Richard Dawkins Admits That Religion ISN'T the Problem in the Mideast - and What the Problem Really Is

In reality, I don't think this is any kind of huge departure from what Dawkins (and Harris and Maher) have been saying all along - he still attributes the violence to their religious beliefs.

It's disappointing to see our supposed "intellectuals" getting caught up with the trees and totally missing the forest. The Muslim jihadists practice a specific form of Islam, and it has little to do with the religion itself and everything to do with the worldview from which it emerges. The same thing is true of their politics, their cultural customs (like dietary restrictions and marrying off girls when they still children), and their educational system (teaching only the Qur'an). Each of these (religion, politics, cultural customs, and education) are trees in the forest we call a worldview.

This is where the Spiral Dynamics model can actually be useful in understanding the situation. The spiral in Spiral Dynamics (the book) emerged from Clare Graves's original theory, which uses a double helix (looks like DNA) model to show the interrelatedness of an individual's perception of life conditions with their inner neuronal systems (psychosocial development), producing a level of psychological existence. In this model, a worldview is shaped by the interplay between life conditions and cognitive development.

If we really want to change things in the Middle East, we need to understand their worldview (or worldviews) and why it motivates them to do and believe that Jihad is the answer to their problems. If we can begin to understand that, then we might look to Clare Graves' original work on "change states" and the stages of change, as well as Robert Kegan's "Immunity to Change" model.

Shocker: Leading Atheist Richard Dawkins Finally Admits That Religion ISN'T the Problem in the Mideast

The statement from the evolutionary biologist is a parting of ways with atheists who claim that religion is the primary motivator for terrorist groups.

September 30, 2014  |  By Dan Arel

Is Richard Dawkins changing his tune on Islam and terrorism? In a recent interview with Russia Today, the evolutionary biologist and noted atheist was questioned about the Islamic religion and its ties to ISIS and just how much responsibility it bears in the brutal beheadings carried out by the terrorist group. Dawkins said:

“Religion itself is not responsible for this... It's also this feeling of political involvement. It's a feeling that it's 'us against them.' And I think that quite a large number of young Muslims feel kind of beleaguered against the rest of the world. And so religion in some sense might be just an excuse, but I do think that a dominant part of the motivation for these young men has to be religion."

Dawkins statement is a huge divergence from the opinions of atheists like Sam Harris and Bill Maher, who continue to claim that religion is the primary motivator for radical terrorist groups like ISIS.

Harris's anti-Islamic statements have been notable. Back in 2006, he posted a statement on his blog that bordered on xenophobia: “Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies."

Dawkins' remarks don't even jibe with earlier comments he made in a piece he wrote for the Guardian back in 2001 where he contradicted the claim that terrorists are cowards:

“On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from. It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East, which motivated the use of this deadly weapon in the first place.”

But now Dawkins is saying that politics plays the larger role in such radical forms of unrest and that religion is little more than a pretext for terrorism. Many on the left have been saying this for some time. In a recent piece on AlterNet, C.J. Werleman came to the same conclusion after looking into the Suicide Terrorism Database:

“...though religion can play a vital role in the recruitment and motivation of potential future suicide bombers, their real driving-force is a cocktail of motivations including politics, humiliation, revenge, retaliation and altruism. The configuration of these motivations is related to the specific circumstances of the political conflict behind the rise of suicide attacks in different countries.”

When Dawkins was asked about the motivation behind the beheadings and violence, he took a more scientific look at the biological aspect of revenge:

"There is a kind of pseudo-tribalism which uses religion as a label. And I suspect that some of these people think that this hideous violence is vengeance against, say, America, for attacking Iraq or for forming alliances with, I don't know, with Israel, say. And this vengeance becomes directed towards innocent people. There's one British man who is threatened with execution now who is an aid worker, whose motivation is purely altruistic towards the people there. [Since the interview, British aid worker David Haines was executed by ISIS.] And yet he's been scapegoated as vengeance against the US and British governments. I think vengeance is a hideous emotion, but it is one that does have a biological basis.”

This is a much-needed step for new atheists like Dawkins, who have a following in the millions of people who look to him as an expert on such issues. When he had wrongfully blamed religion as the driving force for acts of terrorism, it did a disservice to those working to address the real issue behind the Middle East's problems; it's politics, especially bad foreign policy by the U.S. and its allies, that has always played a bigger role in extremism than religion.

Again, Werleman notes the impact of these policies:

“To maintain control of the Middle East’s cheap oil supplies, we [the U.S] have engaged in industrial slaughter. To achieve our ends, we have propped despotic regimes and brutal dictators, overthrown democratically elected governments, and waged three wars in two decades on Muslim soil. All while we fund and are complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation and theft of Palestinian land.”

Those like Harris seem to ignore this fact and would rather claim that these groups claim to carry out these actions in the name of Allah as proof that they are religiously motivated.

Not understanding this difference can have catastrophic results, especially since now the U.S and its allies are dropping bombs across Iraq and Syria and carrying out the same foreign policy strategy that typically breed groups like ISIS. It is easy for us to believe that we are carrying out an ethical battle against a religious evil, but to believe so is an illusion and ignores all available evidence.

Atheists often want to vilify religion so badly they fail to see the contrary evidence right in front of them. But ignoring the evidence just to serve an anti-theistic agenda does the world no favors. It is time for other new atheists to join Richard Dawkins in accepting the evidence behind the origins of such terrorist movements, and work to solve the problems instead of disparaging an entire religion.

Dan Arel is the author of Parenting Without God and blogs at Danthropology. Follow him on Twitter @danarel.

Many Individuals, and Even Entire Cultures, Fear Happiness

The quest for happiness has become a nearly archetypal feature of Western culture, not to mention a nation such as Bhutan, where happiness is a department in the government's social policy planning (Gross National Happiness Commission).

New cross-cultural research published in the Journal of Happiness Studies suggests that humans actually have an aversion to happiness. Looking into the reasons for happiness aversion, the authors, Joshanloo and Weijers, identify four beliefs:

1. Believing that being happy will provoke bad things to happen
2. Believing that happiness will make you a worse person
3. Believing that expressing happiness is bad for you and others
4. Believing that pursuing happiness is bad for you and others

This is an interesting study. Fortunately, BPS Research Digest offers a nice review of it - the original article is paywalled - but I am including the abstract at the bottom of this post.

