Saturday, June 4, 2011

The Dangers of Political Correctness

“The notion of political correctness declares certain topics, certain expressions, even certain gestures, off-limits. What began as a crusade for civility has soured into a cause of conflict and even censorship.” George Bush quotes (American 41st US President (1989-93), b.1924)

Wait a minute! Political correctness is a good thing, right? It is a set of rules that tells me how to speak to what I perceive as minorities and members of social groups that are victimized by some unique preference/color/gender or sexual orientation. It lets me make generalizations about someone’s race without offending them! It helps me feel safe when I discuss things in class like the impact of race or gender on job hiring. Well hold on, when was the last time I talked about anything racial in public? OH RIGHT, I am not allowed to, that would be politically incorrect.

Forget the fact that the perceived need for diversity can compromise the entry standards of some of our most prestigious institutions, such as our very own Naval Academy. Academy English professor Bruce Fleming has written numerous articles outlining the lower standards applied to applicants who are not white. The need to appear politically correct overshadows the safety of our enlisted troops, who are expected to follow the orders of officers who gained entry to the academy because of what Fleming refers to as a two-tiered admissions system, “because minority candidates have lower test scores and grades than their counterparts.”(Fleming) Certainly such a generalization does not sound politically correct, that is because it is not; it is an honest assessment based on Fleming’s several years of reviewing test scores as a member of the admissions board at the Naval Academy.

This phenomenon is not limited to the Navy. Do you remember the massacre at Fort Hood in 2009? Major Nadal Malik Hasan, a medical officer in the United States Army, opened fire on unarmed solders in the base itself, killing 13 and injuring two dozen more before he was stopped. Gettysburg HACC’s own Professor Hallberg addresses this incident in the upcoming revision of his book “Return to First Principles”, to be released next year. Professor Hallberg reports that in spite of numerous warning signs, which began weeks before the incident, Major Hasan’s colleagues were afraid to report him “for fear of being seen as discriminatory against Muslim soldiers.” The focus on this incident was understandably directed at the lives lost, but the issue which created this situation, political correctness, was not only overlooked by the majority of major media sources, but additionally compounded by a statement made by Army Chief of Staff General George Casey, “a greater tragedy than the carnage inflicted on unarmed soldiers by an officer of their own army would be anything that called into question ‘diversity’ as a priority of the American military.” Professor Hallberg responds in “Return to First Principles”, “It seems to suggest, Army policy holds that diversity trumps human life.” As a former enlisted airman, these sentiments fill me with great trepidation as to the path that our future military leaders are being guided towards.

What exactly is the widespread result of assigning people and groups with these hyphenated labels? How many of us truly believe that the fact that Mike’s ancestors are from Africa has a profound impact on his performance as a college student; that a professor’s height hinders or helps their ability to effectively impart their knowledge to a classroom of students? I like to believe that in this day and age, not many of us. These are thinly veiled attempts to classify and separate us as a culture. What brings us together as Americans is not our differences, but our common goals, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In order to facilitate our progression as a culture, as a race of humans, we need stop using these labels to distinguish ourselves from others and embrace what attributes we share. I am not so naive as to believe that we are ready for a national handholding ceremony to sing Kumbaya, but if any progress is to be made towards racial and cultural acceptance, the issues need to be able to be freely discussed, with respect not fear.

America the Strong-Counterpoint

America the Strong!

America the Proud!

Where did this country with a flag that has stripes that represent the blood of the fallen go? Where did it come from? It was built on the hard work of great men and women. Men like my grandfather who left high school early and lied about their age to enlist, so that they could go fight for it. This country invested so much of itself into World War II that it went bankrupt for a time. Perhaps you have heard of it, the great depression. After it was over, and we had annihilated our enemies, what did we do? Did we move into Japan and teach them how to police themselves? Did we go to Germany and teach them the finer points of democracy? Hell no we did not! We jumped on the global market as one of the only remaining super powers with an intact industrial structure and got ourselves established.

