Thinking Fast and Slow

 Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

Intro

• Biases - systematic errors

• Using heuristics - usually substitute an easier question for a harder one

• System 1 more influential than your experience tells you

Chp 1

• Control of attention shared by 1 and 2

• Limited budget of attention (invisible gorilla)

• System 1 constantly suggesting, feeding info to system 2

• Cannot turn off system 1

• Cognitive illusions

• System 2 cannot substitute for 1, need to compromise

• System 1 - really likes stories, cause-effect, active agents

Chp 2

• 2 is “lazy”

• Measuring cognitive effort by pupil dilation

• Mental effort is distinct from emotional arrousal

• We have a maximum mental effort, above which we “give up”

• High mental effort, hard to pay attention to other things

• Gravitate to least demanding course of action

• Switching from one task to another is effortful

Chp 3

• Self-control and deliberate thought draw on same limited budget of effort

• Flow

• Busy and depleted system 2 - less self control, yield more easily to temptation, more selfish and prejudiced

• All variants of voluntary effort draw at least partly on shared pool of mental energy

• “Ego depletion”

• Motivation

• Overconfidence

• If system 1 involved, conclusion comes first and arguments follow

• Connection between ability to control attention and ability to control emotions

• Stanovich and West (system 1 and 2, or type 1 and 2 process)

• Stanovich says 2 parts to system 2

• Algorithmic and “rational,” or engaged or reflective

Chp 4 - Associative Machine

• Associative activation, cascade

• Coherent, good story, causal story

• Priming effect - relies on unconscious association

• Ideomotor effect - influence of an action by an idea (“florida/old age” experiment), also works in reverse

• Reciprocal priming effects - circular

• Money priming

• “Lady macbeth effect”

Chp 5 - Cognitive Ease

• Fluency level, familiar

• Memory illusion

• Predictable illusions occur if a judgment is based on an impression of cognitive ease or strain. Anything that makes it easier for the associative machine to run smoothly will also bias belief

• Truth illusions (maximize legibility, visual contrast, easy to read, memorable)

• Repetition induces cognitive ease/availability

• Mere exposure effect (usually stronger for stimuli that individual never consciously sees)

• Mednick - creativity is associative memory that works very well, RAT (remote association test)

• Powerful effect of mood on this test

• Happy mood loosens control of system 2

Chp 6 - Norms, surprises, and causes

• System 1 assessing what is normal, maintain model of normality

• “Norm theory” - recruit original episode and interpret in conjunction with it

• Seeing causes and intentions, need for coherence

• Perception of intention and emotions is irresistible (except to some extent for folks on spectrum)

• Experience of freely willed action is different from physical causality

• Paul Blood - inborn readiness to separate physical and intentional causality explains religious beliefs; perceive “world of objects as essentially separate from world of minds”

Chp 7 - machine for jumping to conclusions

• System 1 doesn’t keep track of alternatives it doesn’t select

• System 2 has to decide whether to “unbelieve it”

• Confirmation bias, positive test strategy, search for confirming evidence, is how system 2 tests hypothesis

• Exaggerated emotional coherence (halo effect)

• Suppressed ambiguity

• Halo increased weight of initial impressions

• Decorrelate error!

• What you see is all there is (WYSIATI)

• Asymmetry between ways our mind treat info that is available vs info we don’t have (availability bias)

• System 1 radically insensitive to quality and quantity of information that gives rise to impressions and intuitions

• Consistency and coherence of info more important than completeness;

• Knowing less is often better/easier than knowing more

• Overconfidence

• Framing effects - how present info

• Base rate neglect

Chp 8 - How Judgments Happen

• Directing attention and searching memory

• System 1 able to translate values across dimensions

• Mental shotgun

• Basic assessments

• Friend or foe, approach avoid

• Dominance, attractiveness

• Similarity, representativeness

• System 1 does well with averages but poorly with sums

• Deals with exemplars or prototype

• Almost complete neglect of quantity in certain situations

• Intensity matching

• Prediction by matching not accurate, but comes naturally

• Mental shotgun - system 1 computes more than want or need for particular judgment

Chp 9 - Answering an Easier Question

• Have intuitive feelings and opinions about almost everything

• If question or judgment difficult or not enough time, system 1 find an easier related question (“substitution”)

• Heuristics

• Judgment based on heuristic will be biased in predictable ways

• Present state of mind looms very large when people evaluate their happiness “WYSIATI”

• Affect Heuristic - dominance of conclusions over arguments most pronounced where emotions are involved

