Catarsi immaginaria

Catharsys – You are Not So Smart – David McRaney

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Punti chiave: Lo sfogo violento non ci libera dalla rabbia ma crea piuttosto dipendenza – Strategia alternativa per liberarsi dalla rabbia: imparare a contare fini a dieci – La rieducazione dei carcerati-

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THE MISCONCEPTION: Venting your anger is an effective way to reduce stress and prevent lashing out at friends and family. THE TRUTH: Venting increases aggressive behavior over time.

DESCRIZIONE DEL BIAS

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Head to the gym and assault a punching bag. Shoot some people in a video game. Scream into a pillow.

Note:SFOGARSI

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The concept of catharsis goes back at least as far as Aristotle and Greek drama.

Note:ARISTOTELE

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was Aristotle’s counterargument to Plato, who felt poetry and drama filled people up with silliness and made them unbalanced.

Note:CONTRO PLATONE

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Balancing the humors—choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, and sanguine—was the basis of medicine from Hippocrates up to the Old West, and the way you balanced out often meant draining something.

Note:IPPOCRATE

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Thanks to Freud, catharsis theory and psychotherapy became part of psychology…He believed your psyche was poisoned by repressed fears and desires, unresolved arguments, and unhealed wounds….

Note:FREUD

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In the 1990s, psychologist Brad Bushman at Iowa State University decided to study whether or not venting actually worked.

Note:BUSHMAN

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The students could set the volume the other person had to endure, a setting between zero and ten, with ten being 105 decibels. Can you predict what they discovered? On average, the punching bag group set the volume as high as 8.5. The time-out group set it to 2.47. The people who got angry didn’t release their anger on the punching bag—their anger was sustained by it… In subsequent studies where the subjects chose how much chilli sauce the other person had to eat, the punching bag group piled it on….

Note:PIÙ CRUDELE CHI SI SFOGA

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If you think catharsis is good, you are more likely to seek it out when you get pissed. When you vent, you stay angry and are more likely to keep doing aggressive things so you can keep venting.

Note:CONCLUSIONI GENERALI

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you get accustomed to blowing off steam, you become dependent on it. The more effective approach is to just stop.

Note:DIPENDENZA

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Bushman suggests you delay your response, relax or distract yourself with an activity totally incompatible with aggression.

CONTA FINO A DIECI PIUTTOSTO

Tolleranti o bamboccioni? SAGGIO

Tolleranti o bamboccioni?

A quanto pare la violenza esercitata dall’uomo sull’uomo sembra diminuire man mano che la nostra avventura su questo pianeta avanza. Se lo dice Steven Pinker ci dobbiamo credere, è uno studioso di vaglia e avrà fatto bene i suoi conticini.

Trattasi di buona notizia?

Di sicuro è una notizia “strana”: la violenza è sempre stato unfattore vincente nella lotta evolutiva.

Per il resto, possiamo compiacerci… purché si tengano bene a mente tre caveat fondamentali:

1. Caveat Taleb: il fatto che declini la violenza non significa che declini il rischio di violenza: si puo’ anche ottenere la pace attraverso armi in grado di distruggere il pianeta in qualsiasi momento.
2. Caveat Pfeffer: la violenza declina ma noi non siamo meno violenti, abbiamo solo imparato ad evitare guerre inutili e ad offendere il prossimo in modo più raffinato.
3. Caveat Cowen: la violenza declina perché siamo più “bamboccioni”. Il bamboccione è una persona tollerante perché restia al cambiamento. La violenza, ovviamente, è un fattore di cambiamento radicale.

La violenza della religione ch9

La violenza della religione

From Religious Cooperation to Religious Conflict – Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict by Ara Norenzayan

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Domanda: cosa rende una religione fonte di violenza? Tesi: spesso proprio cio’ che la rende edificatrice di civiltà.

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how much of a role does religion play in violent conflicts? Critics of religion think that it is a major cause, and there is of course no shortage of examples, historical and contemporary: the Crusades, the early Islamic conquests, the sixteenth-century Catholic-Protestant religious wars, violent Jihadi campaigns of today, Hindu-Muslim violence, Lebanon of the 1970s and 1980s, Bosnia in the early 1990s, Northern Ireland. With these examples in mind, Richard Dawkins argues: Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb.

