By Steve Zolno

​​Our discussion for January 8, 2024, was about the book How to Know a Person, The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, by David Brooks, published October 2023.
 
David Brooks is a conservative columnist known for his articles in the media. He often is seen and heard on talk shows, recently while promoting his new book. His books are primarily about how to improve our communication with others and this new one is particularly popular and well-read. The message he is increasingly conveying in his books and interviews is that politics is personal; if we want a world that functions well, we need to improve our ability to communicate.
 
Brooks makes it clear that he now is aiming higher than simply prescribing how people should interact. He describes what he considers the wisdom that we can bring into our interactions to make them — and the world — function more effectively: “Wise people don’t just possess information; they possess a compassionate understanding of other people. … Being open-hearted is a prerequisite for being a full, kind and wise human being. But it is not enough. People need social skills.” (Page 7)
 
He is concerned about how many people feel unable to be heard and thus are alienated: “It seems like we have intentionally built a society that gives people little guidance on how to perform the most important activities of life. As a result, a lot of us are lonely and lack deep friendships. … Above almost any other need, human beings long to have another person look into their face with loving respect and acceptance. On social media you can have the illusion of social contact without having to perform the gestures that actually build trust, care, and affection.” (Page 8)
​
One of the most important skills we can develop is empathy: “Life goes a lot better if you can see things from other people’s points of view. … There is something to being seen that brings forth growth.” (Page 11)
 
For democracy to survive, we need to be able to communicate with those with whom we disagree to establish and work toward common goals: “To survive, pluralistic societies require citizens who can look across differences and show the kind of understanding that is a prerequisite of trust.” (Page 12) And an essential part of that is empathy, or seeing the world as others see it.
 
Rather, we tend to group people into categories based on gender, race, etc. and fail to see their individuality: “People belong to groups and there’s a natural tendency to make generalizations about them.” (Page 22) We even can do this with people we love.
 
At the most essential level, all of us are equal: “If you consider that each person has a soul, you will be aware that each person has some transcendent spark inside them. You will be aware that at the deepest level we all are equals.” (Page 31)
 
Much of our emotional connection with others is done on an unconscious level: “Through small talk and doing mundane stuff together your unconscious mind is moving with mine and we’re getting a sense of each other’s energy, temperament, and manner.” (Page 45) This especially happens with children.
 
The best communicators, writers, teachers and even friends guide people to come to their own solutions rather than providing answers for them: “A [good] teacher could offer the answers, but he wants to walk with his students as they figure out how to solve a problem … Writers are at their best not when they tell people what to think but when they provide a context within which others can think. … When someone is going through a hard time you don’t need to say some wise thing, you just have to be there with heightened awareness of what they are going through at that moment.” (Page 52)
 
Whether or not there is such a thing as objective reality, we each see events through the lens of our background and experience: “         Every person takes the events of life and, over time, creates a very personal way of seeing the world. … People don’t see the world with their eyes; they see it with their entire life.” (Page 64) In our conversations we need to open ourselves to the viewpoint of the other person in order to really communicate.
 
A serious lack in our educational system is that we are not taught to listen to each other, but often try to outdo each other in our interactions: “We should explicitly teach people, from a young age, how to be good conversationalists.” (Page 74) Conversations are much more productive when seen as mutual exploration of truth.
 
Loneliness seems to be increasing in our time: “Between 1999 and 2019, American suicide rates increased by 33%. Between 2009 and 2019, the percentage of teens who reported “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness rose from 26 to 37%. … People were spending much more time alone.” (Page 98)
This may be contributing to the increasing alienation among many young people.
 
Our political situation may be adding to feelings of isolation and polarization: “Politics seems to offer a comprehensible moral landscape. We the children of light, are facing off against them, the children of darkness. Politics seems to offer a sense of belonging. I am on the barricades with the other members of my tribe. Politics seems to offer an arena of moral action. To be moral in this world, you don’t have to feed the hungry or sit with the widow. You just have to feel properly enraged at the people you find contemptible.” (Page 101)
 
Although a long-time political commentator, Brooks give low marks to politics as a route to personal satisfaction: “If you attempt to assuage your sadness, loneliness, or anomie through politics, it will do nothing more than land you in a world marked by sadistic striving for domination.” (Page 102) Neither does he seem to think that our society provides adequate guidance for how to lead a satisfying life: “Ultimately, the sadness and dehumanization pervading society leads to violence. … Look at many of the young men who commit horrific shootings. They are ghosts. In school, no one knows them. … These young men often have no social skills.” And “As a society, we have failed to teach the skills and cultivate the inclination to treat each other with kindness, generosity and respect.” (Page 104)
“Most important is that we “teach moral and social skills.” (Page 106)
 
Beneath every conversation, Brooks tells us, is the actual conversation, that conveys the emotions and message of divisiveness that people hear: “The actual conversation occurs in the ebb and flow of underlying emotions that get transmitted as we talk.” (Page 114)
 
Getting to know a person includes opening up to hearing how the other sees the world, which also expands our own understanding: “Each mind constructs its own reality.” (Page 133)
 
We each have periods of self-doubt which we carry with us our entire lives: “Every child, even from birth, is looking for answers to the basic questions of life: Am I safe? How does love work? Am I worthy? Will I be cared for?” (Page 135) “Our self-doubt can translate into fear of looking or feeling bad: “Emotions and relationships have hurt me, so I will minimize emotions and relationships.” (Page 138)
 