• Paul Slovic - let likes and dislikes determine beliefs

• System 2 more of apologist than critic, endorser rather than enforcer

Chp 10 - the Law of Small Numbers

• System 1 inept when faced with “merely statistical” facts

• Sampling effects, misunderstand or ignore the importance of sample size

• Artifacts - observations produced entirely by method of research

• Bias of confidence over doubt

• Focus on the story rather than reliability of results

• Sustaining doubt harder work

• Always looking for causes, make it hard to see randomness (vigilance)

• “To the untrained eye, randomness appears as regularity or tendency to cluster”

• “No such thing as a hot hand” in basketball; satisfies test of randomness

• Illusions of patterns (e.g. gates foundation donating for more ‘small schools’ based on misinterpretation of data [small schools more variability])

Chp 11 - Anchors

• Anchoring effect - occurs when people consider a value for an unknown quantity before estimating that quantity

• People’s judgments influenced by obviously uninformative numbers

• System 2 anchoring - adjustment

• System 1 anchoring - priming

• Anchor and adjust

• Start with anchoring number, then adjust, but usually not far enough, b/c stop at edge of uncertainty

• People adjust less when mental resources depleted

• Priming - evoke info compatible with it

• Powerful anchoring effects in choices about money

• Random anchors can be as effective as informative ones

• Far more suggestible than we would like to be

• Negotiations

• Deliberately think the opposite

• Assume the anchoring effect

Chp 12 - Science of Availability

• Impression of the ease with which instances come to mind

• Salient events, dramatic events, personal experiences

• Fluent retrieval

• If asked for more examples (cognitive strain), tend to believe or estimate lower amounts

• Some resistance to availability bias if more vigilant

• When feel good or powerful, more likely to rely on intuitions, system 1

Chp 13 - availability, emotion, and risk

• Protective actions usually designed based on worst past experience, rather than worst possible

• Tv coverage biased toward novelty and poignancy

• Damasio - emotional evaluations of outcomes

• Haidt - the emotional tail wags the rational dog

• Slovic - people have rich view of risk

• Risk exercise in power

• Availability cascade

• Emotional reaction becomes a story in itself

• Importance judged by fluency and emotional charge

• Hard to deal with small risks: either ignore or drastically overweigh

• Protect public from fear as well as danger

Chp 14 - Tom W’s Specialty

• Base rate

• Stereotype

• Unaffected by size of group (predicting by representativeness, substitution

• Representative heuristic

• Often more accurate than chance guess

• Excessive willingness to predict unlikely events

• Think like statistician vs think like clinician

• Insensitivity to quality of evidence

• Bayesian statistics

Chp 15 - Linda: less is more

• Linda fits idea of “feminist bank teller” than bank teller

• Conjunction fallacy - judge conjunction of events more probable than one of the events

• Substitution of plausability for probability

• Coherence

• System 1 averages rather than adding (sometimes less is more)

• Single evaluation vs joint evaluation

Chp 16 - Causes Trump Statistics

• Statistical base rates

• Causal base rates

• Stereotypes are how we think about categories

• Hard to change mind about human nature

• People tend to exempt themselves from statistics or scientific conclusions (hard to learn from the general)

• But easier to learn from examples, specific to the general

Chp 17 - Regression to the Mean

• Illusory effect of punishment for below standard performance and reward for above standard

• Talent and luck

• Regression strange to the human mind

• It always occurs when correlation between two things less than perfect

• Correlation coefficient

• Correlation and regression two ways of looking at same concept

• Our mind strongly biased to causal explanations

• Often confuse correlation with causation

Chp 18 - taming intuitive predictions

• Insensitive to predictive quality of evidence

• Prediction often matches evaluation

• Correlation b/w two measures equal to proportion of shared factors among their determinants

Chp 19 - The illusion of understanding

• Taleb - narrative fallacy, focus on few striking events

• Halo effect (or negative, horn effect)

• Compelling narrative fosters illusion of inevitability

• Ultimate test of an explanations is whether it would have made the event predictable in advance

• The human mind does not deal well with non-events

• Unlimited ability to ignore our past, believe we understand past, hindsight bias

• Once adopt new view, lose much of your ability to recall what believed before (hindsight bias) - i knew it all along

• Outcome bias (blame and praise agents based on outcome)

• In the presence of randomness, patterns are illusions

Chp 20 - Illusion of validity

• Reluctant to infer the particular from general

• Stock market, picking stocks - an illusion of skill, rewarding luck as if it was skill

• Expert pundits, bad record of predictions

• The more famous the forecaster, the more flamboyant the forecasts

Chp 21 - intuitions vs formulas

• Meehl - clinical vs statistical prediction

• Low validity environments; accuracy of experts matched or exceeded by simple algorithm

• Experts try to be clever, too specific and bold

• Use algorithm except for “broken leg rule”

