Lebanese newspaper calls for family therapist

The New Neo Posted on by

So, a Lebanese newspaper calls for a family counselor to settle the current crisis. I hereby offer my services free of charge.

In all seriousness, though, it’s an interesting point the newspaper is making–but perhaps not the one it’s intending to make. Family counseling and mediation are all very well and good, but they don’t work miracles, and, especially in cases of violence and power disparities between the parties, therapy and mediation can be downright dangerous. The idea–very deeply-held among many liberals of good will–that mediation can solve anything and that the old “can’t we just work it out?” routine is relevant in all circumstances is responsible for a lot of harm in this world, well-intentioned though it may be.

I lay a good part of the responsibility for the belief in the universal applicability of these methods at the feet (or the mouths?) of therapists. I’m a believer in therapy. But it is not a panacea, and is most definitely not applicable to all situations–not by a long shot. The recent over-therapization (is that a word?) of our society is responsible for a good deal of harm. Once of these days I’ll write a longer piece on that subject.

The MSM and the pro-Syria rallies in Lebanon: just the facts, ma’am, just the facts

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Yes, there was a big pro-Syria rally in Lebanon yesterday. Very big. That’s one thing that is certain.

If, like me, you’ve been upset at the editorializing and spinning the MSM seems to give to its articles lately, and would like to see a return to straight “just the facts, ma’am” writing on the news pages, leaving the editorializing for the opinion page–well, you should be heartened by the MSM coverage of this rally. Because nary a word, hardly a whisper, of editorializing or even of speculation occurred in the reportage by the NY Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the LA Times, or Newsday (those were the only ones I checked; I stopped at that point, too weary and disheartened to go on).

I was alerted to the Newsday article , (which might just as well have been written by the Hezbollah press agent, so closely does it tow the party line) by a Little Green Footballs post. But, well, that was Newsday. Surely the NY Times and the others, with their vaunted insight and keen analysis, would at least include a few questions as to whether this crowd was really Lebanese, whether it might have been a wee bit coerced or threatened–you know, that sort of thing.

But no, not even a whisper of doubt was heard in the land of the MSM. It reminds me of the MSM’s poker-faced reportage of those 99% votes showing how deep Saddam’s support was. What a time for the MSM to take their news straight!

If you can bear to read the articles, you’ll find nary a word to question the fact that everyone in the crowd was a full-throated and stout-hearted supporter of Syria and Hezbollah, and of course a Lebanese national. No mention of the fact that Syrians in Lebanon number perhaps a million, perhaps more, and could be mobilized for such a rally. No mention of the little fact of possible threats or coercion, despite lines like this from the NY Times article, “Officially, the demonstration was sponsored by several political parties. But the rally was all Hezbollah, complete with well-designed banners, anthems, crowd control and a secret police infrastructure to ensure that things stayed peaceful.” To insure that things stayed peaceful–right!

The Globe article is basically the same. Its opening assertion that the demonstrators were Lebanese, “hundreds of thousands of Lebanese celebrated Syria’s long military presence here yesterday and cheered …” is never questioned. But it’s odd. In the Washington Post article, despite the fact that the author and subject matter are the same as in the Globe (the Post’s Scott Wilson), the articles are slightly different. The Post’s opening sentence reads, “Hundreds of thousands of people…”

Hmmm. Not “Lebanese;” “people.” Pretty subtle, though, if it’s an attempt by the Post to indicate that those “people” demonstrating might not all have been Lebanese. And the Globe article also omits any mention of the following hint, which appears in the Post article, “Scores of men dressed in black, Hezbollah’s grim-faced security detail, monitored intersections and took up positions on the tops of buildings overlooking the teeming plaza and narrow side streets.”

I don’t claim to know who these demonstrators really were and what exactly they represent, and I’m certainly not an expert in the region. But I know enough, after all this time, to be skeptical about such demonstrations, and not to swallow the Hezbollah party line whole without even questioning it.

But then, I’m not a credentialed reporter.

