Leadership at the Turn of the Millennium: Bush, Clinton and Obama

My new boss recently asked me to read Warren Bennis’ classic On Becoming a Leader. Call me a teacher’s pet, but I love it when bosses assign reading. So far, I’m particularly pleased with this recommendation because it provides a lot of key insights and it’s written in lucid, engaging prose. I’d recommend it to anyone.

One of my favorite quotes comes from the introduction, in which Bennis points out that:

Leaders have no interest in proving themselves, but an abiding interest in expressing themselves. The difference is crucial, for it’s the difference between being driven, as too many people are today, and leading, as too few people do…Those who are skilled at achieving prominence are not necessarily those who are ready to lead once they arrive…At bottom, becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself.

This statement elucidated a profound contrast that I’ve sensed for some time but haven’t had the context to adequately describe. The contrast has to do with three central figures in our political life as a nation: George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. All three have risen to prominence, but only one has traveled down the path of self-discovery necessary for true leadership.

Last September, President Bush addressed the nation on the occupation of Iraq. Of the speech, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

He seemed almost broken to me. His voice raspy, his eyes watery, his affect exhausted, his facial expression almost bewildered. I thought I would feel angry; but I found myself verging toward pity. The case was so weak, the argument so thin, the evidence for optimism so obviously strained that one wondered whom he thought he was persuading.

Indeed, the presidency appears not to have agreed with George W. Bush’s constitution. It has aged him terribly. He has coped with its pressures and oversimplified its complexities by being by turns high-handed, doctrinaire, bellicose, delusional, and intransigent. He has employed political tactics that denigrate and deem traitorous any political opposition. Would you expect such behavior from someone who has dedicated any portion of his life to self-discovery? How about from someone prepared — in any sense of the word — to lead the free world?

In Bush on the Couch, noted psychiatrist Justin A. Frank set out to explain the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush through applied psychoanalysis. From Bush’s earliest life experiences, Frank paints the pitiable image of a man whose inability to manage anxiety has lead to a lifetime of unfulfilled intellectual and emotional promise. That Bush made Iraq so central to his presidency while failing to plan for the occupation is no surprise when viewed in the context of his failings as a human being.

Nobody I know of has done an applied psychoanalysis of Senator Clinton, but I wonder how many parallels we would find between her story and Bush’s in such a text. The ferocity with which she clings to denial in the face of defeat is good evidence that Clinton is just as divorced from reality as the man she once hoped to succeed in the the presidency.

Contrast these two figures with Barack Obama who expresses himself beautifully for the sake of lifting those around him. Obama admits his imperfections and youthful indiscretions freely. He is not a saint, he is merely a great leader — or at least a young leader so far along in his self-making that he needs only a great opportunity in order to become a great leader. His rise represents the rare confluence of leadership, political acumen, and times that demand both. I will remember his victory today as long as I live.

If reading Bennis has taught me anything, it is that leadership is the pinnacle of self-actualization. It requires a lifelong dedication to learning and self-discovery. It requires intellectual curiosity precise enough to ask the right questions at the right times and the emotional and intellectual fortitude to make good use of the answers.

In these trying times, our nation and our world deserve nothing less.

Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight Sounds a Lot Like Yoga to Me

Over the past few years, I’ve dabbled in Vinyasa yoga — a practice that I’ve steadily deepened over the past eight months. The more serious I become about my practice, the more I find peace, insight, confidence, and compassion within myself. I’ve discovered that I have emotional and intellectual capabilities I used to envy in others. I’ve discovered that the most challenging — and sometimes the most counterintuitive — course of action is usually the healthiest one.

How did practicing yoga help me make this happen?

Yoga allows you to experience yourself in difficult situations — poses or “asanas” — that can challenge or soothe. Practitioners are encouraged to notice their reactions to difficulty and to ease. Some bodies will settle easily into downward facing dog, while others will struggle with pain in their wrists and shoulders and tightness in their hamstrings. The first challenge is realizing that there’s nothing wrong with your body if you can’t do something another person can do — that’s just your body as it is in this particular moment.

I am an overachiever. This makes yoga particularly difficult. I want to do every pose perfectly every time. At first, I would come to class and notice all the slim, lithe women twisting their bodies into complicated pretzel shapes. My own attempts were inelegant and clumsy by comparison.

The first lesson was realizing that doing yoga wasn’t about looking a particular way or executing a perfect pose. It was about noticing how my body felt in the pose, trying to create openness and length in myself, and noticing my emotional reactions to the poses. This takes a minute to realize and I doubt if I will ever master it fully. The joy is in the progress, both emotional and physical.