• Gawande - a checklist manifesto

• Horror/fear of algorithmic mistakes, the cause of a mistake matters

Chp 22 - Expert intuition: when can we trust it

• Klein - Naturalistic Decision Making, how experienced professional develop skills

• Recognition primed decision

• Great facility to learn when to be afraid

• Expertise takes time to develop, need regular environmental feedback

• An environment regular enough to be predictable

• Time to learn these regularities through practice

Chp 23 - the outside view

• Start public discussion by confidentially collecting each person’s judgment

• Proud emphasis on uniqueness of each case

• The planning fallacy - unrealistically close to best case scenarios, could be improved by consulting statistics of similar cases

• Reference class forecasting, overcome base rate neglect

• Optimistic bias, delusional optimism

• Sunk cost fallacy

Chp 24 - the engine of capitalism

• Optimism both a blessing and a risk, largely inherited, less depression, better immune system, feel healthier, promotes action

• Starting small businesses

• People generally feel that they are superior to most others on most desirable traits

• Optimistic risk taking - helps drive economic dynamism

• Competition neglect

• Anchor on our plan, illusion of control

• Cognitive ease vs cognitive strain - judge better than vs worse than

• CFO’s way overconfident in predictions, paid to be knowledgeable, not acceptable to account for all the uncertainty

• Generally a sign of weakness and vulnerability for clinicians to appear unsure

• Premortem, what will we do if this crashes and fails, legitimize doubts

Chp 25 - Bernoulli’s error

• The agent of economic theory is rational, selfish, and his tastes do not change

• Thaler - “Econs”

• Prospect Theory - value the change in status, not just value of outcome, so need to know reference points

• Disbelieving is hard work, and system 2 is often tired

Chp 26 - Prospect Theory

• Dislike losing more than like winning, threats more urgent than opportunities, asymmetrical s-curve

• Diminishing sensitivity

• Loss aversion ratio (1.5 - 2.5), but all bets are off is loss is potentially ruinous

• Doesn’t deal with disappointment, anticipation of regret

Chp 27 - endowment effect

• Indifference map/curve, combination of two goods

• Loss aversion induces a bias that favors status quo

• Owning an object appears to increase its value (endowment effect)

• Held for use vs held for future exchange

• For econs, buying price is irrelevant history, not so for humans

• Decision making under poverty

• Living below one’s reference point

• Always in the “losses”, so improvement is “reduced loss” rather than a gain, all choices between losses

Chp 28 - bad events

• Negativity and escape dominate positivity and approach

• Golfers put more accurately for par than birdie

• Amygdala - threat center; threats can bypass visual cortex (react before “seeing”)

• Some distinctions between good and bad hardwired

• Goals are reference points

• Animals also fight harder to avoid losses than achieve gains

• Loss aversion in law (fairness)

• Asymmetrical effects on well-being

Chp 29 - Fourfold Pattern

• Possibility effect: large impact of changes between 0%-5%

• Overweigh small risks

• Certainty effect: large impact of changes between 95%-100%

• Certainty at a hefty price

• Inadequate sensitivity to intermediate probabilities

• Probability vs decision weight

• Almost completely insensitive to variations of risk among small probabilities

• High probability of gain? Risk averse, fear of disappointment, accept settlement

• Low prob of gain? Hope of large gain, risk seeking, lottery ticket

• Hig prob of loss? Hope to avoid loss, risk seeking, reject favorable settlement

• Low prob of loss? Fear of large loss, risk averse, accept settlement

• Hard to cut losses

Chp 30 - rare events

• Terrorism: availability cascade

• Lotteries and terrorism - same kind of mechanism

• Rare events ignored or overweighted

• Plausability, can you imagine it

• Probability likely to be overestimated if alternative not fully specified

• Vivid and emotional

• Denominator neglect

• Unlikely events more heavily weighted when stated in relative frequencies (1 out of 100) vs abstract risk (1%), people tend to take more “seriously”

• Decisions from global impressions

• Decision from experience - usually don’t overweight, often underweigh

Chp 31 - risk policies

• Gains and losses combined or deconstructed, different preferences

• Narrow (separate decisions) vs broad (single comprehensive decision) framing

• Humans more likely to narrow frame

• Look at gamble as part of bundle of gambles, shield yourself from pain of losses with broad framing

• Creak a risk policy based on broad framing

Chp 32 - keeping score

• Money as proxy for points on a scale

• Mental accounting

• Massive preference for selling winners than losers - disposition effect

• Sunk cost fallacy

• Regret, self-administered punishment

• Stronger reaction to sins of commission vs omission, more regret and blame

• Loss aversion higher for health

• Taboo tradeoff (can’t accept increase in risk)

