Understanding The Problem But Not The Solution

Having taught Computer Science at the college level for a number of years, I've come to apply the analysis-design parts of programming to evaluate different thinkers, ideologies, movements, and theories. The analysis part of programming refers to understanding the problem and what is needed, in a computer using setting, to solve the problem. The design is a logical explanation that solves the problem that a given analysis addressed.

Using the approach has helped me distinguish between utterly bad thinking, ideologies, movements, and theories from those that that have merits but are flawed. I've yet to see anyone or any idea that has addressed a social, economic, or political problem without flaws in either the analysis and the design.

If we take Marx for example, and I lean toward Marx politically speaking, but I struggle with his solution. What Marx observed is that the wealthy used their property (wealth) as a means of obtaining power. And they use their power to exploit and oppress workers and others. 

So Marx proposed that to solve the problem of the wealthy oppressing others, we only need to switch places between the workers and owners in the workplace and the government. Thus, workers would rule over all others. 

Marx's understanding of Capitalism was more accurate with some forms of Capitalism than with others. For example, what Marx observed about the Capitalism of his day very well describes the relationship that workers have with owners in publicly owned companies in today's economy. And so that is where Marx's thinking has merits.

The problem with Marx's solution is that it was not a game changer. In other words, while Marx would have the workers trade places with wealthy owners, there would still exist one economic class dominate the others. 

So Marx understands the problems of some forms of Capitalism. But his solution is wanting. It is wanting not because it is without merit, but because it is not complete enough to create a healthy system. BTW, neither the Soviet Union nor China nor Cuba nor North Korea nor other "Communist" nations followed Marx by empowering workers both at the workplace and in government.

The above is too lengthy an introduction to the article that will be reviewed today. Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen (short bios are at the end of the article being reviewed) have written a book called An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. And what is being reviewed here is a portion of the book that has been adapted to be a magazine article (click here for the article). The first paragraph of their article best describes the causes for the environmental and climate change crises that we face today:

'Our multiple cascading ecological crises—including, but not limited to, climate disruption—are the product of human overshoot: too many people consuming too much, beyond the capacity of the ecosphere to handle in our time frame. That means job #1 is accepting limits.'

Now if we stopped there, we might assume that the solution would involve both reduction in consumption, especially by those who are wealthy, and a redistribution of goods so that the reduction in consumption would not harm those in the lower economic classes. A

In fact, if we stopped right there, we could start a national discussion on the subject of what we need to do to ensure a livable future for  those who come after us. The first paragraph is so well stated. From listening to Wynton Marsalis one time at a Tanglewood concert, we could paraphrase the first paragraph by saying that we 'swung too hard.' The problem with the current form of capitalism that we employ and embrace is that it always asks us to swing harder. And thus, a trusted system is what is pushing us toward a cliff.

What kind of change is needed? According to Jackson and Jensen, if we reorganize and restructure our communities to be a much smaller size, we could address our problem with consuming too much. And in restructuring our communities, we need to make them smaller. Why do they make that claim.

They make that claim because they have traced our evolutionary process from being hunter-gatherers to the present day. One of the first big changes they noted was when people switched from being hunter-gatherers to raising crops, especially grains, then relationships between people changed from being egalitarian to being hierarchical and hoarding entered the picture. The reason for agriculture causing changes in how people related is because people changed from roaming for food to creating permanent settlements. And technology allowed us to create surpluses, especially in the raising of cereal grains, and the need to control those surpluses produced ownership, and hierarchy. 

As we continued down the time line through the Bronze Age, we see societies becoming larger and more complex. And part of that included bureaucracies, armies, and empires. With our advancements in technology came even greater complexity in terms of nation-states, colonialism, industrial societies and so forth.

But our use of agriculture and advancement in technology alone do not cause our current problem. The missing ingredient to all of this is the human capacity for handling an overwhelming number of contacts. According to Jackson and Jensen, the human capacity for the total number of relationships we can handle never evolved past the number that they claim was the number of people in hunter-gatherer communities. And the total number of people in which people can be in relationship with, according to Jackson and Jensen is calculated to be 150 people, which is Dunbar's number (click here  and there for an explanation of Dunbar's Number).

But if we are going to be more precise, Dunbar's Number refers to the maximum number of friendships a person can handle. Other numbers provided by Dunbar, and his research is based on studies of primates, include the number of acquaintances, which is set at 500, and the number of people we can recognize, which is set at 1,500. But besides the literal numbers, the human problem of people trying to consume too much is in large part because we live in settings in which the number of people involved in our different areas of life are too great for our neurological capacity to handle.