It's time for Western psychology to recognise that many individuals, and even entire cultures, fear happiness

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Monday, July 21, 2014

It's become a mantra of the modern Western world that the ultimate aim of life is to achieve happiness. Self-help blog posts on how to be happy are almost guaranteed popularity (the Digest has its own!). Pro-happiness organisations have appeared, such as Action for Happiness, which aims to "create a happier society for everyone." Topping it all, an increasing number of governments, including in the UK, have started measuring national well-being (seen as a proxy for "happiness") - the argument being that this a potentially more important policy outcome than economic prosperity.

But hang on a minute, say Moshen Joshanloo and Dan Weijers writing in the Journal of Happiness Studies - not everyone wants to be happy. In fact, they point out that many people, including in Western cultures, deliberately dampen their positive moods. Moreover, in many nations, including Iran and New Zealand, many people are actually fearful of happiness, tending to agree with questionnaire items like "I prefer not to be too joyful, because usually joy is followed by sadness".

Looking into the reasons for happiness aversion, Joshanloo and Weijers identify four: believing that being happy will provoke bad things to happen; that happiness will make you a worse person; that expressing happiness is bad for you and others; and that pursuing happiness is bad for you and others. Let's touch on each of these.

Fear that happiness leads to bad outcomes is perhaps most strong in East Asian cultures influenced by Taoism, which posits that "things tend to revert to their opposite". A 2001 study asked participants to choose from a range of life-course graphs and found that Chinese people were more likely than Americans to choose graphs that showed periods of sadness following periods of joy. Other cultures, such as Japan and Iran, believe that happiness can bring misfortune as it causes inattentiveness. Similar fears are sometimes found in the West as reflected in adages such as "what goes up must come down."

Belief that being happy makes you a worse person is rooted in some interpretations of Islam, the reasoning being that it distracts you from God. Joshanloo and Weijers quote the Prophet Muhammad: "were you to know what I know, you would laugh little and weep much" and "avoid much laughter, for much laughter deadens the heart." Another relevant belief here is the idea that being unhappy makes people more creative. Consider this quote from Edward Munch: "They [emotional sufferings] are part of me and my art. They are indistinguishable from me ... I want to keep those sufferings."

In relation to the overt expression of happiness, a 2009 study found that Japanese participants frequently mentioned that doing so can harm others, for example by making them envious; Americans rarely held such concerns. In Ifaluk culture in Micronesia, meanwhile, Joshanloo and Weijers note that expressing happiness is "associated with showing off, overexcitement, and failure at doing one's duties."

Finally, the pursuit of happiness is believed by many cultures and philosophies to be harmful to the self and others. Take as an example this passage of Buddhist text: "And with every desire for happiness, out of delusion they destroy their own well-being as if it were their enemy." In Western thought, as far back as Epicurus, warnings are given that the direct pursuit of happiness can backfire on the self, and harm others through excessive self-interest. Also, it's been argued that joy can make the oppressed weak and less likely to fight injustice.

There's a contemporary fixation with happiness in the much of the Western world. Joshanloo and Weijers' counterpoint is that, for various reasons, not everyone wants to happy. From a practical perspective, they say this could seriously skew cross-cultural comparisons of subjective well-being. "It stands to reason," they write, "that a person with an aversion to expressing happiness ... may report lower subjective wellbeing than they would do otherwise." But their concerns go deeper: "There are risks for happiness studies in exporting Western psychology to non-Western cultures without undertaking indigenous analyses, including making invalid cross-cultural comparisons and imposing Western cultural assumptions on other cultures."
_________________________________

Joshanloo, M., & Weijers, D. (2013). Aversion to Happiness Across Cultures: A Review of Where and Why People are Averse to Happiness. Journal of Happiness Studies, 15 (3), 717-735 DOI: 10.1007/s10902-013-9489-9

Further Reading

• What's the difference between a happy life and a meaningful one?
• Other people may experience more misery than you realise

* * * * *

Aversion to Happiness Across Cultures: A Review of Where and Why People are Averse to Happiness

Mohsen Joshanloo, Dan Weijers
 

Abstract

A common view in contemporary Western culture is that personal happiness is one of the most important values in life. For example, in American culture it is believed that failing to appear happy is cause for concern. These cultural notions are also echoed in contemporary Western psychology (including positive psychology and much of the research on subjective well-being). However, some important (often culturally-based) facts about happiness have tended to be overlooked in the psychological research on the topic. One of these cultural phenomena is that, for some individuals, happiness is not a supreme value. In fact, some individuals across cultures are averse to various kinds of happiness for several different reasons. This article presents the first review of the concept of aversion to happiness. Implications of the outcomes are discussed, as are directions for further research.

Preliminary Thoughts on a New Nomenclature of Psychotherapeutic Diagnosis and Practice

 

Above is one model of integrative psychotherapy (Erskine and Trautmann, 1996). What follows below are some preliminary thoughts on how I practice as a therapist and how I might change the existing nomenclature to reflect a more client-centered, relational model that rejects pathologizing language and structures (i.e., the DSM).

Premise: 

What counselors and psychotherapists have been taught to identify as symptoms of a corresponding condition pejoratively defined as "mental illness" should rather be understood as adaptations to experience.

All adaptations are at their genesis the best available mechanism for survival. As a person ages, these adaptations become either skillful (healthy) or unskillful (not supporting physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health).

Disclaimer:

Short-term responses to challenging situations are not, in general, to be seen as adaptations to that experience (i.e., normal human emotional responses to life events such as death of a loved one, losing a job or promotion, surviving an accident, and so on). If, however, there are several similar experiences over a person's lifetime, with a corresponding response pattern that has solidified into what Carl Jung defined as a "complex," then this then can be seen as an adaption and not a response. 