• Be explicit about anticipation of regret

• Regret and hindsight bias

• Gilbert - people tend to overestimate amount of regret they will feel

Chp 33 - reversals

• Discrepancy between joint and single evaluation

• Joint eval can focus attention on different aspect

• Categories, if eval is across categories, can cause reversal

• Intensity matching

• Hsee’s evaluability hypothesis: somethings not evaluable on their own

• Awards to victims of personal injury were more than twice as large in joint than in single eval

• Joint eval usually broader, but be wary of sales technique or manipulation of joint eval

Chp 34 - frames and reality

• Meaning - associative machinery

• Framing effects - losses hurt more than costs

• Cash discount vs credit surcharge

• Physicians just as susceptible to framing effects

• Frame-bound vs reality-bound

• System 2 has no moral intuitions of its own

• Descriptions vs substance

• Mpg frame is wrong, should be replace by gallons per mile

• Opt-out vs opt-in

• Not how we experience the workings of our mind

Chp 35 - two selves

• Experienced utility (J. Bentham)

• Decision utility (wantability, economics)

• Peak-end rule - avg level of pain at worst moment and end

• Duration neglect - tend to forget/neglect duration

• Experiencing self vs remembering self

• Maximize future memories

• Intensity more impt to memory than duration

Chp 36 - life as a story

• Rules of narratives and plot

• Significant events and memorable moments, progress, gains and losses

• Peak-end rule

• Amnesic vacations

Chp 37 - experience well-being

• Experience sampling (Csikszentmihalyi)

• Day reconstruction method

• Extent of inequality of emotional pain

• Being poor is miserable, being rich man enhance life satisfaction reporting but doesn’t enhance experienced well-being

• Satiation level

Chp 38 - thinking about life

• Gilbert and Wilson: Affective forecasting

• Miswanting - bad choices from affective forecasting

• Focalism - rich source of miswanting

• Mood heuristic one way to answer life-satisfaction question

• Small sample of highly available ideas

• Focusing illusion: substitute small part for the whole (synecdoche)

• Attention to new situations withdrawn over time as it becomes more familiar

• Except for: chronic pain, exposure to loud noise, severe depression

• Bias in favor of goods and experiences that are initially exciting

Conclusions

• Don’t consider humans irrational, have rational capabilities

• Chicago school of economics, faith in human rationality, freedom to choose, milton friedman

• Libertarian paternalism (Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein), defaults, etc

• Marvel of system 1 - maintaining rich and detailed model of world

• System 2 - can’t distinguish b/w info from skills vs heuristic

• Richer language, diagnostic ability

Summer Reading

 Reading has been tough since the boys moved in, but life has been so rich.

Culture and Value - Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein - A Memoir - Norman Malcom

Wittgenstein and Modern Philosophy - Justus Hartnack

- My working memory doesn't work well enough to follow W step by step. Like in chess or other board games, I can only look ahead a couple moves before losing track of the possibilities. But I'm sympathetic to his style, and usually 'get' his insights at some level. I think, anyway.

The Life of Milarepa - trans Lobsang Lhalungpa

- need to read again!

The Rise of Wolf 8 - Rick McIntyre

- The first installment in a trilogy about the wolves of Yellowstone. McIntyre has spent more time observing wolves in the wild than anyone else living. perhaps anyone else ever. The writing is very flat, but the scope is epic.

Amulet books 1-8 - Kazu Kibuishi

- I asked Mom to send book 1 to the kids for Easter. Initially P was way too scared; Ty was scared but enthralled. After a few weeks of dipping his toes into the water, P fell for it and has asked me to read to him from the series almost every night.

The Great Psychotherapy Debate - Bruce Wampold

- Wampold argues that the medical model has misled interpretation of research data on psychotherapy (missing the forest for the trees). His starting and ending point is the equivalent effect of different psychotherapies. In between he demonstrates how research has shown that the "common factors" provide effects much greater than the specific ingredients in various psychotherapies.

30 by 30

30 books to read by 30

I'm cheating by adding "and/or"!

1. Eiger Dreams or Into Thin Air - John Krakauer

You read, Into the Wild, didn't you John? You might have read these two, but if you haven't, I think you would enjoy them and relate to Krakauer personally, especially in Eiger Dreams.

2. Anything by Terry Pratchett

Granddaddy Richard and Aunt Julie both love this author. I've only read one of his, I can't remember what, something about a young witch learning the ropes. I think his Disc World series is his most famous.

3. Jesus as Precursor - Robert Funk, or Jesus and the Disinherited - Howard Thurman

These two books kinda helped me re-commit to Christianity in college. I expect I wouldn't enjoy Jesus as Precursor as much now, but I re-read Jesus and the Disinherited last year and was moved once again by Thurman's faith.

4. What if? - Randall Munroe.

Richard also lent me this book after he read it. So awesome and so funny!