The models in our minds help us anticipate how others might act, but we also can exaggerate our fear of others which prevents us from seeing them and interacting based on reality rather than our projections: “Each of us goes around with certain models in our head that shape how we see the world. You build these models early in life and they work for you. They help you defend yourself from abuse or neglect [but] a person with an overreactive defense architecture is thinking, My critics or opponents are not just wrong, they are evil. Such a person perceives apocalyptic threats coming from all directions and seizes on conspiracy theories that explain the malevolent forces all around. … Angry people always are in search of others they can be angry at.” (Pages 139-41)
 
Looking inside ourselves may not work to improve our interactions with people: “Introspection isn’t the best way to repair your model; communication is.” (Page 143) And the most productive communication is based on empathy — a willingness to really hear the other person: “Empathy is a set of social and emotional skills. … A person who is good at mirroring is quick to experience the emotions of the person in front of them, to reenact in his own body the emotions the other person is holding in hers.” (Pages 144–46)
 
Brooks discusses how we carry two, sometimes competing, characteristics within us: “We humans are divided creatures. We have these primitive, powerful voices within us — passions such as lust, rage, fear, greed, and ambition. But people also possess reason, which they can use to control, tame, and regulate those passions.” (Page 170)
 
When we train our children to hopefully be responsible citizens, we want to encourage them to develop positive behaviors. This is best done by modeling and pointing out positive ways to act rather than criticizing actions we want to discourage: “Instead of calling attention to the behavior you want your child to stop, call attention to the behavior you want them to do.” (Page188)
 
In the larger picture, empathy allows us to identify with the deep feelings of all members of the human race: “The person with interpersonal consciousness can not only experience other peoples’ experiences, she can experience the experience of humanity as a whole.” (Page 196)
 
Brooks makes an important point about identity politics where we tend to assume we know about people based on their outer characteristics: “A black woman could be wise or foolish, compassionate or callous, considerate or cruel. … Today, in our identity politics world, we are constantly reducing people to their categories: Black/white, gay/straight, Republican/Democrat. It’s a first-class way to dehumanize others and not see individuals.” (Page 235)
 
The author shares a number of thoughts about what he thinks constitutes wisdom in contrast to knowledge. Wisdom looks at the big picture and the long-range potential of people and situations rather than reacting only to the immediate situation: “Wise people don’t tell you what to do; they help you process your own thoughts and emotions. … The knowledge that results from your encounter with a wise person is personal and contextual, not a generalization that can be captured in a maxim,” and: “The wise person sees your gifts and potential, even the ones you do not see. … We all know people who are smart. But that doesn’t mean they are wise.” (Pages 249-50)
 
Ultimately, developing a capacity for compassion is what best serves us and those with whom we interact: “She who looks with the eyes of compassion and understanding will see complex souls, suffering and soaring, navigating life as best they can.” (Page 270)

By Steve Zolno

​Our discussion for December 13, 2023, centered around the book The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves, by Shawn A. Ginwright, 2022.
 
The author is an Oakland activist who runs a program for inner-city youth to help them move in the direction of identifying their strengths and working toward careers. He also is on advisory boards at both Stanford and Harvard universities.
 
Perhaps the most important theme of this book is, no matter how much change we may be able to make in the world, it doesn’t necessarily lead to personal healing: “I’ve come to realize that as a society, we don’t really do a good job at preparing, teaching, or training people how to be vulnerable, cultivate empathy, practice self-reflection — all the stuff that makes us human.” (Page 2)
 
Personal transformation is an essential part of the task to transform society: “Just like the absence of disease doesn’t constitute health, the absence of violence doesn’t constitute peace” (Page 7) … and part of the process of changing society is agreeing on a clear vision forward: “Our work at social change has become an effort to make better maps without a clear, compelling destination.” (Page 12)
 
Our inveterate tribalism often keeps us from seeing the other person beyond our preconceptions: “An issue that keeps us from progressing is the extreme polarization in our society that keeps us from being able to have a genuine conversation.” (Page 15)
 
The author reminds us that our judgments of others sometimes lead us to consider them less than human, which makes genuine dialogue impossible: “No human is intrinsically better or worse than the next. While it’s true that the conditions of our lives are different, we should be careful not to confuse the conditions of a human with the quality of the human themselves.” (Page 16)
 
It is easy to think that an accurate description of a problem fixes it. But to move forward, we must agree on a vision and a way to approach it: “Our tendency is to get locked into hindsight and never move past it. I’ve seen this happen with community activists, social service professionals, and corporate leaders.” (Page 46)
 
Truth and truth-telling are essential elements of both personal and societal growth. In 1955, Mamie Till, mother of Emmet Till, received the murdered body of her 14-year-old son. Rather than just bury him, she held an open-casket funeral to which thousands eventually came: “It was perhaps her truth-telling that sparked the movement for civil rights. … Researchers … learned that if you care about someone, you are more likely to be honest with them. But research also shows that speaking truth to power is good for our health.” (Page 57)
 
We cannot move forward in a meaningful way unless we first clarify the direction we want to go. Being anti-racist or anti-war doesn’t clarify the kind of society we want: “It is not enough to define our work by what it is in opposition to. … Do we want to live in an anti-racist society or a society based in belonging?” (Page 83)
 
One way to transform society is to provide opportunities for young people on a path toward criminal behavior to see themselves as capable of developing talents to contribute to society. It is not easy to turn people around who are headed in the wrong direction, but programs that show them support and have them learns skills that change their self-image often work: “If someone is willing to see these young men as human, even when they show up with inhumane behavior, it affords them the ability to act from their core rather than as the person society conditioned them to be.” (Page 103)
 