In those days returning from war, having served one’s country was a badge of honor to be worn proudly. What badges of honor do our youth strive for now? The media glamorizes men wearing oversized jewelry. It is now socially acceptable, even expected, for successful business men to have their nails manicured! How about famous people being proud of being on welfare? Anyone remember when “Ol Dirty Bastard” (ODB) went to collect his welfare check in a limousine? They shot that live and plastered it all over MTV. Why the only thing classier than that would have to be the glorification of being a drug addict and advocating date rape, SURELY no one in this great country would get rich and famous from that, unless your name happens to be Marshall Mathers. If that happens to be the case your career might just net you 13 Grammy awards and enough money to buy your own record label. Even land a sponsorship for a car manufacturer in your hometown to be played during the Super Bowl.

Well the media is just a show, right? All that stuff is pretend you say? Let’s talk about something more real and current. You may remember Terry Jones, a minister from Gainesville, Florida. Terry wanted to burn a stack of copies of the Koran to commemorate the anniversary of 9-11. Certainly, in a country that endorses individuals who rap about illicit drug use and murdering your daughter’s mother would be okay with something like this. It is constitutionally safe to burn the flag as a symbol of protest, why not some books? Terry Jones was crucified in the public media. Terry even received several calls from White House staff and a four star general in our great army, warning him that his actions would put our troops “in harm’s way.” I’m sorry, I thought that driving a Humvee over an improvised explosive device was deadly whether your enemy was angry with you or if they were happy with your country’s stance on religious tolerance.

Now before you go out and boot up your copy of Word to write to me in all capital letters, indented and in 56 pt. font, I would like you to consider the following; what exactly would our nation’s response be to a National Bible Burning day in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Forum Trolls... Pay the toll


This is the age of social media, cyber communities and online research. The majority of these services are available to us for the low cost of a monthly internet fee and tolerating the occasional blinking advertisement on the side of the page we are accessing. With new frontiers there are opportunities for new crimes: digital piracy, copyright infringement, identity theft. Like crime that happens in the physical world, many of us can avoid being victimized by staying in the right neighborhood and acknowledging that most things that are too good to be true, are in fact not true. This applies to pop up ads that tell us that we are winners or that they can remedy our endowment insecurities for the low price of $4.99 a month. The toll I am concerned with is the intellectual toll that we pay the forum trolls whenever we go searching for information.

A forum troll (n) or trolling (v) is a person or act with the sole purpose of adding conflict to an issue or to garner the poster attention that is typically lacking from their unimpressive social or family lives. The sheer size and often anonymity of the internet lends the troll all the safety they need to freely spew vile rhetoric, racial slurs or whatever else they feel they need to do in order to elicit a response to their post. When responded to, even if the response is completely lacking in hostility, you can expect a reply along the lines of, “UMAD BRO?!?!”or, “LAWL.”

These social deviants are protected by forums that allow users to post without providing accurate contact information. Of course, their words are protected by the first amendment. Anyone is free to say whatever they please. The issue at hand is not a legal one; rather it is a matter of ethical consideration. How many of these people would actually write this filth if their REAL name and photo were sitting right there next to their post? Should we really have to pay the toll of sifting through an immeasurable volume of baseless mental diarrhea to access a real intellectual debate on a forum? Debate is the cornerstone of our whole political and legal system. It is one of the things that make this country great. Would you willingly sit through a presidential debate if one of the candidates were wearing a paper bag over their head with a happy face drawn on it?

Why don’t the forum moderators put a stop to it? The answer is money. Let’ say you are looking for a forum debate regarding Pro-life vs. Pro-choice. The forum thread is 18 pages long. Every other post is some nut with a screen name like, “I8urb4by”who is adding nothing but off topic quotes about porn and making fun of dead babies. However, the actual discussion is insightful and thought provoking. So you are resigned to navigating through 18 pages of a thread that only has 9 pages of information you want. Every time you load a new page of the thread, 4 side bar advertisements load. Every advertisement gives the people running the forum a nickel. By not removing the troll’s posts, the forum has made $3.60 off of your time instead of $1.80.