Note:LA POSIZIONE CRITICA: RELIGIONE PRIMA CAUSA DI GUERRA

they offer counterexamples of violent conflicts motivated by secular ideologies that lack a religious dimension: the two World Wars in the twentieth century (including the carnage caused by Fascism and the Nazis), Stalin’s and Mao’s purges, and the genocidal Pol Pot regime, to name a few. Earlier, starting in 1915, the Committee for Union and Progress, known as the Young Turk Regime, Westernizers who wanted to reform and secularize the ailing (religiously organized) Ottoman Empire, carried out the first genocide of the twentieth century by annihilating most of the Armenian population as well as depopulating the rest of the Ottoman Christians from their ancestral lands.

Note:PRIMA RISPOSTA DEGLI APOLOGETI

Moreover, defenders of religion point out that some of the sins attributed to religion are in fact caused by something else that gets entangled with religion. William James, one of the great founders of modern psychology who took a great interest in religion, put it this way: The baseness so commonly charged to religion’s account are thus, almost all of them, not chargeable to religion proper, but rather to religion’s wicked practical partner, the spirit of corporate dominion.

Note:SECONDA RISPOSTA

If we take all the violent conflicts we know of in a given historical period, and assess the degree to which religious divisions were a factor, what would we find? Such studies are rare, but in the Encyclopedia of Wars, Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod attempted one such comprehensive analysis. They surveyed nearly 1,800 violent conflicts throughout history. They measured, based on historical records, whether or not religion was a factor, and if so, to what degree. They found that less than 10 percent involved religion at all.

Note:10%

In a related “God and War” audit commissioned by the BBC, researchers again scrutinized 3,500 years of violent… In the end, religion was a factor in 40 percent of all rated violent conflicts, but rarely as the key motivator of the conflict. Religion is an important player, but rarely the primary cause of wars and violent conflicts….

Note:SECONDO ESAME

Sharpening the Question: Three Clarifications about Religion and Conflict

In the popular imagination, there are the tolerant religions (Buddhism gets a lot of votes, and of course, the pacifist Quakers!) and there are intolerant religions (the fundamentalist strains of the Abrahamic faiths)… Today, many people, with more seriousness than Franken, think that radical Islam is the “problem religion” of the twenty-first century, but ten centuries earlier, it was Christianity (mainly Catholicism), and Islamic Spain was a cosmopolitan center of many faiths, a far more tolerant society than medieval Christendom. If some religions are inherently more violent than others, how do we explain these changes within a religious tradition?…

Note:RELIGIONE DI PACE

Religion and Its “Wicked Partners”

We wanted to know: do people who are more religiously devoted scapegoat other religious groups more? Or less? The answer, it turned out, depends on teasing apart “religious devotion” from its “wicked partners.”… We also considered what James called religion’s wicked intellectual partner, the “spirit of dogmatic dominion.” We got a measure of religious exclusivity: “My God (beliefs) is the only true God (beliefs).”… Hansen and I found that, after matching people on age, gender, occupational status, and other factors, exclusivity increased the odds of scapegoating. No surprise there—more dogmatic people are more scapegoating of other religions. But what was more interesting, holding constant exclusivity, was that prayer frequency reduced the odds of scapegoating….

Note:DISCERNERE NELLE RELIGIONI: ESCLUSIVITÀ DOGMATISMO PREGHIERA

Religion inevitably contains, reflects, and reveals all that is within the realm of humanity: the good and the bad. It is like any other facet of human civilization: some of it is noble and inspirational, much of it is nonsensical and even dangerous.

Note:ALLPORT

Religious tendencies contribute to intolerance and violence in at least three ways. The first one involves the workings of supernatural monitoring as a group-building social device. This leads to a sliding scale of distrust toward those who fall outside of one’s own supernatural jurisdiction. Second is the social bonding power of religious participation and ritual that could exacerbate conflict between groups. Third, religion fosters sacred values, making them immune to trade-off,

Note:LE TRE VIE DA CUI S’INSINUA L’INTOLLERANZA: SUPERERWATCHER (COESIONE), AFFILIAZIONE, SACRALITA’.

The Outer Limits of Supernatural Monitoring

Social cohesion inevitably involves setting up boundaries between those who can be trusted and those who cannot. After all, and despite some theological teachings about universal love and indiscriminate compassion, a religious community would not be a cooperative community if there were no social boundaries.

Note:I CONFINI DELLA FIDUCIA. CREDERE CHE DIO CI GUARDI E’ ESSENZIALE

Azim Shariff and I tested this idea in the well-known Dictator Game… If Christian folk were good theologians, they would follow Christian doctrine and be “Good Samaritans,” being generous equally with everyone. But they were not. Christian participants primed with thoughts of God were most generous toward the Christian receiver, less generous toward a stranger with unknown religious affiliation, and least generous toward the Muslim receiver… While this result is not exactly an indication of intense hostility toward religious outgroups, it does show that making supernatural monitoring salient does lead to a discriminant form of generosity that is sensitive to group boundaries….