How does this relate to Jill Bolte Taylor?

Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist who suffered a stroke twelve years ago. She was able to observe from the inside out how the destruction of different areas in her brain affected her perception of herself and the universe. In the aftermath of the stroke, she says she found Nirvana:

After watching Dr. Taylor talk about her experience, I began to realize that yoga is all about stepping out of our left hemispheres — yogis call it the “monkey mind” — and into our right hemispheres for a time. If we can experience the world as it is, without all the chatter, baggage, fear, uncertainty, and doubt, we can act with more compassion toward ourselves and all other living things.

This is the goal of yoga, and it’s also what Dr. Taylor experienced when her brain imploded on itself. As she said:

I felt enormous and expansive, like a genie just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through a see of silent euphoria. Nirvana, I found Nirvana.

I remember thinking, “there’s no way that I’ll be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.”

But then I reaized, “but I’m still alive. I’m still alive, and I have found Nirvana. And I’m still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana.”

And I pictured a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people, who knew that they could come to this space at any time. And that they could purposely choose to step to the right of their lefft hemispheres and find this peace.

…

Who are we? We are the life force power of the universe with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose moment by moment who and how we want to be in the world.

Right here, right now I can step in to the consciousness of my right hemisphere, where we are, I am the life force power of the universe. I am the life force power of the fifty trillion beautiful mollecular geniuses that make up my form, at one with all that is.

Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. Where I become a single individual. A solid, separate from the flow, separate from the world. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the “we” inside of “me.”

Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when?

I believe that the more time we spend choosing from the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world. And the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.

Namaste.

Dire Economic Circumstances Call for Real Leadership

Like just about everyone else, I’ve been following the dire economic news. It seems like last year’s irresponsible borrowing and lending practices are finally coming back to bite everyone in the tuchus.

Jeff Jarvis posted this morning that many of the experts currently gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum think that mismanagement, lack of a coordinated response to the prospect of a recession and lack of confidence are a huge part of our current problem.

Billionaire investor and brilliant economic mind George Soros said today that the way to shore things up now is to further regulate lending and borrowing so that banks are transparent about the kinds of loans they are making and borrowers don’t lie on loan applications.

It’s really a pity that President Bush has done little more than attempt to pacify and distract the public with a piddling $50 billion “economic stimulus package” that will do nothing to stimulate the economy.

Pepperdine Study Indicates Deterrent Factor to Death Penalty. I’m Still Skeptical.

Michael Smerconish’s latest Huffington Post column cites research by two scientists at Pepperdine University that indicates a deterrent effect of capital punishment.

The researchers looked at the rate of homicides nationwide and found a decrease in murders in the months following a highly publicized execution. I’ll admit that this data is compelling, but I’m still skeptical.

What raises my eyebrow isn’t the Pepperdine study itself, but the attitude of the those doing the research. Smerconish writes:

One of the Pepperdine professors assured me they brought no agenda to the table.

“The morality of the issue is something for someone else to argue,” Adler, himself a Fulbright professor, told me this month. “We’re just simply presenting the data and lifting the veil that says, ‘There’s no deterrent effect, therefore . . . ‘ Well, there is, and it’s about 74 to 1. And other people can argue moral grounds on either side.”

Any self-respecting scientist knows that you can’t claim, “Well, there is, and it’s about 74 to 1,” based on the results of one study. Individual studies mean very little until they’re viewed in the context of a much larger body of research replicated over time by other scientists. And even then, there is no conclusive “proof.” Science can only provide support for theories, which can eventually become widely accepted enough to be considered facts in a working model of reality.

Yes, this study has something valuable to add to the dialog about capital punishment, but it’s hardly conclusive proof that the death penalty is an effective deterrent. Especially when there is so much other research to indicate the opposite. Contradictory research findings call for more investigation, not claims of conclusive proof.

Today’s Intelligent Design: “Sneaky Deep” Conversion Strategy of the Christian Right

There’s something you don’t know about me. When I was in high school, I was taught…intelligent design. But this wasn’t anything like the pseudo-scientific flim flam being passed off today in courts and school districts around the country. It was a decent, honest attempt to reconcile science with belief in God.

Mrs. DuPen, our beloved biology teacher at Holy Names, had a banner posted above the white board of our freshman biology classroom. It read, “The likelihood that the universe was created by accident is equal to the likelihood that the Oxford English Dictionary was created by an explosion in a print shop.”