Diagnosis:

When we join a new client on their healing journey, our task is to identify with them the somatic symptoms, affect dysregulation, cognitive distortions, lost spirituality, the core beliefs, and each domain's corresponding defense mechanisms that block an integrative experience of full health.

An integrative approach assesses from (at least) five domains, four of which are addressed by specific models of psychotherapy that contend their model is the only necessary model:

• Body - somatic symptoms and unconscious behaviors
• Affect - ability to regulate affect and for affect to match verbal and behavioral expression
• Cognitive - possessing rational and non-distorted self-concepts, lack or pervasive thinking errors, or other forms of unskillful cognitive and behavioral scripts
• Spiritual - a sense of purpose and meaning in one's life whether it's religious, spiritual, or atheist/humanist

The fifth domain is the Core Beliefs a person holds about who s/he is and what other people believe about him or her. These beliefs are deeply held and generally unconscious. They tend to originate in infancy and early childhood, making them difficult to uproot in order to plant new seeds for healthier core beliefs. Further, core beliefs tend to manifest in each of the four other domains listed above.

Multiplicity

We are all born (barring organic defects) with a whole and healthy Self-seed (our genetic and characterological template) that will become a mature sense of Self. However, no one escapes childhood without that Self being compromised in some way. Some children are so abused and/or neglected that they never develop a solid sense of self.

Consequently, parts of the self that are either overwhelming (emotional responses to trauma), unsafe (natural behaviors that are punished by caregivers), or not nurtured (for example, capacity for compassion or generosity) are split off from the Self and become self-fragments, ego states, parts, or subpersonalities that often remain unconscious and tend to show up in various forms of projection.

For each split off part, there is a part or parts that manages the outside world in some way to keep those "exiled" parts out of consciousness. Some of the common "managers" are the Pusher (focused on achievement and constant movement toward the next goal), Perfectionist (all or nothing thinking, a need for personal perfection, the failure of which brings intense shame), Pleaser (often middle children or first children who try to make everyone else happy, often at the expense of their own happiness), and the Inner Critic (a part who seeks to ensure the client is never criticized by others by being so hyper-critical of the client that any other criticism will be avoided). 

In order for splitting to become "hard-wired," there must be repeated episodes of the experiences that lead to the splitting. Normal misattunement between child and caregiver will not lead to splitting and, in fact, such misattunements are necessary for the development of resilience when they are quickly repaired by the caregiver.

Worldviews or Reality Frames

It is incumbant upon the therapist to be "experience near" (Kohut) with the client and be able to identify their basic worldview or reality model. This does not mean that the therapist necessarily supports the client's worldview, however, but it does require that the therapist be able to work within that reality frame.

It's also important that a client's worldview be held lightly - different parts of the client will possess alternate worldviews with anywhere from slight to profound variations.

Likewise, when a therapist encounters a new client whose worldview is unfamiliar (for example, someone from another country, or members of Tribal Nations, and so on), it is essential that therapists educate themselves as best they can and that they inquire with the client when they start to make assumptions about the client's experience that may not fit their reality frame.

Models of Psychotherapy

Successful therapeutic interventions require the all five domains are addressed. Here are a few examples of the therapeutic models that address the various domains:

Body - nutrition, exercise, somatic therapies (Somatic Experiencing, Bioenergetics, Yoga Therapy), behavioral psychotherapies, mindfulness-based therapies, Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS - "parts work"), Hakomi, Eye Movement Desensitization, and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Affect - affective neuroscience, interpersonal neurobiology, intersubjective and relational psychotherapies, mindfulness-based therapies, IFS
Cognitive - cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), neurolinguistic programming (NLP), rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT), script analysis (Transactional Analysis), existential psychotherapy, narrative therapy, IFS
Spiritual - transpersonal psychotherapy, Jungian Analytical Psychotherapy, contemplative practices, meta-narrative therapies, existential psychotherapy, IFS (developing "Self-Leadership"), expressive therapies
Core Beliefs - cognitive therapies, relational psychotherapies, IFS, narrative therapies, creative visualization, soul retrieval, expressive therapies

Undoubtedly, there are other models I am not familiar with or that have slipped my mind at the moment, so this list should not be taken as my final position on this topic.

Goals of Psychotherapy

First rule: Do No Harm. Second rule: It's not the therapy, it's the relationship.

If therapists can successfully follow these two rules, and hold a belief in the inherent ability of the client to heal, as well as a belief in the client's ability to know what therapeutic pace and which interventions are best for them, then the client becomes his or her own healer and the therapist simply "midwife" that process with them.

The goal is never to impose a therapist's sense of "mental health" but, rather, to explore with the client what their own sense of mental health looks like and feels like in their lives. Having done so, then it becomes easier for the therapist to identify with the client which areas or domains of their life are not functioning optimally.

Areas of less-than-optimal function are the adaptations defined as unskillful that therapy seeks to minimize while also helping the client learn skillful adaptations to replace those being minimized.

***

Okay then, that is my first-pass at a new model. Please share your thoughts, comments, and criticisms in the comments section here or at Facebook.

The "Richard Lewis Model" Explains Every Culture In The World

Someone on Facebook linked to this article, but I have forgotten who - sorry. From Business Insider, Gus Lubin offers a brief profile of British linguist Richard Lewis and his model of cultures. Lewis has plotted out the world's cultures on three qualities: Linear-actives (people who pursue goals in a linear, step-by-step manner), Multi-actives (multi-taskers who operate less by schedules or more by importance), and Reactives (groups who prioritize courtesy and respect).