More throat-clearing, this time from the Independent

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, now it’s the Independent’s turn to engage in speculation that Bush may, just may, have been right about something. In this, the Independent is following in the footsteps of the NY Times. Try to form, though, the Independent just can’t resist the usual hedgy “throat-clearing.” Eating crow is just too hard; it sticks in the craw and must be coughed up every now and then.

Here is a good discussion of the fact that the Independent article gives only partial and reluctant credit to Bush. But I want to give special mention to a sentence from the Independent that particularly bothered me; the author just could not resist reiterating the same tired old inaccurate accusation, to wit, “The 2003 invasion of Iraq may have been justified by a giant fraud…”

“Fraud.” “Lie.” With no evidence whatsoever that the WMD claims were anything other than an honest mistake. These people are really, really starting (no, not just starting, but continuing) to bug me with their sophistry. They just cannot resist the dig, even (or perhaps especially) when throwing the much-maligned neocons a bone.

And anyway, what’s so “difficult” about admitting Bush may have been right, especially when the news about which he may have been right is so wonderful? Maybe even harder than admitting Bush may have been right is to admit that they may have been wrong, and that’s the reason for all this “throat-clearing.” It’s a way to say, “Well, I may have been wrong about one thing–but still, I sure wasn’t wrong about everything.” And that need–the need to not be wrong–may be one of the most universal human traits, as has been so amply demonstrated lately.

UPDATE: And now Le Monde climbs aboard the democracy train, despite a slight cough, not wanting to be left behind or to leave all the good seats to those cowboy Americans (courtesy Belgravia Dispatch). Since I don’t speak French, I read the Le Monde article in the always-amusing babelfish translation, and it appears to me that these Le Monde throat-clearings (what Belgravia Dispatch refers to as a “grudging nod”) are relatively mild compared to similar sounds recently made by the Times and the Independent. My guess is that the relative mildness of Le Monde might be due to the fact that this latest democracy eruption has occurred in Lebanon, a country in which France has a special interest and historical ties.

Suicide bombers: explanations vs. excuses

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In an article entitled “How not to explain suicide bombing,” and posted here at Normblog, Eve Garrard examines the reasons put forth by apologists on the left to explain–and sometimes, by extension, to excuse–suicide bombers. She tackles three particularly commonplace explanations/excuses, and finds all three wanting: poverty, despair, and lack of alternative tactics.

When I read Ms. Garrard’s article it reminded me of something I’ve thought about many times before: the fact that, although there is a world of difference between an explanation and an excuse, in practice and argument the two are often blurred. For example, in sociological reseach, an area in which I have some experience, demographic characteristics such as poverty, race, or history of abuse in childhood might be studied to see whether they are more frequent in criminals than in the general population. Then the results are reported and discussed, and then interpreted and used in different ways (explanation? excuse?) by different interest groups.

When sociological studies are done and data is collected and analyzed in this manner, are the results meant to be mere descriptive correlations, or are they offered as explanations for a behavior–or even as excuses? And, if so, does the data actually support those conclusions? As with so many things, the answer is “it depends.” It depends on the way the data has been gathered, crunched, and then discussed by the author, who may or may not have an agenda (if the author is a scientist, he/she is not supposed to have an agenda, but scientists are also human). The reader may certainly have an agenda, and this often affects the way he/she interprets and understands the data. And the political and special interest groups discussing the data most definitely have an agenda.

But, logically speaking, correlation does not imply causation–that is, explanation–and neither a description nor an explanation implies an excuse. Of course, politics and journalism don’t always take this logic into account, to say the least. But I’ll try my best to do so here, and to differentiate between explanations and excuses.

An explanation is a factor contributing to a behavior, and it exists in the empirical sphere: “X is one of the reasons Y happens.” There are different types of explanations. A necessary explanation would go like this: “Y cannot happen without X having happened.” A sufficient explanation is as follows: “For Y to happen, only X needs to have happened.”

