Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today’s topic, friends.
To enrich our sense of the value of friends and its connection to respect, it’s worthwhile to consider how Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan deals with this topic on his Theme Time Radio Hour episode, “Friends and Neighbors.” So, without further ado, here’s Bob’s take on friends.
Bob on Friends
Early in the show, Bob plays us a lively tune by Porter Wagoner and the Wagonmasters called “Howdie Neighbors.” Despite the title, it’s not just about greeting people who live next door or on your block. People from all over the community are invited to a grand party with music, dancing, and sharing a bite to eat. It sounds like a great way to meet some new friends and catch up a little with some old ones as well. Conjure up in your mind a lively fiddle, a frolicking banjo, and the following lyrics:
Howdy neighbor, howdy, get out and come right in
We’ll make a bowl of gravy to sop your biscuits in
So howdy neighbor howdy come in and sit right down
Come on and tell us all the news how are things in townWe’re so glad to see you,
Been a wonderin’ how you’ve been
Everybody’s feelin’ fine,
So let the fun begin
Get the banjo off the wall and tune it up in [the key of] A
Play some good ole country tunes like grandpa used to play
As the song winds down, Bob greets us listeners with a hearty, “I want you all to be my friends.”
And then he solemnly quotes Friedrich Nietzsche:
“Go up close to your friends, but do not go over to him. We should respect the enemy that is in our friends.”
Said another way, it is important to get close to good friends, but we should keep in mind that all have faults, including our friends. Therefore, we would be wise to find a way to remain close to our friends, but, at the same time, when we see our friend begin to do some unhealthy acts, we shouldn’t just go ahead and join along in these acts just to remain friends. If your friend takes out some heroin, perhaps you might want to politely refuse to partake.
Next, Bob tells us a little about Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the lead singer of the song he is about to play, “Don’t Take Everybody to Be Your Friend.”
“She’s a powerful force of nature, a guitar playin’, singin’ evangelist…Anything but ordinary and plain. She was a big, good lookin’ woman, and divine. Not to mention sublime and splendid, always dressed like she was on her way to church, with that electric guitar strung across her shoulder.”
Here’s a few of the lyrics from a mighty impressive performer:
Oooh don’t, don’t take everybody to be your friend.
You just bear this in mind
A true friend is hard to find.
Please don’t take everybody to be your friend.Some will cause you to weep,
Some will cause you to moan,
Some will gain your confidence,
And cause you to lose your home.
You just bear this in mind
A true friend is hard to find.
Please, don’t take everybody to be your friend.
Choose your friends wisely is obviously the central message here.
Moving right along, Bob tells us about Moon Mullican, a Texan. Bob surmises the guy must be a friendly fellow from the song he sings, “Make Friends.”
Make friends with the rich,
Make friends with the poor,
Make friends with the high,
Make friends with the low.Even a little child,
You oughta greet him with a smile.
While travelin’ through this world, try to make friends.Wear a smile, not a frown,
Don’t you put your neighbour down.
While travelin’ through this world, try to make friends.
Sometimes you may be weak,
Sometimes you may be strong.
Sometimes talked about, sometimes treated wrong.
But you just can’t miss,
If you’ll remember this,
While travelin’ through this world,
Try to make friends.
The delightful interplay between the piano and guitar on that one offers us a metaphor for what beauty can come from two different folks doing their things together.
Next, Bob tells us about one of the wisest guys he ever got to know, Muhammad Ali, who once said, “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything at all.”
As you can see, Bob likes to provide some relevant quotes throughout his show. Here’s one from Aristotle:
In poverty, and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a true refuge. To the young, they help to keep out of mischief, to the old, they are a comfort and aid, and those in the prime of life, they incite to noble deeds.
A little later in the show Bob tells us:
If you need a friend, here’s some things that makes a good friend: Good friends listen to each other. Good friends help each others solve problems. Friends are dependable. This one is very important, good friends never borrow money.