Here is a brief description of his book (When Cultures Collide, 3rd Edition: Leading Across Cultures) from Amazon:

In this thoroughly updated and expanded 3rd edition of the groundbreaking book, When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures, Richard Lewis includes every major region of the world and more than sixty countries! Capturing the rising influence of culture and the seismic changes throughout many regions of the world, cross-cultural expert and international businessman Richard Lewis has significantly broadened the scope of his seminal work on global business and intercultural communication. Included are new chapters on more than a dozen countries. Within each country-specific chapter, Lewis provides invaluable insight into the beliefs, values, behaviors, mannerisms and prejudices of each culture, lending helpful advice on topics to discuss and those to avoid when communicating, guides to interpreting unique terminology, and modes of behavior that will contribute to successful communication and lasting relationships. Lewis advises on overarching guidelines for proper overseas manners, whether in a restaurant, at the home of a colleague or in the boardroom. Using dozens of scientific, yet highly accessible diagrams and building on his Linear-active, Multi-active and Reactive (LMR) culture type model, Lewis gives managers and leaders practical strategies to embrace differences and work successfully across an increasingly diverse business culture.The 3rd Edition of the popular When Cultures Collide grows in size and information. It contains an additional three countries and regions that now 'play significant roles on the world stage' and include coverage of newer EU member states, the Indian subcontinent, the 'Arab Lands,' the Sub-Saharan region and Latin America in more detail. Country chapters in the new edition also include sidebars that provide a quick look at key motivating factors in each country.
- Kate Berardo, DELTA Intercultural Academy contributor 

Contents

PART I: GETTING TO GRIPS WITH CULTURAL DIVERSITY

• Different Languages, Different Worlds
• Cultural Conditioning
• Categorization of Cultures
• The Use of Time
• Bridging the Communication Gap
• Manners (and Mannerisms)

PART II: MANAGING AND LEADING IN DIFFERENT CULTURES

• Status, Leadership, and Organization
• Team Building and Horizons
• Motivating People and Building Trust
• Meetings of the Minds

PART THREE: GETTING TO KNOW EACH OTHER

• English-Speaking Countries Western European Countries
• Central and Eastern European Countries
• Nordic Countries
• The Baltic States and Central Asian Countries
• Middle Eastern Countries
• Asian (South, Southeast, East) Countries
• Latin American Countries
• Sub-Saharan African Countries

Here is the article Lubin:

The Lewis Model Explains Every Culture In The World

Gus Lubin | Sept. 6, 2013

A world traveler who speaks ten languages, British linguist Richard Lewis decided he was qualified to plot the world's cultures on a chart.

He did so while acknowledging the dangers of stereotypes.

"Determining national characteristics is treading a minefield of inaccurate assessment and surprising exception," Lewis wrote. "There is, however, such a thing as a national norm."

Many people think he nailed it, as his book When Cultures Collide, 3rd Edition: Leading Across Cultures, now in its third edition, has sold more than one million copies since it was first published in 1996 and was called "an authoritative roadmap to navigating the world's economy," by the Wall Street Journal.

Lewis plots countries in relation to three categories:

• Linear-actives — those who plan, schedule, organize, pursue action chains, do one thing at a time. Germans and Swiss are in this group.
• Multi-actives — those lively, loquacious peoples who do many things at once, planning their priorities not according to a time schedule, but according to the relative thrill or importance that each appointment brings with it. Italians, Latin Americans and Arabs are members of this group.
• Reactives — those cultures that prioritize courtesy and respect, listening quietly and calmly to their interlocutors and reacting carefully to the other side's proposals. Chinese, Japanese and Finns are in this group.

He says that this categorization of national norms does not change significantly over time:

The behavior of people of different cultures is not something willy-nilly. There exist clear trends, sequences and traditions. Reactions of Americans, Europeans, and Asians alike can be forecasted, usually justified and in the majority of cases managed. Even in countries where political and economic change is currently rapid or sweeping (Russia, China, Hungary, Poland, Korea, Malaysia, etc.) deeply rooted attitudes and beliefs will resist a sudden transformation of values when pressured by reformists, governments or multinational conglomerates.

Here's the chart that explains the world:

 Richard Lewis Model (www.crossculture.com)

Some more details on the categories:

Lewis Model (www.crossculture.com)

The point of all of this analysis is to understand how to interact with people from different cultures, a subject in which Richard Lewis Communications provides coaching and consultation.

"By focusing on the cultural roots of national behavior, both in society and business, we can foresee and calculate with a surprising degree of accuracy how others will react to our plans for them, and we can make certain assumptions as to how they will approach us," Lewis writes.

The Mindset List for the Class of 2017 (Beloit College)

Each year as the new crop of college freshmen leave their families and begin the journey into adulthood, Beloit College reminds the rest of us how we are by offering a list of perspectives held by this particular group of freshmen.

Sadly, the gender balance in the image above is also indicative of the the new freshman class in most schools - young women outnumber young men by as much as 2:1.

It's somewhat amusing, to me at least, that Beloit offers this list with the assumption these kids will finish school in four years. While that may be true at Beloit, most freshman entering college this year will take more than four years, and as many as six (or more).

2017 List

• Mindset List webcast
• The Guides
• Media Resources

When the Class of 2017 arrives on campus this fall, these digital natives will already be well-connected to each other. They are more likely to have borrowed money for college than their Boomer parents were, and while their parents foresee four years of school, the students are pretty sure it will be longer than that. Members of this year’s first year class, most of them born in 1995, will search for the academic majors reported to lead to good-paying jobs, and most of them will take a few courses taught at a distant university by a professor they will never meet.

The use of smart phones in class may indicate they are reading the assignment they should have read last night, or they may be recording every minute of their college experience…or they may be texting the person next to them. If they are admirers of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, they may wonder whether a college degree is all it’s cracked up to be, even as their dreams are tempered by the reality that tech geniuses come along about as often as Halley’s Comet, which they will not glimpse until they reach what we currently consider “retirement age.”

Though they have never had the chicken pox, they are glad to have access to health insurance for a few more years. They will study hard, learn a good deal more, teach their professors quite a lot, and realize eventually that they will soon be in power. After all, by the time they hit their thirties, four out of ten voters will be of their generation. Whatever their employers may think of them, politicians will be paying close attention.

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List, providing a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. Prepared by Beloit’s former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief and Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride, the list was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references. It quickly became an internationally monitored catalog of the changing worldview of each new college generation. Mindset List websites at themindsetlist.com and beloit.edu, as well as the Mediasite webcast and their Facebook page receive more than a million visits annually.

The Mindset List for the Class of 2017

For this generation of entering college students, born in 1995, Dean Martin, Mickey Mantle, and Jerry Garcia have always been dead.

