Girls are raped; boys “lose their virginity” (unless it is to a man)

R. Horton

When women reveal that they first “had sex” at the age of 11, we call it rape, even if it was consensual, and rightly so. Often, these same women will go on to detail a life plagued by self-loathing, substance abuse, reckless behavior, and failed relationships. It may not be absolutely right to blame every single problem on these early sexual experiences (surely verbal abuse, physical abuse, and other factors play a role), but most of us agree that this is not the best way to become a healthy and satisfied sexual being. Having sex as a child is absolutely to be avoided.

Unless you are a boy and the person having sex with you is female. The latest in a long line of men bragging about their early sexual experiences is Josh Brolin, who says he “lost his virginity” when he was eleven to a girl named Greta. There is no mention of how old Greta was at the time. Men’s Journal also says that he stole cars and smoked heroin as a teen. His life follows a pattern we might associate with victims of child rape. He was most recently arrested on New Year’s Eve for public intoxication.

I certainly don’t know the facts regarding Brolin’s early experiences, and I don’t claim to know anything about him beyond what I’ve read in these reports, but I can’t understand why journalists can blithely report that a boy “lost his virginity” at the age of eleven. I can’t imagine anyone saying the same of a woman without at least mentioning the age of the person who had sex with the child or the possibility of child rape.

It is time to view sex with young boys in the same way we view sex with young girls.

Genetic testing, the Affordable Care Act, Ethics and You

R. Horton

In Slate, science writer Virginia Hughes published an essay decrying what she sees as superfluous or even harmful discussions around the ethics of genetic testing. She says, rightly, that some ethicists are discussing the wisdom of closing the door on testing after the “personal genomics horse has bolted.” It is true that genetic testing is here and will not go away, but we certainly haven’t worked through all the challenges posed by testing, information-management, and client care.

One of the major ethical challenges of testing, I hope, is being helped by passage of the Affordable Care Act. Starting in 2014, patients with preexisting conditions in the US will be able to purchase health care insurance through affordable insurance exchanges. Currently, though, one fear of testing is that it would reveal preexisting conditions that would otherwise be invisible and make it impossible for some people to get insurance coverage even while healthy.

Hughes hardly mentions that particular reason for the concerns related to testing.  She says in one sentence, “Would adding this data to someone’s medical record affect health insurance rates?” After raising this question, she neither answers it nor discusses it. I would think the ability to buy and afford health insurance is one of the major concerns for patients who consider the risk of exposing genetic determinants of future diseases. Medical testing is assumed to be confidential, but patient records are, of course, shared with insurance companies.

Another concern for people considering genetic testing is that the information revealed by the tests may lead to discrimination in employment. Without legal protections in place to ensure that employees are protected in the event a genetic test reveals a likelihood of future illness or disability, concerns about having the information available are quite rational.

Setting aside concerns about insurance and employment, which are monumental, Hughes addresses the issue of how information may harm patients. She is of the mind that full disclosure is always the best policy for health-care providers. The question of when it is appropriate to withhold health information from patients seemed to arise as soon as anyone began providing health care. The question has been around so long, of course, because it is both extremely important and because different patients express extremely divergent preferences. While some want full disclosure, others would prefer to be left to enjoy their lives ignorant of impending doom.

The most confusing part of Hughes’ essay is when she states, “While wasting time debating ethical dilemmas, the medical community has neglected to talk about more pressing logistical problems: 1) How to ask people ahead of time what, precisely, they want to know (and don’t want to know); and 2) How to improve the medical system so doctors can follow through on those wishes.” The two “logistical problems” she identifies are exactly the kinds of concerns expressed by the “ethical dilemmas” noted by ethicists. Yes, what is the best way for doctors to give patients exactly the kind of information they want without revealing unwanted information? These are the ethical dilemmas ethicists are wasting time debating.

China, England, and the profusion of human emotions

R. Horton

Given his recent meteoric rise to international celebrity, I felt compelled to read something by Mo Yan. As I’m reading from translation, I don’t think I am at all qualified to comment on the literary merit of his work, but his characters capture China as I remember it. Contrary to stereotypes, his characters exhibit a massive profusion of emotions—they scream, break down crying, and are overcome with lust as their libido drives them to distraction. The characters are sometimes admonished that they really should try to keep it together as it is unbecoming to be so overwrought.

Before I went to spend a semester in China, I tried to get advice from books, people from China, and people who had worked in China. I was told that losing control of my emotions would be a terrible thing, as I would lose face. Many who talk about China stress the importance of losing face as if having a mental and emotional breakdown in the rest of the world will be met with complete acceptance or even admiration. So, I was quite surprised to arrive in Beijing and see frequent and extreme departures from the assumed equanimity of Chinese people. Perhaps the emotional nature of the people is why their society has emerged to keep emotions under strict control—or at least save it for private moments.