Good friends never change the channel on your radio. Good friends will always tell you when you have food in your teeth. Good friends sometimes pay for dinner. And good friends sometimes let you have the last beer. And if you are doing all of those things, maybe you’ll have a friend, like Carol King sings about. Here’s Carol King. She’s going to brighten up even your darkest night.
From here, Bob launches into Carol’s classic song, “You got a Friend.” A few of the lyrics go:
When you’re down and troubled,
And you need some love and care,
And nothing, nothing is going right,
Close your eyes and think of me,
And soon I will be there
To brighten up even your darkest night.
You just call out my name
And you know wherever I am
I’ll come running to see you again
Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call
And I’ll be there
You’ve got a friend
If the sky above you grows dark and full of clouds
And that old north wind begins to blow
Keep your head together and call my name out loud
Soon you’ll hear me knocking at your door…
Now, ain’t it good to know that you’ve got a friend
When people can be so cold?
They’ll hurt you, yes, and desert you
And take your soul if you let them,
Oh, but don’t you let them.You just call out my name
And you know wherever I am
I’ll come running, running, yeah, yeah, yeah, to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call
And I’ll be there, yes I will.
You’ve got a friend.
Tapestry, the Carol King album this song appears on, was the most popular of the early 1970s era, remaining on the charts for over 6 years. So, on that series of notes, I think we’ll begin to fade out for this week. I hope you enjoyed our little meditation on friends, and I hope you’ll join us again right here at From Insults to Respect.
Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
According to the FDA, there has been a long-standing concern that antidepressants may have a role in inducing worsening of depression and the emergence of suicidality in certain patients during the early phases of treatment. Pooled analyses of short-term placebo-controlled trials of antidepressant drugs showed that these drugs increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults (ages 18-24) classified as having major depressive disorder and other psychiatric disorders. Short-term studies did not show an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24; there was a very slight reduction with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults aged 65 and older.
This may sound somewhat encouraging for those who are thinking of taking antidepressants and are over 24-years old if they are willing to put aside concerns about the many other negative side effects associated with taking this class of drugs. However, interpreting these findings is highly problematic for a number of reasons. For example, these results were based on short-term studies, typically lasting just a few weeks, while many people used the drugs for years. Many drugs that were viewed as relatively safe when the short-term evidence became available later turned out to have serious negative effects when the long-term effects started to come in.
Other concerns have to do with the fact that the current available studies are almost always carried out by the drug companies that have a massive interest in proving that the drugs are safe. With the largest lobbyist group in Washington, DC (see 
“In a meta-analysis of the placebo-controlled trials from 2006, the FDA reported only five suicides in 52,960 patients on SSRIs (one per 10,000 patients)(3), but there were many more suicides in these trials(2). Five years earlier, in 2001, Thomas Laughren, who was responsible for the FDA’s meta-analysis, published a paper using FDA data where he reported 22 suicides in 22,062 patients randomised to antidepressants(4), which is 10 per 10,000, or 10 times as many as he reported in 2006. In Laughren’s 2001 paper, there were four times as many suicides on antidepressants as on placebo, which was statistically significant (P = 0.03, my calculation). However, Laughren did not tell his readers about this but wrote: “There is obviously no suggestion of an excess suicide risk in placebo-treated patients.” No, but there surely was in the drug-treated patients!”
In interpreting the safety of these types of drugs, there are many other types of concerns hidden in the data. For example, there is strong reason to think that the subjects in these published studies are not at all the typical people who take antidepressants. Usually when someone is depressed and is open to taking antidepressants to feel better, they go to a nearby physician and get a prescription for the actual drug. That’s not at all how the subjects in these studies go about it. They have to fill out more forms than usual, and they have to agree to be part of an experiment that has them being randomly assigned to taking either the real drug or a placebo.
