E. O. Wilson: Religious faith is tribal and is dragging us down

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This from the New Scientist:

“Why does our species, especially the religious section of the species, seem to ignore scientific warnings about Earth’s future?

“I think primarily it’s our tribal structure. All the ideologies and religions have their own answers for the big questions, but these are usually bound as a dogma to some kind of tribe. Religions in particular feature supernatural elements that other tribes – other faiths – cannot accept. In the US, for example, if you’re going to succeed in politics, it’s a prerequisite to declare you have a faith, even if some of these faiths are bizarre. And what they’re saying is “I have a tribe”, and every tribe, no matter how generous, benign, loving and charitable, nonetheless looks down on all other tribes.

“What’s dragging us down is religious faith.  But is atheism the answer?  In fact, I’m not an atheist – I’m a scientist. Atheism is the belief that there is no god, and you declare there is no god: “Come, my fellow atheists, let us march together and conquer those idiots who think there is a god – all these other tribes. We’re going to prevail.”

“I would even say I’m agnostic because I’m a scientist. Being an agnostic means saying, dogmatically, that we will never be able to know, so give it up. The important thing is that it appears that humans, as a species, share a religious impulse. You can call it theological, you can call it spiritual, but humans everywhere have a strong tendency to wonder about whether they’re being looked over by a god or not. Practically every person ponders whether they’re going to have another life. These are the things that unite humanity.

“If humans have a built-in spiritual yearning, can we do anything about it?  This transcendent searching has been hijacked by the tribal religions. So I would say that for the sake of human progress, the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to the point of eliminating, religious faiths. But certainly not eliminating the natural yearnings of our species or the asking of these great questions. (reported by Penny Sarchet, New Scientist)

This present writer/commentator is neither an atheist, an agnostic nor a scientist, nor does he want to eliminate anyone or their beliefs. He follows the teachings of Epicurus, which are very simple (please see the posting above,  which sets out the main points of Epicureanism in simple English).  Epicureans tend to be very individualistic. Some have tried to gather Epicureans into clans, societies and clubs – all have failed, because (I suspect) Epicureans are mainly introverts who don’t want groups dominated by jolly organisers or preachers manqués.  They just try to get on with following the humanistic advice of a very ancient, hard-done-by, but very intelligent savant called Epicurus:  lead a pleasant life,  think of others and avoid stress and unpleasant people.

Oh, and another thing: a sensible Epicurean questions what he hears himself saying, as in “Am I any different from any other human being” or “Is a follower of Epicurus any different from those who follow gurus/preachers/ subverters ranging from Jesus to Dawkins?”  An ounce of self-doubt is a healthy thing; absolute certainty about your beliefs a damn nuisance to the rest of us.

Grim reading for Americans

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The Pew Research Center surveyed more than 40,000 people in 37 countries this year, examining global attitudes to the US and the president since Barack Obama left office. The numbers are grim reading for anyone but Vladimir Putin.

Confidence in the US president has collapsed 42 points to just 22%, while favorable views of the country overall have dropped 15 points to 49%. The declines are staggering in European countries, and in the 10 countries where US presidential favorability ratings plunged the most,  including South Korea and Japan: two allies who are clearly not reassured by Trump’s belligerent tone toward North Korea. Trump starts his presidency at the low point where George W Bush ended his, after years of cowboy diplomacy and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are just two countries registering a rise in confidence since the Obama era ended: Israel and Russia. In Israel, where Obama clashed repeatedly with the Netanyahu government, confidence has risen 7 points, from 49 to 56%: hardly a tidal wave of happiness.  The only country to fully embrace Donald Trump is Mother Russia herself, where confidence has rocketed 42 points, from 11% to 53%. Given the number of Russian immigrants in Israel, the two countries may really reflect only one dynamic: the curious case of Trump’s crush on Moscow.

These results are not just passing curiosities; they  have potentially serious consequences for American foreign policy.  If the public and foreign politicians have little or no confidence or trust in you they will not be there for you if you really need their support.  Trying to deal with a President with the attention span of a ten-year-old, who can’t or won’t study up on the issues,  is a sure guarantee of being ignored when the chips are down. Americans like to think in terms of a pax Americana (although pax might be be a somewhat misleading word after so many years of war).  Trump is encouraging foreign countries to re- think their foreign policies.  After so long that is an agonising thing to have to do.  America is squandering her  goodwill.

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Light relief

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On Tuesday I went to the Hospital of St. John & St. Elizabeth in London for an MRI scan. Firstly, I had to fill in a medical form. That’s understandable. What was quite incomprehensible was that a standard piece of information printed on the form for the benefit of the MRI operator was:

VIP?

In other words, was I a very important personage, due special treatment and cringing attention? An Arab Prince, perhaps? Even a King or a member of the rapidly changing Trump Administration, needing special treatment quickly before being fired?

Naturally, I crossed out the ” No”, put there by the receptionist, and wrote “Yes”. I must be important to someone, even if I am a member of the hoi polloi.