1. Eminem and LL Cool J could show up at parents’ weekend.
2. They are the sharing generation, having shown tendencies to share everything, including possessions, no matter how personal.
3. GM means food that is Genetically Modified.
4. As they started to crawl, so did the news across the bottom of the television screen.
5. “Dude” has never had a negative tone.
6. As their parents held them as infants, they may have wondered whether it was the baby or Windows 95 that had them more excited.
7. As kids they may well have seen Chicken Run but probably never got chicken pox.
8. Having a chat has seldom involved talking.
9. Gaga has never been baby talk.
10. They could always get rid of their outdated toys on eBay.
11. They have known only two presidents.
12. Their TV screens keep getting smaller as their parents’ screens grow ever larger.
13. PayPal has replaced a pen pal as a best friend on line.
14. Rites of passage have more to do with having their own cell phone and Skype accounts than with getting a driver’s license and car.
15. The U.S. has always been trying to figure out which side to back in Middle East conflicts.
16. A tablet is no longer something you take in the morning.
17. Threatening to shut down the government during Federal budget negotiations has always been an anticipated tactic.
18. Growing up with the family dog, one of them has worn an electronic collar, while the other has toted an electronic lifeline.
19. Plasma has never been just a bodily fluid.
20. The Pentagon and Congress have always been shocked, absolutely shocked, by reports of sexual harassment and assault in the military.
21. Spray paint has never been legally sold in Chicago.
22. Captain Janeway has always taken the USS Voyager where no woman or man has ever gone before.
23. While they've grown up with a World Trade Organization, they have never known an Interstate Commerce Commission.
24. Courts have always been ordering computer network wiretaps.
25. Planes have never landed at Stapleton Airport in Denver.
26. Jurassic Park has always had rides and snack bars, not free-range triceratops and velociraptors.
27. Thanks to Megan's Law and Amber Alerts, parents have always had community support in keeping children safe.
28. With GPS, they have never needed directions to get someplace, just an address.
29. Java has never been just a cup of coffee.
30. Americans and Russians have always cooperated better in orbit than on earth.
31. Olympic fever has always erupted every two years.
32. Their parents have always bemoaned the passing of precocious little Calvin and sarcastic stuffy Hobbes.
33. In their first 18 years, they have watched the rise and fall of Tiger Woods and Alex Rodriguez.
34. Yahoo has always been looking over its shoulder for the rise of "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”
35. Congress has always been burdened by the requirement that they comply with the anti-discrimination and safety laws they passed for everybody else to follow.
36. The U.S. has always imposed economic sanctions against Iran.
37. The Celestine Prophecy has always been bringing forth a new age of spiritual insights.
38. Smokers in California have always been searching for their special areas, which have been harder to find each year.
39. They aren’t surprised to learn that the position of Top Spook at the CIA is an equal opportunity post.
40. They have never attended a concert in a smoke-filled arena.
41. As they slept safely in their cribs, the Oklahoma City bomber and the Unabomber were doing their deadly work.
42. There has never been a national maximum speed on U.S. highways.
43. Don Shula has always been a fine steak house.
44. Their favorite feature films have always been largely, if not totally, computer generated.
45. They have never really needed to go to their friend’s house so they could study together.
46. They have never seen the Bruins at Boston Garden, the Trailblazers at Memorial Coliseum, the Supersonics in Key Arena, or the Canucks at the Pacific Coliseum.
47. Dayton, Ohio, has always been critical to international peace accords.
48. Kevin Bacon has always maintained six degrees of separation in the cinematic universe.
49. They may have been introduced to video games with a new Sony PlayStation left in their cribs by their moms.
50. A Wiki has always been a cooperative web application rather than a shuttle bus in Hawaii.
51. The Canadian Football League Stallions have always sung Alouette in Montreal after bidding adieu to Baltimore.
52. They have always been able to plug into USB ports
53. Olestra has always had consumers worried about side effects.
54. Washington, D.C., tour buses have never been able to drive in front of the White House.
55. Being selected by Oprah’s Book Club has always read “success.”
56. There has never been a Barings Bank in England.
57. Their parents’ car CD player is soooooo ancient and embarrassing.
58. New York’s Times Square has always had a splash of the Magic Kingdom in it.
59. Bill Maher has always been politically incorrect.
60. They have always known that there are “five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes" in a year.


Leon Wieseltier - In Defense of Thomas Nagel: A Darwinist Mob Goes After a Serious Philosopher

I am reading Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, and I find it well-written and well-reasoned. Importantly, Nagel is not claiming he has the answers to how to solve the materialist, reductionist perspective in the current scientific worldview. However, he is pointing out some of the weaknesses in the current system.

Here is a description of the book from Amazon:

The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology.

Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such.

Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic.

In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

With that description of the book, here is an article in defense of Nagel, who has been savaged by the scientific community. Both Brian Leiter and Michael Weisberg have given harshly negative reviews, as has Steven Pinker, who tweeted, “What has gotten into Thomas Nagel? Two philosophers expose the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker.” And The Guardian named “Mind and Cosmos” the "most despised science book of 2012."

A Darwinist Mob Goes After a Serious Philosopher

BY LEON WIESELTIER
MARCH 8, 2013

Is there a greater gesture of intellectual contempt than the notion that a tweet constitutes an adequate intervention in a serious discussion? But when Thomas Nagel’s formidable book Mind and Cosmos recently appeared, in which he has the impudence to suggest that “the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false,” and to offer thoughtful reasons to believe that the non-material dimensions of life—consciousness, reason, moral value, subjective experience—cannot be reduced to, or explained as having evolved tidily from, its material dimensions, Steven Pinker took to Twitter and haughtily ruled that it was “the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker.” Fuck him, he explained.