There are several ways to combat this phenomenon. The easiest and least committal would be to never respond to a troll’s post. “Feeding” the trolls is the most direct way to add to their sense of power and ensure that they will continue posting. A more drastic and time consuming method is to only visit forums with a thorough application process and extremely active moderators. The latter will most assuredly limit the quantity of material you have at your disposal, but it will inevitably increase the quality.

Mommy, Death is Under My Bed


It is safe to say that people fear death; not only the death that they all will one day face, but also the death of their loved ones. What is it that fuels this fear? Is it a rational fear? It is difficult to believe that so many people are plagued by this aversion to an event which so little is known about. Exploring the mindset towards the death of a loved one may seem like an exercise in simplicity, however, the rationale behind the fear of a loved one dying is not as simple as it may seem.

Since no one has successfully returned from a death that they maintained long enough to garner any insight into what happens, one can only presume that the real pain caused by the death of a loved one is a pain of personal loss. Not a soul on this earth can, on substantial authority; state that death is a negative experience for the participant. By comparison, the Harry Potter Bertie Bott's Jelly Beans come in an immensely diverse array of flavors. Some of the more abstract flavors include: Chocolate, Brussel Sprouts, Strawberry Jelly, Rotten Egg, Toe nails, Dirt, Biscuit, and the ever popular Vomit. One would think, as a result of people’s inclination to presume the worst, that these flavors would be sorted by flavor; this is not the case. People have spent millions of dollars on boxes where their next jellybean has as much a chance of tasting like earwax as it does buttered popcorn.

Why this presumption that death is going to be an earwax jellybean? There are numerous cultural influences that make death seem like something most of us would rather avoid for ourselves and our loved ones. A good place to start would be the personification of death itself, The Grim Reaper. The first psychopomp is believed to be Charon, the ferryman who conveyed the newly dead across the river Styx into Hades, the land of the dead. Interestingly, the idea of a psychopomp, (one who watches over the dead), would seem to say that humans want a greater understanding of death; after all, is that not the point of personifications? Where does the modern visage of death come from? According to William Bramley, author of Gods of Eden, in Brandenburg, Germany, there appeared fifteen men with “fearful faces and long scythes, with which they cut the oats, so that the swish could be heard at great distance, but the oats remained standing”. The visit of these men was followed immediately by a severe outbreak of plague in Brandenburg. It is all so clear now, people do not want a kinship with death, people want a scapegoat.

What is the reasoning behind humans needing a scapegoat to throw the burden of death upon? When addressing questions such as this, it is most prudent to consult the mechanics who study the moving parts of the mind, psychiatrists. Jeff Schimel covers the history of TMT or terror management theory in his article, “Is death really the worm at the core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility.” This theory is quite elaborate, yet scientific in nature and rings true in the face of empirical study. Schimel writes that all living things share the lineage of evolution; that is to say, all life began as one thing and changed into another. Based upon this line of thinking, it can be stated that all life shares a common trait, the powerful drive to adapt to its surroundings and overcome any adversity that it faces. As a life form, human beings share this trait but there is an added complication in our evolution as a species. Human beings developed sentience or self-awareness. We not only have natural instincts which guide us towards survival, but we are also aware of the consequences of our failure to successfully perform these functions. Schimel elaborates on these ideas warning of the intrinsic flaw in our sentience; that even if we are successful in our endeavors for survival, we will eventually fall victim to the inevitable boogie man of death. This conflict between a need for survival and knowledge of the impending demise creates what is referred to as TMT. Schimel goes on to write that, “Humans mitigate this fear through the development and maintenance of a dual-component anxiety buffer consisting of a cultural worldview and self-esteem.” Translated into laymen’s terms this means that much of the desire for achievement that motivates us to do great things is based on a desire to defy that scythe wielding monster, who we all are painfully aware is waiting for us. Alleviation of TMT is achieved through adhering to popular worldviews set forth most commonly by major religions, which tell of a symbolic defiance via an afterlife or a more literal non-cooperation by means of having children or works of art which will survive long after the lights go out. According to TMT, death motivates the human race to achieve great things! By that rationale a fear of dying is not only inherent to us as a species, but it places us above other pattern based thinking life forms. This author believes that this level of acceptance is utterly reprehensible. Why should mankind’s major motivation be fear? The elimination of death as a negative event would eliminate an anxiety which plagues every single member of the species on a daily basis. Even the possibility of death being a good thing could create a less stress ridden existence. As any student of psychology can attest to, Skinner proved that a rat is more prone to preform positively when given a pellet rather than an electric shock.