Besides the scientific rebuttal of Dunbar's Number (click here for that rebuttal), we have to ask if there is any other way to prevent us humans from consuming too much and living lives that swing too hard. After all, if America is any indicator, we find that those who are at least moderately privileged find it very difficult to accept the truth that we are destroying the earth's capacity for sustaining human life. The reason why they find it difficult is because accepting that truth involves admitting that they need to change their lifestyles. The changes required are not changes for the better when they see getting more material goods as being better. Rather, those changes are for the worse because it means expecting less because they will have to share more with those who are less or have no privilege.

And that is one of the problems that the article does not address. How can we get people to accept living in smaller communities when they can't even accept the truth about our ecological problems because that would require that we change?  

In addition, what do we really know about the social structure and interactions that took place in hunter-gatherer societies? Is it possible to create smaller communities? Would there be competition and hierarchies between these smaller communities? 

Despite the problems with the proposed solution, the analysis is both correct and depressing. It is correct because for us to leave to our descendants a habitable planet, we do have to learn how to consume less. That is especially true if we want to lift more people out of poverty. The problem here isn't just whether we have enough resources to significantly reduce poverty. The problem is whether the amount of waste produced in lifting people out of poverty will become threatening to human life. Or maybe we should replace the word 'whether' in that last sentence with the words 'when will.'

At the same time the analysis is depressing. And that is because of the resistance that those who are privileged and who already consume way to much have to changing and the ominous ecological storm clouds are leaving the horizon as they head straight for us. And that is the first task we have to address. How do we get people to recognize that we need to change? The above article does not help us answer that question because what it suggests is a non-starter in today's world for various reasons. But at least the above article alerts to what might be one of the problems that require a most urgent response.

Between The Rock Of History And The Hard Place Of The Future

Robert Jensen is one of my favorite activists to listen to and read. Though he is a member of a Presbyterian Church (St Andrews Presbyterian Church, which is a church in the PCUSA denomination), we really don't come from the same religious tradition. He does not believe in Jesus as being God's Son (click here) while I do. But Jensen says he believes in the "core principles" that Christ taught. So in a way, Jensen's Christianity resembles that of many people including Thomas Jefferson.

If at this point, my fine fellow flaming fundamentalist friends and family have found reason to ignore what he has said and written, they would be missing out on a buried treasure of convicting messages. For, in his work as an activist, Jensen can challenge us with the best of them to follow a certain set of principles taught by Christ. And so us Christians would do ourselves a favor to learn what we can even it is from confessing nonbelievers.

The article being reviewed here is about the failure of American intellectuals to stand up to wealth and power (click here for the article). The role of the intellectual as people like Chomsky sees it is to act as a rational prophet, a prophet who warns the people about the direction in which society is going but does so using logic and science rather than inspiration and divine revelation. According to Cornel West, our religious institutions from all faiths have already lost prophetic voices. And as a result, we see society racing towards a self-annihilation while the alarm bells are too faint to wake us from our dreamworld.

We could get into the specifics of the article on why intellectuals are content to comfort people in being satisfied with the status quo,  but you can garner that for yourself by reading the article. It is Jensen's train illustration that we are here to first understand and then use to learn how to respond to the many crises that jepardously threatens our collective futures. 

In this illustration, one sees that the train one is riding on is about to derail. So one suggests that rather than continuing the ride, the train should stop and all who are on the train should disembark and continue the trip on foot. The response of all others to this suggestion is to refuse to believe the danger because the people are not only too comfortable, they have grown accustomed to their surroundings. So, to expect all others to follow the suggestion to leave the train is to be unrealistic.

This metaphor applies to how most of us respond to the two main threats that act as the sword of Damocles which hang over the collective heads of all mankind: war and environmental catastrophe. For when leftists, like myself, repeat the warnings of Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and Martin Luther King about how war will eventually cause the extinction of mankind, we are told to get real.  We are told that because war is almost as old as sin and thus it is only from an idealistic "pie in the sky" attitude that thinks we could change now. In other words, the reality of history tells us that we will never change and so why waste one's breathe on asking for it. Since people have always relied on wars in the past, they always will do so in the future. That is reality.

