You Sir (M'am?) are a Cognitive Simpleton

I couldn't decide which one of four people I'm obliquely ranting at with this post.

On an unrelated note, here's the post:

Definition
Dominant ideologies function to reify the status quo and to protect status and wealth privileges. How does this happen? Most people tend to be cognitive misers--that is, they prefer attributionally and cognitively simplistic explanations for complex social phenomena (Taylor, 1981). Dominant groups exploit these social psychological tendencies by advancing attractive, yet out-group disparaging, explanations for social inequality (Kluegal & Smith, 1986). Over time, these attributions are accepted as a priori truths that frame subsequent political and educational discourse (Contextual Factors Surrounding Hispanic Dropouts). Given that tenure in the political arena is predicated upon the popularity of one's position on controversial issues, it is usually in the policy maker's best interests to defend her/his position by advancing simplistic arguments that are consistent with prevailing ideologies. Two common examples are:

The just-world belief
As Americans we have been socialized to believe that there is a direct correlation between a person's life circumstances and her/his degree of organic worth. In other words, good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. In order to get ahead, you simply need to align yourself with accepted intepretations of truth and justice (Lerner and Miller, 1978).

The myth of meritocracy
In a similar way, most of us believe that resources should be allotted accroding to ability and effort. Those people who are naturally skilled and/or exert the most energy deserve to reign over the unskilled and the lazy. This belief is also rooted in the western ideal of rugged individualism and, in many ways, is the anti-thesis of a structural attributional set (Kluegal & Smith, 1986).

From Latino Education Policy in Texas.

Defining "out-group" aside, the concept being espoused is interesting, particularly as part of the preamble for a white paper on educational reform. In Texas.

Consider it more widely though. Right or wrong, yes or no, this guy or that guy... are democracies set up to create false dichotomies? I get busted for overcomplicating things on a regular basis, but in all honesty, how many decisions do we make that truly consist of either one option or the other, with no inbetweens, no third ways, no indirect consequences.

I say very few... why are political decisions packaged to be marketed as something different? To defend the rich? Or is it because the lazy electorate refuses to hold the rich and ambititious to a higher standard?

More frightening, what happens when someone in a position of power who presents issues so simply really sees them that way?

In my limited experience, it's both frustrating and frightening. Particularly for someone who can't say "yes" or "no" to anything without at least a 100 word abstract attached.

Back to education for a second... Speaking of trying to view things from more perspectives then just our own, here's a neat excerpt from an article on Pambazuka news that I recommend pondering:

It is the third tradition, Islam, which gave Africa its first higher education institutions that have endured to the present. Indeed, Africa claims distinction as the center of the world’s oldest Islamic universities and some of the world’s oldest surviving universities. They include Ez-Zitouna madrassa in Tunis founded in 732. Next came al-Qarawiyyin mosque university established in Fez in 859 by a young migrant female princess from Qairawan (Tunisia), Fatima Al-Fihri. The university attracted students and scholars from Andalusian Spain to West Africa. Then in 969 Al-Azhar mosque university was established in Cairo, the same year that the city was founded by the Fatimid dynasty from the Maghreb. It came to be regarded as the most prestigious center of Islamic education and scholarship and attracted the greatest intellectuals of the Muslim world, including Ibn Khaldun the renowned historian who taught there. Another major early Islamic university was Sankore mosque university in Timbuktu founded in the twelfth century where a wide range of courses were taught from theology, logic, astronomy and astrology, to grammar, rhetoric, history and geography.

Arbitrary, unqualified, and many unanswered questions. Just the way I like leaving a blog post. Ha!

Shameless Pandering. But for a cause

I read a news story that reminded me: the International AIDS Conference is kicking off in Toronto on Sunday.

It's expected to be huge, bringing together researchers, doctors, patients, policy makers, and probably everyone inbetween. I have a friend working in Toronto for the summer helping coordinate the thing.