Isn’t that just dreadful? Is it not an outward manifestation of how very unequal we are now? The innards of a King, after all, bear a striking resemblance to my own, or so I assume.

The gender gap in British and American higher education

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A few days ago, Robert wrote an excellent piece on the self-obsession of many people today, especially men. http://hanrott.com/blog/pared-back-living-and-the-modern-male. He mentioned a creeping sexism in which men are encouraged to have big experiences, whereas women are meant to find happiness at home. I responded by highlighting that part of the problem with gender relations nowadays is the gender gap in university enrolment. In both the UK and the USA, women are significantly more likely to attend university than men. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36266753. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/28/look-how-women-outnumber-men-college-campuses-nationwide/YROqwfCPSlKPtSMAzpWloK/story.html. I wanted to explore why this is occurring, and its effects on the way men and women behave.

The most common explanation for the growing gender gap at university is the lack of male school teachers. If young boys had strong academic male role models to look up to, more of them would aspire to get a degree of their own. For me, this explanation isn’t sufficient. Women teachers have long outnumbered their male counterparts, yet the gender gap in educational attainment keeps growing. A lack of male teachers doesn’t explain why the problem is getting significantly worse. The other explanation I don’t buy is the idea that men are being discriminated against in the admissions process. This is complete nonsense; as someone who recently went through the admissions process, I experienced no discrimination of any kind as a man. Universities cannot help it if more women are applying to university than men.

My explanation for the gender gap is that men are less suited to academia and life at university. At school they tend to be worse behaved, less disciplined and less hard working. They are more easily distracted. They get into fights, and are more likely to commit crime or be expelled. Men also seem less able to commit to projects for a long period of time, like coursework, which means they won’t cope as well with dissertations or long essays. I also think men have more and better-paid options that don’t require a higher education. Many of my male friends have gone straight from school into the media, banking, accounting or engineering- all of which tend to be male-dominated.  Women’s best paid options seem to be education, research and law, which all either require or greatly benefit from a higher education. Of course, all of these are a generalisation, but the statistics show the overall trend is strong.

The conservative National Review magazine has an interesting explanation. They say that family breakdown and the rise of fatherless households is to blame. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425506/why-do-more-women-men-go-college-anna-sutherland. Without a strong father figure, men lack a decent role model at home. Since fatherless households tend to be poorer, boys growing up with a single mum are less likely to succeed, even if the mums in question work very hard. I think this explanation has some credibility. The only person I know at university who grew up without a father is a woman, and her brother hasn’t done especially well at all. National Review is very keen to stress that a degree is not a pre-requisite for a happy life, but it certainly makes one more likely. Having said that, it’s not clear if the government can do anything to prevent families from splitting apart. Unlike National Review, I don’t think religion can do much either. In the US, black children are more likely to grow up without fathers, despite black people being significantly more religious than white Americans.

The worsening gender gap at university has several implications. One of the most significant is that is does damage to the notion that our society is a meritocracy. Your ability to get a higher education should not depend on something you can’t help. If National Review is right, then your life chances are also dependent on the your family status, which is something else beyond the control of the child.

The gender gap at university also threatens women’s prospects of marriage. People tend to marry within their own social class, because they have more in common with those of a similar educational background. University is often where people meet their future husbands and wives; it’s where my parents met. The gender gap will leave an increasing number of women without a husband, and mean that those who do find a husband are less likely to have as much in common with them. At the same time, it allows men to be too choosy. If there are an excess of women, why settle for a women who doesn’t fit your predisposed notions of beauty, charisma or charm? The luxury of men being able to be picky could lead to an increase in misogyny, where women are judged for superficial traits that wouldn’t have any bearing if the number of men and women was equal. Even before marriage, there’s evidence that an excess of women makes men more promiscuous at university, whereas an excess of men makes them more monogamous. http://time.com/money/4072951/college-gender-ratios-dating-hook-up-culture/.

The purist libertarians amongst you may not see this as a problem. After all, women are choosing to go to university at higher rates, so why not respect that choice? What’s important is people’s freedom to choose, without being discriminated against. There’s certainly some merit to this argument. If women believe they will gain more from a degree than men, then that’s their decision to make. I certainly wouldn’t want a crude quota system that would lead women to believe they are the subjects of formalised discrimination, like how affirmative action in the US makes whites and Asians believe they are discriminated against.

Having said that, I don’t think we can ignore the problem entirely. The fact is, degrees are a requirement for many professions, and incredibly advantageous to many others. Increasingly, having a postgraduate degree will open up more opportunities than it does currently, let alone an undergraduate degree. So if men don’t get more degrees soon, they will be locked out of many professions in the future. An increasing amount of frustrated and disillusioned men could have all sorts of consequences, from an increasing crime rate, to a higher suicide rate, to increasing support for extreme political movements. One of the reasons why Trump won the presidency was that many men felt they had suffered the effects of deindustrialisation, and America’s transformation from a manufacturing power to a service and knowledge-based economy. Now there’s nothing Trump can do to reverse this trend. But if men can’t adapt to and succeed in the modern world, we will see plenty more Trumps for years to come.