5. The Half Has Never Been Told - Edward Baptist

An economic analysis of interstate slave trade to and colonization of Tenn/Alabama/Miss/Texas, and how all that ties into U.S. economic super-growth. It's a lot to get through, but very much involves our family. He even begins book by describing how enslaved folks were marched from Danville west and south along routes we now drive frequently.

6. The Education of Little Tree - Forrest Carter

A sweet book, sent to me as a bday gift by Aunt Marrietta, that brought tears to my eyes; I read it one day in HS when I was home sick. Little did I know of its dark and ugly background. Look on youtube for "The Reconstruction of Asa Carter." I think we are related to one of Asa's co-conspirators in their planned attack of Nat King Cole. Also Henry Louis Gates Jr wrote a very good NYtimes piece about the book.

7. Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier

Living in the mountains of NC, if you haven't read it, you will enjoy it!

7. Holes - Louis Sachar

Didn't you have to read this at some point? I've found it - usually, but not always - very fun to pick up books I read as a kid (I didn't read very many).

8. The Hobbit

For example, until I read this as an adult, I didn't realize how well it was written for youth. Very very charming experience.

9. a story collection by Sherman Alexie

I've read a lot of his stuff, so I'm not sure which to recommend. Pick a short story collection.

10. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

I enjoyed all her books, and I'm not sure which I liked the best. But this one is the funniest, I think.

11. Moby Dick or The Encantadas - Herman Melville

I took a class on him and loved it; these two especially.

12. Ficciones or Labyrinths or another story collection - Jorge Luis Borges

I took a class on him too! Also awesome. The Library of Babel and the Lottery of Babylon both stick with me. Kinda dark philosophical-dilemma, mind-bendy stuff. Very much something Christopher Nolan would like.

13. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe

Speaking of trippy stories! A wild tour of late-hippie life. 

14. The Miracle of Mindfulness - Thich Nhat Hanh

I wish I could hang out with him for a year or two. Ready anything by him.

15. the Rule of St. Benedict

This is something I return to regularly. Be careful not to sleep with your knife in your belt! Benedict edited as much or more than he wrote. There's so much experience packed into this little book.

16. Sayings of Desert Fathers and Mothers

I'm not sure which collections I've read. I do really like Benedicta Ward's writing style.

17. The Life of St Antony - Athanasius

18. Some biography of St. Francis

I can't remember which ones I've read. I know I read G.K. Chesterton's book on St Francis, which I enjoyed. But Chesterton's personality is so strong, it sometimes masks his subject. He has a fun, apologetic, sometimes exaggerated voice; sometimes it's annoying. Heretics is a fun book of his.

19. War and Peace - Tolstoy

This really is an awesome book. So many cool characters and scenes, and so much dramatic history. Tolstoy's diatribes against the "great man" theory of history get repetitive. Granddaddy David told me a couple times, even before he listened to the book, that he identified with a particular famous scene - where Prince Andrei is injured in battle, is lying on his back staring at the wide sky, and has a spiritual redirection moment (the first of several). https://bigbook2018.wordpress.com/2018/03/16/andreis-infinite-sky/ 

Granddad said he had such a moment once as a boy, lying in the field by the plow while his Dad went to get something, staring at the sky, feeling a benevolent force in the universe. I think he called it a great "friendliness."

20. Zen and the Birds of Appetite - Thomas Merton

I read a lot of his stuff for a couple years; I'm not sure what to recommend. I'm not as big a fan as I used to be, for some reason.

21. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

One of my favorites, I think. If you read it, I recommend Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie as a sequel.

22. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

I really struggled with it in HS but really appreciated it the second time through. Achebe has a seminal lecture/essay confronting it's racism.

23. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and Kim by Rudyard Kipling

I definitely recommend reading these two back to back. Great stories with lots of similar racist and colonialist innerworkings.

24. Ancient Turkey: A Traveller's History - Seyton Lloyd

One of my favorites from travels in Turkey

25. Any book about Islamic architecture

I don't know why exactly, but I feel very attached to domed mosques. so periodically I'll check out a big picture or history book about Islamic art and/or architecture.

26. The Cloud of Unknowing

Another book that doesn't get old for me. It's the inspiration for the "centering prayer" movement.

27. A book by Martin Laird

He's my favorite contemplative prayer author. His books are Into the Silent Land, A Sunlit Absence, and An Ocean of Light

28. Jesus the Baptist - Richard Vinson

When I was trying to read a handful of books about historical Jesus work/research, Dad sent me this unfinished manuscript. He gives a great introduction to the subject, and then presents some of his findings and arguments. I really really enjoyed it.

