Why do we like horror?

Well, Halloween has come and gone and so the scary stuff is pretty much at ease.  But the more I think about it, being scared makes no sense.  Think about it.  I wrote a previous blog about evolution and emotions.  I was thinking of fear.  Why do we feel fear?  Why does that make evolutionary sense?  I think the easy answer is because fear gives us a clue that we should avoid something because it’s a threat to our lives.  People avoid scary things because it could be a threat to their own existence.  For example, many people are afraid of heights.  This is because they view heights as something that could potentially end their lives.  Many people are afraid of public speaking.  This is because it not only forces one to do something, but it also forces one to be something that makes them uncomfortable.  So being scared is something to avoid.  Yet. . .

Halloween is all about being scared.  Not only to we look forward to this holiday, but we can’t wait to go see the latest Saw movie or go through some haunted house during Halloween.  This isn’t just around October, but throughout the year, we seem to love horror movies and we love being scared.  So why is that?  Evolution tells us that being scared is something we try to avoid.  Yet, we sometimes seek out horror in order to be scared.

This problem has been around since Aristotle.  I have a few suggestions but I wanted to see what everyone else thought.

For those who don’t think clearly. . .

“I have a right to own a gun because the constitution says so.”  — You’ve just embraced cultural relativism.

 

“God would never allow that.” — You’ve just embraced Divine-Command Theory.

Evolution and Emotions

The prospect of evolution is that a new trait will be more adaptable for the species.  For example, imagination helps you survive because imagination helps you think of certain possibilities.  If you don’t have an imagination, then you have to go through a trial and error basis and that can literally kill you.  Lately, I’ve been thinking about emotions and how they have an evolutionary advantage.  So why do emotions help us survive?

Happiness seems to be easy.  Happiness releases endorphins and that provides pleasure.  We all seek pleasure and pleasure is something that makes us survive, or at least, it makes us not want to die.

Anger.  This seems tricky.  Why does anger help us survive?  Well, imagine if we never became angry.  It seems that in some cases, we are justified in being angry.  If we never became angry, people would walk all over us and that wouldn’t help us survive.  That’s one example.  But anger seems to have a survival mechanism.

What about love?  Love is an extremely complex emotion, but it seems that it’s nature’s aphrodisiac in order for us to propagate the species.  In other words, love may not help the individual survive, but it does help the species overall survive.

There are a few emotions that I’ve been trying to figure out how they help us survive but I can’t think of why.  Maybe through our imaginations, we can discover the purpose of these emotions.  Why is sadness a helpful evolutionary strategy?  I’ve been thinking about it, and the only thing I can think of is that the way to break through sadness is by some creative process.  Notice that many people are creative when they’re sad.  They seem to break that sadness by being creative.  But this seems to be a lot of energy.  Why couldn’t we just evolve with a simple creative process without being sad?  It seems that it’s expanding too much energy just by simply being creative.  So what’s the point of being sad?

What about jealousy?  What’s the survival process of being jealous?  I guess when we see someone trying to steal our significant other, we see that as a threat to spreading our genes.  Ehh, maybe.  That seems like a weird explanation.  So what’s the point of jealousy?

What about disappointment?  Anxiety?  Hope?  Despair?  Or being nervous?  I can’t explain the evolutionary purposes to these.  Can you?

What is Conservativism? What is Progressivism?

Here’s an interesting site where the author breaks it down into simplistic steps.  There are some that I wouldn’t agree with on what is conservativism.  It might make sense in today’s climate (and that’s what the author is saying), but as a philosopher, conservativism is something different than how it’s being used today.

On the flip side, he also has a list of what is progressivism.  Again, not everything on the list I agree with, but it’s a very nice summary on both counts to suggest what the differences are.