Note:TESTARE L’IPOTESI DEL DIO ONNISCIENTE

Religious Participation, Social Solidarity, and Conflict

There is a common belief that social ties are inherently good, and indeed there is a great deal of evidence showing that people with strong community ties are healthier, happier, and more prosocial.

Note:IL LATO POSITIVO DELLE RELAZIONI FORTI

The same processes that build community also open the door for exclusion to those who are seen as not belonging, and often, violent opposition to those who are seen as threatening. This could be called the social solidarity hypothesis of intergroup violence.

Note:IL LATO OSCURO

In a series of experiments, psychologists Adam Waytz and Nicholas Epley illustrate how this seeming paradox enables a particularly toxic form of an intergroup attitude: dehumanization of socially distant others… Who dehumanizes more: people who feel socially disengaged or socially connected? Their results were counterintuitive but decisive: feelings of stronger social connection to close others led to more dehumanization and harsher moral judgment of socially distant others….

Note:DEUMANIZZAZIONE

Suicide attacks come in waves, with one act of self-sacrifice inspiring others, creating cultural cycles of violent martyrdom. What better way to inspire and mobilize one’s community than to lay down one’s life for a cause? As an extreme form of parochial altruism

Note:KAMIKAZE

We found that those who attended mosque often, compared to those who attended rarely or never, were twice to three-and-a-half times more likely to support suicide attacks against the perceived enemy (Israelis). This clearly supports the social solidarity hypothesis.

Note:IL SUICIDA È SOCIALMENTE ATTIVO

No doubt, then, religious practices and rituals can add fuel to conflict. But it is important to emphasize that religious participation can also be coopted to work for greater inclusiveness.

Note:MA… CI SONO FORME DI PARTECIPAZIONE CHE CI RENDONO PIU’ TOLLERANTI

In a pioneering study, a team of economists led by David Clingingsmith wanted to know what effects, if any, participation in the hajj—the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca—has on social attitudes toward various groups. Are people transformed by this powerful experience? This annual pilgrimage brings together millions of practicing Muslims from all over the world and all walks of life into the holy city of Mecca to devote themselves to prayer, fasting, and other ascetic practices… Clingingsmith’s findings were complex and wide ranging, but they told a consistent story: hajj participation led to more tolerance toward Muslims and nonMuslims alike. It increased endorsement of equality, harmony, and peace among different ethnic and religious groups. Participation also encouraged more favorable attitudes toward women and their right to education and jobs….

Note:COME TI TRASFORMA ANDARE ALLA MECCA?

It is only in political contexts where there is asymmetric conflict and there are strong feelings that one’s group is under threat that altruism turns violent. In less conflict-prone contexts, when there is no target to attack or adversary to scapegoat, religious attendance would be more about sacrificing and less about attacking.

Note:IL CONTESTO

there is the nature of the religious participation itself. In the case of the former, religious participation was local—it reflected how often Palestinians attended mosque or Jewish settlers remembered attending synagogue in their local neighborhoods. In the hajj, in contrast, participation is global by its very nature. It’s an opportunity for Muslims to meet and interact with other Muslims of all stripes from all over the world… Religious ritual is typically enacted in a local context and cements ties with one’s immediate neighbors….

Note:ESPERIENZA GLOBALE

Religion and the Sacred: Negotiating the Non-Negotiable

Finally, a third path from religion to conflict is something that religions are particularly good at: the creation of sacred values.

Note:IL SACRO-VALORI NONNEGOZIABILI

Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges explain: Ample historical and cross-cultural evidence shows that when conflict is framed by competing religious and sacred values, intergroup violence may persist for decades, even centuries. Disputes over otherwise mundane phenomena (people, places, objects, events) then become existential struggles, as when land becomes “holy land.” Secular issues become sacralized and nonnegotiable.

Note:GUERRA SANTA

All of this tells us that parts of the religious bundle can create and intensify conflict, but somewhere in the same bundle there lie seeds that can be coopted to soften and overcome conflict.

AMBIVALENZA

Mors tua vita mea: tutti i vantaggi della violenza

Gli indiani Yanomamö vivono nell’ Amazzonia al confine tra Brasile e Venezuela. Costituiscono per gli antropologi un caso più unico che raro poiché non hanno mai avuto contatti con la civiltà moderna. Guardando loro guardiamo all’uomo primitivo che eravamo (e impariamo molto).