This reality of history narrative reduces all reality to the past in order to give us permission to not change course despite the evidence that tells us that we are racing to certain doom. Why? Because to change course, to depart from the train, would result in participating in a disruption of our normal way of living and doing things, a change that would introduce too much immediate discomfort. And so the desire to avoid this discomfort enables us to deny the second reality, that is the reality of our coming destruction, the reality of our future. For how can we ever escape extinction when we inevitably arrive in an age of the proliferation of WMDs while still relying on war and force to resolve our most basic conflicts?

At this point, some will be tempted to ask, what comfort can possibly come from relying on war to solve our problems? To the victors, go the comforts. War brings us the comforts of the acquisition of conquest and control. But here, even History tells us that no one is on top for ever. Every great nation and empire has fallen from its victorious perch.

The same point can be applied to our coming environmental apocalypse. Despite the rising amount of CO2 in the atmostphere and the environmental changes that have already taken place, not only have we refused to change, we are doing worse. So not only are we not cutting down on our use of fossil fuels, we are extracting these fuels in ways that are more and more harmful to the environment. From mountaintop removal to fracking to tarsands extraction to deep sea drilling, we are increasing our econoligcal footprint rather than minimizing it. 

And it isn't just our lifestyles that are attacking the environment, it's China's as well since it has surpassed us in the production greenhouse gases. Our demotion to 2nd place was already predated by the China excuse for not changing our way of life. That excuse asks, why we should change our consumption of fossil fuels to protect the environment if it no longer matters what we do because of what China is doing? In other words, we are too comfortable to get off the train.

Certainly a comfy past presents a hard and fast reality against asking people to change. But there is more than one reality in today's world. Global climate change is accelerating before our own eyes as can be seen in the disappearing of ice in the North Pole and the breaking up of ice in the South Pole along with the dead zones in the ocean. And with this global climate change comes life threatening weather changes to some areas because of the water supply problems, wildfires, the diminishing ability to grow crops, the increase in the number of stronger and stronger storms, and the raising of global sea levels which threatens to evict millions from their homes.

While the reality of History holds us back from making lifesaving changes, the reality of the Future is banging on our door and telling us to take shelter. These two antagonistic realities are battling for both our souls but for our future existence. 

This battle between History's claim on us and the Future's ominous prophecy should be familiar to us Christians because evangelism occurs when we make the Bible's version of this conflict known to people. The reality of the past tells us that we can only expect people to sin and reject God. The reality of the Future warns us of what will happen if we do not repent and believe in Jesus to save us. If such a battle between History and the Future occurs at this level, should we be surprised that a similar kind of battle occurs on earth between the reality of past and current seeds we've sown and the dangerous harvest that will be reaped if we don't change now? Though Jensen does not believe in the Gospel call and thus the dueling realities that comes in evangelism, his illustration of the train that is about to be derailed certainly tells us of the more than one reality we are accountable for on earth. And we need every reminder because those who are addictably comfortable with History's reality want to deny what is coming in the future.

So it is knowledge of these dueling realities in Jensen's illustration which can potentially save us. And whether it actually saves us depends on how we respond and whether we are willing to leave our comfort zone for sake of our future and that of others. 

Does The Left Have More To Say Against Pornography Than The Right

The Bible is replete with stories of people who are more than willing to become sociopaths for the sake of power or prosperity. In Genesis 19:1-10 and Judges 19:12-29, wicked men surround the house where visitors were staying and demand that the owner give up the visitors so the evil townsmen could have sex with them. As Carl Trueman points out about the Judges 19 passage, the real issue was power rather than sex (click here for the talk). For the men of the town wanted to show the visitors and their host who was boss. 

In Acts 16:16-19, Paul casts a spirit out of a slave girl. This caused an uproar because the girl's owners made money off of her misery as the spirit that possessed her also enabled her to tell the future. When her owners discovered that they could no longer profit from her predictions, they dragged Paul and Silas before the authorities to be imprisoned and punished. Here, power didn't turn the hearts of the girl's owners into stone, it was the love of money and prosperity that did.

The purpose of this post is to compare the arguments against pornography made by a couple of people on the Left with those made by a couple of people on the Right. Because of old stereotypes, some conservatives are surprised that there are Leftists who oppose what conservatives consider to be sexual sins. On the other hand, it is unfortunate that too many liberals and leftists consider conservative opposition to pornography to be prudish and the result of too much inhibition. We will find that those from both the Left and the Right can provide useful information and reasons for abstaining from consuming pornography. And we need this information because those who direct and produce these films and those who crave watching them are beginning to become like the heartless people described in the Scriptures cited above. For as Robert Jensen, one of the people being reviewed here, wrote that pornography illustrates what the end of the world looks like because it leads people to abandon having a caring identification with others and a world without that kind of care has no hope. 