How to Handle Iran

Fareed Zakaria on CNN had an interesting round table about Iran.  Two people were for reform and the other person was for attacking Iran.  I found all of them intelligent and they gave their case equally well.  What really intrigued me was what Zakaria recommended: maybe we should get used to a nuclear Iran, but with extreme caution.  It surprised me, but his argument makes a lot of sense: if we attack Iran, most of the Arab world would support Iran, and because the War on Terror is already costly and unpopular, we can’t do Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan all at the same time.  The only solution would be to be there for a long time, which won’t work, or to bring in a draft.  Yikes!  At the same time, this will only delay Iran from getting the nuclear weapon by only a few years; it won’t stop them from getting it.  Thus, allowing them to get the nuclear weapon might be a better option, but with caution.  You can check it here and here.

The Wishful Theist

Daniel Dennett in his book Breaking the Spell has talked about “belief in belief in God.”  What does that mean?

People who believe in God are sure that God exists, and they are glad, because they hold God to be the most wonderful of all things.  People who moreover believe in belief in God are sure that belief in God exists (and who could doubt that?), and they think that this is a good state of affairs, something to be strongly encouraged and fostered wherever possible: If only belief in God were more widespread!  One ought to believe in God.  One ought to strive to believe in God.  One should be uneasy, apologetic, unfulfilled, one should even feel guilty, if one finds that one just doesn’t believe in God. . . People who believe in belief in God try to get others to believe in God and, whenever they find their own belief in God flagging, do whatever they can to restore it.  (p. 221)

So the belief in belief in God is so strong that a few atheists even encourage it.  (How many agnostics or atheists do you know who simply say religion is not for them but may be needed for some people, because it gives them meaning?  Or that if someone is demonstrating the fallacies of a religious doctrine, the atheist simply states, “but it works for the religious people?”  Or even a few atheists who wish they were believers?)  Indeed, part of the belief in belief in God already sets up an authority in society: not only does one believe in God, but one should believe in God, one should even, if necessary, struggle to believe in God, that the belief in God is a good thing in itself.  The default, it seems, is that theism is the goal of life and that an atheist who wishes to be a theist is understandable.  I challenge this assumption.

Imagine a young illiterate man from a third world country who suffers from abject poverty and a cripple at that. He has no family, no home and on certain unfortunate days, nothing to eat. His great desire is to commit suicide to end his misery. He thinks of it daily. There is only one thing preventing him from doing so: his belief in God. He knows that suicide is the greatest of sins and he can not offend God. He has tried to reason his way out of belief in God, but no matter how much he tries, he can’t stop believing in God, not for a minute. He doesn’t go to church, loathes it actually, hates the clergy, etc. And as for the afterlife, he would rather not exist at all than have to wait and suffer for years before attaining paradise. And sometimes he even hates God before disbelieving in Him.  In the end, he repents for disrespecting God, but he does so reluctantly.  So here’s the question: is this sort of person possible? If so, is there a psychological reason? Can a theist be so reluctant to be a theist? Is it possible to will oneself to atheism overnight?  We often hear of the atheist wishing that he could believe in God, but can there be a theist who wishes he was an atheist?

Evolution in Action

I know I haven’t been blogging lately, but since school has started, I’ve been extremely busy. I’m hoping to post on Mondays to get our intellectual juices flowing.
At any rate, check out this image.
Awesome stuff.  First of all, guess what that image is?

If you thought it was some crazy insect, you’re wrong. It’s actually an orchid.  This orchid has “learned” to mimic bees and wasps. Natural selection has molded the flowers of these orchids (many in the genus Ophyrys) into mimics of the insects that pollinate them.  Thus, males insects, thinking that this orchid is actually a female insect, land on them and tries to copulate with them.  Obviously, it doesn’t work, but during this attempt, the insects’ heads or bodies contact the orchids’ pollen sacs which attaches itself to the insect.  The frustrated insect flies off, but soon tries to copulate with another orchid, which puts the hitchhiking pollen in contact with the new orchid’s stigma. In such a way the bees/wasps serve as “flying penises,” helping the orchids have sex.  You can see the whole article (and more pics) here.

Finally, here’s a clip of fire ants in the Amazon making a raft out of. . . themselves.  Very cool!

Fareed Zakaria: The Way Out of Afghanistan

As you know, I’m a big fan of Zakaria and I agree mostly with his policies about international affairs.  He has recently come up with an interesting article about how to deal with the troubles in Afghanistan: we buy off our enemies.