In experiments with young children, they consistently show empathy for others, a quality that often is eventually unlearned. The author asserts that those qualities can be relearned: “Research illustrates that we have been hardwired to care, and we neurologically are wired to connect with others, because mirror neurons in our brains are stimulated when we’re interacting with other people. Care is our collective capacity to express concern and empathy for one another. It requires that we act in ways that protect, defend, and advance the dignity of all human beings, animals and the environment.” (Pages 120–21)
 
In our interactions, we often take on a rigid position that prevents us from hearing the other person and working together toward solutions: “Most of the time we don’t question what we see; we just act on it as if it were true. When we make a pivot in our perspective and become aware that it is limited we … pull back and become curious about a possible bigger picture.” (Page 154)
 
We only can progress toward the society we want by clarifying and working toward that vision. Focusing only on what we don’t want doesn’t move us forward: “We can never achieve what we want simply by pointing out what we don’t. This is why I’m cautious about the term anti-racist. It does a good job of articulating an active and engaged stance against racism but what comes after that? Being racist and anti-racist are two sides of the ‘not’ coin, which never gets us to what we really need and want, which is belonging.” (Page 177)
 
The polarization in our country and world, where people see those with whom they disagree as the enemy, and often less than human, only can be overcome when at least those on one side of the divide agree that they must see the others as equal human beings: “Has our country become so divided that we see each other as evil, the ultimate form of dehumanization? I have to see you as human, even if you refuse to believe that I am.” (Page 188)
 
If we are constantly stressed by the state of our world and our efforts to fix it, then there is very little reward for us in the present. Just as important is learning to create a sense of inner peace as well as outer peace while our struggle continues: “Justice is not only an outside game that comes from marches, rallies and legal victories. It also is an inside game that requires we cultivate spaces of solitude, reflection, and vision. … Grace is giving ourselves and others undeserved permission to be human. … It’s hard to practice grace with others if we don’t first practice it with ourselves. In our journey to create a more just world, all of us must learn to be more human and lean into the courage to create a world based on love and justice.” (Pages 233–35)

By Steve Zolno

Our November 6 discussion centered on how the extensive history of white supremacy threatens the existence of democracy. The Hidden Origins of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future, by Robert P. Jones (2023), was the book that provided the impetus for our discussion. It should be noted that the author is a white Christian minister and leader from the South. For my quotes and notes on the book or for a link to a recording of our discussion, email me.

The author asks us to consider: “Is America a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians, or a pluralistic democracy where all stand on equal footing before the law (Page 6)?” He discusses the Doctrine of Discovery, promulgated by the Church as Western European powers slowly decimated native populations in the Americas: “The Doctrine of Discovery claims that European civilization and western Christianity are superior to all other cultures, races and religions. It follows that domination and colonial conquest were merely the means of improving the eternal lot of Indigenous peoples (Page 14).” From this view, the “favor” we did for Indigenous Americans was providing them an opportunity to become civilized as we destroyed their culture.
 
The author contends that the idea of Christian superiority has dominated American history right up to the present: “This sense of divine entitlement has shaped the worldview of most white Americans and thereby influenced key events, policies, and laws throughout American history” (Page 19). But as we dig up the civilizations that disappeared before the arrival of Europeans, we discover that native societies were much more complex than we imagined: “Archeological evidence indicates human presence in what is now Mississippi as far back as 10,000 BCE. These people were nomadic hunters of large animals like mastodon and bison. As the area began to warm over the next few millennia, Indigenous people adopted a more sedentary farming lifestyle and established villages connected by trade. By 1000 CE, Native Americans were living in complex societies, with large settlements and ceremonial temple mounds” (Page 32).
 
As we decimated the native population, we forced the remainder to move westward so that white settlers could occupy their land: “After personally overseeing brutal military campaigns against Native Americans as a general, Andrew Jackson (elected 1828)...made ‘Indian Removal’ the center of his presidency” (Page 40). Our brutal treatment of Native Americans was noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in his widely read book Democracy In America (1831): “It is impossible to conceive the frightful sufferings that attend these forced migrations” (Page 42).
 
In the early 1900s, many southern Blacks moved north to escape persecution and being stuck in menial, low-paying jobs: “One of the primary destinations for Blacks fleeing Mississippi’s toxic environment was Chicago, which saw more than 100 Black emigrants arriving each day at the height of the migration” (Page 54). Emmett Till, whose mother moved to Chicago from Mississippi, a 14 year old visiting relatives in the south in 1955, was lynched after being accused of whistling at a white woman. The trial of the perpetrators resulted in a verdict of not guilty by an all-white male jury. His mother insisted that he have an open casket to show the condition of his body, which resulted in wide publicity and a civil-rights awakening across the US.
 
Segregation continued in the South for over 100 years after the end of the Civil War, but the courts began to declare it illegal based on the 1866 “equal protection” 14th Amendment: “The US Supreme Court ruling in Brown v Board of Education (1954) was an unmistakable sign that the federal government was dismantling a major Jim Crow stronghold…its segregated schools” (Page 55).
 
Registering Blacks to vote began after that war, but Southerners resisted. Northerners who arrived to assist the process were met by a great deal of violence. Resistance to civil rights and teaching history continues to this day: “On March 24, 2022, Governor Tate Reeves signed into law a bill purporting to ban the teaching of ‘critical race theory.’ Given that there is no evidence that anything resembling critical race theory was being taught in state primary and secondary schools, the law achieved nothing” (Page 103).
 