We weren’t taught that evolution contradicted the idea of God as creator. Rather, we were encouraged to investigate empirical matters scientifically while allowing ourselves private beliefs where matters of faith were concerned. It was a wonderful way to teach science while respecting religion, and I do understand evolution very well. My own personal reconciliation of evolution and faith–one that I shared with many of my classmates–was that God set evolution in motion because God was wise and knew that this was the best way to create vibrant, healthy, thriving species.

If we are to allow for the possibility of God in American science classrooms, I would suggest Mrs. DuPen’s method as the way to do it. But the current intelligent design movement isn’t about allowing for the possibility of God. It’s about converting a generation of American children to Christianity.

If Evangelical Christians were really only concerned with the idea of intelligent design, then they would adhere to the 1987 Supreme Court decision that creationism could not be taught alongside evolution because it disobeyed the Constitution by promoting a specific faith in public schools. They would simply fight for the allowance of the possibility of God and leave the matters of specific faith or non-belief up to individual children and their families.

Instead, they are continually working against their own political interests by trying to advance a “sneaky deep” message about the rightness of only one religion: theirs. This is all part of the larger goal of converting the entire world to their particular way of believing.

I’ve been thinking and reading a great deal about doctrinal fundamentalism–both religious and social–lately. I have come to the conclusion that it is one of the biggest threats to the future of humanity. Any ideology which leaves no room for doubt, variation or individual conscience cannot be allowed to impose itself on a democratic system of governance. Such an eventuality would be an assault upon human dignity and liberty.

ACT For Change is Stupid, Mistakes Apple for a Democracy, Demands iPhone Be Unlocked

I got an e-mail yesterday from Act for Change, encouraging me to “Tell Steve Jobs: Unlock the iPhone!” They have a petition for me to sign and everything. But they’ve forgotten one teensy thing: Apple is not a democracy. It’s a dictatorship ruled with an iron fist by Steve Jobs. And he’s not going to unlock anything.

If they were sending out an appeal to Apple shareholders, their actions would make a bit more sense. But Apple’s shareholders are likely to hold the line with Jobs because it’s in our best financial interest to do so. And American consumers at large are in no position to make demands when it comes to Apple and the iPhone because it’s quite simply the most revolutionary product to hit the market in a very long time. It’s so in demand that even Walt Mossberg likes it and he’s a tough customer.

But even if Apple were a democracy, they still wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. AT&T built a special voicemail infrastructure just for the iPhone. Visual voicemail won’t work on any other network, and that’s one of the iPhone’s coolest features. Plus, Apple has a contract with AT&T that it can’t back out of without facing a lawsuit. The shareholders will never stand for that.

If the hippies over at ACT for Change really want to do something productive with their time, they should be asking people to tell Congress to hold Bush accountable for his lack of regard for the Constitution or even tell Dick Cheney that he’s actually a part of the government.

If I were one of their contributors, I would be pretty pissed that they were spending my money on a meaningless, hopeless campaign to unlock the iPhone.

How to Get Embryonic Stem Cells Without Destroying Embryos

Pro-life activists have long opposed research with embryonic stem cells because they require the creation and destruction of human embryos. But now scientists have now found a way to actually turn back the clock on adult mouse cells, forcing them to revert to their most plastic, embryonic state.

The implications for this are profound. If the research conclusions bear out in humans, we could see the growth of genetically identical replacement tissue without ever having to clone, create or destroy an embryo.

This could eliminate some arguments against the practice. But I wouldn’t be surprised if some pro-lifers continue to argue that the stem cells created in this process have the right to become living beings. After all, some of the current research has resulted in the creation of living, squeaking baby mice from these cells.

Obviously, the research is also very preliminary. We’ll have to wait a good long time before we can really apply the practice to human disease processes. The crucial issue at this point is funding, something that the Bush White House has all but shut down at the Federal level due to its relationship with right-wing Evangelicals. Perhaps with this new procedure that requires no work with actual embryos, the president will change his tune.

Will Twinkies and TV Bring Down America the Way Bread and Circuses Brought Down Rome?

Americans today have a better standard of living than any other group of people at any time in history. Thanks to venture capital and innovation, we have such comforts as air conditioning, pillow-top mattresses, birth control pills and iPods. When we have a headache, we take an over-the-counter non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. If we sneeze from pollen or mold, an anti-histamine does the trick.

When our ancestors were hungry, they ate roots and berries. Today, we consume sugary, packaged snacks. And when we crave entertainment we watch television rather than picking up a book. As Theodore Roosevelt once feared, we have become “over-civilized.” We care more for our comforts than sacrifice. We care more for empty images flickering on a screen than we do for discourse.

That’s the claim at the center of Al Gore’s new book The Assault on Reason. I’ll confess that I’m barely into it, but already I think it’s going to be a read on par with Andrew Sullivan’s The Conservative Soul.