The people we are comparing are Chris Hedges, Robert Jensen, William Shishko, and Carl Trueman. And though I don't have enough material from any of these writers to guarantee that neither mistakes will be avoided nor people underrepresented, we can all benefit from the information provided.

The main source in understanding Hedge's view of pornography can be found in Chapter 2 his book, Empire Of Illusion: The End Of Literacy And The Triumph Of Spectacle. He calls this chapter "Illusion Of Love." A helpful source in understanding Robert Jensen's view of pornography can be found in his book, Getting Off: Pornography And The End Of Masculinity. Since I did not have access to his book, I used various YouTube videos as well as internet articles. Because of the explicit references made in some articles and videos, there are only a couple of links that I feel I can share on this blog. But I would highly encourage anyone who can tolerate numerable explicit sexual references to look up  what Hedges and Jensen have written and said about pornography. The references that I can share here include this interview with Robert Jensen and this interview with Chris Hedges. Btw, there is a link to the same interviews in the Audio-Visual Library page of this blog

My sources for Trueman and Shishko will only consist of the few internet articles I could find. Thus, I will try to be careful regarding any conclusions I make about their views but note that my caution will not prevent mistakes. And please realize that any conclusions I do make are from the materials available to me.  The internet articles written by Trueman consist of: The Problem With Porn Is The Problem With Culture, Playboy Is In Trouble -- But It's Not Good News, and Pornography: The New Normal. The internet article written by William Shishko is called, Pastor To Pastor: The Perils Of Pornography.

One of the basic differences in the views of the people we are comparing here can be seen in the methodologies used to study the subject. For the most part, Hedges and Jensen, approached pornography as investigative journalists. Thus, they gain most of their information from interviews, critical observations of porn, and attending adult film conventions. Their first focus is on the performers who help produce pornography. Here, they zero in on the women filmed while performing sexual acts, but Hedges will also tells us a little about the male performers. However, Jensen, in particular, will also talk extensively about the consumers of porn. He includes himself as a former consumer. 

In contrast to them, Trueman and Shishko approach the subject as ministers and theologians. Trueman also approaches the subject as a cultural critic. As ministers, Trueman and Shishko admonish all in the audience to abstain from all pornography for the sake of one's own soul. Thus, their concern will focus on a subset of actual or potential consumers of pornography. In addition, Trueman tries to identify some of the cultural factors that contribute to the making and demand for pornography.

There are two kinds of motivation we can use to resist the temptation to enjoy pornography. These different motivations coincide with what was written in the recent post, Are You An Innie Or Outie Christian. That is we have external reasons for abstaining from watching pornography and internal reasons. 

An  external reason would be to refuse to look at porn because of how some, who produce it, suffer as a result. The women performers involved suffer multiple personal and physical traumas in the making of the films. Personal traumas include verbal and emotional abuse as well as the emotional impact of having so many partners. Many of these women suffer from PTSD, as Hedges testifies, and the traumas and overwhelming stress provoke the need for the women performers to take drugs and alcohol to numb and manage the full impact of their sexual activities. Because of the severity of the PTSD and the coping through drug use suffered by the women performers, Hedges more than appropriately calls pornography "necrophilia."  The physical traumas suffered by these women include tears in intimate areas which require surgical repair, bruises from being hit, the physical trauma from the number of partners involved, and the contraction of diseases some of which have no cure. 

Thus, an external reason for not consuming porn is to refrain from contributing to the humiliation, degradation, and abuse of the women performers. And this remains an external reason for as long as we refuse to look at pornography simply because of the concern we have for these women. For those progressives who are tempted to look at porn, Chris Hedges has this challenge. He asks, how can it be so wrong to abuse women in foreign sweatshops but it can be ok when that abuse comes from the sex exploitation industry in America?

Hedges compares the pictures from Abu Graib with what can be seen in pornography. And lest we think that only the women performers in porn are affected, the verbal, physical, and sexual abuse these performers must suffer while being filmed along with the pervasive theme of male dominance and female humiliation and degradation are, according to Jensen, designed to be associated with eroticism by the producers of porn. Thus, the present and future female partners of porn consumers can also suffer from the messages preached by pornographic films. 