One must wonder, despite the teaching of brotherly love in the Christian Bible, how so many have justified hatred and discrimination against Blacks and Native Americans for the entire history of the US: “Christianity…has too often been anchored in a self-serving emotional experience that is untethered from morality and justice” (Page 107).
 
Once they were dispossessed of their lands, Native Americans were promised they could keep the new areas to which they were moved, but then they even were forced off those lands as settlers encroached. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) included a vast tract of land, ostensibly owned by the French, from the current State of Louisiana to the Canadian border, to the fledgling United States, but of course that land already was occupied by numerous Native tribes.
 
In almost all cases, treaties made with tribes were broken. In Minnesota, the Dakota tribe was given a generous treaty but cheated out of its funds. Then they were attacked by a huge influx of settlers that resulted in their going on a rampage, which caused them to lose the land they were promised: “Pushed off their lands and with most of their promised annual compensation stolen each year before it ever arrived, the situation became desperate among the Dakota people in the winter and spring of 1861-62 (Page 126)….Dakota warriors fanned out across a 150-mile swath of the state, attacking forts, towns, and white homesteads in what would become the most violent ethnic conflict in American history” (Page 128). The Ojibwe tribe in the area of Duluth also lost their lands with little or no compensation (Page 140).
 
As in the South, Minnesota had its share of lynchings based on white supremacy: “In 1920, an enraged white mob of 10,000 people lynched three Black men in Duluth…a white woman accused a Black man of raping her. The accused were a group of Black men working in town for a single day” (Page 142). A doctor who examined the woman said, “I don’t think she was raped.” But again, the perpetrators received minor sentences. Also in Minnesota: “In 1931, a Black family was attacked by an angry mob in their south Minneapolis home by whites who wanted them out of the neighborhood” (Page 160). But, as in the South, “Textbooks in Minnesota history contained no mentions of the mob or lynchings.”
 
As part of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, those who survived the trek to Oklahoma were promised the territory “forever” (Page 187). But white settlers were encouraged to take part in a land race in 1889, replacing the occupants whenever possible: “By 1825, the US government successfully pressured the Osage to cede more than 100 million acres of their tribal lands” (Page 199). Because the auto industry created a large demand for oil starting in the early 1900s, a number of schemes tried to deprive them of their profits. Then in 1921, Congress passed a law to establish “guardians” for the Osage and restrict access to their funds. Worse yet: “Between 1918 and 1931, wealthy Osage were systematically targeted for marriage and murder by whites who wanted control of their headrights, as documented in Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann” (Page 206).
 
Not far away, in Tulsa, Blacks established the prosperous Greenwood District, where, in 1921, white Tulsans unleashed unspeakable violence against African Americans, killing hundreds and displacing thousands in just two days (Page 211). Again, this history was largely ignored: “The Tulsa ‘race riot’ was mentioned in an Oklahoma history book in 1941 in a single paragraph” (Page 229). At last, 100 years after the massacre, there is some recognition of the event by Tulsa’s white churches (Page 235).
 
The author’s main concern is that, although we cannot change the past, refusing to acknowledge the horrors imposed by the white majority on Indigenous and Black Americans make us less likely to do better in the future: “Authentic healing flows from, and true repentance is built on, the twin pillars of truth-telling and repair. For us to learn from the past, we have to look at and wrestle with all of it — the sad and the ugly as well as the good and the great” (Page 239). He cites a number of incidents in which lands have been returned to tribes.
 
There also is a slow awakening of the pattern of police brutality against Blacks: “In the wake of national protests for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd, the Southern Poverty Law Center recorded the removal of 168 Confederate monuments in 2020….In 2001 the US House of Representatives voted to remove statues honoring Confederate or white supremacist leaders from public display in the US Capitol” (Page 264).
 
Indigenous Peoples’ Day began to be commemorated in 2021 under Joe Biden, and some churches have voted to create reparation funds “to atone for their role in slavery and to benefit the descendants of the enslaved people they had once owned.” But not all churches have joined this effort: “The Southern Baptist, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination in which I grew up, doubled down against efforts at truth-telling and repair” (Page 267).
 
There also have been international efforts to recognize the damage: “In 2007, the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was passed by the UN following 25 years of lobbying” (Page 269). The US only signed on to this declaration in 2010. Many US church organizations have repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery since that time, followed by the Vatican in 2023.
 
The author asks: “How do we cope responsibly with our history as the descendants and beneficiaries of perpetrators of unspeakable violence done in the name of the country and faith we still claim? We have been the occupiers and the enslavers, not the displaced or the enslaved” (Page 306). We only recently began to acknowledge the role of white supremacy in our history: “Euphemisms like explorer, pioneer, and homesteader created a respectable veneer that smoothed over terms like invader, occupier and colonizer” (Page 307).
 
He reminds us that democracy is based on the idea of every individual being considered equally valuable members of society, but we often have failed to follow democratic principles, and making up for the past may be needed: “If we choose democracy, it will require more than just confession by an unflinching few. It will require joining the work already underway to repair the damage done by this malignant cultural legacy” (Page 310).
 
Perhaps most importantly, establishing true democracy in our everyday situations and lives will need all of us to be educated and committed to the principle of treating others with recognition for their value as human beings. Only as this principle takes hold will we each have our own human value guaranteed.

Our October 9 discussion was about whether people can change their behaviors to heal the world rather than engaging in the destructive patterns in which we have participated since humans walked the earth. We focused on the popular book Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst, by Robert Sapolsky, an evolutionary biologist at Stanford. For my quotes and notes on the book or for a link to a recording of our discussion, email me.
 