Il loro più importante studioso è stato Napoleon A. Chagnon che ha sintetizzato la sua esperienza trentacinquennale nel libro – bellissimo quanto ostracizzato - “Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes -- the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists”.

Fino agli anni cinquanta la loro esistenza era addirittura sconosciuta. Saranno stati in  20.000 anime che vivevano dispersi in 250 villaggi indipendenti sempre in guerra tra loro.

NC arrivò in Amazzonia presso gli Y nel 1964. Allora il governo li trascurava completamente, giusto qualche sporadica distribuzione di pillole antimalaria.

I loro territori erano poco accessibili poiché vivevano lontani dai grandi fiumi.

I primi a contattarli (come sempre)…

… newly arrived mission groups who came to convert them to Christianity…

NC spiega la sua presa di contatto…

… I made a small mud-and-thatch hut next to one of the recently contacted villages and started to learn the Yanomamö language…

Tornò regolarmente degli anni successivi ma il periodo di residenza più importante andò dal novembre 1964 al marzo 1966. Un periodo di notevoli rischi e avventure. Un tempo l’antropologo che lavorava sul campo viveva in isolamento per mesi interi, oggi chiama regolarmente casa ogni giorno.

Raggiungere i nostri eroi richiede almeno sei ore di canoa dall’ultima postazione civile sull’ Orinoco. Ma il difficile è vivere con loro…

… The Yanomamö were fascinating, wild, and very difficult to live with, especially when you were the only one of your kind…

Si tratta di persone dure, anche se si trasformano se catapultati in contesti a loro estranei, per esempio le “vicine” missioni di Padre Luigi Cocco…

… they quickly learned to modify their habits and could be very cooperative and even charming in small numbers…

Ad ogni modo, oggi, non sono più quelli di una volta…

… ruined by creeping civilization and increased contact with the “outside world.”… Latecomers denounce me because the Yanomamö they visit at Salesian or other missions today are not the same kinds of Yanomamö I first…

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I selvaggi vivono in uno stato di guerra perenne…

… The Yanomamö were one of the last remaining large tribes that were still locked in intervillage warfare, struggling to maintain their independence, security, and safety from the ever-possible unexpected attacks by their Yanomamö neighbors…

NC è stato testimone di questa eterna lotta tutti contro tutti…

… I would be one of the last eyewitnesses to the political, social, and military struggles that repeatedly occurred among the Yanomamö… I also learned about many more wars…

Si tratta di un warfare probabilmente tipico dell’uomo primitivo.

Si tratta di uno stadio di transizione…

… These people were involved in a barely perceptible transition from “primitive” to “complex.”…

Finora lo conoscevamo solo grazie all’archeologia. Ora possiamo guardarlo dal vivo.

L’approdo finale: lo stato…

… terminated with the development of the political state and “civilization.”…

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Oggi l’antropologia si è politicizzata e anche solo riportare certe scoperte puo’ essere pericoloso per la carriera di uno studioso…

… denounce earlier anthropologists in the name of political advocacy of native rights… because this older image of the Yanomamö does not conform to what the activists want to see…

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L’ubiquità del terrore è la più grande scoperta fatta vivendo con Y.

Oggi siamo ansiosi per i terroristi islamici? Crediamo forse di vivere un periodo particolare della storia umana?

Sbagliato: lo stato d’ansia presso Y è lo stato naturale. La morte puo’ arrivare da un momento all’altro per mano del vicino.

L’errore di Rousseau: pensare all’innocenza del buon selvaggio…

… Rousseau never used the phrase “noble savage” (or “the good savage,” as it is sometimes translated) in his best known work, The Social Contract (1762), but the concept he described—that humans in the state of nature were blissful, nonviolent, altruistic, and noncompetitive and that people were generally “nice” to each other—was soon given that name…

Si tratta di un idealismo illusorio…

… One point I emphasize in this book is that our assumptions about the alleged social tranquility of the past may be idealistic and incorrect…

La vita dei nostri antenati era ben diversa…

… Life in the societies of ancient past—the “Stone Age”—appears to have been decidedly uncertain and fraught with danger, mostly from neighboring peoples who seemed to be ever willing to fall upon you when you least expected it—and this possibility was never very long out of your mind…

E’ Thomas Hobbes – e non Rousseau - lo studioso che meglio ha descritto questo stadio primitivo della vitta umana…

… short, nasty, and brutish…

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Le discipline scientifiche sono sempre in cerca di una grandezza da “massimizzare” per rendere coerente il loro discorso…

… In economics, for example, maximizing profit… In political philosophy it might be maximizing the greatest good… In biology it might be maximizing reproductive…

La vita con Y ci fa capire che l’uomo primitivo massimizza la sua sicurezza e lo fa attraverso la guerra e la violenza…

… He likened war to foul weather—not just a shower or two, but a persistent condition for extended periods of time, something chronic…

Si vive con una paura costante di attacchi dall’esterno. Rousseau e Hobbes hanno ricavato le loro tesi da una mera speculazione a tavolino ma ora abbiamo la possibilità di verificarle sul campo.