Now think about that. If you are depressed and open to taking these types of drugs, why would you agree to not knowing if you are taking the real pill or the fake one? Here’s a possible clue. As it turns out, many, if not all, of the subjects who agree to this are already taking one or more psychiatric drugs, including antidepressants. They have to agree to stop taking the antidepressants that they were taking, which typically leads to very uncomfortable withdrawal reactions.
So, again, why would people who are already depressed agree to undergo such an ordeal. It seems to me that it is very possible that many of these subjects had come to feel that the drugs that they had been taking had not been helping them. Thus, they became willing to try being part of the experiment in the hope that they will be put on another experimental drug they have not tried yet and it might end up providing the relief they were seeking.
Now, add this to the picture. Those who agreed to being subjects were excluded if they had had any suicidal thoughts or attempts. So, keeping this in mind, it turns out that many in this group of subjects are those who were placed in the past on antidepressants and did not have suicidal issues when taking them. This leads one to conjecture that this is a group of people who are particularly less likely to have suicidal issues than most people when they use antidepressants. After all, many people who choose to go on antidepressants in the usual manner (going to a local doctor) do so because they have begun to have suicidal thoughts and feelings, and some may have made an attempt to end their life. These folks would be excluded from participating in the study. Thus, those who participate in these studies are a special group who tend to not have suicidal reactions before taking antidepressants and when taking antidepressants.
Given all of these problems, how can we get some additional relevant information about whether these drugs increase suicidal issues for adults? Well, here’s a recent published study that I think is worthwhile to consider.
We found that antidepressants double the risk of suicidality and violence, and it is particularly interesting that the volunteers in the studies we reviewed were healthy adults with no signs of a mental disorder….
In one of the two crossover trials we excluded because we did not have data on the first period separately, a healthy volunteer committed suicide, which was mentioned in both published articles.A14,A15 She had received duloxetine in increasing doses for 16 days, tapered off the maximum dose of 400 mg daily very quickly (in just four days according to the design of the study) and killed herself four days later while on placebo. 
The authors, several of whom were employees of Eli Lilly or owned stock in the company, judged her suicide ‘to be unrelated to study drug treatment’,A15 although it is well known that the suicide risk is high when an antidepressant is stopped abruptly.
Although only two of the 29 clinical study reports were eligible for our meta-analysis, e.g. as the studies needed to be double-blind, two researchers (AØB and PBD) read them all (2224 pages) and extracted data independently, as we wanted to explore possible selective reporting of harms in the published articles. Nineteen clinical study reports reported on the harms we investigated and nine of these were published, but less than half of the harms were reported in the articles (21 of 50 events on antidepressants and two of four events on placebo)….
There can be little doubt that we underestimated the harms of antidepressants. For 11 of our 13 trials, we only had access to the published article, and it well documented that the drug companies underreport seriously the harms of antidepressants related to suicide and violence, either by simply omitting them from the reports, by calling them something else or by committing scientific misconduct.
Psychiatrists believe that the suicide risk with antidepressants is only increased till age 24, but this misconception builds on seriously flawed trial data that the FDA has published.
They also found out that many suicide attempts must have been missing; some of the investigators responded that there were suicide attempts they had not reported in their trials, while others replied that they did not even look for them. Further, events occurring shortly after active treatment was stopped were not counted. Another 2005 meta-analysis conducted by independent researchers used UK drug regulator data and included 40,826 patients; they found a non-significant doubling in suicides or self-harm events when events occurring later than 24 hours after the randomised phase was over were included (relative risk 2.14, 95% confidence interval 0.96 to 4.75, our calculation).
Even the FDA’s 2006 meta-analysis of 100,000 patients in 372 placebo-controlled trials
Well, this is just one study that discusses the issue of suicide risks for adults choosing to take antidepressants. I chose to present it because it is the most recent study on this topic, and it seemed to me to present some additional information not usually available in the US literature.
