The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. – Blaise Pascal

It is Super Bowl Sunday. I am a fan of football. Perhaps a bigger fan of the enjoyable hoopla involved, starting with the food. I find a good party to be invigorating, if not cathartic. But perhaps that’s just my justifying a favored idiocy. Maybe loving football is crazy.

I realize that my love of football isn’t “rational.” But it seems to me that holding just about any aspect of life to a ruler of cold logic sucks the life out of it. For good and bad. Couldn’t the origin of biological life itself be seen as a bit of a quirk, a happenstance detour from the straight and narrow?

Yes, when there are problems to confront, full-strength rationality can be one heck of a tool. In many situations, an indispensable tool. But to apply it to all of life . . . maybe that’s crazy.

As for the Pascal quote, I might revise it this way:

The unconscious has its reasons of which the conscious is largely unaware and has little comprehension.

Whatever you do today, I hope you enjoy it.

[recycled material - first appeared here]

Roughly twenty years after the birth of the term, I still don’t like homophobia. The word. But before arguing against the use of this term, let me emphasize that by taking a position against the word I am by no means taking a position in support of any or all behavior the term is used to categorize. The issue I address here is solely the perceived misuse of language.

Why quibble over “homophobia”? First, as popularly employed, homophobia implies a diagnosis, and supports a perspective, that rests upon a tenet of pop-psychology. The tenet asserts that behind all aggression, anger, and resistance, exists the true causal emotion — fear. But does fear underlie all aggression, all anger, all opposition?

As Andrew Ortony and Terence J. Turner, researchers specializing in the psychology of emotion, long ago outlined in the pages of Psychological Review, anger is a distinct emotion that has its developmental roots in the infant’s experience of frustration. The infantile experience of frustration, especially that of restraint, develops into the adult emotion of anger. Furthermore, the expression of anger emerges prior to that of fear. Hence anger does not develop out of fear.

What underlies adult anger?

In a 1993 edition of another psychological journal, Cognition and Emotion, renown authority on human emotion Nico Frijda wrote, “As for anger: The most elementary elicitors…are acute goal interference.”

For the above and other reasons, the fear-as-primary-motivator tenet of pop-psychology seems to me to be more than highly questionable. It is likely outright false.

Returning to the specific case of homophobia, opposition to the increasing presence and political clout of homosexuals cannot and should not be written off as a mere symptom of widespread phobia. It is more complicated than that.

If you think about it, the reasoning behind “homophobia,” “homophobic,” and “homophobe,” is almost absurd. With similarly applied reasoning, one could diagnose anti-abortion activists as choice-phobic, environmentalists as development-phobic, and republicans as tax-phobic. As an even more ridiculous example, I myself could be called “creamed-corn-phobic,” for I intensely dislike this canned vegetable and resolutely oppose its inclusion into my diet.

Why not diagnose as phobic all aversive and oppositional behavior? Because the underlying reasoning is defective, and because a term as serious as phobia should not be used to categorize a person or people with reckless abandon.

The second and perhaps primary reason why the popular use of homophobia concerns me is that behind this term lurks moral and political bullying. All too frequently individuals employ the term in an attempt to pathologize opposing perspectives. To force values. To close issues. By labeling and defining people as “homophobic” you easily discredit their concerns. Calling someone homophobic is equivalent to saying, “You are sick. Your feelings and beliefs have absolutely no place in this society.”

True, the “other side” is frequently guilty of the above, but does that justify it?

The questions of homosexual rights (the extension of civil rights to people with differing sexual orientations), and how and to what degree society should accept and accommodate homosexuality, are controversial and complex. Personally, I’m for homosexual rights such as the right to marry and adopt children. However, using words that discredit the holders of opposing opinions and values, and thus, indirectly, the opinions and values themselves, is a strong-arm political tactic–a tactic that undermines the effort to make our communities and nation more free-thinking.