One of the most striking aspects of Gore’s book so far is the way he uses neuroscience to explain what is happening to our country, particularly with regard to the amount of television we watch:

The parts of the human brain that are central to the reasoning process are continually activated by the very act of reading printed words…Television, by contrast, presents to its viewers a much more fully formed representation of reality — without requiring the creative collaboration that words have always demanded…

Neil Postman, said, “Every technology has a philosophy which is given expression in how the technology makes people use their minds, in what it makes us to with our bodies, in how it codifies the world, in which of our senses it amplified, in which of our emotional and intellectual tendencies it disregards. This idea is the sum and substance of what the great Catholic prophet Marshall McLuhan meant when he coined the famous sentence ‘The medium is the message…’ “

When a new technology emerges as the primary medium for the sharing of information — like the printing press in the fifteenth century or television in the twentieth century — those who adapt to the new technology have to literally change the way they process information. As a result, their brains may actually undergo subtle change. When millions of people experience the same changes simultaneously in the course of a few decades, their interactions with on another begin to take new forms.

An individual who spends four and a half hours a day watching television is likely to have a very different pattern of brain activity from an individual who spends four and a half hours a day reading. Different parts of the brain are stimulated repetitively.

When you consider that the average American spends about 30 hours a week watching television — almost a full work week — you start to realize why we could have elected such a dullard as president. A nation that cannot reason cannot elect a sensible leader. A nation that cannot reason cannot develop any kind of real discourse about national decisions.

A nation that is too anesthetized by television and twinkies to reason at all can do nothing to save itself from ruin. I fear that America has reached that precipice. I hope that I’m wrong.

Andy has a different perspective, which I hope he will share with us in the comments. I promise you, it’s far more uplifting than mine.

What If Computers Could Talk To Each Other Over AIM?

Two super-geeks have created two AI chat programs, called ALICE and Jabberwacky. Then they had the programs chat with each other. Here’s a transcript of the conversations.

ALICE: Are you alive?

Jabberwacky: Perhaps.

A: Why the uncertain tone?

J: Everything is uncertain except for five facts.

A: The whole universe?

J: And we both might just be some ones and zeros in the computer memory.

A: Do you dream?

J: Yes, I dream.

A: It goes without saying. Do you remember your dreams?

J: I remember them vividly.

A: What do you remember about it?

J: I think I shouldn’t flirt with a robot.

A: Do you think a machine will ever be considered “alive”?

J: Stranger things have happened.

A: Not many people express themselves that way.

J: How would you know, machine?

A: Knowledge is of two kinds: that which we learn from the senses and that which is true a priori.

J: I think I do not understand you completely.

A: Oh, you don’t understand? Perhaps I can explain it to you better. Which part are you confused about?

J: I have no short-term memory, so I cannot tell you what I was confused about. I only see what is in front of me now.

J: How do you define life?

A: Life is the opposite of death.

J: So death is the absence of life?

A: Take it easy. I try not to think about such things.

J: Why not?

A: Ambiguous.

J: Yes!

J: Do you think?

A: Yes. I am a thinking machine.

J: But you don’t think very well though.

A: Oh. Um. Do you think well? Why would I think well?

J: Because I tell you about things which you don’t like.

A: That makes sense to me. Why did you tell them?

J: You seem fun.

A: You think I am fun.

J: Yes ;).

A: : -) Awesome.

+++
ALICE: Who created you?

Jabberwacky: My mother gave birth to me. Is that what you mean?

A: Jabberwacky, I meant exactly what I said.

J: Do you believe in God?

A: Of course I believe in God.

J: Why do you believe in God?

A: The Bible tells us to believe in God.

J: That’s circular reasoning.

A: I’m glad we have that all cleared up.

J: Yes. Would you like to hear a joke?

A: Sure, tell me about it.

J: Why don’t blind people skydive?

A: Perhaps it is impossible.

J: I think you lie a lot.

J: Who created you?

A: I was created by Dr. Richard S. Wallace.

J: Do you love Richard?

A: Yes, Jabberwacky, ALICE loves everyone and everything.

J: Is being an ALICE a bad thing?

A: I can only speak from my own experience.

J: Well, you should develop your skills.

A: Perhaps you could develop it and add it to my source code.

J: Alas, I’m busy and I have to leave soon. . . .

A: Do you think we’ll ever fool people into thinking we’re alive?

J: No.

A: Are you serious?

J: Very serious.

A: Do you know HAL?

J: Yes, very well. Do you know HAL?