29. A River Runs Through It, and Other Stories - Norman Maclean

So beautiful, and it makes you want to move out west.

30. Something by Shakespeare that you were forced to read in school

Go back and read it again. I bet it will be a very different experience. It has been for me.

Only One Floor Brain

   As I continue to learn, little by little, about collaborative problem solving and trauma-informed care - thanks to great UMFS trainers and well-educated counselors in my life - I frequently encounter the metaphor "upstairs brain/ downstairs brain." It's a model used to explain why reasoning, logical consequences, and such discipline/teaching frameworks don't work very well for kids who are constantly dealing with stress and trauma. The downstairs brain contains the "basic" survival and life functions, while the upstairs brain contains the "higher" reasoning and linguistic capabilities. If you consistently face stress or trauma, especially in your early years of life, then you kinda get stuck in a state of stress response: fight, flight, freeze, so forth. The "upstairs" functions aren't very accessible to you when you're running for cover and screaming downstairs. And even when you can make it upstairs, you may not be as familiar with the floor-plan as someone who hasn't had to deal with the same types of toxic, chronic stress.

   From what I've heard, this metaphor has been very successful. Kids and adults both grasp it, and its been especially helpful to counselors trying to persuade parents and care-takers to focus on calming strategies and trust-building before teaching "lessons" and such.

   But...of course I have a but, as always, a but...

   Isn't this another iteration of the mind/body, rational/animal, logic/emotion, male/female hierarchy that we've believed for so long, in the west at least? Besides, aren't reason and language and other advanced skills just a small, relatively recent additional room in the house of the brain? Or maybe more like various pieces of furniture and decoration throughout the house? I don't think "upstairs brain" gets its own floor, with a similar amount of square footage as "downstairs brain." If we have to describe our brain as split between reason and everything else, I like Haidt's metaphor of the elephant with a person riding it, a person who evolved to serve the elephant, not the other way around.

Models for Sex/Sexuality/Gender

(2/17/20)
For the past couple days, as my mind wandered during the sermon or during dull moments at my desk, I've been trying to find a good pictorial model or allegory for human sex/sexuality/gender.

I want something that expresses the bi-modal or bi-nodal nature as well as the constellated individuality or brilliant spectrum nature, and that doesn't conceptually privilege or emphasize certain areas or points of the picture. I guess the question is, can you draw a picture with two nodes that doesn't necessarily pronounce those nodes?

At first I thought of a magnetic field


Like, the field is defined by the poles, but that's not really what the field is. I dunno what I'm talking about.

Or then the rainbow

Which is already associated with diversity, but also has two endpoints. But those endpoints aren't actually places, they are concepts, in the same way that sex/gender is a generalized description of lots of specific facts/experience/ideas/feelings/etc.

I guess I'm really excited by the description of gender and sex that Kandel laid out in his book. I didn't understand how all the interrelations worked, but I visualize it as a flow-chart, of sorts, with five genres of sex-gender identification.

Ezekiel paper

"Then you shall know that I am the Lord." This is Ezekiel's chorus, the book's faithful and terrible refrain. Beginning with chapter six, after Ezekiel's first rush of vision-journey, calling, and performative prophecy, nearly every prophecy or "word of the Lord" ends with "Then you/they shall know that I am the Lord." The phrase occurs over 60 times in Ezekiel (Peterson). For better and for worse, knowledge (da'at) of the Lord (YHWH) is the ultimate result of God's word and action. With and within the moral-justice and religious lessons that God teaches, this one seed is planted and replanted.

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Is your holy city being sacked by the mighty Nebuchadnezzar? Are its strongholds toppling? Its people cut down? Its children scattered?

Then you shall know that I am the Lord.

Is the land itself heaving and cracking? The sky darkening in shame and misery? The deep escaping? The fire quickly consuming?

Then you shall know that I am the Lord.

Are your neighbors mocking you? Plundering your riches? Defaming your king? Despising your religion?

Then you shall know that I am the Lord.

Are your enemies falling into the pit they dug? Is your enemy's enemy on the rise? Did a bigger fish just swallow the fish that swallowed you?

Then you shall know that I am the Lord.

Are you experiencing forgiveness? Do you have a fresh spirit and a newborn heart? Have your tears of mourning turned to shouts of deliverance?

Then you shall know that I am the Lord.

Is a new age dawning? A reign of peace on its way? A river flowing out of holiness and into all the world?

Then you shall know that I am the Lord.

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Who is Ezekiel?