To address the loss of a loved one through the lens of TMT, explains much of the apprehension behind human’s fears of such an event. Orson Scott Card writes of the thoughts of a dead man, Mark, viewing his own corpse in his short story, “Quietus”, “…he turned around to the coffin, which fascinated him, and he opened the lid again and looked inside. It was as if the poor man had no face at all, Mark realized. As if death stole faces from people and made them anonymous even to themselves.” The view of death as not only a loss of proximity but also existence is completely without supporting evidence., yet the mere possibility of this is enough to send an entire species into a sort of frenzied achievement mode; constantly ensuring that loved ones are aware of our love in case it is the last time that they get to hear it. Joseph Hayes alludes to the idea that according to TMT, our need for sexual conquest, procreation, marriage, sustained monogamy, anniversaries, and even tokens of affection are a result of our fear that that person may leave us uninformed as to our true feelings.

To summarize, for such a motivating force in the human race as a whole, there is absolutely no empirical evidence that death is a negative experience for the participant. This detail does nothing to dull even the idea of the inevitable blow which awaits us all. Based on how the scientific community views Freud’s works, which also cannot be proven by empirical testing, the default to negative death is completely absurd. The fact that a possibility exists, does not make it a fact or even likely to be a fact.

Works Cited

Bramley, William. The Gods of Eden. New York: Avon, 1993. Print.

Card, Orson Scott. "Quietus." Maps in a Mirror: the Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2004. 25-26. Print.

Hayes, Joseph, Jeff Schime, Jamie Ardnt, and Erik Faucher. "A Theoretical and Empirical Review of the Death-thought Accessibility Concept in Terror Management Research." Psychological Bulletin 136.5 (2010): 0033-2909. Web.

Schimel, Jeff, Joseph Hayes, Todd Williams, and Jesse Jahrig. "Is Death Really the Worm at the Core? Converging Evidence That Worldview Threat Increases Death-thought Accessibility." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92.5 (2007): 789-803. Print.