When we think about science we usually consider the ability of humans to make sense of our world and universe, and to apply that knowledge for the common good. We expect science to provide an explanation of the forces of nature that we can harness to make our world work better. Implicit in much of science is the idea of causality — events lead to other events in a predictable manner — and an expectation that we can use that understanding in our quest for meaning and a better world. Sapolsky provides insight into the human experience based on years of observation and experiment to guide us in moving beyond the world we have created to the one in which we want to live.

In his comprehensive but rather rambling 700-page book, Sapolsky explores the biological and historical patterns of both our constructive and destructive behaviors. He discusses our inner motivations as well as our actions. He also considers the choices we can make to move the world toward a place that works better for us all. That might contradict the thesis of his new book: Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, but more on that later.

Sapolsky starts Behave by stating that aggression is a natural part of our makeup: “We always are shadowed by the threat of other human beings harming us (Page 2).” He cites observations of primates and other animals — as well as human studies — to make that point. He demonstrates that throughout the animal kingdom up to — and including — ourselves it ultimately is cooperation that allows us to live together and civilizations to advance: “The realm of humans harming one another is neither universal nor inevitable (Page 4).” He notes that we are the only species that harm others because of ideology (Page 11), and that our words form the basis of beliefs that we impose on the world (Page 16).

An important question he asks is: “Does pure altruism actually exist (Page 18)?” Are we motivated by a desire to make the world a better place, or are all our actions based on narrow self-interest? (See Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene.)

In the next chapters he focuses on how brain structure and hormones interact, and the cortex, which commands us to move our muscles and where language is comprehended, and the amygdala, which controls aggression. He tells us that our default natural state is trust (Page 39), but we learn distrust from experience. Using our brain for self-control takes energy of which we have a limited amount (Page 49), and involvement in social structures actually expands the frontal cortex (Page 51). Dopamine is evoked by the anticipation of pleasure and reward and increases as we cooperate with others (Page 66). He cites the power of words to evoke strong emotions (Page 89) and the aggressive behaviors that can result from them.

Regardless of what they are taught, children who witness violence are more likely to act aggressively because it becomes embedded in their nervous systems (Page 198). But personality development differs by culture: collectivist (usually Eastern) cultures emphasize interdependence and individualist (usually Western) cultures emphasize independence and competition.

Only humans are capable of passing on cultural values and skills that develop for countless generations. With a few exceptions, we have moved from the hunter/gatherer stage to agriculture, from exposure to the whims of nature to building shelters (Page 270). Hunters/gatherers in small groups usually have been more egalitarian, but as we developed complex states, we created hierarchies with great gaps between those on top and bottom (Page 291).

Regardless of what we may consider our advanced civilization, we have retained our innate tribal tendencies, which divide others into those we think are like us and those who are not — Us and Them (Page 416). We tend to act on those tendencies regardless of how much we might profess to believe in constructive communication. But our emphasis on competition rather than cooperation can lead to chronic stress that causes heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic maladies (Page 423).

Most of our conversations are devoted to emphasizing the negative — what is missing — rather than clarifying the direction we want our lives and societies to move (Page 503). But seeing the negative also may have evolutionary advantages in that it allows us to identify threats. Irrational optimism in warfare may be dangerous to your health (Page 643). (see Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow.)
 
Most of the rest of the book is devoted to how cooperation and conciliation are as much a part of our nature as aggression. Militaries know that most people have a natural aversion to killing and try to train that out of them (Page 647). Sapolsky points to the helplessness many people feel to create positive change, but reminds us that there have been those who have made a difference through persisting in their visions of peace and the value of all human beings, such as Gandhi, Mandela, MLK, Lincoln, and many others (Page 652). He points to the mass movements that began progress toward democracy, but many have faltered in such places as Egypt, Tunisia, and Venezuela (Page 653). One-time enemies have chosen reconciliation numerous times, such as between the US and our combatants of the World Wars, and our venture in Vietnam (Page 655). We now recognize the folly of much of the genocide of the past, such as the treatment of African slaves and Indigenous Americans, but do we recognize it when it happens in our own day?
 
Sapolsky acknowledges the importance of our upbringing on our actions, but insists we can find alternatives to chronic aggression. The assumptions we carry about others and the world in our minds can keep us from constructive dialogue. He states that there is an underlying experience we seek from our interactions and worldly quests: “Often we’re more about the anticipation and pursuit of pleasure than the experience” (Page 672), and claims we do not need to be bound by our backgrounds, but can focus our attention on our vision of how the world should work: “You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate” (Page 675).
 
Sapolsky clearly is very caring about the direction of our world. No one watching his popular videos could doubt that. But in my view, it is his grounding in the classic causal scientific model that limits the vision he conveys. If our actions — and the universe — primarily are the result of a series of events (unfortunate or not) that lead one to another, then what happens is indeed predetermined. But it seems he hasn’t really considered the full implication of the determination he espouses.
 
If everything we do is predetermined, then our coming to that conclusion also is predetermined, so belief in predetermination is meaningless. And that view doesn’t really follow what much of science and philosophy tell us. A hundred years ago the quantum physicists told us that what happens is not predetermined, but only can be predicted with a limited degree of certainty.
 
Our expectations about what will happen often are wrong because they are based on incomplete observation. There are limits to our understanding. We often can’t really know what those around us will do or say; weather reports frequently are mistaken; the prediction of a vast majority of economists that we would be in a recession by now was wrong (as they admit). Even if everything that happens is predetermined, we don’t have enough information to know how things actually will turn out. The universe is immense, and we only can frame it through our limited thought processes. Einstein, Hawking, Heisenberg (uncertainty principle) and many others have expressed awe about the mystery of nature and how little we really know.

