Letters to the Editor
J.C. Miller
Published Letters: 344 Editor's Choice: 35
-
DurianJoe gets it
[Read the article: Not the other white meat]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]because he’s not afraid of inner experience, something most of humanity shuts out in order to remain comfortably in childhood.
-
Escape from experience, escape from growth
[Read the article: A wonderful, magical animal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In all the writing this week in Salon on pork, pigs, animal treatment, and humans choosing how to interact with other living things, one phenomenological element is conspicuously absent. Absent because, as in the lives of the readers and writers, it is evaded: the inner material including thoughts, sensations, and emotional states authentically experienced when someone physically and directly takes the life from an animal, with their own hands - kills the pig. That material was evaded in the accounts, defenses, and rationalizations by authors of articles and letters precisely because it is the single, salient phenomenological piece of reality that would otherwise guide behavior in individuals authentically connected to their worlds, because it is highly distressing, and because authentically relating to the experience leads naturally to choices that are deviant, stigmatizing, and lead to dissonance with family and significant others – that is, the choice to stop killing and eating animals. Put simply, humans who honestly and without fear access the phenomenology of killing animals are internally driven to vegetarianism provided they overcome fears of social deviance and rejection.
But those are powerful fears, so order to avoid social alienation and the distressing experience of killing, we conform to normative consumption of flesh and personally avoid the killing itself or numb ourselves to the distressing inner material it naturally elicits. Avoidance of inner material, whose interpretation is part of empathic responding, is taught from childhood. 4-H programs are a good example – children develop an emotional bond with an animal and when they authentically experience dissonance and distress around the animal’s killing, the children themselves are domesticated by “adults” to repress and avoid the feelings of loss and revulsion and empathic elements through shaming and through overt and covert messages that to maintain inclusion in their social groups requires acceptance and normalization of the killing. Once a child becomes adept at numbing himself to inner dissonance, life in orthodoxy becomes much more manageable. Becoming dead to anxiety and dissonance that would otherwise drive growth, integration, and moral development helps normalize everyday functioning: the lying, cheating and manipulation of others that drives academic and economic success; acceptance of behaviors of the criminally disordered constructed as “leader”, “candidate”, “chief justice”, etc.; striking or neglecting a child constructed as “parenting”; group endorsement of gratuitous mass killing in distant cultures.
Deadening oneself to inner life as part of domestication does facilitate a sense of security in social groups, and the price – forfeiture of moral and existential development – is generally accepted as reasonable.
-
There must be some way out of here
[Read the article: Torture and the rule of law]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]“Again, there are only two choices -- Rule of Men or Rule of Law. Neither will ever be perfect. But one has to choose what one wants.”
Behavior goverened by external locus of control and threat of punishment is the antithesis of choice. Behavior that is reliably (i.e. principled) adaptive and integrative (i.e. “moral”) arises once moral development transcends authority and rules. History and morality await the irrelevance of men’s rule and law.
-
Dear Ms. Havrilesky,
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for your important and, as usual, freakishly well-written insights on social malevolence, in this case “The Cleaner”.
The 75 percent relapse rate for traditional treatment is nonsense – it is much closer to 85 to 95 percent, consistent with the real likelihood that incidence of relapse is higher in that subculture than for individuals who somehow escape (by not being court mandated or kidnapped) this form of “treatment” altogether. There is no (none) research evidence to suggest that traditional interventions (AA/NA, 12-Step) are in any sense effective forms of treatment for chemical dependency. The principles embodied in these approaches are in fact known to be countertherapeutic.
Even that picture ignores these transparent yet well-disguised outcomes:
1. Individuals in these traditional programs (AA/NA, 12-Step) are encouraged to, and do, substitute addictive use of alternative harmful substances, primarily nicotine and food, for alcohol or the illicit drug they are in the process of relapsing to. Their addictive use is encouraged, normalized and ritualized within the NA/AA subcultures.
2. The addictive use of food, resulting obesity, and comorbid conditions may kill the addict about as quickly as their drug of choice would have. Obviously more so for nicotine, one of the most addictive, harmful, socially costly substances we know, which is also established to be a gateway drug (i.e. is known to lead back to use of alcohol and street drugs). In affected families, children learn that what “clean and sober” actually means is normalized addiction to the gateway drug nicotine. That will influence their choices later in life.
The compulsive story-telling in these subcultures of addiction is actually integral to their purpose: avoidance of therapeutic here-and-now processing of inner material provides escape from the discomfort of real change and escape from fear of addressing the underlying issues driving addiction.
If I were a writer attempting to put some type of positive cover on all of this damage, I imagine I might resort to some childhood version of religiosity as well.
For a depressing look at how the medical industry, traditional treatment industry, and parents help trap kids in this subculture of addiction and cycle of relapse: “Beautiful Boy”, by David Sheff.
-
None are spared as dupe or rube
[Read the article: Rush Limbaugh was right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]in the vacuum of inauthenticity, where caricature can trigger fear and a poser, childlike devotion, while a burning flag is cause for concern, not celebration.
-
He is indeed, absolutely,
[Read the article: The livin' is easy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of Us, in ways that will be vitally comforting in our serious striving ahead to kill the enemies, to pay the price, as our God guides us. A leader who is so like us, validating us, protecting against inner dissonance, soothing, like a little wine, a hymn, a victory, some euphoria, like a little dementia.
-
Could we please now follow up with Dog Week, at Salon,
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]including some recipes?