The focus must shift from nation building to dealmaking. The central problem in Afghanistan is that the Pashtuns, who make up 45 percent of the country and almost 100 percent of the Taliban, do not feel empowered. We need to start talking to them, whether they are nominally Taliban or not. Buying, renting, or bribing Pashtun tribes should become the centerpiece of America’s stabilization strategy, as it was Britain’s when it ruled Afghanistan.

Granted, this has worked in the past, but history also shows that another group just gets infuriated from it.  We helped out the Afghans in the early 1980s and the result was the Taliban.  We helped out Israel and many radical groups form from it.  It seems that the answer is to not only educate the country, but to do some extreme nation-building in the surrounding countries which seems like too much work.  Thus, we must form stronger allies within the region.  The talking to our enemies is something I’ll agree with on Zakaria, but to bribe them seems to bring up more troubles.

However, international politics is much like chess.  By bribing  the tribes, we’re essentially telling the enemy “your move.”  Their next move can be weak (like moving a pawn), deadly (they kill our queen), or successful (we checkmate them).  Zakaria defines this as success.  I only hope that their other optional moves are weak.

Huxley vs. Orwell

Aldous Huxley (writer of Brave New World) and George Orwell (writer of 1984) have written great books about the dystopia of the future and how we should always be on the lookout for conformity.  Two great authors that should still be read today.  What’s interesting is how these two approach the world in totally different ways which you can see here.

In my opinion, Huxley’s world is far more dangerous and harder to fight than Orwell’s.

Requiem for the Right, Health Care Myths, and How to Love the Bomb

In this weeks Newsweek, there were three interesting articles.  I’ll put them forth and express my opinion as well.

Requiem for the Right

This article talks about how the political right must do some drastic changes or else the Republican party will soon die out.  In a way, I can see it, but I think Tanenhaus misses the larger picture.  The GOP might die, but conservativism never will.  Conservativism has been around since Edmund Burke and it’s been very dynamic over the years.  In fact, if an institution wants to survive, it must change to meet the demanding times.  This is probably why Obama won and McCain lost.  Obama said “I will do this, I will do that.”  He put up an agenda.  McCain didn’t really have an agenda; he mainly put forth things that he wouldn’t do, which isn’t what the public wants to hear.

How can they be organized?  All organizations need a leader, and the conservative party became chaotic when they lost William F. Buckley Jr.  In other words, the conservative party needs a new leader, and fast if they expect to gain something.  Tanenhaus also mentions that language plays a big role in forming a party.  It could, but leadership is an all-important concept.  It’s also important to note that a great leader makes sure that s/he never allows fringes into the party, or even recognizes them.  That’s what made Buckley so great: he denounced the John Birch Society, and he basically said that Ayn Rand wasn’t that great.  At the same time, he solidified the great conservatives of the time: Barry Goldwater (who in my opinion is the last great conservative we’ve had), Ronald Reagan, and John Tower.  If the leader of conservativism comes down to people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin, conservativism will either split or move more toward the right.  Either way, it’s a disaster.  Remember, Teddy Roosevelt was the first to sponsor national health care, and Reagan voted for FDR. . . all four times.

The Five Biggest Lies on the Health Care Debate

Need I say more?  Why won’t these myths die?  It’s as if people are following an ideology instead of going where the evidence takes them.  It’s just a simple fallacy of appeal to the consequences of beliefs.

Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb

An interesting title.  Basically, the article is stating that having nuclear bombs is actually a great deterrence and that might actually make the world a safer place.  The article points out that since Pakistan got the bomb, they haven’t had any major wars with India ever sense.  That may be true, but I’ve always found deterrence a weird concept.  Basically, you’re doing a certain action to prevent others from doing the same action.  But that seems odd.  It’s like saying you’re punishing a child in order to teach other children that they shouldn’t do that same action.  I’ve always thought that punishments were done because some action was wrong, not because of some deterrence effect.  At any rate, I can’t let this go and may embracing the bomb might be the best strategy after all.  At least, my realism in me says so.