So healing the world of the problems we have created, in my view, begins by admitting how little we know, rather than affirming how much we know. When aware of how little I know about others I am forced to let go of my preconceptions. To follow Socrates, all we really know is that we know nothing. (See Plato’s Apology, 22d) When we interact from that place, we are closer to reality than we are from our assumptions about others and the world. Of course, we must still rely on our concepts, but realizing their limits is the beginning of real understanding.
 
The knowledge we have accumulated has built our civilizations, saved lives, and allowed us to live much longer and conveniently than previous generations, at least in the Western world. But it also has allowed us to erect the false god of thinking as our only source of understanding. Our current knowledge eclipses what we knew 100 years ago, but 100 years from now people will look back and be amazed at our ignorance. Plus, our emotional side gets lost when we dwell only on the rational.
 
Acknowledging the limits of our perceptions puts us in a place of profound humility. We are less likely to think that we and members of what we consider our group are better or worse than others. We are less likely to encounter others as threats. We are more likely to make realistic assessments of others and the world as we realize the limits of our concepts and engage who and what is around us in a way that is more genuine and personally fulfilling. This leads to having greater respect for every human being, and as we do this, we experience the respect we seek. Acknowledging our limits and common humanity allows us to return — if only cautiously — to the sense of trust that Sapolsky considers our original state.

By Robert Katz

Social media has been a place of connection for friends, families, and persons with shared interests. It also has been a cesspool of hate speech, harassment, and disinformation. The social media companies, for the most part, have policies against the worst sorts of online behavior, though the policies have been sometimes inadequate and poorly enforced. But a recent ruling by the Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeal, a judicial body to the right of the current Supreme Court, undermines the ability of the companies to do even the modest content moderation they have undertaken. The US Supreme Court just announced it will take up the case this term.

Recently a Georgia teacher was fired by her board of education for reading a book to her fifth-grade class that the board considered controversial. The book was a popular children’s title: My Shadow Is Purple. A grandmother of one of the students approved of the firing, stating that it is up to parents, not teachers, to teach “cultural fads” to their children: “I want the parents to be parents and the teachers to teach.” (“Georgia teacher fired after reading book on gender to fifth-grade class,” Adela Suliman, The Washington Post, August 19, 2023.) Book banning in schools and libraries is increasing, with over 1,600 known incidents last year alone. (“Attempts to Ban Books are Accelerating and Becoming More Divisive,” Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth Harris, The New York Times, September 16, 2022.)
 
The nature of what is taught also is being challenged. In Florida, current policy requires that children be taught about the “benefits” of slavery. (“Protesters Decry Erasure, Rewriting of Black History, from Florida Schools,” Democracy Now, August 17, 2023.) In Arkansas, advanced placement African American studies now are banned in high schools. (“Arkansas Orders Credits be Withheld for AP African American Studies in High School,” Democracy Now, August 16, 2023.)
 
These and similar curriculum changes are increasing in many states. They add a new urgency to the perennial argument about what is teaching and what is indoctrination. Taking a step back and considering the purpose of education in a democracy might provide us a clearer perspective about the direction we want education to take.
 
None of us would disagree that it is essential for children to learn basic skills to navigate life. Nor would we argue against vocational training required to move students toward their chosen career. But beyond that, what are the skills they need to maximize their ability to succeed?
 
Our world is one of diverse individuals. No two of us are the same. In our schools, workplaces, and everyday lives, we encounter a wide variety of people with whom we need to work toward common solutions to the problems that confront us. We want recognition and acceptance for who we are, but many people from all backgrounds believe they never receive the recognition that is their due.

In the 1960s, segregation was a dominant practice in the South. Homosexuality was considered a mental disease in the US, a view even promoted by mainstream psychology. TV programs — including commercials — were dominated almost entirely by the presence of straight white Americans. This was the model unthinkingly promoted by our media and educational system.
 
There has been a growing awareness of the horrors perpetrated upon those who didn’t fit the predominant idea of what an American should look and act like, and a greater understanding of what it means to be human slowly has awakened in this country. Many people have begun to realize that the value of human beings does not depend on their race, religion, sexual orientation, or other personal factors, but that encountering people as the unique individuals they are benefits those on both sides of the encounter. Unfortunately, many people still judge others based on their personal characteristics rather than their value as an individual.
 
Yet an ability to work and live with others remains an essential element of success in all areas of life, unless we measure success by an ability to impede others based on what we don’t like about them. But those who do this are distracted from focusing on their own progress and success.
 
Real education enables us to expand our horizons — to understand others and the world better and engage with them as they are, not as we imagine them to be. Progress in every area of knowledge — from science to geography to math to psychology — depends on encountering and learning to understand the world as we find it.
 
The same principle applies to our willingness to understand individuals who compose much of the world with which we engage every day. It is not up to me to determine how or who you should be. If our approach is one of openness to who and what we encounter, our model of the world will expand as will our knowledge and wisdom.
 
For those who believe that education is preparation for life, learning is an ongoing process of continually expanding our horizons. We strive to understand the mistakes of the past so we don’t continue making them in our own lives and times. Real education embraces the diversity and beauty of the world and people that surround us. This is the most essential element in our ability to function more effectively in every area of our lives. ​(For further reference, see In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria, 2015, Norton Press, or my 2018 talk at the Commonwealth Club: “Do We Learn from History?”)