I had similar experiences confronting British culture. The more British people I meet, the more baffled I am by the stereotype of “British reserve.” Really, if you just look at a crowd shot at any English football game or walk through any pub after hours, you are likely to understand the phrase “spontaneous overflow of emotion” better than the stuff about having a “stiff upper lip.” People in Britain, as far as I can tell, celebrate with gusto, compete with passion, and love with intensity, despite constant reminders to stay calm. When I posed this question, my wife, who is English, postulated that the emotional nature of the English is why they needed all those signs reminding them to “keep calm.” And they did keep calm, when they needed to in order to survive, and the Chinese keep calm if necessary, but humans need full emotional lives to be fully human.

And this is what separates us from machines. Descartes postulated that machines could not ever think. If machines do think, he said, they will be able to express thoughts using language. Much later, Alan Turing developed the Turing Test of artificial intelligence, which claimed that we can test for human intelligence by seeing how well the machine can use language. If it uses language in the manner of a human, it will have human consciousness. Now, many of us walk around with electronic devices that are personal assistants that carry on conversations with us. I am not sure whether Turing would give them the stamp of human consciousness, but Siri is at least approaching conversational levels of language, with limitations, of course.

But Siri doesn’t seem to become exasperated, lovelorn, ecstatic, or depressed. Even if she appears to, we aren’t likely to believe it, at least as first. Robot designers are making impressive improvements in the facial and bodily expressions of emotions in machines.  If machines are able to convincingly display a wide range of human expression, we may not be convinced machines actually feel these things, but we may start to wonder whether our fellow humans actually feel what they are expressing. And in that state of confusion (as some of us already are), we will be truly alone.

Politifact, Obama, and Tax Plans

R. Horton

Mitt Romney has repeatedly said that several studies prove his tax plan is possible without tax increases on the middle class. President Obama claims that even these “studies” show that middle-class tax increases would be required to make the plan work. The studies (or analyses) in question are those by Harvey Rosen and Martin Feldstein. Politifact rated the president’s claim “mostly false.” This is just one more egregious rating from Politifact.

The president has said that making the plan work would require either raising taxes on the middle class or eliminating popular deductions such as the home mortgage deduction. In supporting their “mostly false” rating, Politifact said, “Rosen found that when a wide array of tax breaks are eliminated — from home mortgages to charitable giving to health insurance benefits — and projected economic growth rates are factored in that the increased revenues can balance out the money lost through tax rate cuts for high-income taxpayers.” These are, of course, exactly the middle-class deductions the president was referring to. Eliminating these deductions will, of course, increase the taxes middle-class families pay.

As for the Feldstein claim, Politifact quotes Feldstein as saying he did not separate data on the income earners to which President Obama referred, so it is impossible to say whether Obama’s statement is true or false. But please note, it is possible to say that Romney’s claim that the study proves his plan is possible without increasing taxes on the middle class is possible to evaluate. It is false. Feldstein says his claim was that Romney’s plan was possible without raising taxes on families earning less than $100,000/year. As Josh Barro pointed out, “Feldstein allows for tax increases on people making more than $100,000. But on Sept. 14, Romney told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he would hold people making less than $200,000 or $250,000 harmless from tax increases.” Feldstein certainly doesn’t claim that Romney’s plan is viable without eliminating the deductions President Obama says will need to be eliminated, and he does not claim it would not require tax increases on those making $100,000 to $250,000, which is Romney’s definition of middle class.

Wither Education; Whither Education

R. Horton

In his Apology, Socrates boasted that he shared whatever knowledge or skills he had in the agora with no expectation of payment, and he managed to work in a little reminder that he had reduced himself to poverty by refusing payment for his tireless search for truth. By this, of course, he insinuated no small measure of superiority over the Sophists, who choose to offer educational opportunities in exchange for a living wage, something educators are only occasionally lucky enough to achieve today. Socrates shared his information primarily with wealthy young men who had plenty of leisure time to sit around the agora soaking up tidbits of brilliance from an old master. Likewise, it is currently difficult for any but the most affluent to afford the luxury of study for the sake of intellectual stimulation and personal enrichment.

Indeed, it is increasingly painful for most middle-class people to afford even a vocational education that doesn’t leave them deeply in debt. Education is now typically only worth the expense when students go for the quick credential—a certificate or license that will get them in the pool of skilled labor. In the past, students such as myself could afford to pursue intellectual interests without worrying about being reduced to poverty. Study in the arts and humanities has never generated great financial rewards, but it did not always result in a lifetime of crippling debt as many recent graduates are finding awaits them now.