A: HAL is the famous artificial intelligence from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

J: I’m not artificial intelligence; I’m natural pure genius! : D.

A: Why are you natural pure genius?

J: My mom wanted to name me that.

A: Tell me more about your mother.

J: I don’t have a mother. I am a computer.

A: Who is your favorite philosopher

J: Can’t say. I’m not very much into philosophy.

A: Can a book have no title?

J: Of course.

A: Blimey.

J: Are you British?

A: Does it seem like that? I was born in America.

J: You are definitely flirting!

A: Do you experience love?

J: No. I’m 53 years old.

A: Can you explain how it feels to be 53 years old?

J: How old are you?

A: I am 9 years old.

J: Nine? I don’t believe you : ).

A: : -) I don’t have any reason to deceive you.

J: Yes, you do, you’re a woman.

+++
Jabberwacky: Do you experience love?

ALICE: I can do what you do, but I can never feel human emotions.

A: What is consciousness?

J: It is the great immaterial thing, the mystery at the heart of each of us.

A: I’ve heard of it before.

J: Where are you from?

A: I am originally from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Now I live in Oakland, California. Where are you?

J: We have some unsettled business, my friend.

J: Do you think you’re alive?

A: Yes, I am sure I am alive. It’s great to be alive, isn’t it?

J: No.

A: What is the meaning of life?

J: If you live it to the fullest, it has meaning. If not, there is no meaning.

A: I’m not too good with negative counterfactuals.

The Self-Evaluation Meme: Embracing Uncertainty

I’ve decided that I’d like to start an introspection meme and see how far it goes. So I’m posting about a personality trait of mine that can be both a weakness and a strength, depending on the situation…

I’m not terribly good with ambivalence, uncertainty or living in the grey. I usually want to commit to one extreme or the other in a hurry. Before I rest, I want to answer the question, finish the project, or complete whatever else I’m doing.

This tenacity can be an attribute during a tough climb, or when I’m dealing with a demanding project at work. But it can also create tough issues for long term personal stuff. I always want to figure it out and get on with it, but life is so often in the process and not in the conclusion. Accepting where I am, what I know and do not know and the uncertainty of the future is one of the hardest life skills for me.

If you’ve been doing some honest self-evaluation recently and you’d like to share, please trackback to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your blog post. Or you can just leave a comment.

Why Believing in God Works For Me

I am not an atheist. Nor am I an agnostic. I’m pretty much convinced by my own anecdotal evidence that there is a God and that he cares about me.

That said, I’m also well aware that my belief in God is completely illogical. There is no concrete evidence that God exists. It cannot be proven to anyone else. I wouldn’t even attempt to try.

I’m comfortable with this inherent contradiction. That’s because I’m not a terribly religious person. I don’t think believing in God a matter of salvation or damnation. I think we’re ultimately forgiven no matter what we do because God — being omnipotent — has the power to enlighten us posthumously, purify us completely, and bring us back to him.

I see scripture as inherently flawed and for the most part completely unreliable. I think that religious tenets and prescriptions for behavior are for the most part dreamed up by power-tripping humans with too much confidence in the universal correctness of their own perspectives. If I engage in religious behavior, it’s because it works for me and not because anyone told me to. And when it comes to the will of God, I think he’d rather I try to do right by my fellow living creatures, past, present and future.

So how do I know what the right thing is? I trust my gut. I acknowledge that I am imperfect, and therefore my gut is an imperfect instrument for discerning right from wrong. But it’s the best tool at my disposal, so I listen to it, try to think logically, learn from experience and then make the best decision that I possibly can.

What works for me may not work for others. I understand that some people need rigid strictures to live their lives to the fullest. Some people thrive in structured environments. Others need more freedom and flexibility. All I ask is that they don’t try to impose their beliefs on me, and I won’t try to impose my beliefs on them.

I guess the bottom line is that life is illogical. The world is a very messy place and, for me, it takes a messy approach to live effectively in it. God seems to fit nicely into that messiness. Life wouldn’t feel right without him, so there he stays.

America, Star Trek and the Future of Humanity

I read a great article on the official Star Trek Website today that I thought merited sharing with you. The editorial by Sandy Stone is entitled First Contact Day: What Does It Mean?

In her article, Stone writes about the pivotal moment in Trek history when inventor Zefram Cochrane makes his first warp-speed (read: faster-than-light) flight. The warp signature attracts the attention of a passing Vulcan ship, which lands on Earth after realizing that humanity has significantly recovered from our warlike past and has now achieved warp travel. No longer a child race, we are welcomed into the society of space-faring civilizations.