An excuse, on the other hand, exists on the moral sphere, and goes this way: “X is one of the reasons we should forgive the person who does Y and not hold him responsible.” Excuses have to involve some sort of reason to let the perpetrator off the moral hook.

In her article, Ms. Garrard has rather amply demonstrated that poverty, desperation, or lack of alternative tactics are neither necessary nor sufficient explanations for suicide bombings. In fact, it seems that in many cases they are not even characteristics of suicide bombers at all. But that doesn’t mean that, in certain individual cases, these factors couldn’t be considered to be contributing or partial explanations. The left has traditionally been interested in these kinds of “rational” and/or socioeconomic factors (poverty, desperation, and need) as explanations for immoral behavior on the part of a group the left sees as underdogs or powerless. The left’s perception of suicide bombers certainly seems to fit this mold rather well.

To be considered excuses, however, these possible contributing explanations would have to be both necessary and sufficient–which they are not, as Ms. Garrard demonstrates. In addition, because of the terrible nature of the acts of suicide bombers who deliberately target innocents, the perpetrators’ cause would have to rest on a nearly unchallengable plane of high moral rectitude in order to be considered to be any sort of possible excuse–and, even then, they would be subject to “do the ends justify the means?” arguments. Another possible excuse would be if the perpetrators were found to utterly lack the moral capacity (in the legal sense) for making judgments. The latter condition is also not met in the case of suicide bombers, except perhaps for those very few who seem to actually have been developmentally disabled (the apparent use of a Down’s syndrome youth in Iraq, for example).

But what about other possible explanations/excuses? What accounts for the seeming reluctance on the part of the left to offer religious belief as either an explanation or an excuse for suicide bombers, a reluctance Ms. Garrard mentions in her article but declines to explain? After all, the bombers are clearly under the sway of ideologies that promise them eternal rewards in heaven for their behavior. The bombers’ belief that they will receive rewards in the afterlife for their acts is not sufficient to explain their behavior (after all, not everyone who believes in such a philosophy becomes a suicide bomber, not by a long shot), but there is little doubt that it is necessary. Try as one might, it’s hard to find a person–however desperate, impoverished, or lacking other resources–willing to blow him or herself up in the act of murdering innocent civilians for political ends, who does not believe that he/she will receive some sort of spiritual reward beyond this life in return for that act. (The kamikaze pilots of WWII are sometimes compared to the terrorists and might be considered exceptions to this rule, since it is unclear to what extent afterlife beliefs motivated them. But kamikazes differed from modern-day terrorists in many important ways, particularly in the fact that the kamikaze targets were all military and were never innocent civilians. And, although there is some uncertainty as to how much a belief in afterlife rewards such as enshrinement may have motivated the kamikazes, it seems to have at least been somewhat of a factor in their motivation.)

Another characteristic that seems necessary, although not sufficient, to create a suicide bomber is an ethos that glorifies death in some way. Certain segments of Palestinian and other Arab/Islamicist culture do just that, as witness statements such as the famous “you love life and we love death.” In the case of the kamikazes, the culture didn’t seem to have glorified death in the same sense. But an acceptance and even glorification of suicide in romantic/heroic terms appears to have been present in traditional Japanese society, which may have helped pave the way for the kamikaze pilots’ acceptance of tactical suicide in service of country.

Why, then, do most on the left tend to ignore these strongest possible explanations (afterlife rewards, glorification of death) for the behavior of modern-day terrorist suicide bombers? Is it because these explanations fail to fit the left’s preferred socioeconomic framework of behavioral causation? Is it because religion is generally of such slight importance to many on the left in their own lives that it’s hard for them to credit its importance in the motivations of others? Or is it because such explanations are harder to offer as excuses for the behavior, and it is really excuses that many on the left are seeking?

I’m all for empathy, but…fish?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m fond of pets, and as a child I had my share of fish, too. I won a succession of goldfish at a succession of fairs by tossing ping-pong balls into their tiny water-filled globes. Perhaps the shock of those ping-pong balls–light though they may have been–barrelling into their little worlds stunned them in a way that proved fatal, however, because most of the pretty little fish were found (to my sorrow) floating on the surface of the water in our fishtank just a day or two after taking up residence there. There was one particularly hardy specimen who managed to live long and prosper, and I carefully nurtured and fed him (her?) for three years.

