Keeping vulgarities to oneself

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Vulgar language seems now to be acceptable to a portion of the population. In the not-so-old days the use of bad language and the constant use of the word beginning f… were regarded as a sign of lack of education, low-class, know-nothing pub talk. It used to to be considered polite to guard your tongue.  Now one hears a stream of expletives in many movies and plays, as if it is clever or avant-garde. It isn’t. What this actually demonstrates is a paucity of imagination, and an inadequate command of the language.

Who decides what is vulgar and in bad taste? Good question. In the days when there was an acknowledged leadership in the community there was also consensus. This may have seemed hierarchical, but it did have some advantages. Now, so many standards have been demolished as “shiboleths” that there is nothing right and nothing wrong. Moral relativism has a lot to answer for.

Defining anti-semitism

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These are the words of Rabbi Alissa Wise of Jewish Voice for Peace (lightly edited):

Anti-Semitism is real – that’s not up for debate. Wherever anti-Semitism exists, we need to stamp it out. But criticizing Israel isn’t anti-Semitic. Nor is speaking out against the occupation of Palestine.

Unfortunately, the State Department doesn’t see it that way. Their definition of anti-Semitism includes “demonizing,” “delegitimizing,” or creating a “double-standard” for Israel. These definitions are intentionally vague, and are already being used by colleges and others to silence those of us — Jews and non-Jews — who speak out against Israel’s human rights abuses.

Labeling legitimate criticism of Israeli aggression as anti-Semitism does not just stifle debate. It trivializes the real struggles of those who are being persecuted because of who they are. This isn’t an abstract issue. This State Department definition is having real ramifications, across the U.S. and around the world. All too often, Jewish Voice for Peace chapters and members are slandered for organizing boycotts of companies profiting from injustice in Israel. All too often, Palestinian students on campus are punished for sharing their stories of oppression and occupation.”

We need to end all forms of hate and prejudice, wherever they exist. But we won’t do that by muzzling activists. The State Department should revise its definition of anti-Semitism.

Best tip of the year

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Dogs win our hearts by staring soulfully into our eyes. Researchers have discovered that when dogs have prolonged eye-to-eye contact with their owners, it causes a rush – in both man, and his best friend – of oxytocin, the “love hormone” believed to promote maternal-infant bonding. For the study, reported in the journal Science, animal researchers from Japan’s Azabu University gathered a group of dog owners and their pets, and a separate group who had hand-reared wolves. They took urine samples to determine oxytocin levels in all participants, then asked the owners to interact with their animals for up to 30 minutes. A second set of urine tests revealed that the owners who gazed at their dogs for several minutes had significantly raised levels of oxytocin, as did the dogs. However, the wolves’ oxytocin levels remained stable, regardless of how long they stared at their owners.  (The Week May 2015)

We are running a field trial aimed at young men who are wooing pretty girls for the first time. Please try this out for up to 30 minutes and report back about success or otherwise. If your girlfriend tells you to your face she thinks you are really weird, and runs out of the room, please inform us. Address your observations to the Oxytocin Effectiveness Study in Human Beings at this blog address. Have fun.

Humanity has been here before

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In a book called “Global Crisis” Geoffrey Parker discusses the 17th Century, a series of world-wide humanitarian disasters, nowadays understood to be principally caused by climate change and over-population, with political unrest in Western Europe, the Ottoman Empire through to China, where the Ming dynasty collapsed. 

When I studied this period the main influence was Hugh Trevor Roper, who thought that the “17th Century Crisis” was caused by a struggle between centralizing nation states and provincial magnates who resisted the increasing power of government. For a while this idea of a worldwide crisis was abandoned in university history departments.  But the scientific knowledge of global climate changes has brought the “17th Century Crisis” back into fashion, but with rather different causes. Humanity survived a century of poor harvests and near starvation, but, as Geoffrey Parker says, at huge cost.  The threat of starvation doesn’t necessarily lead to revolt, but if you add bad decisions by governments, it can push a population over the edge.  This is what we are seeing before our eyes.

Some people believe that the fundamental reasons for the current strife in the Middle East can be found, once again, in over-population and climate change, and that the religion is only the outward manifestation of a longer term problem that will affect the whole planet.
One could argue that the politics of the Middle East has made a worsening situation very much worse.

I believe that Epicurus, were he alive today, would counsel us not to make matters even more fraught and dangerous by intervening, but instead to find ways of making life as pleasant as possible in a very unstable and dangerous epoch.