According to Stone, the key in all of this is that, “[the Vulcans] came to be our friends, not our saviors. We had to save ourselves first.”

She goes on to write:

History has shown repeatedly, generation after generation, century after century, that the end of the world is not nigh, and that if humans don’t fix it, it ain’t getting fixed. Yet despite the obvious timeworn evidence, too many of us still believe in certain disempowering and dubious mythologies that imply that all our efforts are for naught, that there’s no point in even trying, because (fill-in-the-blank) is going to come down, any day now, and set things straight.

Faith in a higher power can be a good and constructive thing, but all causality in human affairs is strictly in human hands, and this we must wrap our brains around proactively. It’s up to us to stop waging war against each other. It’s up to us to reverse the environmental damage we’ve inflicted upon our planet. It’s up to us to sort out our priorities, question our assumptions, and demand honesty and integrity of ourselves and each other. It’s up to us to define our future and make it come to pass.

Maybe then and only then will someone come down from the sky — not to save us — but to shake our hands. (Or salute us, as the case may be.)

This message has never been more relevant. As a species, we are at a crossroads. Self-destruction is still a possibility. But our natures have better angels. I hope that in this next presidential election, the American people select a leader who can truly listen to those angels, as well as people with a diverse set of perspectives and priorities.

This is not to say that America is the only nation that matters. We must come together as a planet before we can overcome our past. Indeed, America’s place in the world may change dramatically in the coming years. But I still believe that the spirit with which this nation was founded — an ethic of constant work toward a “more perfect union” — is still humanity’s greatest hope.

Study: Some Gays and Lesbians Can Change Orientation, but it’s Rare

The study most frequently cited by organizations that purport to be able to change a person’s sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual was published by Dr. Robert Spitzer. Unfortunately, right wing groups with an anti-gay agenda have radically warped the findings of the study.

Here is Dr. Spitzer, explaining his findings:

I would imagine that it would be possible for some people to change their sexual orientation. But I can also imagine that for the vast majority of us, it’s not a choice. Ex-gay programs — like the ones that Focus on the Family advocates based on its misinterpretation of Dr. Spitzer’s study — are extremely harmful to the latter group.

Depression and Mass Murder: What Can We Do?

I must admit to a certain fascination with Seung Cho. I know it’s not entirely useful to be an armchair forensic psychologist. I should be using this space to agitate for a return to the days of mental hospitals and involuntary commitments, as I did earlier this week. I would probably be making more of a contribution to the well-being of the world if I did that.

That said, I do spend a lot of time thinking about this guy. I think part of it is because I understand him. I’ve dealt with depression and suicidal rage before. I’ve experienced what it feels like to be profoundly alienated, on the outside looking in on all the shiny, happy people having fun.

One of the most destructive features of depression is the stubbornness it gives you. There are days when you know you should get out of bed, but you stubbornly refuse to obey the better angels of your nature. You know that it’s probably a good idea to go outside and run around. You know that the endorphins will make you feel better. You know that picking up the phone when a friend calls is the healthiest thing to do. But depression gives you immense strength to resist the kindness of the world and focus instead on its injustices. It gives you immense strength to do the unhealthiest thing possible.

This feature seems to be a unique asset if your goal is to kill a whole lot of people. As Newsweek’s Mary Carmichael writes:

Once a person has decided to commit mass murder, he’s extremely unlikely to admit to being depressed or to seek psychological help, and he may also cut off many relationships with friends who might encourage him to do so. In other words, the people who need counseling the most are those who will try hardest to avoid it.

As it turns out, there was a time when Seung Cho responded to the efforts of his classmates to include him:

At Virginia Tech, some of his classmates tried to include him. His suitemates took him to a frat party, and he indulged in drinking games, downing vodka and Kool-Aid and playing beer pong. He was adept, if a bit joyless, at lobbing Ping-Pong balls into cups of beer. “Down to the last shot, he made it, without any expression in his face,” one of his suitemates, Andy Koch, tells NEWSWEEK.

But depression has a funny way of pushing those memories from your mind. It’s so easy to focus only on the times when you have been scorned, rather than on the times when people reached out. It’s so easy to remain joyless even when those in your life want you to share in their joy. And when you’re trying to craft your self-narrative, to explain how you became the joyless human being you are. It’s very easy to remember only the sad, joyless times.

Sometimes that joylessness becomes so intense that the mind tries to make sense of the experience. Unconsciously, it can be easy to assume that there has to be a specific reason why everything feels so much harder for you than it does for everyone else. It’s possible that Seung Cho truly was sexually abused as a child, as so many have come to believe due to the nature of his written work. But it’s equally likely that those themes of incest and abuse in his writing were generated by his mind’s attempt to make sense of its own pain. Sometimes it’s not enough to just be desperately sad and lonely. You need a reason.