Ezekiel son of Buzi was a priest from the southern kingdom of Judah. My Bible notes say he was probably a Zadokite priest, because that is a specific priestly group who's faithfulness Ezekiel praises in its later chapters (Peterson). Ezekiel's final vision contrasts the Zadokites’ loyalty to YHWH with the fickle idolatry of the "Levites,” although the Zadokites are technically also descendants of Levi. However, based on Ezekiel's individual suffering (early exile, death of his wife, sorrow) and extreme prophetic demands (laying on side for months with little to eat and drink, long periods of muteness, cutting off hair, etc), you could argue that he was more likely in the "bad" group, the Levites, than the "good" group, the Zadokites. Perhaps there are other reasons Ezekiel is presumed to be Zadokite.

In any case, he was taken to Nippur, or near there, by the Chaldeans/Babylonians in the first round of exile in 597 B.C.E, along with the King Jehoiachin, other politico-religious leaders, and skilled workers. Jehoiachin surrendered Jerusalem, and Nebuchadnezzar then set up a new king, Zedekiah, who's later push for independence brought Babylon's full wrath back onto the city. In 587 the Temple was destroyed and a larger group from Judah was deported.

So, at the beginning of this book, Ezekiel is a priest who has lost his home, his country, and the tangible practices of his religion. By the end of the book, he has lost his wife, perhaps much of his dignity and sanity, and he's lost the knowledge that the Temple, the "delight" of God's eye and His preferred footstool, still exists.

Did he or a scribe listening to him write this book? Who knows, right? The book is certainly well written, architecturally sound, finished and consistent.


Is there a prophetic style?

The only prophetic book I've read straight through more than once is Isaiah, and I guess some of the shorter ones like Joel. But I think I've read and listened to the "classical" Biblical prophets enough to have a slight feel for them, their style and rhythm. I know I'm reading in translation, but it feels like standing in the ocean up to my waist, in the surf and waves. The waves crest and trough, regular but irregular, predictable but always surprising, sometimes breaking upon me, sometimes gently lifting me off my feet.

Reading and studying Ezekiel has not felt like that. There's much more prose than poetry. Certain sections, notably the prophecies against the nations, break into a familiar prophetic canter, but overall the book reads less aurally and more visually. There's an intellectual, heady, mind-over-body (or out-of-body) character to the book, which is a bizarre thing to say, considering how Ezekiel often has to embody his prophecy.

The only definition of a prophet that really sticks in my head is "someone who conveys a 'word' from God." Abraham Heschel and Walter Brueggeman primarily highlight the poetic-sympathetic awareness and style of Biblical prophets, and they lift it up as a key to the meaning of prophecy in general. But Ezekiel pushes that definition, perhaps transgresses it.

For example, in his visions, he clearly brackets their beginning and ending as visions, and he's careful to say that what he sees is "something like" a wheel within a wheel or looks "like" burnished bronze. He doesn't dare say that he's seen or encountered the here-and-now glory of YHWH. Yet, despite his descriptive caution about the Glory of the Lord, he is extremely sharp and precise in his spacial and geographical language. In his initial vision he is very careful to describe where things are in relation to other things ("over," "under," "next to," etc.). The prophecies against other nations are filled to the brim with place names and fascinating geographical references. In his ultimate vision of the new temple, his spirit guide measures every nook and cranny and commands him to remember all the various cubits!

In his prophecies there are no seamless shiftings between his words and God's words like you might find in other Biblical prophets. Whenever Ezekiel speaks it is clearly demarcated. In fact there are only a handful of his personal words in this book, mostly words of dismay or petition. Exclamations like, "Ah Lord God! Will you destroy all...?" The times Ezekiel appears as a character, very little of his "character" or personality shines through.

It is paradoxical, and perhaps misleading, that you can read Amos or Isaiah and feel like you get to know them, as a personal voice or tradition, even though they speak words almost exclusively "from the Lord." Ezekiel, on the other hand, because he so clearly labels his voice vis-a-vis God's voice, and describes his prophetic performances from a distance, seems much more hidden, unavailable, even though he doesn't speak any more or less in the name of the Lord than Amos or Isaiah. If prophets' prophecies reveal their personal spirits as much as God's message -- and I think they do -- then I should "get to know" Ezekiel as well as I get to know Isaiah or Amos.

Now that I think about it, there is one aspect of his personality that seems to rise to the surface. His prophecies and visions incorporate that priestly sensitivity most typically expressed in distinctions between the holy and profane. Ezekiel is named as a priest from the beginning, so you might assume priestly concerns take center stage. But temple impropriety, while it is certainly listed among the people’s sins, is not really center stage. The main protests of God concern idolatry and injustice, much like the other prophetic books. Nevertheless, the book has something of a pervasive, archetypal priestliness, or weirdness. I'm not really sure what I'm referring to or what example I could give to support this claim. Maybe it has to do with the clear spatial lines, as well as his prophetic acts.