So, I wouldn’t say I lack all feeling for fish, not exactly. But I’m afraid I fail to live up to PETA standards. Their fish empathy project is hitting the airwaves, designed to add a new layer of guilt to our lives.

I wish them good luck in New England–ain’t gonna happen. Here in New England, we like our seafood, especially on our plates.

Gone for the weekend

The New Neo Posted on by

Going away for the weekend to Montreal for a family get-together. Montreal in winter, you ask? Well, the hotels are relatively cheap and available, and I hear there’s a nifty system of underground tunnels. Blogging will be light to nonexistent, since I plan to keep far away from computers. We’ll see whether I stick to that vow. I plan to resume blogging early next week. Have a good weekend!

So, why neo-neocon?

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The short answer is, “Because it stands for “neophyte neocon.” And that’s pretty much what I am.

The longer answer is: when I started this blog, I chose the name without too much deep reflection. But I know what I had in mind. “Neocon” is usually used as a pejorative, unfortunately, and I wanted to try to rescue it from this fate and wear it proudly (although somewhat tongue-in-cheek).

When I was a liberal and liberals were under attack, I used to say that I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Of course, now I understand a lot better, since I’m making some of that fuss myself. I think I always was more of a classical liberal (as in “social liberal or mild libertarian”) than a leftist-type liberal (as in “thinking the US is a force for capitalist global imperialist evil”). I used to say to critics that I was proud to call myself a liberal.

Now I’m doing essentially the same thing regarding being a neocon. “Neocon” is used by critics as a code word for a lot of things, among them: imperialist, unrealistic dreamer, and scheming puppeteer (along with its subset, scheming evil Jewish puppeteer).

I am not using it in any of these senses. I am using it to mean a person, socially liberal, who espouses a foreign policy that includes the vigorous support of the spread (preferably nonviolent) of democracy along with guarantees of human liberty around the world. Neocons usually believe that such a spread of democracy plus liberty guarantees (the latter being very important as well) would be both a good thing, and a practical thing as well, since the belief is that on the whole it will lead to greater peace and prosperity for everyone, including the US.

The “neo” in “neocon” traditionally also refers to the fact that the originators of this position came mostly from the ranks of liberals or even leftists. Although it’s not always used this way any more, it is another way in which the word seems to apply pretty well to me. And since my political change has been relatively recent, I thought the extra “neo” would be particularly appropriate.

For more neocon information, go here. In the article, Max Boot offers an interesting synonym for neoconservatism–“hard Wilsonianism” (as opposed to the “soft” Wilsonianism of liberals). I like it, even though the phrase doesn’t exactly fall trippingly off the tongue. It links the neocons to an earlier tradition of internationalism, giving the movement some historical context.

Lessons learned from the purple finger revolution

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The cascading changes of these last few months have been nothing if not dramatic. Whether it be purple fingers in Iraq or orange clothing in Ukraine or the Lebanese flag with its picture of a green cedar, it all seems part of a whole. The visuals are astounding; the naked hope and determination in the faces of the people are clear. The fact that these photos are coming from a part of the world many thought immune from the desire for freedom only make them more astouding, and more moving.

But what do they actually mean? I was talking with a friend yesterday who reminded me that the outcome is uncertain and civil war and other unspecified dire events may end up undoing all of this. And I agree–up to a point, that is.

We can’t know the end result. But then, we never can. But no matter what happens, one thing can’t be taken away, and that is the fact that these events have demonstrated–once and for all–something basic about human nature.

When the authors of the Declaration of Independence wrote “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” it was more an article of faith than anything else, because the right of liberty (and the desire for it) was not all that self-evident to most of the world. But the framers turned out to be prescient, because here is evidence that is so strong that I think it amounts to proof: human beings want and value liberty and self-determination. Even though these things are abstractions compared to basic needs such as food and water, they seem to represent another basic need, one of the human spirit.