Here was a signal to the Darwinist dittoheads that a mob needed to be formed. In an earlier book Nagel had dared to complain of “Darwinist imperialism,” though in his scrupulous way he added that “there is really no reason to assume that the only alternative to an evolutionary explanation of everything is a religious one.” He is not, God forbid, a theist. But he went on to warn that “this may not be comforting enough” for the materialist establishment, which may find it impossible to tolerate also “any cosmic order of which mind is an irreducible and non-accidental part.” For the bargain-basement atheism of our day, it is not enough that there be no God: there must be only matter. Now Nagel’s new book fulfills his old warning. A mob is indeed forming, a mob of materialists, of free-thinking inquisitors. “In the present climate of a dominant scientific naturalism, heavily dependent on speculative Darwinian explanations of practically everything, and armed to the teeth against religion,” Nagel calmly writes, “... I would like to extend the boundaries of what is not regarded as unthinkable, in light of how little we really understand about the world.” This cannot be allowed! And so the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Secular Faith sprang into action. “If there were a philosophical Vatican,” Simon Blackburn declared in the New Statesman, “the book would be a good candidate for going on to the Index.” I hope that one day he regrets that sentence. It is not what Bruno, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Voltaire, Hume, Locke, Kant, and the other victims of the anti-philosophical Vatican had in mind.

I understand that nobody is going to burn Nagel’s book or ban it. These inquisitors are just more professors. But he is being denounced not merely for being wrong. He is being denounced also for being heretical. I thought heresy was heroic. I guess it is heroic only when it dissents from a doctrine with which I disagree. Actually, the defense of heresy has nothing to do with its content and everything to do with its right. Tolerance is not a refutation of heresy, but a retirement of the concept. I am not suggesting that there is anything outrageous about the criticism of Nagel’s theory of the explanatory limitations of Darwinism. He aimed to provoke and he provoked. His troublemaking book has sparked the most exciting disputation in many years, because no question is more primary than the question of whether materialism (which Nagel defines as “the view that only the physical world is irreducibly real”) is true or false.

And so scientists are busily animadverting on Nagel’s account of science. They like to note condescendingly that he calls himself a “layman.” Yet too many of Nagel’s interlocutors have been scientists, because Mind and Cosmos is not a work of science. It is a work of philosophy; and it is entirely typical of the scientistic tyranny in American intellectual life that scientists have been invited to do the work of philosophers. The problem of the limits of science is not a scientific problem. It is also pertinent to note that the history of science is a history of mistakes, and so the dogmatism of scientists is especially rich. A few of Nagel’s scientific critics have been respectful: in The New York Review of Books, H. Allen Orr has the decency to concede that it is not at all obvious how consciousness could have originated out of matter. But he then proceeds to an almost comic evasion. Finally, he says, we must suffice with “the mysteriousness of consciousness.” A Darwinii mysterium tremendum! He then cites Colin McGinn’s entirely unironic suggestion that our “cognitive limitations” may prevent us from grasping the evolution of mind from matter: “even if matter does give rise to mind, we might not be able to understand how.” Students of religion will recognize the dodge—it used to be called fideism, and atheists gleefully ridiculed it; and the expedient suspension of rational argument; and the double standard. What once vitiated godfulness now vindicates godlessness.

The most shabby aspect of the attack on Nagel’s heterodoxy has been its political motive. His book will be “an instrument of mischief,” it will “lend comfort (and sell a lot of copies) to the religious enemies of Darwinism,” and so on. It is bad for the left’s own culture war. Whose side is he on, anyway? Almost taunting the materialist left, which teaches skepticism but not self-skepticism, Nagel, who does not subscribe to intelligent design, describes some of its proponents as “iconoclasts” who “do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met.” I find this delicious, because it defies the prevailing regimentation of opinion and exemplifies a rebellious willingness to go wherever the reasoning mind leads. Cui bono? is not the first question that an intellectual should ask. The provenance of an idea reveals nothing about its veracity. “Accept the truth from whoever utters it,” said the rabbis, those poor benighted souls who had the misfortune to have lived so many centuries before Dennett and Dawkins. I like Nagel’s mind and I like Nagel’s cosmos. He thinks strictly but not imperiously, and in grateful view of the full tremendousness of existence; and he denies matter nothing except the subjection of mind; and he speaks, by example, for the soulfulness of reason.

Divided Brain, Divided World - RSA Action and Research Centre

Psychiatrist and author Iain McGilchrist, whose most recent book is The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, and the Director of RSA’s Social Brain Centre, Dr Jonathan Rowson, have joined forces to write Divided Brain, Divided World; Why the best part of us struggles to be heard. This document grew out of a workshop given in November the mark the evolution of The Social Brain Project into The Social Brain Centre. McGilchrist and Rowson explore the practical significance of our two brain hemispheres having radically different "world views."

For a detailed synopsis to the report, Jonathan Rowson posted an introduction of sorts a few days ago, which is here. I'll share a little of it below.

Divided Brain, Divided World

Divided Brain, Divided World; Why the best part of us struggles to be heard explores the practical significance of the scientific fact that the two hemispheres of our brains have radically different ‘world views’. It argues that our failure to learn lessons from the financial crash, our continuing neglect of climate change, and the increase in mental health conditions may stem from a literal loss of perspective that we urgently need to regain. The evidence-based case is that the abstract, articulate, instrumentalising world view of the left hemisphere is gradually usurping the more contextual, holistic but relatively tentative world view of the right hemisphere.

Divided Brain, Divided World examines how related issues are illuminated by the ideas developed in author and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist’s critically acclaimed work: The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. It features a dialogue between McGilchrist and Director of RSA’s Social Brain Centre, Dr Jonathan Rowson, which informed a workshop with policymakers, journalists and academics. This workshop led to a range of written reflections on the strength and significance of the ideas, including critique, clarification and illustrations of relevance in particular domains, including economics, behavioural economics, climate change, NGO campaigning, patent law, ethics, and art.

Download Divided Brain, Divided World (PDF, 2MB)

* * * * *

The Process

Thankfully, in the report we have much broader capacity to develop the ideas, and in the afterword I reflected as follows:

“During the course of reading Iain’s work, the process of preparing and conducting the dialogue, organising the workshop, and compiling and writing this document, I have often felt somewhat overwhelmed by the effort, but never underwhelmed by the goal. The theory is big, difficult and audacious and most people don’t quite know what to do with it. So, there have been times where it has felt like the drive to extract importance out of the interest has been in vain, but when I reflect on the initial motivation, and the potential prize, it feels more like we just have to try differently, or better.”