His prophetic acts are so outlandish, and yet so miniature, like a giant bishop in bulbous robes and high hat celebrating mass with little bitty wafers and a golden chalice. I can just imagine Ezekiel lying on his side, in the middle of each day for over a year, in full view of the exiles and their oppressors, with his besieged brick nearby, completely silent except for whenever the word of the Lord comes to him.

Or there goes Ezekiel silently carrying his exile baggage to and fro, clearly performing but unable to talk about it until the word of the Lord shows up. Or here is Ezekiel, stone-faced, shaving his head in public, dividing up his hair, meticulously weighing it into thirds, burning some of it inside Nippur's city walls, scattering some of it to the wind, binding some to the skirt of his robe, burning some more of it. Or worst of all, there is Ezekiel, after his wife dies, not allowed to unbind his turban, not allowed to weep or moan, not allowed to take off his sandals or cover his upper lip or eat the bread of mourning. This combination of drama and restraint seems particularly priest-like to me, somehow.

The only time he fully breaks character, he does so in the most stereotypical priestly way: when God tells him to bake his barley-cake over a fire of human-dung, he cries out in dismay, "Ah Lord God! I have never defiled myself..."; and the Lord relents and allows him to use cow-dung instead. Would that he had so vigorously protested God's later word - "with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes" [i.e., kill his wife]!

Admittedly, when I think of biblical prophecy, I think of poetry; I think of wolves lying down with lambs; I think of non-rational language and excessive meaning, sharp turns from life to death and back to life; I think of Elijah calling down fire or Jeremiah weeping or Amos thundering about justice. Reading Ezekiel has forced me to expand my feelings and ideas about prophecy. If there is a biblical prophetic style, then Ezekiel, like a prophet would I suppose, keeps us from pinning it down or boxing it in.


How is Ezekiel's message relevant today?

In preparation for this paper I read a powerful book, The Religion of the Landless: The Social Context of the Babylonian Exile, by Daniel Smith-Christopher. In it Smith-Christopher shows how the Bible and modern day issues might talk to each other, back and forth, when using the language of sociology.

Christopher shines light on the Biblical exile by using sociological data about more recently exiled or forcefully detained people groups - Bikini islanders removed during WW2, Japanese-Americans imprisoned during WW2, enslaved Africans in America, and the Black South Africans forced into "Bantustans," rural villages, during Apartheid. He selects four generalizations about these groups' exile experiences and shows how they may have applied to the Judaeans in Babylon.


Structural Adaptation

In exile people groups often have to re-group or re-order, but in a way that preserves some sort of continuity. For example, the Japanese-Americans developed very strong ties and support systems within their cell blocks. Some immediate and extended families were able to stay together, others were separated, but in either case, they were able to develop new fictive kinship relations. In a similar way, Christopher argues, the Jewish exiles had to expand and rework their bet'ab - house of father, an extended family - systems to create larger unit groups of kinship, not necessarily blood-related. By the time they returned to Judah, the bet'ab had become bet'abot (plural) and more like the pre-exilic mishpehot (clan).


Leadership

Christopher also explains that exiled groups typically suffer a specific leadership dilemma and conflict - direct violent resistance versus indirect adaptive resistance. He uses this dilemma to frame the conflict between Jeremiah - who advocated that the exiles seek the shalom of the city to which they've been exiled - versus Hananiah - who prophesied a quick overturn of exile and return to the homeland.


Rituals of Resistance

Much like the structural adaptations that are necessary during exile, rituals may organically adapt or refocus for exiled peoples. Christopher argues that the harsh prohibition against marrying foreigners just after the return from exile -- going so far as to force divorces and break up families -- was a continuation and response from exile. In essence, Christopher speculates that the exiles stressed the importance of sticking together to maintain their identity and religion, and that this continued during the early days of post-exile Judah.


New Heroes

Exiled groups also tend to develop new heroes, says Christopher, or emphasize slightly different stories about their heroes. The “diaspora hero” is more often successful through cleverness and piety within the context of the “enemy” or oppressor (Esther, Joseph, Daniel) than through military success. Other common diaspora hero types are the satirical fool, who can’t win but can at least make fun of the oppressor, and the messiah, who miraculously saves the day and flips the script.


What message does Ezekiel have for me?

I think I’m still struggling with what I started with, “Then you shall know that I am the Lord.” How can that be the answer or end result of everything? It reminds me of Job, who never really gets an answer to his questions. Instead he receives a visit from God, “knowledge of the Lord,” which overwhelms him and reshapes his experience.

Is it possible that all my experiences are God-directed toward God? That bad, good, happy, sad, all my life can lead me to “know that God is the Lord?” What help is that? May it be so, that even scrolls full of words of woe, when fed to us by God, in some weird and hidden way can taste sweet as honey.