There is something similar to this when it comes to how Americans feel about psychiatrists. There are many people who hold the belief that psychiatrists are enormously helpful to our society by relieving suffering while others believe that psychiatrists have sold out to the pharmaceutical industry, consequently leading to enormous harm.
We get to see and hear favorable positions for the psychiatric point of view from the numerous ads on TV, radio, and print media sponsored by the fabulously wealthy pharmaceutical industry, which has the biggest lobbyist group in Washington, DC (see 
Psychiatrists have become addicted to the enormous financial benefits of transforming human suffering into a language of mental illness and then convincing people that they need to spend the rest of their life on psychiatric drugs. The consequences to society of this mental illness/drug approach is an enormous increase in people becoming disabled due to the negative drug effects. There is also some recent research suggesting that when women on these drugs become pregnant, there is an increased risk of miscarriages, and if the infant is brought into this world alive, she or he is at an increased risk of serious health consequences.
In my opinion, one of the best places to obtain the arguments about the harmful approach of psychiatric drugs is at the “Mad In America” site that readers can access 
The latest version of what is viewed by psychiatrists as the most authoritative American text on mental illness is the DSM-5. It tells us that mental disorders “are usually associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other important activities (APA, 2013, p. 20).” There is some additional vague wording here about also having a “dysfunction.” Although my focus here is on the suffering component of the definition, I will say a few words about the functioning part of the definition shortly.
n case this vague definition does not provide enough wiggle room for clinicians to label all people seeking their services as having a mental disorder and to prescribe a drug for it, the ICD tells the clinician, “When the requirements are only partially fulfilled, it is nevertheless useful to record a diagnosis for most purposes” (p. 8). This type of double talk is one of the reasons why many people view the mental illness construct as too vague for scientific purposes.
Now, lets get back to the “suffering” component of the mental disorder definition. According to Buddhist philosophy, the first Noble Truth is that to live is to suffer. According to Christian philosophers that I have read, suffering is something to make us think. It is a tool to get our attention and to accomplish the Lord’s purposes in our lives in a way that would never occur without the trial or irritation. In Judaism, the Talmud teaches us that the righteous suffer in this world in order to increase their reward in the Eternal World. Rabbi Eliezer, in the Talmud, welcomed his suffering, calling his pains ”my friends.”
If we look outside the religious teachings, we find that giving birth is accompanied by suffering, and yet it makes more sense to classify this experience as a natural part of creating new life rather than a pathological condition. When writers receive rejections from publishers, or a loved one dies, suffering often accompanies these experiences.
Add to all of this the problems one encounters when one tries to decide objectively how much suffering, beyond the “normal” amount that one experiences during life’s parade of disappointments, is required to ascribe a diagnosis. In the end, can we really determine if one’s “suffering” is really a symptom of a disorder, or just life being life.
In saying this, I am not seeking to encourage people to be disrespectful to people who choose to take psychiatric drugs. It is their life, and it is their right to make the best decision they know how to make, and I wish them well. At the same time, I believe suffering may best be served by exploring what it could potentially provide. In my own life, I have seen numerous examples of people growing from their suffering. And one of the hardest lessons I had to learn, when seeking to be of help, is that there are times when it is best to address another’s suffering not by trying to fix it, but to stand respectfully beside the person’s misery and sharing what they are going through.
It begins with Sanders turning to Kasich and asking him, “Is Trump a liar?”
Kasich, 
Then, Kasich says, “But I’m not going to go so far as to call someone a liar! That when you get, when you start using terms like that, Bernie, we saw it in Congress. You know, back in the days when we were in the majority and they were after Jim Wright and all those things and there was a lot of calling people dogs and liars. Just let the facts speak for themselves, and then we can draw a conclusion. And I’m only saying this, not because I’m trying to defend anybody. I’m worried about my country. I’m worried about getting through this.”