You see, the book is magisterial, and the argument utterly fundamental, so anybody who spends their time trying to effect social change should at least be aware of it, and have some sense of what they feel or think about it. You can think of it as a grand theory for our times. The argument is pitched at too general a level to ever reflect a single direct cause of a single phenomenon, but once the narrative as a whole seeps into you, it feels like it is relevant to everything around us, and you want everybody else to be able to see the world through that lens.

One of the respondents, Independent Researcher Simon Christmas FRSA captured the value of this kind of contribution well (p 67):

“It has given me a better way of grasping many things I had already thought or felt. By doing so, it has made those thoughts and feelings clearer and more meaningful. Iain himself notes that there is little in the book that one might not arrive at by some other route. I think that is key to its impact: it speaks to an audience who have already fumbled their way to an intellectual discontent for which Iain’s argument provides a shape, a story, a narrative.”

Practical Implications:

We tried our best to make sense of the ‘so what?’ question and made some headway that I hope others might build on. In the report, John Wakefield’s (former political journalist) extended feedback piece (p 71) gives a particularly careful account of the extent to which we should expect practical implications from such a nuanced and high-level thesis, but for the press release we were naturally a little more direct:

“This issue has deep significance for anybody working to affect social change. The evidence-based case is that the abstract, instrumental, articulate and assured world view of the left hemisphere is gradually usurping the more contextual, humane, systemic, holistic but relatively tentative and inarticulate world view of the right hemisphere. This cultural trend can be illustrated in a range of current policy issues, for instance:

• An obsession with exam results in school education
• The creation of absurd forms of bibliometry and citation counting in higher education research assessment exercises.
• Funding cuts for arts and humanities courses that struggle to justify themselves in instrumental terms.
• Pervasive ignoring or denial of the scale of our climate change problem.
• Political failure to think through the implications of the fact that beyond a minimal threshold higher income does not equate with higher wellbeing.
• Political failure to question the imperative for economic growth.

Hopeful Pessimism:

Some might think the report has a negative quality, in that it’s basically a critique of the modern world and the direction we are heading, but at its heart it is hopeful, constructive and even optimistic: Iain closes the dialogue as follows:

“I call myself a hopeful pessimist. In respect of where we are currently headed, yes, I am a pessimist. In respect of our potential to adapt and change quickly, I am hopeful. I sense that people are sick of the current worldview in the West… In response to my book, people of all walks of life all over the world have written to me. They are looking for a change in direction, and I think all I have done is to give them courage to believe in what they already really know at some level – something which has not been articulated in quite the same terms before. In many ways my message is a very positive one. We have been sold a sadly limiting version of who we as human beings are, and how we relate to the world. Inside each one of us there is an intelligence, in fact a superior intelligence, that sees things differently from the way we have been sold – if we would only listen to it. Let’s hope that we can.”

###

A Note on Reading the Report:

I really hope as many people as possible can read the full report. However, if you just press ‘print’, you’ll get about 48 pages double-sided, so it is worth thinking of what you most want to read by going to the contents page in the PDF first. The dialogue with me and Iain is split into three parts: 1) The argument (p 8) 2) Challenges to the argument (p 23) 3) Practical Implications (p 31). The Reflections section (p 51) includes 14 feedback pieces including Ray Tallis, Mark Vernon, Tom Crompton, Rita Carter, Theresa Marteau and others. The Appendices (p 80) feature details of a three-hour workshop discussion where Guy Claxton, Mark Williamson, Matthew Taylor and many others spoke, and has been included to capture some of the best ideas generated collectively, but will probably only be of interest to those who are truly committed!

Secular Buddhist Podcast, Episode 155: Julian Marc Walker - Devil in the Details

This week's episode of the Secular Buddhist Podcast (Episode 155) features integral theorist and yoga teacher Julian Marc Walker, discussing his new book, Devil In the Details: 3 Keys To Thinking More Clearly About Spirituality (Thinking Clearly About Spirituality). Enjoy.

Secular Buddhist Podcast, Episode 155: Julian Marc Walker: Devil in the Details
Ted Meissner | February 9, 2013


Julian Marc Walker

Today we speak with yoga instructor Julian Marc Walker about his online book, Devil In the Details: 3 Keys To Thinking More Clearly About Spirituality.

Secular Buddhism is, in many ways, suspended between two world views: that of the naturalistic and non-religious, and that of the faithful and religious. We often find ourselves brokering discussions between these very different poles, caught in the middle as we explore Buddhism’s teachings and practice, couched in ancient tradition, with contemporary understanding of the world informed by science.

This is also true of other disciplines like yoga, which is also undergoing a protestant evolution. New ways of seeing the world seem to clash with ancient attempts to understand. We often get mired in discriminating attitudes, rather than collaborative investigations about how our predecessors in practice may have been trying to understand what they were discovering.

Julian Walker has been teaching yoga since 1994 and practicing Mind-Body Healing since 1997. He studied under Ana Forrest from 1992 to 1998 and was certified by her to teach. Influenced by American Buddhism, Tantra, and Transpersonal Psychology, Julian has led workshops across the United States and in Canada and has been training teachers and bodyworkers since 2001 and sharing his twice-a-year Transformation Retreats to Ojai since 2002. He weaves sacred poetry, world music, mythology and transformational themes into his deep stretch and flow yoga classes and is well known for his “Funky Friday” class that includes ecstatic dance.

So, sit back, relax, and have a nice Darjeeling.

Podcast: Download

Quotes
“I’ve been in pursuit of integration. I think the underlying question for me has been, ‘Is there a way to have a meaningful spiritually engaged life that is congruent with science and psychology and is really about seeing spirituality as a way to cut through delusion.’” — Julian Marc Walker 

“Spirituality is often the domain of fuzzy logic and vague beliefs. But this need not be the case! Julian Walker identifies the three key mistakes in reasoning made again and again in our thinking about, and discussion of, subjects like God, The Big Bang, evolution, souls, astrology, psychics and other aspects of religion and pop spirituality.” — Julian Marc Walker 

Web Links

• Julian Walker Yoga

• Julian Walker FaceBook 

Music for This Episode Courtesy of Rodrigo Rodriguez
The music heard in the middle of the podcast is from Rodrigo Rodriguez. The track used in this episode is “Sagariha” from his CD,Traditional and Modern Pieces: Shakuhachi.

