. We are limited by our senses and we are controlled by no one thing.  I like to think of the brain as a mess of wires that are all connected at millions of crossroads and consciousness is just another electrical line weaving its way through the mess like a twisting and morphing snake, never ceasing and impossible to catch.

The Big Bang Argument…

So when Christians say that science is making great strides to help them reinforce their faith by illuminating the “Designer” in the natural world it is yet another attempt to high jack scientific thoughts. One of these scientific discoveries it the theory of the Big Bang:  At the beginning of time and space there was a singularity or a dot of condensed mass and all at once it exploded in all directions and it seems that this must be due to a God making it happen. One Christian apologetic put it this way; if there is a cause then there must be a ‘causer’. I’ve heard it also said that there can’t be something from nothing so god is the something before the Big Bang. And all things burst from his mouth and it was good I guess.

The main reason scientists believe the big bang is a viable theory is that it was discovered that the universe is expanding. Things are constantly floating away from the center is a uniform yet accelerating way.  This leads to the logical conclusion that at one point in time all the universe was in that center as a super dense mass.  So the idea that something came from nothing is to negate the idea the dense mass was something. Also, it is like a Christian to take one piece of incomplete text and turn it into doctrine. They say, “no, you guys came up with it, and now we know god is real because he is outside space and time (supernatural) and space and time only existed after the big bang.”

This is how simple people think.  They take one idea and run with it instead of doing what any skeptical, intelligent person would do which is to probe the idea, discuss possible exceptions of explanations and continue to study the theory. There are so many theories that go past the big bang and many that try to discover more underlying realities involved in the universe that may prove the big bang theory to be laughable but it is the search and continued skepticism that keeps science going and our understanding evolving. Even if all the theories are proved incorrect it is still better than hanging the whole argument on “God did it.”

The Your Just Rejecting god Argument…

Many Christians argue that atheists reject god’s commandments because they want to be free to be sinful, sexually deviant, or otherwise morally delinquent and to this I think there is a very simple answer.

I say to this, “I don’t reject god because god is not real; I reject you because you are not my superior and you have no right to dictate my life.”  I don’t reject unicorns; I reject those who try to sell me one.

Christians often say things like god forgives you, or god Loves you, or god wants you to do this or that. These people are so diluted they think they are god and thus are really saying I forgive you because I can do that, or I want you to do this or that because I am righteous.  Self-righteousness is toxic and speaking for god is a sign of delusional hubris.  

THE CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE!

                Children are not slaves to their parents and society can make decisions about how to better educate and treat these future politicians, professors, doctors and maybe even pastors.  It is only when we encourage curiosity, nurture open-mindedness and strive for intelligence in all children that humanity will evolve to solve the world’s problems.  Survival requires adaptation and change, not conservatism and stubbornness.

The biologist Richard Dawkins often expresses concern for the children of religious people. These children are indoctrinated from the beginning to believe everything that their parents tell them about the world and about how god wants them to behave.  Children grow up blindly converting to the religion of their parents with no choice and often with no outside influence to other explanations of the world.  Many children are taught that god is always watching and judging them; that they were born sinners and are condemned unless they abide their parents interpretation of ‘god’s will’; and taught that those who are not a part of the in-group are outsiders and are to be judged accordingly.  When children begin to think for themselves and challenge their parent’s authority (which is normal) they are often ostracized, abused, ridiculed, excommunicated, or otherwise tormented by their own families. It is not always extreme but children in these families are not encouraged to be curious about the world or about other ways of thinking.  They are shielded from outside influences to ensure total brain washing and speaking out about family problems is often discouraged and punished. 

                Daniel Dennett, the brilliant philosopher, has one simple, yet powerful solution to this issue and I’m inclined to agree with his plan.  His solution is to create a mandatory curriculum of religion education in public schools. Schools would teach only the uncontroversial beliefs of as many religions as possible and I think they should through in some philosophy and history as well. This would allow students to think about religion from a more secular point of view and make better decisions about how to live their life as well as how to examine claims about the world. Why would a religion be afraid of this informative curriculum if they are so sure of the righteousness of their prescribed dogma?

Why Atheists, Agnostics and Others should speak their minds

“…AND IN WHAT POSITION.”

-Christopher Hitchens on god the dictator

                In the last few years I have watched atheists and others in the media to speaking out about various issues including prayer in school, government sanctioned prayer, catholic malfeasance, radical Muslims,    radical Christians, Christmas, and a slew of other important issues.  These media encounters are often mini-debates where one side is pitted against the other and given a 5 or 10 minute speech and it ends up being very limited in substance and typically not very persuading for either side but in these mini-debates I have noticed one argument on the religious side that rebukes the atheist for  “rocking the boat”. They say things like “why do you want to tell children Christmas isn’t real?” or “why don’t you just keep your opinions to yourself,” or “just let people believe what they want.” So, it is to these types of comments that I write this. I want to express why I think it is essential for dissidence to be encouraged and why these ‘free-thinkers’ or ‘new-atheists’ should speak up more often. Power must be questioned and challenged and some of the smartest people are atheists or agnostics.

                The majority of Americans identify as Christian and that majority includes the political body that governs the country. Christian politicians and advisors are informed by their beliefs and these people’s decisions influence millions of lives.  Science funding, global warming, taxation, education and social programs are all influenced by rich, white religious people who have a tenuous grasp on modern science and use stone-age justifications and logic to make their decisions.  These people have been in power long enough to show that they are incapable of creating a better world for the masses.  In the thousands of years that the bible has been around and with the millions of religious people that have interpreted it, it seems that little change has occurred for the better. They tote the ideas of Jesus but their actions are the same as any ancient kings and dictators. It’s all about money and power to these Christians and the Republican Party is the best example of this.  So, the outsiders watch for as long as they can and then they decide to speak out and whether they are atheists or others something has to be said.

                When people say that atheists are militant or stringent it is only because they are fighting thousands of years of power mongering and reification in the religious controlled world. Catholics and Christians have forced their views on millions of good people throughout the world with their emissaries and armies and child indoctrination.  They use fear and hate to propagate conjecture and outdated ideals for the purpose of control, power and self-righteous fulfillment. Anyone who says Christians just want to live good lives so why make waves hasn’t taken into consideration the bigots who spew hate to their children and to the public. There are countless examples of negative acts done by Christians in the name of Christianity and many of them go unchallenged or whose consequences are too subtle to notice until it is too late.