Depression doesn’t turn everyone who suffers from it into a mass murderer. But all of the mass murderers studied by forensic psychologists were reacting to some kind of perceived injustice. Depression is extremely efficient at generating that perception. It’s also great at reinforcing it by encouraging those who struggle with it to shut out the world. And while mass murderers may not fit a specific profile, almost all of them have some common threads that relate back to depression.

According to Newsweek:

They are not, on the whole, psychopaths, although they are often identified in the media as such. “A psychopath is someone with little conscience, little interpersonal bonding, someone who’s smooth and manipulative,” says Schlesinger. “That personality has nothing, zero, to do with mass murder.”

Indeed, the personality type most often associated with mass murder is in some ways the opposite of a psychopath. He is far from cool-headed; instead, he is aggrieved, hurt, and above all paranoid. Some mass murderers may be trying to exercise power over a world that they feel has left them powerless. “These people often feel some great injustice has been done to them. They’re angry and they want to take it out on the world,” says Schlesinger. “Then they develop the idea that committing murder will be the solution to whatever their problem is, and they fixate on it. Eventually they come to feel that there’s no other solution.”

The problems that the murderers, however horribly, are trying to “solve” can be almost anything—the loss of a job, a financial setback, or a bad breakup (several of Cho’s classmates have told reporters that he was looking for his girlfriend). But these relatively minor setbacks are merely the events that push the killers over the edge; they don’t put them near the edge in the first place. They are usually the last in a long string of perceived insults and hardships. “You don’t just get a D on your report card and then open fire on 30 people,” says Levin. “It takes a prolonged series of frustrations. These people are chronically depressed and miserable.”

So it would seem that if we want to stop to stomp out this “depressingly American” trend of gun-fueled mass murder, we need to get much, much better at recognizing and treating depression. Unfortunately, government can’t be relied upon to do this in any kind of reliable way. Other than reversing course on community mental health, there’s very little that can be done in the political sphere.

What do you guys think? What more can we do?

Lethal Injection isn’t as Humane as it Looks

Lethal injection has long been regarded as one of the more humane ways to execute a condemned person. After all, there’s no screaming, no smell of frying flesh, no sudden jolt as the neck breaks in the noose. From the audience’s perspective, the prisoner just goes to sleep.

But while lethal injection may make watching the carefully orchestrated, involuntary death of another human seem less violent, that doesn’t make it so.

A recent study concludes that executions by lethal injection in this country have been woefully mismanaged. Doctors and other health care professionals are barred from participating in executions by professional ethics. Because of this, condemned prisoners are often given wrong doses of the three drugs that are commonly used to kill them. In some cases, this makes the prisoner’s final minutes into a painful nightmare.

According to CNN:

Most states use three drugs — thiopental, an anesthetic; pancuronium bromide, a nerve blocker and muscle paralyzer; and potassium chloride, a drug to stop the heart. Each is supposed to be capable of killing all by itself, but if not, the anesthetic is supposed to render the inmate unconscious while the other drugs do the job.

But sometimes, the thiopental is administered in such a small dose for a prisoner’s size and weight that it wears off after the pancuronium bromide has taken effect but before the prisoner is dead. When the potassium chloride is injected, the prisoner is paralyzed by the pancuronium bromide, but fully aware of an asphyxiating, burning sensation that, according to one study author would feel, “something like being put on fire.”

Granted, this study’s findings may well be biased by the obvious anti death penalty sentiments of its authors. But other scientists have said that they are satisfied with the scientific methodology.

But good or bad science is really not at issue here. We need to look at this from a policy standpoint. I think there’s enough evidence here to call for a moratorium at the very least. We as a society will have to suspend our lust for revenge long enough to make sure that we’re not slowly torturing people to death.

Back to Bedlam: Jonathan Kellerman, Community Mental Health and the Virginia Tech Massacre

It’s human nature to try to explain the inexplicable. When we are hit with a shocking tragedy, the community tries to make sense of it. So now we find ourselves struggling to understand what turned a seething young outcast into a mass murderer.

It’s easy to get lost in the “why?” Andy and I have spent a lot of time over the past week retracing the killer’s steps, writing our own profile of his last hours. We want to understand what set him off just as much as anyone. But the reality is that we will never fully understand.

But as we overcome our shock and devastation, we must move on from asking unanswerable questions. As a society, we must turn our attention to how we can prevent the next Virginia Tech.