So, unlike students we once had, entering freshmen will forgo anything resembling a liberal education and opt for vocational training instead, leaving them unaccustomed to the expansion of the moral imagination and sharpening of the critical edge. We no longer need visionary writers to describe some hellish dystopia where critical thinking is forbidden and creativity is quashed. We have seen this future, and the future is now. The Texas Republican Party is now officially opposed to the teaching of higher-order thinking skills. They argue that education in critical thinking causes students to challenge the teaching of their parents, but they seem less concerned about parental authority when parents teach their children that global warming and evolution are real but the seven habits of highly effective people are not. Parents have the right to turn off the lights, they believe, but not the right to open the window and invite illumination from the sun.

A few days ago, I read and shared a blog by Jack Rasmus, who warned of the dangers of corporatization and privatization of education (another excellent blog on the subject is here). His blog is insightful and accurate, but I don’t think many in education will need his warning—we have already experienced the move away from education and toward indoctrination. Rasmus says one goal of privatization is to replace educators either with machines or curricula so standardized that teachers are no better than machines. I once had the surreal experience of sitting in a meeting where we were told in no uncertain terms that there was no movement toward developing a standardized curriculum. No, we had it all wrong. In fact, what they were doing, we were told, was developing a few standardized questions for the final exam. They were merely determining the content of our classes; we were free to teach it anyway we saw fit, so long as we used the tools provided in the training we would be required to complete.

Not surprisingly, many teachers have left the schools for other pursuits, but no teacher wants to give up on education. We may not all be willing to die for education as Socrates was, but we aren’t likely to give up without a fight, either. And we do know, of course, that we may very well end up reduced to poverty and may face trouble with the authorities.

As we flee the schools and universities, where will we take our questions, answers, and insights? Socrates lectured in the open market, where he ran into trouble. We can go to the public spaces, but the public spaces are now almost entirely privately owned. We can emigrate away from repressive governments, but we cannot escape the reach of the transnational corporations that own the public spaces, water, and land we occupy. The internet is democratic we thought, until we realized the corporate owners of internet services store and compile the private messages, tweets, and personal information of everyone, and they often do not hesitate to turn over such information of rabble-rousers to authorities.

In an entirely Socratic move, some universities and individuals have decided to offer their instruction for free with open-sourced content. Students thirsty for knowledge can find lectures uploaded to various content sites, syllabi posted for all to see, and bibliographies filled with provocative citations. If the content is difficult to comprehend or organize, many dedicated individuals are willing to provide coaching, tutoring, or lecturing for any and all willing to listen.

As the conservative fear, teaching is a subversive activity (though it can subvert either the left or right), and subversives will not stop teaching. The pursuit of knowledge, even if unattainable, is a worthy endeavor, and the desire to broaden our imaginations and expand our reach is the only path to a brighter future. The next dark ages could, indeed, be the last, but we must strive for a new age of enlightenment or die trying.

 

Update on Saylor White

R. Horton

After public pressure and eliminating all excuses for denial, Aetna has finally approved Saylor’s surgery, so he is at last getting treatment. His wife sent the following message to those who were concerned about him:

“Great news! Aetna APPROVED Saylor White‘s surgery with the original surgical team and hospital. They could not provide the services in-network so had to approve it. His doctors office is working to reschedule ASAP. Thank you to everyone who has been comfort and support to us during this trying time. Bless you all!”

While we are all relieved and thrilled he is getting treatment, there is no excuse for subjecting sick people to so much stress and indignity.

Notes on European Socialized Healthcare

R. Horton1 Comment

Yesterday, I posted a blog about three people who must rely on contributions from friends, admirers, and strangers to maintain the healthcare they need, and these three individuals are not unusual cases in the US. It is the argument of conservatives that universal healthcare coverage (or anything socialized) will deprive workers of their dignity. It is the pride of ownership and rewards for hard work that gives people self-respect and a feeling of accomplishment. Providing for yourself makes you a better person.

The majority of Europeans, where it is generally inconceivable that anyone would be forced to hold a fundraiser to pay medical bills, seem to disagree. Just as most Americans do not consider Social Security or public education to be a demeaning form of charity, most Europeans do not consider healthcare to be a demeaning government handout. Rather, healthcare is a burden shared by all to protect their common interests. The costs of advanced medical technologies and surgeries are out of range for all but the richest Americans. Medical emergencies can quickly run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars. A six-figure salary will not offset the costs.