Language is a powerful tool. Sure, it would be nice if we could classify all behavior and persons we didn’t like as pathological, hence undeserving a legitimate place in the world. But it just isn’t that simple. Furthermore, by doing so we undermine a better understanding.

It seems that three cheers are in order for religion. At least if you accept things on face value. And read no further than the headline. What did the study actually find?

“After unscrambling sentences containing religiously oriented words, participants in our studies exercised significantly more self-control,” says psychology graduate student and lead researcher on the study, Kevin Rounding.

Oh. Okay. But wait. Is this effect exclusive to religion? The answer: Can’t tell.

Rather than having a control condition involving the unscrambling of sentences neutral to religion, why not test to see if other terms have an equally pro-self-control effect? I can think of a few sets, including family (and/or other social-group-oriented words) career-aspirations, dangers in the world, etc.

My alternative headline: Compared to complete ambivalence, religion kinda moves people.

Bah.

—

Note: My comments are based upon the news release of the finding. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a link to more in-depth information about the study.

> Encouraging a protesting child to leave a security blanket behind.

> Euthanizing an ailing, elderly pet.

If we always ‘followed our heart’ and ignored what sober reasoning informs us is the right thing to do . . . our life might be easier, emotionally, in the short term. But in the long? And what about the lives of others? Don’t we sometimes need to shoulder a distasteful load to make the lives of others better?

I got to thinking about his subject over the weekend, when taking a sharp knife to a fish just pulled from the water. The fish certainly didn’t like that jolt of pain (judging by it’s brief struggle). But then it was dead and went into the ice-filled cooler. Sure, I could have circumvented the blood and personal experience of killing another creature by just letting it die on its own time, so to speak. But that, I imagine, is less compassionate than what I’ve taken to doing with the fish I catch and plan on eating.

Yes, I am a carnivore. But I believe I am at least somewhat ethical in my flesh-eating. For one, I will and do honestly confront the pain and blood that is a consequence of how I feed myself and my family. For another — at least when it comes to fishing — I fish waters that have minimal “fishing pressure.” Meaning I go where the fish populations are healthy. And I take only enough for a good meal or two.

This weekend my fishing partner and I brought home 4 fish. We had caught more fish, but didn’t keep them. Not the right size and/or species.

Slow-baked over turnip greens and yellow squash, and served with lemon-pepper butter — my, they were good. Actually, my 3-person household only finished two. No need to be gluttonous. The other two fish we’ll enjoy later this week. As part of a balanced diet.

Of course I realize that returning the the vegetarian diet I once adhered to (in my early 20s, when else?) would eliminate some death and suffering that comes because of my dietary choices, directly or indirectly. But would that impetus come from my heart or my head? I wonder.

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy what I consider to be a philosophically tenable and personally fulfilling diet.

[recycled material - first appeared here]

Evolution has been, and still sometimes mistakenly is, portrayed as a grand parade to the new, the better, the more complex. But two things, at least, make this flatly untrue.

First, the failures are an undeniable yet indispensable part of the parade. Sure, they tend to be fleeting and thus partly invisible — joining the parade for a mere half block before veering off to nowhere — but to overlook them is sheer folly. The numbers, were we to count them, are staggering.

Second, there is no force pushing evolution inextricably toward the bigger and the better. None that seems more than a human projection, in my opinion. Consider this recent science news headline:

Male Sex Chromosome Losing Genes By Rapid Evolution, Study Reveals.

That’s right, the male “Y” has been losing size (and hence complexity) over time. It’s shrinking. And not due to immersion in cold water.

With evolution, whatever works in one form or another, persists. Whatever doesn’t, disappears. Sometimes. If we are talking organisms, that is absolutely true. But non-working (non-functional) characteristics of organisms can persist if there is no cost the selective pressures can subtract. Sometimes.

I’m not an evolutionary biologist, so don’t take my word for it. I also wouldn’t advise taking any single thinkers word for anything. I suggest aiming for a deeper education.