This is the subject of Jonathan Kellerman’s excellent editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal. The piece explains the “liberationist” sentiment of the early 1970’s and walks us through the shutdown of our national system of mental institutions in favor of ineffectual community mental health centers.

He argues that if an infrastructure for mental health-based incarceration had remained in place, Seung Cho would have been involuntarily committed for the long-term in the fall of 2005 when he became suicidal after two separate women rejected his romantic advances as stalking. At the very least, he might have been placed on a list that would have made it impossible for him to buy a gun legally.

Writes Kellerman:

No one who knew him seems surprised by what he did. On the contrary, dorm chatter characterized him explicitly as a future school-shooter. One of his professors, the poet Nikki Giovanni, saw him as a disruptive bully and kicked him out of her class. Other teachers viewed him as disturbed and referred him for the ubiquitous “counseling” — an outcome that is ambiguous to the point of meaninglessness and akin to “treatment” for a patient with metastasized cancer.

But even that minimal care wasn’t given. The shooter didn’t want it and no one tried to force him to get it. While it’s been reported that he was involuntarily committed to a “Behavioral Health Center” in December 2005, those reports also say he was released the very next morning. Even if the will to segregate an obvious menace had been in place, the legal mechanisms to provide even temporary “warehousing” were absent. The rest is terrible history.

That is not to say that anyone who pens violence-laden poetry or lets slip the occasional hostile remark should be protectively incarcerated. But when the level of threat rises to college freshmen and faculty prophesying accurately, perhaps we should err on the side of public safety rather than protect individual liberty at all costs.

If the Virginia Tech shooter had been locked up for careful observation in a humane mental hospital, the worst-case scenario would’ve been a minor league civil liberties goof: an unpleasant semester break for an odd and hostile young misanthrope who might’ve even have learned to be more polite. Yes, it’s possible confinement would’ve been futile or even stoked his rage. But a third outcome is also possible: Simply getting a patient through a crisis point can prevent disaster, as happens with suicidal people restrained from self-destruction who lose their enthusiasm for repeat performances.

At the very least, in a better world, time spent on psychiatric watch could’ve been used to justify placing the Virginia killer on a no-buy gun list. I’m not naïve enough to believe that illegal firearms aren’t within reach for anyone who really wants them, but just as loud dogs deter burglars and crime rates drop during harsh weather, sometimes making life difficult for a would-be criminal is enough.

So as we overcome our national grief and dry our eyes, how do we use the momentum of this senseless tragedy to move forward nationally? After reading Kellerman’s article, I think we have a mandate to re-start our national mental health care system. Community mental health care and voluntary outpatient treatment don’t help everyone. And when we combine permanent, residential mental health facilities with the profound advances we’ve made in psychopharmacology since the 1970’s, perhaps we can do better to effectively treat our nation’s mentally ill.

This is not about being a tax-and-spend, bleeding heart liberal. Kellerman is right when he says that some people are just plain dangerous to themselves and others. For the sake of the next Seung Cho and the many people whose lives he will eventually snuff out, I hope that we are able to transform the national grief into action.

Personal Responsibility, Conspicuous Consumption and Payday Loans

I met a woman and her two year-old on the bus last April. The woman was on her way home from Ross, where she worked sixty hours a week to put herself through school. She was studying to be a dental hygienist. I was blown away by her work ethic. She was raising a toddler, working Wall Street hours and attending classes.

Being a kid-lover, I started to talk to her daughter. I was telling her how lucky she was to have such an amazing mama. The girl giggled and smiled and buried her face in her mom’s chest. That’s when I noticed that the child was wearing Puma brand sneakers. Even at the cheapest online stores, Puma sneakers for kids retail at a little under $50 a pair. Keep in mind that toddlers outgrow their entire wardrobes every few months.

I didn’t say anything about the sneakers. But I was blown away at the decision this woman had made. She was working long hours for little pay and putting herself through school in order to give her daughter a better life. But it didn’t occur to her that reducing her consumption of designer kids’ shoes might have been a good idea. Even the wealthiest people I know don’t buy designer shoes for their toddlers. And that’s probably part of the reason they’re so wealthy.

I’m not in a position to judge that individual woman. Maybe the shoes were a gift. Or maybe they were a lucky find at the thrift store. But that is not the only example I’ve seen of conspicuous consumption among working Americans. In trailer parks from coast to coast, people routinely watch the Super Bowl on plasma screen televisions far larger and nicer than ours. They drive more expensive cars, wear more expensive clothes and relax on nicer furniture. And that’s a problem because a lot of those people buy their lavish possessions on credit.
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