Track your comments!
[x]


When you register, comments on your articles and replies to your comments appear here. Register Now!

Sign in to your account
[x]

Not a Scientific Blogging member yet?

Register Now for a Free Scientificblogging.com Account

  • Customize your profile with pictures, banner, a blogroll and more.
  • Leave comments on articles, add other members to your friend lists, chat with people on the site.
  • Write blog posts that can be seen by hundreds of thousands of readers.

It's free and it only takes a minute!

Already a Scientific Blogging member?

Sign In Now

Banner
By Patrick Lockerby | April 17th 2009 05:28 PM | 17 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
.

More The Chatter Box articles

All

About Patrick Lockerby

Retired engineer, 60+ years young.
Computer builder and programmer.
Linguist specialising in language acquisition and computational linguistics.
Interested in every human endeavour except the... Full Bio

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:
 "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.


On the day that Martin Luther King said those words, I was moved. 

Whenever I read these words or hear them, I am moved.
People with empathy do not speak face to face, but heart to heart, soul to soul.

The message is clear: Do not judge any person by physical appearance.

But we do.  It is a battle between the personal ethic, the personal aesthetic and the 'not-my-tribe' avoidance mechanisms that seem to be rooted in our psyches from birth.

I was reminded of this when I first saw a video of Susan Boyle competing in the TV show 'Britain's Got Talent'
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living,

If you have never seen or heard Susan Boyle, please do watch her singing 'I dreamed a Dream'
You will enjoy the experience, and you will also enjoy 'Cry me a River'.

Comments

Fossil Huntress's picture
We treat the beautiful people and animals well. The others are on the plate next to the potatoes... to take a page out of William and Josh's book...

logicman's picture
Heidi:  just in case somebody passing through doesn't 'get' your comment, you clearly point out a real difference between our attitude to  Pandas and our attitude to things that are not quite so cuddly.

Agreed & poetically put. Not judging people by their appearances is as basic Plato's search for the forms, as we're constantly trying to pick out the eternal from fleeting externalities.

But to offer counterpoint, modern Western society has been rather quick in explicitly teaching its youth that looks do not & should not matter, when oftentimes they do. You are told that you shouldn't judge others by the color of their skin, yet you might easily feel fear upon coming across a black man in an empty alley. We're told that looks don't matter, yet it just so happens that popular people almost always look good. In both these instances, we're sending mixed messages to our youth, & they're responding with equally ambiguous behavior. Insofar as any Western societal factor maybe interconnected to rise in eating disorders, I think these mixed messages play more of a relative role than anything else.

Not that I'm disagreeing w/you - obviously society had to start somewhere, & I'm optimistic that we're constantly moving in the right direction. But I can be suspicious when certain PC movements try to deny reality.

As a second phase in this movement, a more candid message, which is currently popping up in newer 'diversity' campaigns & college courses, is that it's OK judge, you can't help that, but just be aware of that, & when you can accept others' for who they are w/o minimizing whatever makes them who they are.

I was also touched by Boyle's performance. Judging by its emotional salience & popularity, it definitely speaks to a core part of humanity, how the beautiful can come from such unexpected places. I'm not sure where the fault-lines lie in why exactly the performance was so moving. Was it in the crowd's 'cynical' expectations that the performance would sink, which was shared by everyone who viewed the video? Or was it in Boyle's internal state, perhaps being at least in part (if not fully) responsible for allowing the 'hell' that was her life to propagate - a hell that was saved by the fortune of a traveling cast from American Idol stumbling upon her application? Probably somewhere in between.

Ode on a Grecian Urn, by John Keats

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 5
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 10

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 15
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 20

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love! 25
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 30

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore, 35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 40

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! 45
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Part of this is due to the "Schema" effect; the way we analyze people and things in the environment.  It is culturally and experientially based, but it's our shortcut method of determining things like "this dog may be dangerous" and "this is a bad environment."

Gerhard Adam's picture
It seems that there are really two concepts at work here.  One is pre-judging (or prejudice) and the other is actually acting on that judgement.

In today's world (and I suspect at any time in the past), we should not be too free in giving our trust to strangers.  This is precisely what we see being exploited by serial killers (on the extreme), because we've been conditioned to believe that somehow being distrustful is "bad".  We tend to avoid eye contact because it's perceived as rude (such as staring at a stranger).  The point was raised about being afraid of seeing a black person in an alley at night, but the more appropriate question is why are we more trusting of a white stranger?  This is the same problem with "profiling", not because it is wrong in identifying a potential threat, but because it creates the illusion that others outside the profile are trustworthy.