Questa verificata è stata avversata dal “politicamente corretto”…

… For many anthropologists who cling to Rousseau’s view of mankind rather than Hobbes’s, I am a heretic, a misanthrope, and the object of condemnation by politically correct colleagues, especially those who identify themselves as “activists” on behalf of native peoples because I describe the Yanomamö as I found them…

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La forza dell’uomo è la sua capacità di cooperare. Ma purtroppo non si tratta di una capacità naturale…

… ability to live cooperatively in social groups is not “natural”… it is something that must be explained…

Va spiegata.

La miglior spiegazione l’ha fornita il biologo evoluzionista William D. Hamilton. Purtroppo la sua teoria della socialità non è stata presa molto sul serio in antropologia…

… reluctance of anthropological theoreticians and field researchers to take ideas from biology seriously…

Hamilton pubblicò il suo articolo nel 1964 sulla rivista Journal of Theoretical Biology. Effettivamente, una pubblicazione poco letta dagli antropologi.

Si notava che la cooperazione umana era radicata nella parentela…

… frequently noted amity and favoritism characteristically found in kinship… In a very real sense, these “kinship behaviors” were in fact reproductive behaviors… Hamilton called his new concept “inclusive fitness,”… generally known as “kin selection”…

Per un biologo evoluzionista mettere al centro la parentela fu del tutto naturale: tra parenti condividiamo più geni…

… related individuals share genes with each other,… For example, individuals share on average half (50 percent) of their genes with their siblings, they share one-fourth (25 percent) with their half-siblings, an eighth (12.5 percent) with their full cousins, etc….

Esemplare in questo senso l’uscita di J. B. S. Haldane…

… “I’d lay down my life for eight cousins”… That’s because eight cousins would carry, on average, 100 percent of the genes that the person who laid down his life carried…

Ma l’antropologia si distrasse e non colse il punto di Hamilton. E dire che non parlava altro che di “parentele” (vedi Lévi Strauss).

E’ facile andare d’accordo tra parenti. Ma i parenti stretti sono pochi: comunità più vaste richiedono qualcosa in più rispetto alla parentela…

… It is easy to get along with your neighbors when there are only a few dozen of them in your band or village and most of them are close kin—brothers and sisters, or dependent juveniles like your children, nephews, and nieces…

Il passaggio dalla centralità della parentela alla centralità della Legge astratta è la transizione illustrata da Y…

… Large, politically complex societies emerged only after—or as a consequence of—the replacement of kinship institutions and nepotism by other institutions, by what Hobbes called the power that keeps men in awe, namely, the political state and law…

Si capisce meglio perché i primi antropologi fossero avvocati o comunque esperti di giurisprudenza: perché il periodo della transizione corrisponde ad una scoperta della Legge.

L’uomo primitivo non ha istituzioni politiche, deve crearle…

… most of the peoples in the newly discovered worlds of central Africa, Polynesia, Melanesia, Australia, and the Americas lacked what we have come to know as the political state and the law…

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Ci sono due canali attraverso i quali si presenta l’esigenza di autorità e leggi.

Primo: un gruppo più vasto è anche più potente e sicuro…

… larger villages are more secure than smaller… as the group increases in size from, say 40 to 80 people, the role that political leaders (headmen) must play in keeping order increases… tasks become more difficult as village sizes get larger—150 people…

Secondo: i conflitti risolti con la secessione dei dissidenti diventano problematici allorché il territorio diventa fittamente popolato…

… the presence of potentially hostile neighbors inhibits village fissioning, keeping people at home where disputes and arguments increase, but also helping the village to survive as a group in a political situation…

La nuova soluzione escogitata è semplice: la tirannia. Un capo o una casta ristretta link) legittimata ad usare violenza sui membri del gruppo.

Ecco, Y illustrano questo stadio dell’umanità in modo vivido…

… When villages get even larger, say 200 people, headmen can become oppressive and tyrannical…. Some of the Yanomamö villages I lived in contained close to 300 people… political leaders in these villages were extremely harsh men…