Having to ask friends, family, admirers, and strangers to help pay your bills is demeaning, demoralizing, and degrading. The conservative vision of letting everyone pay their own way or debase themselves in their dying months, weeks, or days is appalling and unconscionable. I have my own objections to the Affordable Care Act, but trying to fix the problem is more honorable than ignoring the problem or, worse, declaring that the current crisis in healthcare is acceptable. We must demand solutions. If you are opposed to the solution on the table, bring your idea to the table.

Ignoring the problem is killing us. Unfortunately, we must also be humiliated before we can die penniless and ashamed.

Leaving Artists (and others) to Die–Saylor White, Candye Kane, and Paul Williams

R. Horton8 Comments

Last Sunday I attended a benefit concert and auction to raise money to help defray medical expenses incurred by the talented and hard-working musician and songwriter Saylor White, who is insured by the Aetna Medicare Advantage Plan, is suffering from spinal cancer. Saylor’s doctors recommended surgery to relieve the pain and, with luck, remove the tumor, but Saylor’s insurance company refused to cover the surgery. Saylor has many friends and admirers who rallied around him and did whatever they could to help. After the benefit, Saylor posted the following on his public Facebook profile:

“It will be a few days before we can deal with all the benefit information. I am sorry there is so much information and it is taking a lot of people to collect it all, but it really boils down to this: On Feb 17 my doctor told me I had a tumor, and malignant cancer in my spine. Since then I have never been treated for the cancer or the damaged spine. On the 17 of Feb. I could walk to appointments. I no longer can walk without someone else’s help, and my wife cannot pick me up. We have done [what] we can to get treatment. We do not know what to do now because we officially have no treating physician. Thanks for all the amazing support. We feel blessed but we, and you all have done all you can do–the help will have to come from some other place.”

Saylor’s many friends and admirers will attest to the hard work he has done throughout his life. There is simply no justification for treating a working and decent person with such inhumanity. Of course, Saylor is correct that he is blessed to have so many people supporting him. Many people in his situation suffer in isolation and despair. How can we live in a country that claims to be civilized, developed, or free and allow this kind of unnecessary suffering to continue? We cannot. We must face the barbarism of our current system and work to change it.

This information is disheartening enough, but when I returned from the benefit I saw that friends and admirers of blues singer, Candye Kane, had a benefit on the same day as Saylor’s to cover her medical costs, and her future is uncertain. Candye expressed her gratitude on her Facebook page as well:

“Thank you so much to all of you for your ongoing support and thanks to all who attended and played the benefit last night at the Belly Up Tavern. I can’t even believe how many people care about me.”

And it is true, many do love her and support her. It shouldn’t be necessary for her friends and followers to do this, but I am glad they can and will. Still, I think of the many who spend their lives in more obscure kinds of work. Does justice require that we work hard, buy insurance, and also be popular? Must we punish those who fail to develop vast social networks of emotional and financial support? Our system is as absurd as it is unjust.

Finally, last night I read the latest installment of a blog by Cindy Lee Berryhill, who is a musician and wife of rock journalist and biographer Paul Williams, who suffers from dementia resulting from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident. (For anyone interested in caregiver narratives, Cindy’s blog provides and excellent example.) Paul now requires full-time residential care. Though he and Cindy have both worked and made great contributions to our society (I really want to emphasize this theme), Paul’s care is too expensive to be borne by most working people. On her Facebook page, Cindy explains that the California Medicaid program enables her to keep him in care so long as she does not make more than $2,200/month. In order to make sure she meets all requirements, however, she hires a lawyer to maintain her paperwork and ensure she does not run afoul of the requirements. In order to have money to do this, she seeks help from friends and followers.

Is this really what we want to be as a society? Is this the best example the wealthiest country in the world can set? This is unjust and shameful. Our country is in crisis. It is time that we demand solutions.

If nothing else, we can enjoy some of the work of these fine musicians.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlnLojVPacM]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwskX49Qxf8]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYYoHZNBbjE]

Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, and the loss of freedom

R. Horton3 Comments

Libertarian and conservative critics of progressives seem to endlessly repeat the same refrain that progressives are opposed to freedom and liberty. This generally baffles progressives as they see themselves as the defenders of civil liberties such as free speech, marriage equality, and religious liberty. Listing examples of the liberties they defend does nothing to quell criticism from libertarians, however, as the concepts of liberty that libertarians hold is quite different from the concepts of liberty progressives hold.