We’re all aware of slippery slope arguments: If A, which is not so bad, is allowed then B, which is terrible, will surely follow. While such arguments are sometimes valid, they should be used sparingly. Thrown around indiscriminately, these arguments can lead to paranoia and polarization, warning of dire consequences from the adoption of reasonable measures. If we have universal background checks, next thing they’ll be confiscating our guns.

Many people and groups reacted to the recent US Supreme Court decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis with a slippery slope framing. That was the case of the web designer refusing to do websites for gay weddings, with the court's conservative majority siding with the web designer. The ACLU had this to say after the decision came down: “The Supreme Court held today for the first time that a business offering customized expressive services has the right to violate state laws prohibiting such businesses from discrimination in sales. The Court’s decision opens the door to any business that claims to provide customized services to discriminate against historically marginalized groups.”

Does this case really “open the door” for the kind of wholesale discrimination that the ACLU statement conjures? Let’s take a closer look at the decision.

Briefly, the case arose when a Colorado web designer, Lorie Smith, decided she wanted to get into the wedding web design business, but did not want, because of her religious beliefs, to design websites for same-sex weddings. At the time the case was filed, she had not yet designed wedding websites, but courts allow preemptive lawsuits challenging a law when there is a real threat of prosecution for exercising First Amendment (speech) rights. Here, the state of Colorado, under its anti-discrimination laws, had taken legal action against a baker who refused to make custom wedding cakes for gay couples, and admitted it would go after Smith for her no-gay-weddings policy.

Because Colorado had yet to act against Smith, her lawsuit was tried on the basis of stipulated facts — i.e., facts that both parties to the lawsuit agreed were true. One of those facts was that Smith’s web designs would be “expressive in nature,” designed “to communicate a particular message.” Another fact was that Smith would not otherwise discriminate against gay customers: if a person who happened to be gay was opening a restaurant and wanted her to design the website, no problem.

And in fact, Smith and Colorado agreed about most of the operative legal principles. Colorado conceded that when Smith created a website, she could not be forced to say anything that was against her beliefs. More generally, both parties agreed that Colorado’s anti-discrimination law did not dictate what goods or services a business sold, but only who it sold to. An analogy raised in the briefs is of a store that sells greeting cards. Under Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, the store could not refuse to sell cards to gay people or Jews. But neither could it be forced to sell cards that celebrate gay weddings or bar mitzvahs.
​
So, under Colorado’s reading of the law, Smith was entitled to create only wedding websites that affirmed a traditional view of marriage. But she could not refuse to create such a website for a gay couple. In other words, if Smith offered to create a website celebrating the marriage of John and Craig, with a banner across every web page that said, “Marriage is the sacred union of a man and woman,” she wouldn’t be violating Colorado law. What gay couple in their right mind would want to avail themselves of such a website? Even under Colorado’s reading of its law, Smith would be able to effectively withdraw from the gay wedding website market.

Of course, you can worry that maybe the next case will expand the definition of “expressive activity” protected by the First Amendment. But the Supreme Court majority, in all fairness, did limit its decision to the situation in which a person is creating a work of expression in words, pictures and video, which is clearly protected by the First Amendment. There may be close cases where the dividing line between speech and conduct is not entirely clear. But if a plumber refused to serve a gay person claiming his plumbing is an act of creative expression, the likely judicial response would be solvuntur risu tabulae, which is Latin for “you gotta be kidding me” (actual translation: “the case is dismissed amidst laughter”). Others may try to claim that a refusal to serve gay people is protected expression as part of their freedom of association. But this kind of argument has been soundly rejected by the Supreme Court, which so far has upheld public accommodations laws such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act against free-association claims. It seems unlikely that even the current conservative court would want to disturb that particular hornets’ nest.

The law is often engaged in balancing competing values, both of which are important — such as in this case, free speech and anti-discrimination. The rule of law thrives on distinctions, sometimes very fine ones. This most recent case makes a modest concession to free speech over anti-discrimination policy, a concession that, given what the parties were arguing, doesn’t seem to be all that consequential. We have to remain vigilant that the next case doesn’t expand the scope of that concession in a way that more seriously undermines discrimination laws protecting gay people. But let’s not exaggerate the importance of a decision that doesn’t make a lot of practical difference by hoisting the slippery slope flag.

As bands turned into tribes and then nations, a central authority figure emerged who was far removed from the immediate lives of most members of society. That was an individual or group that created and enforced the rules by which people — other than themselves — were required to live.
 
Those who came into power usually sought to retain it for themselves and their families. An exception was the early experiment in democracy in ancient Greece, which ultimately failed.
 
People submit to authority because they are protected by living in large societies rather than trying to survive on their own. To use Hobbes’ famous phrase, in a state of nature life is “nasty, brutal and short.” (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter XIII, Part 9: “Of the Natural Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity and Misery.”​) His view, in a time before modern democracy, was that any state is preferable to none.
 
Perhaps it is fair to say that most of us seek the comfort of living in a society, but when we believe ourselves oppressed, we seek freedom. Thus we are both social animals and people with an essential belief in our value as individuals.
 
The way this plays out in our everyday lives is that we don’t want to be isolated from society but also seek to express our individuality. Every political movement — ancient, modern and those in between — can be seen in this light.
​
​Many countries that seemed to have been moving toward democracy over the last century have become mired in autocracy, while many individuals under autocratic rule have expressed their desire for freedom. In the US, which was founded on overthrowing what was considered an authoritarian regime, there still are many who are convinced that the current government is oppressive and does not recognize their essential needs.