The purple finger revolution that is spreading so swiftly right now might end up coming to naught, although I don’t think so. But even if the Cassandras are right, and it ends in new repressions or civil war or dramatic terrorist carnage, there is no turning back from the knowledge of what we’ve witnessed ourselves, and that is the deep and virtually universal desire for liberty.

An added note: If you happen to have read my earlier post on intrapersonal change and how it occurs, I want to add that this knowledge about the desire for liberty has comes to us through images that affect us on both the cognitive and the emotional level, through observation. We view the photos and are moved; at the same time, we are processing them cognitively for what they mean, and we (even the NY Times) are changed as a result.

I believe that one of the reasons this “purple finger revolution” has been able to move with such rapidity is that the worldwide media are able to spread those images quickly and effectively to people who in years past would never have had access to them. These people see those images, do the same sort of processing, and come to their own changed conclusions: it’s possible; we can do this, too. And, for those people who actually participate in the demonstrations or the elections, and directly experience their own newfound power, further personal change occurs not just through observation but through action. The whole thing is a feedback loop in which the observations and the attendent feelings and cognitions lead to action, and that action leads to other feelings and cognitions, which can in turn lead to changed beliefs and even further action.

After some preliminary throat-clearing, the Gray Lady coughs it up

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m a regular Roger Simon reader, and I was alerted by a post on his blog today to an editorial in the NY Times (since the Times now requires registration, that link might not work for you). I must confess I’ve stopped reading the Times on a daily basis, so I didn’t see it myself.

The first paragraph contains the obligatory litany of gloomy events in the Mideast. And the whole thing is hedged with the usual cautions and caveats. This all comes under the heading of what Hitchens might call “throat-clearing” (I can’t find the original source of the Hitchens phrase at the moment, but it is referred to in this Norman Geras piece–which, by the way, is itself well worth reading).

But after all the hemming and hawing, the Times coughs up a couple of extraordinary sentences. First it says that this year so far has been one of “heartening surprises.” Then comes this: “The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances.”

I have to hand it to the Times. I never thought I’d see them give Bush any credit, even if the Times managed somehow to acknowledge that good things appear to be happening right now in the Mideast. I thought they’d just pull another “Communism-has-fallen-but-its-just-an-accident-pay-no-attention-to-that-man-behind-the-curtain-Reagan” routine.

When, in the very next sentence, the Times writes, “[The Bush administration] boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance,” it somehow manages to leave out the tiny fact that the Times itself, to put it gently, was not among those few. This is followed in the next sentence by one of those declarations that is mindboggling in its ability to ponderously state the obvious, “there could have been no democratic elections there this January if Saddam Hussein had still been in power.”

But I give credit where credit is due. One of the themes I’ve harped on here is the incredible difficulty involved in admitting error. This is not just a characteristic of the left, by the way–it’s one that many human beings share on both sides of the fence, in matters both public and private. The Times is to be commended on being able to do it at all, so I guess I shouldn’t carp on the fact that they haven’t done it exactly the way I would have wanted them to.

Still waiting: can we agree to agree?

The New Neo Posted on by

Faster than even the most optimistic of neocons ever suspected, the dominoes of the Middle East totter and tremble, poised to fall from dictatorship to democracy.

There’s no mistaking the jubilation and the feeing of newfound strength in what used to be called the Arab street. There was no mistaking it on January 30th in Iraq, and there’s no mistaking it now in Lebanon, where even the previously anti-American Walid Jumblatt said, “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Berlin Wall has fallen.”

I have to hand it to Jumblatt. He’s done something quite rare: he’s revised his previous opinion in the face of new evidence. And he’s publically admitted it.

But I’m still waiting. And I’m not alone in that. I’m waiting for my friends, the ones I’ve had all those arguments with for the past two years over Iraq. I’m not one to gloat, so I haven’t brought it up with them, but I’m waiting for just one of them to mention what’s happening now, to voice any sort of opinion on it at all.