A Jungian Analysis of Young Goodman Brown

The Delusions of Young Goodman Brown
The story, “Young Goodman Brown”, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a work of art. If one were blessed with infinite time and access to the author, along with all of his influences, one could ascertain the original intent that drove Hawthorne to craft such an intricate tale. Unfortunately, such resources are not available to anyone; that being the case, art must be defined in the terms that make the most sense to the onlooker. The result is an infinite amount of interpretations, all filtered through the variables of the person experiencing the work. The particular translation that this paper will validate, is that Young Goodman Brown did not leave his home to meet with Satan, rather that he set forth to confront certain aspects of himself that he could not accept being a part of the man he viewed himself to be.
In order to fully realize the theory, groundwork must be laid out. Fortunately, Neo-Freudian psychiatrist, Carl Jung, spent the majority of his career exploring and theorizing about the makeup and motivations of the human mind. D.J. Moores notes that, Jung disagreed with Freud’s claim that the subconscious is mostly driven by libido. (Moores) D.J. Moores also tells us that Jung believed that there exists a shadow behind a person’s conscious mind. (Moores) This shadow is comprised of the aspects of oneself which are repressed by the society one exists in and the standards to which one holds oneself. In a rigidly Puritanical society, such as the one Young Goodman Brown finds himself in at the onset of the story, the pressures to be prudent and morally beyond reproach would be quite oppressive. To summarize, a confrontation with Young Goodman Brown’s own shadow, is the destination that our protagonist leaves his faith behind to visit in the woods.
An examination of the specific aspects of Young Goodman Brown’s departure from his wife, “Faith”, lends a fair amount of depth to this allegorical perspective. From the onset Faith attempts to dissuade Young Goodman Brown from his task. If one considers Faith’s role as that of Young Goodman Brown’s faith, then the following passage holds an entirely different connotation.
‘"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, "prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's afeard of herself sometimes. Pray tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year."’(Hawthorne)
Young Goodman Brown’s faith is aware of his meeting with his shadow, at least on any level as faith could be, for faith is not known for being the most informed of motivations. One may ask, “Why would he set off on this quest to confront his shadow; he seems happy with his faith?” D.J. Moores tells us that, The answer from a Jungian perspective is that Goodman Brown is in fact seeking himself his lost/unwanted parts, the psychic energies he keeps locked in the dungeon of the unconscious because they threaten to overwhelm his Calvinistic value system, which has no room for darkness, shadow, and "evil."(Moores) The urge for internal completion is what drives Young Goodman Brown into the woods that night, in spite of the happiness his faith offers him.
The following passage is a reflection by Young Goodman Brown after he has already left his faith behind.
‘"Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. "What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no; 't would kill her to think it. Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven."’(Hawthorne)
Of the several relevant points displayed in the previous passage, the first is how he refers to his faith as “little”; almost as if he is acknowledging that it is insufficient for her to solely support him, absent the meeting he is en route to. Young Goodman Brown feels the guilt of leaving behind his faith in this pursuit, calling himself a “wretch.” This is further evidence of the deterioration of his already compromised Puritanical values. Paul Hurley presents the idea that this endeavor would result in the death of his faith, were he successful; sidestepping this reality Young Goodman Brown is under the impression that his distance from his faith will only be temporary. (Hurley) When viewed from the Jungian school of thought, this is quite an elegant little piece of foreshadowing. Paul Hurley agrees that, the irony in this passage lies in the idea that once Young Goodman Brown has finished with his confrontation with his shadow that he will return to his faith and earn access to heaven by merely clinging to her skirts. This mindset does not sound like a faithful Puritan, who believes that his virtues and good deeds will gain him passage through the pearly gates. (Hurley) Perhaps, he is aware of the folly of this spiritual attitude on a subconscious level and that doubt feeds his shadow all the more.
Young Goodman Brown’s meeting with the Devil is full of telltale signs that this is his own personal devil. The choosing of Satan to represent Young Goodman Brown’s shadow is not a farfetched one.” Satan, according to Jungian theory, is Christianity's shadow; he is all the religion refuses to tolerate.” (Moores) One of the indicators that this particular vision is a product of a tormented mind is the resemblance the figure bears to Young Goodman Brown. Hawthorne describes him as a man who is, “apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still they might have been taken for father and son.” (Hawthorne} All obvious similarities aside, the specification of the parallels in expression lend weight to the theory that this man is an aspect of Young Goodman Brown’s mind.
The inclusion of the various townsfolk represents the Jungian aspect of projection. Jung wrote. "Hence one meets with projections, one does not make them" The surprise meeting of persons to whom his moral standing was of great import is evidence that his shadow was attempting to rationalize with him by showing that even these great moral beacons in his life, his deacon, his bishop, his wife, and even the woman who taught him the catechism, were capable of evil.
Young Goodman Brown’s refusal to participate in the ritual and merge with his shadow left him in a desolate position, aware of his shadow yet unable to accept it Young Goodman Brown sought the only refuge of a mind faced with a reality it cannot handle, the projection of its own flaws onto those around it. Thus, Young Goodman Brown’s rejection of the rest of his village and wife was nothing more than the result of a failed merging with the inescapable parallel that lay behind all of his noble aspirations.
Works Cited
Moores, D.J. "Young Goodman Brown's 'evil purpose': Hawthorne and the Jungian shadow." Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 27.3-4 (2005): 4+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Apr. 2011.
Hurley, Paul J. "Young Goodman Brown's 'Heart of Darkness'." American Literature 37.4 (Jan. 1966): 410-419. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Anna J. Sheets. Vol. 29. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Apr. 2011.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” 40 Short Stories. Ed. Beverly Lawn. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009, 1-11. Print.