We might ask if it is possible to create a government that satisfies both of our desires for stability and freedom. That was the intent of the US founders as they wrote the Constitution in response to a failed attempt at government under the Articles of Confederation in the years after the Revolutionary War.
 
If human nature mandates we dwell on what is missing in our lives and country, rather than the direction we want to go, there may be no type of government that can satisfy our desire for stability and freedom at the same time. If, however, we stress educating our population about how responsibility on the part of citizens is required to sustain the benefits of democracy for everyone, it may be possible to work toward a truly participatory type of government.
 
The essential principles of such a system cannot be written into law; they need to be understood by the majority of individuals who support real democracy based on compromise as well as insisting on one’s rights. Realizing that my freedom is limited by where it impinges on that of others is the most essential step to protecting me and others at the same time.
 
Freedom and rights as we usually understand them fail to provide the accountability that makes democracy work. We operate as much by habit as principle. Our custom of considering only our individual needs fails to  recognize the poorly functioning democracy to which it contributes. Dialogue with others toward workable solutions at all levels — in government, organizations, schools, families and our personal lives — is our only hope for maintaining democracy.
 
The course of democracy in the United States will largely be determined by our upcoming elections. The most essential principle of democratic rule of law is holding each of us responsible for contributing to the type of country that respects the rights and dignity of everyone. If a candidate or party that promotes this principle prevails, American democracy will likely be preserved; if those prevail who do not believe that this principle applies to them as well as everyone else, our democracy likely will become another failed experiment.

​The explanation for this bit of judicial nonsense is to be found in the Supreme Court’s decision last term, New York Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. Back in 2008, on a 5–4 vote, the Court decided that the Second Amendment right was an individual right to self-defense, not merely the right of states to maintain militias. That case, District of Columbia v. Heller, acknowledged that some gun-control measures would nonetheless be constitutional, but left unanswered the question of how their constitutionality would be determined. The federal courts of appeal after Heller devised their own two-step constitutional test that went something like this: First, the court would decide whether the gun-control measure infringed on the Second Amendment at all, using history to determine whether such gun-control measures were in practice at the time that the Second Amendment was adopted. Second, if history did not answer the constitutional question, then courts would employ a balancing test: Given the nature and extent of the intrusion on gun rights, was the government’s interest in protecting public safety sufficient to justify the law’s intrusion? Under this two-step test, the Fifth Circuit had previously upheld the constitutionality of a law prohibiting domestic violence perpetrators from owning guns.
 
In Bruen, the court threw out Step Two. The only question that needs answering, according to the majority opinion, is whether the gun-control measure at issue has a sufficiently close historical analog to the laws in force at the time the Second Amendment was enacted. How close? The court didn’t make that clear. But the new method of constitutional reasoning that the court prescribed, based solely on history and historical analog, led directly to the preposterous decision that domestic violence abusers had the constitutional right to own guns.
 
Justice Thomas, writing for the court in Bruen, argued that we needed no such Step Two balancing test because the Second Amendment already incorporates a balance “struck by the traditions of the American people.” But what does that mean? If you’re balancing the dangers posed by guns with the right to self-defense, then that balancing will look drastically different in 2023 than in 1789. The latter was a society in which most people lived in small towns or farms, there were no cities with a population greater than 35,000, there were no professional police forces, firearms required reloading with every shot, and the biggest dangers were from belligerent Indians and recalcitrant slaves.
 
To state the obvious, we live in a different world, one of epidemic gun violence in a highly urbanized society, where weapons load automatically, where every week brings news of mass shootings, and where gun violence — homicides and suicides — is the leading cause of death in children.

​But even in bucolic early America, society was planted thick with laws controlling the use of guns. As UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler recounts in his book Gun Fight, there were laws requiring guns to be given up to the authorities in times of war. Concerns with gunpowder igniting fires caused some jurisdiction to prohibit the storing of guns inside homes or other buildings. There were laws forbidding sale of guns to Indians or free Blacks. There were laws routinely requiring a town’s adult male populace to report with their guns to be inspected to see if they were in good working order. In the late nineteenth century, shortly after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, in the so-called wild West, frontier towns like Dodge City or Tombstone forbade gun possession within the town limits. The guns had to be left with the sheriff or in the outskirts of town with their horses. These measures resulted in surprisingly low murder rates, and researchers have concluded that “many more people have died in Hollywood westerns than on the real frontier.” (Winkler, p. 164)
 
The lesson we can draw from this history is not a precise model of the kind of gun legislation we need today, but rather the general principle that gun rights were always embedded in the social and legal order that limited dangers posed by gun ownership. Indeed, the very wording of the Second Amendment, with its prefatory clause “a well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,” preceding the declaration of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” strongly suggests that the framers of the Second Amendment envisioned a version of gun rights that was consistent with, indeed subordinate to, public safety. But if we follow a strictly historical model much commonsense and widely supported legislation — background checks, keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, licensing gun dealers, prohibiting ex-felons from buying firearms — all may be in constitutional jeopardy because none of these laws existed at the time of the Second Amendment’s adoption.
 
Democratically elected representatives have no greater responsibility than to keep their constituents safe. Perhaps the US Supreme Court will eventually overturn the Fifth Circuit’s decision protecting the gun rights of domestic violence abusers. It may clarify Bruen so as to make the decision more intelligible and more workable. But to have a court with clear ideological bias consult 18th and 19th century statute books to decide whether 21st century gun-control laws will be allowed to stand is an appalling prospect and a usurpation of democratic self-government. Being clear that this is an unacceptable state of affairs is the first step to changing it.