In terms of providing external reasons for not watching porn, Hedges and Jensen prove to be invaluable sources. With regard to the welfare of the performers, neither Trueman nor Shishko help us understand the suffering and injustices that are endured in making such films. One of the reasons for this is that the amount and kind of information coming from Hedges and Jensen is the kind that comes from practicing journalism rather than theology. From this, we must not conclude that neither Trueman nor Shishko are naive regarding the exploitation involved in making these films. Trueman says that women are exploited in pornography. But in his and Shishko's writings used for this post, this is not seem to be an important issue.

However, there is an external reason for men not watch pornography from the Conservative Christian side. That external reason is located in the wives of the would be consumers. But in briefly mentioning this, it is evident that for Trueman and Shishko, the vast majority of reasons for not viewing pornography are internal reasons according to the material reviewed. That is the key question asked by a person considering watching pornography is, how does it affect me? How does it affect my innocence before others and before God? How does it affect my relationships with the spouse and the family? This last question is a different question than asking how would the spouse and family be hurt if I watch pornography. 

Both Jensen and Shishko provide more than adequate internal reasons for why we should not sneak a peak at pornography. For Jensen, the internal reasons revolve around whether pornography fed expectations can prevent one from finding sexual satisfaction as well as will such expectations cause one to fall into the "masculinity trap." According to Jensen, the "masculinity trap" is a never ending and never succeeding real life game of trying to prove that one is man enough. 

For Shishko, it is our eternal standing before God that is the issue. We must remain pure and unstained if we are to join God forever. For the Scriptures are clear in asserting that the sexually immoral will not enter the Kingdom of God. And here Shishko gives a stern warning because he knows, just as Jensen does, that viewing pornography can be enslaving and it can be that way to anyone. Here, both Shishko and Jensen share their past and present struggles with pornography.  And this honesty by both of these men is helpful because none of us are invulnerable to the allurement that pornography calls with.  

Neither Trueman nor Shishko are naive about how tempting pornography can be to ministers. In the video referenced at the beginning of this post, Trueman stresses the fact that the crowd that asked the host to bring out his visitor so they could rape him were Israelites, were the people of God. That, according to Trueman, this section of Judges gives an illustration of how low God's people can go. In addition, Trueman calls pornography viewed on the internet as today's top pastoral problem. 

Shishko provides tips for battling the urge to look at pornography. They can be summed up by saying don't be arrogant, use whatever tools you can to keep yourself pure so you can have an enjoyable temporal and eternal future.

We should note that there is common ground between the secular approaches of Hedges and Jensen and the Christian approaches of Trueman and Shishko. This is especially apparent when we compare Trueman with Jensen. Both are disturbed by today's market for porn and what that says about us. Both see in porn a constant, unfortunate changing in what is private and what is public. Both see the never ending search for change and for something new in porn.

However, there is a factor that both makes them different and similar at the same time. For Jensen, the Feminist critique of porn that says it is about male domination rather than sex carries much weight. Hence, Jensen identifies the existence of our patriarchal society as contributing to the making and use of porn. Trueman embraces a Biblical patriarchal approach only emphasizing that male headship should use its strength and position to sacrifice for and protect women rather than to dominate them. Though Jensen would heartily agree with Trueman about how men should use their strength to show compassion, Jensen argues that compassionate strength is a human quality rather than just a male one. And Jensen would challenge male headship because of the patriarchy that comes with it. Here Trueman must be careful in defining male headship so that it not only sacrifices for and protects women, but so that it it doesn't use paternalism to limit the contributions that women can make.

So, does the Left have more to say against pornography than the Right? In reality, such is a silly question. It is like asking do you want to be able sleep or be able to eat? Why not choose both? From a Christian perspective, there is nothing said by any of the men reviewed here that merits criticism. Nothing! They all have significant contributions to make to those who fight to resist consuming pornography. 

Certainly Christians, like myself, would love to see Hedges and Jensen see the spiritual ramifications of using porn which we see. However, because Christians, like myself, tend to use internal reasons only to motivate ourselves to refrain from sin, we can eventually make ourselves hyper-vigilant about our own internal state and thoughts. Such vigilance can be counterproductive in any fight against temptation as it causes us to obsess about it.  To be motivated to act or refrain from acting for the welfare of others regardless of what benefit it bring us is a foreign motivation to many Conservative Christians. But it is one that could serve us well in our own personal lives as well as in our witness to the world.