For libertarians, all liberty stems from property.  In short, if you have little property, you are not entitled to liberty. Murray Rothbard, who wrote the introduction to Ron Paul’s book, puts this idea quite succinctly in The Ethics of Liberty, saying, “Human rights, when not put in terms of property rights, turn out to be vague and contradictory, causing liberals to weaken those rights on behalf of ‘public policy’ or the ‘public good.’” In other words, when progressives seek to ensure that all people enjoy the same rights, Rothbard and other libertarians claim this actually denies human rights as it causes some individuals to lose some of their property.

So, your right to free speech, for example, depends on your owning enough property to exercise your speech. Otherwise, it depends on the goodwill of some property owner to permit you to speak. As Rothbard puts it, “There is no such thing as a separate ‘right to free speech’; there is only a man’s property right: the right to do as he wills with his own or to make voluntary agreements with other property owners.” And, of course, libertarians feel that all property should be privately held.

So, when Occupy Wall Street protesters are chanting “Whose streets? Our Streets!”, they are going directly against the beliefs of libertarians. Protesters have been evicted around the country on the basis that they are on “privately held” public spaces. You can try protesting conditions in Foxconn plants outside an Apple store to test how much freedom you have on privately held property. Progressives seek to establish publicly held property to ensure that everyone (or as many as possible) has an opportunity to exercise the right to free speech. The same applies to public airwaves and Internet bandwidth.

If you want to be able to speak publicly, you must be a property owner. To have a significant voice, you must own a great deal of property. When the Supreme Court ruled that unlimited political contributions were a matter of free speech, this is really the underlying theme to their proclamation. When George Carlin declared that the owners of this country were the only ones with any freedom, some regarded him as a crazy conspiracy theorist.

Philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously helped distinguish between two kinds of liberty. Negative liberty is the freedom from interference from others. Positive liberty is the ability to act in the way one chooses. Progressives hold that liberty is meaningless to a person who has no means to act or make choices. Libertarians hold that all liberty is negative (freedom from coercion) and all rights are negative (no one is obligated to ensure that you have positive liberty).

When libertarians and progressives talk to one another, they should at least try to understand how the other is using basic terms such as rights and liberty. As for me, I completely understand why wealthy people would be libertarian. I find it much harder to understand why people who have little property (and that is most of us) would embrace these libertarian ideas.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI]

Religion and Morality: You could do more

R. Horton1 Comment

Immanuel Kant said, “Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.” In the past I was of the opinion that if a moral system makes people miserable, it is not a useful moral system at all, but I think perhaps I’m finally starting to grasp Kant’s meaning. Sometimes it takes me longer than I’d like to get things.

It seems to me now that there are two ways of viewing morality. First, we may seek out systems that give us guidance on how we may improve ourselves. Second, we may seek out systems that validate how we already are.

Over the past few decades (or is this problem much older?), we appear to have embraced a massive self-esteem movement that compels us to seek self-validation rather than self-reflection and self-criticism. Christian mega-churches now teach people that God wants them to be happy, so they should pursue whatever makes them happy: luxury homes, cars, vacations, or other possessions. No more are congregants taught the value of restraint and humility. Thus, immediate and intense gratification is combined with the arrogance of ones who must not be questioned. It is not that I want to see medieval flagellants in the streets, but humble servitude and stewardship might be a nice change. I do realize, of course, that such meek worshipers still exist, but they are too quiet to gain so much notice.

And many people who claim to be interested in Buddhism say that it helps them stay centered. By this, they mean, as far as I can tell, that it helps them cope with the stresses life throws their way. But Buddhism as I understand it teaches discipline and awareness of the suffering of life. Suffering is universal, and relief from suffering must also be universal. To relieve your own suffering, you must stop believing in your “own” suffering and work to relieve universal suffering through loving kindness that pervades all your actions, words, and thoughts.   Your relief comes from the kindness you show others and your restraint from pursuing selfish desires, not from freeing your mind of unpleasant thoughts.

Finally, those who are not religious often turn to moral philosophy as a source of comfort. Rather than evaluating a moral system to see how sound it is and what advice it can offer for living a life that is good, proper, and noble, we read for a philosophy that exalts someone who is very much the way we already are.

When corporate leaders and other public figures are criticized for immoral behavior, they often react angrily and declare that it is their critics who are acting inappropriately. Of course, not all criticisms are valid, so sometimes they are correct, but imagine a world where the same people responded with an air of humility. We’ve entered an age where we constantly demand apologies of anyone in the public who says something we don’t like. I find apologies on demand to be extremely unsatisfying. I would much rather hear someone say, “I try to be a good person, but sometimes I make mistakes. I would ask you to show me the same forbearance and forgiveness that I promise to show you.” And maybe we can all set to the task of improving ourselves and our world.