Yet, in many ways, it is precisely these behaviors that can prevent us from being victims in potentially avoidable circumstances. 

Now having said that, there is a difference in acting on such a judgement, as if by our stereotyping we actually do know how this individual is.  This is where it becomes wrong. 

I tend to take my cue from the animal world where I've seen "wild" animals brought into captivity and despite years of excellent care, they still hold a reserve of caution and are never completely trusting.  I have seen well-mannered horses become uneasy and uncomfortable when people behave a certain way because, in the end, we are still predators to them.

Appearances matter, attitudes matter, and our ability to assess or pre-judge strangers is essential.  It is only when we become too casual about this and use it to discriminate or behave unreasonably to others that it becomes a bad thing.  The difficulty is in tempering our behavior so that we don't give free reign to our insecurities and abuse people pre-emptively.


logicman's picture
I am grateful for all of the comments, thank you all.

Susan Boyle is now amongst the 40 semi-finalists.  I thought I would put a link here rather than as a new blog.
Britain's Got Talent.

rholley's picture
Latest news: she's  in the finals, along with the dance group Diversity, whose choreographer is a physics student.  8 more to join them from the up-coming semi-finals.

rholley's picture
Physics and choreography DO go together!  Susan Boyle came second, but Diversity are the well-deserving winners, as of about one hour ago.

logicman's picture
Thank you Robert.  I'll check for a video online later.   I don't watch TV, I just catch up with the interesting bits on the web, so I'm grateful for the 'heads-up'.

Hank's picture
I have to say, that's pretty darn amazing even if he's not a physics student:




logicman's picture
Hank: thank you for saving me the need to search, and for embedding the video.

Step 1, dispense with the negative:
I don't like this style of music, so I watched it with the volume low.

Step 2, what remains must be positive:
Brilliant!

Patrick wrote:

"... and the 'not-my-tribe' avoidance mechanisms that seem to be rooted in our psyches from birth."

There are reasons they're rooted there. On the level of the group, physical appearance correlates with behavior.

What is called prejudice, as in "pre-judging," is very often "post-judging" on the basis of observed group characteristics. The occasional gross misjudging of an outlying member of an outgroup, or an ingroup for that matter, does not gainsay the benefits of avoidance mechanisms.

logicman's picture
On the level of the group, physical appearance correlates with behavior.


I disagree.  Big people are not all bullies and smaller people are not all timid.  Red-heads do not all have bad tempers. 

Unless you mean to say that the physical appearance of some people correlates with the behaviour of others - in the way that the behaviour of SS thugs correlated with the physical appearance of Jews, Roma and homosexuals and the mentally handicapped.

Gerhard Adam's picture
Patrick, I agree, but social groups also operate on an intrinsic level of trust between members.  An outsider is initially not to be trusted until they prove themselves "worthy" or capable of being in the group.  This is typically the source of the "prejudice" we experience since (rightly or wrongly) we are pre-judging a stranger based on rumor, innuendo, experience, ... .whatever ... but it is inescapable that physical appearance will make us react in anticipation of the expected behavior. 

Whether it turns out to be true or not will become experiential.  This trait is extremely valuable when personal safety and risk of injury was higher, but even in safe social situations it comes into play.  It is also important to recognize that it is precisely this trait which, when ignored by people, can make them victims.

It is no different than seeing an individual with a swastika tattoo .... we expect that we already know what that individual is all about, but in truth we are simply pre-judging.

Big people, small people and redheads do not constitute genetically related ingroups. (Although muscularity does correlate with level of testosterone, which in turn correlates with increased aggression, so ...)

Reflexively bringing up Nazis only impoverishes this discussion. Then again, it's done by liberals -- and many self-described "conservatives" -- on practically a second-by-second basis, so it must work on a lot of people.

logicman's picture
Reflexively bringing up Nazis

Not 'reflexively', but 'on reflection' - a whole different paradigm.

I was not indulging in rhetoric.  I gave the example of Nazis as a worst-case example of how human behaviour can be, and has been, deliberately nurtured to follow our animal ancestors' instincts.  I could just as well have cited the potlatch or the kibbutz as opposite examples.

I do not hold to any particular political doctrine, except, it might be, 'live and let live', with the possible exception of anyone who comes bursting through my front door with a machine gun.  :)

Add a comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <sup> <sub> <a> <em> <strong> <center> <cite> <code> <TH><ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <img> <br> <p> <blockquote> <strike> <object> <param> <embed> <del> <pre> <b> <i> <table> <tbody> <div> <tr> <td> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr> <iframe>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA
If you register, you will never be bothered to prove you are human again. And you get a real editor toolbar to use instead of this HTML thing that wards off spam bots.