Who Scares Me More...

Dear Diary,

As I have long since abandoned all hope that there is an Astute Reader of this blog -- unless of course they're reading it from crawler cache which would fit right in with known local psychology -- I guess it's time for more pointless meandering.

---

Fareed Zakaria is on the TV, having just interviewed Moammar Gadhafi.

For some reason, Mr Zakaria scares me more.

It has nothing to do with his politics, nor his erudition, thoughtful and spot-on analyses, his incisive question and his direct yet polite interview style.

Moammar Gadhafi should scare me more. Although long demonized by US media and a lot of politicians, Gadhafi seems less the monster than he's been represented to be. Certainly his history is far from spotless, and there is much about his history that lends some credence to speculations that he might have been a very high-function schizophrenic, or suffering from a related disorder.

Such disorders, in high-function cases, often present with an adult onset easily interpreted as religious or political dedication, often to the level of fanaticism, and following on the heels of that, sometimes people can do terrible things with little expression of remorse. In their minds, with the certainty they give to their creed or ideology, there is no place for remorse for the Enemy or the Unbeliever. These people, it should be noted, are not the same thing as sociopaths, because their motivations differ and are classically human and social, with long dedication and often with little concern for personal gain, and they may care deeply for their allies and fellows, however admirable or despicable the aims and actions of their faith or faction.

Yet many people with such disorders may spend their lives on medication that will do little to alter the disorder, and in most cases, such people would not see it as a disorder. How, they might ask, can Faith be thought to be a disorder? How can Party loyalty be seen to be a disorder? Yet as time goes on, as midlife comes and goes, often we see spontaneous remission of disorders along the schizophrenic axis... and we see it not only in the severe cases, but also in the mild cases.

About 2003 or so, suddenly the appearance, the politics, and the former emotional convictions and ideological proclamations fell by the wayside, and rather than representing himself as a warrior, Gadhafi started doing things that showed a lot more concern for the well-being of his subjects, even those who might be thought to be political or ideological "faithless" or even in non-violent opposition. And for the last few years, it's as if he has come to realize the error of his former ways, but cannot bring himself to publicly admit any fault or directly express guilt.

Moammar Gadhafi doesn't scare me any more, at least not to look at him. He no longer has that tense and coiled look, nor that glitter in his eye, nor that posture of absolute conviction and woe betide whomever might obstruct him. No, now Muammar Gadhafi looks like the sort of old man you might meet downtown in a park, playing chess with all of the other old men.

Fareed Zakaria, on the other hand, would scare me half to death if I ran into him in a dark alley. Hell, he scares me half to death just watching him on television.

Does this make me a racist? I don't know; I don't think it's race, because I don't think him better or worse, nor do I think myself or my kind better or worse. I have neighbors who have their origins in Palestine, and they don't scare me just because they're Arabic, even though we have not always seen eye to eye and at some times now and then, we just did not get along. Yet it doesn't bother me to look at them.

Totally due to no fault of his own, however, Fareed Zakaria scares me.

And in total counterpoint, a lot of people who probably should really scare me, do not. Much.

---

Like Moammar Gadhafi, I'm mostly past the age where I can be fanatical about ideology or faith. Yet habits of thinking remain, as well as some convictions. Do I remain strong in my convictions that I should love and defend my nation and its Constitution and our varying ways of life? Absolutely I do. Do I remain strong in my conviction that such Faith as I have is, and should be, something that should be Humanist, Rationalist, and as close as possible to what can be verified by the tests of Philosophy and Science? You bet.

Among the habits of thinking I retain from my days as a sort of mild fanatic, I retain a fascination with the concepts of Good and Evil.

For me a lot of questions about Good and Evil can be answered by a so-called "test by results". The ends, of course, do not necessarily justify the means, and I find it easy to resolve that question by thinking "if it causes no harm, do then as you will".

Yet one can't be constrained by that in a simplistic way: if a doctor were to think "if it causes harm it can't be done" then they could not set knife to flesh to carve out a tumor. It's necessary sometimes to balance harm against harm, and benefit against benefit, and each against the other. A doctor could amputate an arm to save a life, because failure to engage in a certain level of harm will result on far greater harm.

A doctor, it must be said, is a doctor. In the solid science side of medical practice, cause and effect, precedent and consequent, and above all documentation of case histories, that's what they know and that is what guides them. Perhaps the greatest skill that comes from all of their training is "prognosis", literally "of the future to know" or "having knowledge of outcome". Most people think that it means "prediction". The real meaning in the medical context -- seen through the lens of my limited education -- is "I know what I will see as this has been often seen before".