But it’s as though it isn’t happening for them. It’s as though they aren’t reading the papers; as though the Mideast has dropped off their radar screens. I know it’s hard to admit you might have been wrong; but surely, in this case, an exception could be made for something so wonderful, so joyous? How can they resist? Remember all that “power to the people” stuff back in the 60s? What is this, if not that?

When I would say to them that there was a possibility Iraq would end up a democracy, and that the thirst for freedom might spread (slowly, I thought) throughout the region, I was called a dreamer. And that was the best thing I was called; ignorant, uninformed, brainwashed, imperialist, neocon (oh, horrors!) were a few of the others. And then, after the tirade, in most cases we had to do the “agree to disagree” thing, in order to preserve our friendship.

Well, I’m just wondering what they think now. Do we still need to agree to disagree? Because I’d love it if we could actually agree to agree. It would be an nice change to hear a little hopefulness from them. Maybe Jumblatt could start a domino effect of his own.

A mind is a difficult thing to change: Part 2–Therapeutic change

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In Part I I revealed my plans to write a series of posts about the process of intra-personal political change. I’ve got a bunch of posts planned on that topic, but this isn’t one of them. Before I tackle political change, I think it would be helpful to offer an introduction to a generalized theory of therapeutic change as a foundation. So here is a somewhat dry (and, mercifully, relatively brief!) introduction to the topic of how therapists view the process of change in therapy.

Of course, like any other discipline, therapy has no lack of theories from which to choose. But the one that made most sense to me when I was studying marriage and family therapy was the idea that change can occur on any–or all–of the following dimensions: cognition, feeling, and behavior (another way to describe the three would be thought, emotion, and action). I would also add a fourth, the spiritual, but for the purposes of therapeutic change or political change we can safely ignore that one. (Although political change does have something in common with religious conversion in the sense that it involves leaving a social group and changing a deep and powerful belief system, spiritual change appears to occur by quite different mechanisms–and, what’s more, I didn’t study it.)

Different schools of therapy approach clients through different parts of this troika of cognition, feeling, and behavior. For example, (surprise, surprise!) cognitive therapists work on changing thought patterns, many psychotherapists work on feelings, and behavioral therapists work on–well, behavior. But a therapist can also work eclectically and choose to approach on any of these dimensions, and that’s the method that made most sense to me, choosing the point of intervention based on the particular presenting problem. Intervening to change one dimension could end up changing another, and ultimately changing them all. The idea was that lasting change could start anywhere, but would then (at least, ideally) cause a ripple effect that would end up changing the family or individual on all three dimensions.

To use a very simple example with an individual: changing a thought (“I’m ugly”) could lead to a change in behavior (going out more) that could lead to a change in feeling (from depression to joy). It usually seems much easier to start with either a thought or a behavior, because they are fairly easy to define and describe (to operationalize). Usually the change in feelings would follow the other changes.

Here’s another way to conceptualize it, if you’re familiar with old Broadway show tunes. The song “A Puzzlement” (lyrics here) from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I” is an excellent example of a person in the throes of cognitive change (actually, it’s also an excellent example of someone in the throes of intrapersonal political change, but that’s getting ahead of my story). The song “I Feel Pretty” from “West Side Story” (lyrics here) is an example of someone for whom feelings–in this case, of course, being loved–have transformed cognitions, and even behavior. And the song “I Whistle a Happy Tune” from “The King and I” (lyrics here) is a classic example of how change on the behavioral level–acting “as though”–can lead to change on the other dimensions.

Of course it’s rare that things go anywhere near that smoothly. I have in my possession a text entitled, “Mastering Resistance,” by Carol Anderson and Susan Stewart. The entire book is devoted to dealing with the roadblocks clients put up to resist change, because change is so hard. There’s even a word for it in family therapy–homeostasis–the tendency of the family system to resist change.

So, that’s it for today. Class dismissed. No quizzes.

[ADDENDUM: For Part III, go here.]