Changing Values: The Global Transformation of Values Has Already Begun

The following is a section from the German Advisory Council on Climate Change (WGBU) report, World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability. They identify in this study some wide-scale values change - perhaps a move toward a more worldcentric perspective - that the identify as "post-materialistic." I posted an outline earlier today - here - which links to the full 400-page PDF file of the study.

Changing Values: The Global Transformation of Values Has Already Begun

In the following, the WBGU brings forward a twofold argument. Firstly, that the necessary transformation into a low-carbon society already corresponds to some of the prevalent attitudes and value systems in many of the world’s countries (Box 2.1-1). Secondly, that the transformation can therefore be viewed as a positive factor in the sense of increasing subjective life satisfaction for large parts of the population. 

Value systems are always linked to cultural and social context. In pluralistic societies, they are ‘negotiated’, i.e. hotly debated, against the background of practical problems and dilemmas. Value conflicts are just as normal as distribution conflicts, and – always assuming that they are carried out peacefully and solved amicably – promote social change and cultural innovation (Dahrendorf, 1957). Any kind of reflexion on the development progress and transformation chances of today’s societies must start with empirically proven values and attitudes. This highlights many issues, such as: what are the value systems in the poor and in the wealthy regions of the world, and how do they differ? And, again region-specific, how is the relationship between the goal of (increasing) material wealth on the one hand, and postmaterialist ideals of self-expression and consideration of the natural environment on the other, developing? What rank is accorded to the growth of both national economies and the global economy in relation to environmental and climate protection?

Since the beginning of the modern era, attitudes and considerations inspired by personal benefit maximisation have established themselves. With the advent of industrial mass production, the ‘good life’ has increasingly become synonymous with material wealth. In the course of the ‘Great Transformation’ (Polanyi, 1944), the economy has been extensively disembedded from its relation to society and life worlds. This functional differentiation of the economic system has lent it an autonomy that has made possible a previously unimagined extent of productivity growth. However, it has also led to the whole social order being subjected to economic principles (Schimank, 2009). This is (only) the case once market principles affect all other subsystems (such as politics, culture, family, etc.) thereby turning rational cost-benefit analysis into the interpretation pattern that determines the actions of society as a whole. This focusing of individual and collective attitudes and preferences has had as much of a determining impact on the self-definition and self-observation of developed industrialised societies as it has on the implementation of socio-economic modernisation in most of the developing societies in the south. This generalisation (or tunnel vision) means that the aspects of a ‘good life’ and sustainable development have become secondary.

Nevertheless, a rethinking process seems to be currently taking place in many parts of society in a great number of countries; just one example from Germany to highlight this, and prove the point: according to a survey published in the autumn of 2010, carried out by the Emnid Institute and commissioned by the Bertelsmann Foundation, a significant part of the German population views growth and capitalism with scepticism: a mere third of Germany’s citizens believes that growth will automatically impact positively on their own personal quality of life. Immaterial values such as social justice or environmental protection are accorded so much importance that they influence the attitude Germans have towards the economic system; for example, 88 percent of respondents think that the current system is not suitable for taking environmental protection, resource conservation, and social redistribution, adequately into account. The majority would like a ‘new economic system’, and does not really believe in the resilience and crisis resistance of purely marketdriven economic systems. Particularly younger Germans do not trust the market’s self-restorative powers, and call for improved compatibility between economic growth and environmental protection. The survey substantiates that in Germany, postmaterialist thinking is by no means limited to the well-off and educated. For the majority of respondents, health, social relationships and environmental status were deemed to be far more important sources of personal quality of life than ‘increasing money and wealth’ (Figure 2.1-1). 75 % of respondents with higher education entrance qualifications, and 69 % of respondents with a mere school leaving certificate, agreed with the statement ‘I consider wealth to be less important than environmental protection and debt reduction’ (Bertelsmann Foundation, 2010).

The increasingly sceptical view of the current economic system’s performance and its externalities rests not least on the realisation of the system’s social costs that result from economic activities relying on short term benefits and gains (Section 1.1), but also on the improvements of material wealth in low-income household settings, leaving space for alternative, postmaterialist value-orientations and lifestyles. These have emerged from the eco (or green) niche, and – as will be shown in the following – are now increasingly determining general perspectives; this also applies in economically less developed regions.

Box 2.1-1: Values, Attitudes and Opinions

The terms ‘values’, ‘attitudes’ and ‘opinions’ have different meanings in psychology, sociology and political sciences (see Häcker and Stapf, 1994). For the most part, it is assumed that attitudes are based on values, and that these attitudes influence people's behaviour, even if research (Eckes and Six, 1994) assumes that there is no particularly close connection between attitudes and behaviour. In this report, the WBGU uses these terms as follows:

1. Personal and cultural values: According to Kluckhohn (1951), values are a shared perception of something worth having or striving for. Cultural values therefore refer to something that has evolved socio-culturally, something that exists independent of individuals. Personal values, on the other hand, refer to the subjective concepts of desire and specific value orientation. Personal values or value orientation therefore describe the individuals' relatively stable preferences with regard to different values (Häcker and Stapf, 1994).

2. Attitudes: Contrary to the rather abstract ‘values’ and ‘value systems’, attitudes relate to certain objects, people (groups), ideas and ideologies, or specific situations (Häcker and Stapf, 1994). Attitudes represent evaluation and action tendencies with regard to attitude objects, and are usually stable in the medium-term. They are therefore neither long-term value systems, nor short-term intentions.

3. Opinions: Are generally considered to be the verbalisation of attitudes and values (Rokeach, 1968). Attitudes are usually measured by several items, i. e. asking carefully selected questions and statements which are indicators for certain attitudes to evaluate one attitude object, thereby ensuring that the results are reliable.