I think the idea is pretty self-explanatory. The conference has been around since 1985 and was originally a scientific consortium. The last two were held in Thailand and South Africa to give researchers from the developed world an idea of the challenges of administering antiretroviral therapy in developing countries as well as to bring physicians from those developing countries into direct contact with the cutting edge research being done around the world. Sharing challenges and hope.

The programme looks awe-inspiring. Registration is closed (and in Toronto), but certain portions of the conference will be made available as free webcasts. Sweet deal.

The joys of electronic mail communication, and other forms of human to machine to human interfacing. Etc.

Ever had one of those days where the world rewarded you for getting out of bed by mercilessly beating your around the head and shoulders with its combat boots?

Me neither. I'm fairly sure the world doesn't have the appendages necessary to make combat boots accessible. But some days it sure feels like it.

Actually, it's not days so much that take me for a ride as isolated events. For instance, I recently checked my e-mail.

Now, for those of you who are still comfortable in the fuzzy warm embrace of the wonders of instant, text-based communication, I have something very important to tell you (Warning: the following sentence will be offensive to most viewers). Email is EVIL.

Besides all the usual diatribes about wasting time, sucking away spare time, taking up too much time, its various addictive qualities and capitalist mantra about the negative impacts on our precious productivity, email has an even more insidious impact on the psyche of the world: it upsets people.

Now, of course, there are nay-sayers out there who would argue that a lot of things upset people: wet blue jeans, Monday mornings, American politics, Mel Gibson, cold coffee... the list goes on. But that's not really what I'm talking about.

Bad things happen. They always have, they always will, they'll probably continue to be of inexplicable origin and they will still show up in the news. Such is the modern life.

But email... email takes all of our usual complaints about print media - decontextualization, the desecration of verbal communication skills and mature vocabulary, sacrificing grammar for convenience, impersonality - and escalates them, allowing them to spill over into the private domain (I don't care if you believe in the distinction between public and private for the purposes of this debate. We can talk about that on someone else's blog). Not only are the nuances and historical relevancies of big things like terrorism, global warming, foreign policy and Paris Hilton taken and run rough-shod over by text's uncanny ability to be quoted witout understanding - now the little things that make life awesome are also fair game for the author's guillotine. (I'm reminded of a quote from Somaya Ramadan, but I don't remember it precisely. It's in the last chapter of "Leaves of Narcissus, and draws heavily on Derrida. But again I digress.)

The minuetiae of daily life - coffee meetings, jokes, quick "how are yous" that may have turned into bigger, better, and ultimately more meaningful exchanges - stripped of their organic virtues and reduced to sheer static input/output loops. Conversations can't evolve: we don't have them anymore. Body language doesn't communicate appreciation (or angst) we don't see it anymore. No random questions, no laughter (lol DOES NOT COUNT), no tangential side tracks. Just text, and hours spent at your computer instead of at the water cooler.

And those are just the things that happen when you're having a good email day.

In the worst case (which, by the way, I've seen happen twice this summer and is really the main reason why email is evil)... - yes, for those of you keeping track, I am finally getting around to the point - email makes people into cowards. Why deal with someone up front when you can belittle them or insult them or even just be angry with them without every having to make a decision more meaningful then whether or not to press send? I'm not claiming that I'm not guilty. But it's true. We can now hide behind the bright glow of LCD and spew forth things that would never air in a real life conversation with someone that breathes, yells, bleeds, with someone that our words can hurt. Email devalues our human interactions; it makes it easier to say and do hurtful things. It also makes it easier to 'craft' messages that should be emotional. It turns exchanges about conflict and feeling into debates, allowing us to throw up our defensive walls before the conversation even begins, and without the potential salvation that witnessing the consequences of our actions played out in another human being's life used to be able to bring. Instead, they respond in kind.

In a world that feels like its fast losing its sense of connectedness, churning out thousands who feel isolated in a sea of other isolations, that might be the biggest crime of all.

Hannah Arendt may have said it best:
"What we call isolation in the public sphere, is called loneliness in the sphere of social intercourse."

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather have the social intercourse than have to give a name to the lack thereof.