A doctor, then, may say within the realm of his training and practice, "I see this, and this, and know that there will be the following sequence of events"; this is prognosis. You've seen one case of smallpox, and you've seen them all. The only question remaining is whether or not the patient will survive the course of the illness; there is no question at all about the course of the illness itself.

Yet most people, obviously, don't have the training of the doctor, and even the doctor sensibly limits their prognostication to the realm of their training and experience in medicine.

A doctor might say "I know the course of this illness, and I may with certain knowledge act to intervene here, here, or here, and in specific ways that are known to work, or reasonably must be expected to have useful effects".

A lot of people out there, sadly enough, think that they can do the same. Yet they may try to do this far outside the realm of their education and/or training.

It's one thing to say "if I do not spray insecticides on your termite infestation, within five years your house will collapse".

And to use a horrid example, it's quite another thing to say "if we don't lynch that black man now, in the future he'll be molesting white women".

---

Only a few things could make someone say something like that.

It's easy enough to spot the ones who would say that because they're full of hate and are offering rationalizations to their hate-driven need to murder.

It's probably nearly as easy to spot the ones who would say that because they're simpletons and easily led, and actually believed some hateful assholes because even the lies of an asshole might be thought -- by simple minds -- to be preferable to utter ignorance and having no opinion at all.

It's quite another thing to spot those who actually believe that Prior Restraint has any logical validity.

---

Prior Restraint is generally considered unconstitutional as well as logically fallacious.

How is this fallacious? Look at this case:

If you lynch someone, it's possible to say "because they are dead, they cannot molest". That is true enough.

It is also possible that they had no intention, no opportunity, no motive. It is as possible that they would have had intention, opportunity, motive. Neither case can be demonstrated by proof of results, of evidence of action, because the person in question is beyond action. Thus it is not legitimately possible to say "because we killed them, we prevented a certainty of criminal action". All that was prevented was a possibility of criminal action.

This is why we have a policy of Punishment rather than Prevention in almost all cases and causes. We may set Prohibitions which specify Penalty, yet absent very clear and present dangers, we cannot intervene to the individual. If you see someone with a knife chasing another person, you may reasonably intervene. If you see someone with a knife spreading butter on toast, you can't reasonably intervene in a murder, there's no victim and no clear intent nor action demonstrating any intent other than to butter some toast. Nor can one reasonably prevent a person from picking up a knife... unless, perhaps, they have a known and demonstrated history of trying (with or without success) to murder people with knives they picked up to butter some toast.

---

Who scares me more?

Despite my prior protestations against Prior Restraint, I have no compunctions against Prior Suspicion.

The sort of person who spreads a statement such as "we need to lynch that black man before he molests white women" because they need to spread a rationalization to their hate-fueled need to murder, I have no objection to people watching them with unyielding suspicion.

The sort of person who will believe that sort of idiocy, well, they too need to be the object of watchful eyes.

But we probably need to remember to be watchful for the sort of person who believes that it is even possible that "because the dead can do no harm, therefor kill or harm will be done" can be true. Though a subtle madness, that is a deep madness.

---

Hopefully everyone can follow this explanation, though it is clear that some cannot. To "err on the side of safety" is still to err.

Some folks have internalized this deep and subtle madness, but at a level where they would never force themselves to examine it. Most people would examine the madness inherent in the very emotion-charged statement "we need to lynch that black man now, or he will molest white women later". Most people would be shocked enough to rack their brains to show the fault in the logic.

Most people would not be so shocked by the statement "he's from a poor and disadvantaged socio-economic class, so of course he'll turn out to be a shiftless gangsta who will spend his life in and out of jail". Yet it's the exact same failure of logic.

To fail to provide for alternatives to that outcome would be failing to recognize the illogic of Prior Restraint.

Yet also, to fail to provide mechanisms to deal with probabilities towards that outcome would be failing to learn from history and statistics.

Thus, as soon as funding can be found towards both ends, we need to provide more and better outreach for those persons from "disadvantaged socio-economic strata" to encourage and enable those who would and can rise above; and, we also need to provide more and better law enforcement and remediative programs that will deal with those who would not -- or cannot -- rise above the stereotype and fallacious certainty of expectations.

---

A quick note: this posting did not segue from the beginning to the end in the way I had intended, yet I happen to like the (very non-rigorously arrived at) conclusion and furthermore am too lazy to re-write the whole thing.

---