At this point, Sanders replies, “But when we talk about the facts, I mean Jake asked a pretty simple question. All that I’m saying is, it’s not a question of, you’re a Conservative and I don’t think you’re a liar. We disagree on everything, but that doesn’t make you a liar, and I don’t think that makes me a liar. But if you were to tell me that three to five million people voted illegally in this election, of which no Republican or Democratic official believes, what can I say? I think that it’s a lie.”
Here Kasich looks troubled, and replies, “I, I, look, I guess I’m gonna do it, I didn’t think I would, does that mean that someone who writes a campaign ad that distorts somebody’s record is a liar? I mean, we have to be careful about our terms. That’s all I’m saying, okay?” 
Regular readers of this blog well know that name calling leads to me and others to lose some respect for the name caller. Calling someone a “liar” is name calling, and we can see the loss of respect that Governor Kasich feels for those who use that term when we watch the video clip.
As Bob Dylan once said on his radio show, “According to a survey, 4 out of 5 people admit to telling white lies at least once a day, and I’m telling you that that other guy, he’s lying.”
And they love pictures of him illustrating his lying ways. This might have been the reason for the chuckling of Senator Sanders and those in the audience when Governor Kasich began to reply to the question, “Is Trump a liar?” But consider how you would feel if someone called the candidate you support a liar. 
Recall that there were people calling President Obama a liar during his administration and illustrations of what some believed were his lying tendencies. 
I think the Golden Rule applies here. Moreover, calling the president a liar stirs up his supporters to be angry, and this can produce less than ideal conditions for people to come together in mutually beneficial ways.
Now, Senator Sanders has been trying to make the case that there is something different in the type of lying that President Trump engages in compared to what most people engage in. He is seeking to see how he can best make that distinction by bringing up the liar issue. In the clip, he brings up the example of the president declaring repeatedly that between three million and five million people voted illegally, and that if just the legal votes were counted, he not only won the electoral votes, he also won the popular vote. At other times, Sanders noted that the president has repeatedly claimed that his electoral vote victory was by the largest amount in history. When the president is confronted with the facts that the previous president, Mr. Obama, had won more electoral votes then he did, that many other presidents also won by more electoral votes then he did, and that this can easily be verified by anyone really interested in the truth of the matter, he just continued to claim he won the election by the greatest margin in history. At another time, the president claimed he was against the Iraq War despite a videotape clearly showing his support of that war, and no evidence that he spoke out against the war when it was getting under way.
These, along with others that he has made, are indeed whopper-sized lies. By providing the type of specifics that I provided in the previous paragraph it makes the point clearer than calling him a liar.
The good professor first covers the fact that to most the question of whether or not life is worth living hardly ever comes up, so intent are they to live every moment that they have. Others, spend most of their lives questioning whether it would be better to enter into the peace of being consigned to the earth. And then there are those who drift back and forth. After a poetic discourse of these different types, James delves into what we might say if we meet someone who indeed is questioning whether it would be better just to end it all.
“To breathe the air, how delicious!
“To come immediately to the heart of my theme, then, what I propose is to imagine ourselves reasoning with a fellow-mortal who is on such terms with life that the only comfort left him is to brood on the assurance, ‘You may end it when you will.’ What reasons can we plead that may render such a brother (or sister) willing to take up the burden again?”
At this point, Professor James hastens to confess that nothing he has to say will be able to prevent all suicides. If we make an effort to help and despite this, the person ends his or her life, “cases like these belong to the ultimate mystery of evil, concerning which I can only offer considerations tending toward religious patience at the end of this hour.”
He tells us that certain people who have grown up with a religious background, find that as they get older what they were taught and came to sincerely believe is not meshing well with their personal experiences. They observe that their own actions don’t accord with every teaching of the scriptures, and guilt begins to mount. And they begin to learn in science based teachings that the world was not created a few thousand years ago in six days, the animal kingdom evolved in a manner very differently than their religious stories, and when some of this science stuff seems to make sense to them, they feel they are engaging in blasphemy. They feel confused and fearful. Thus, Professor James tells us,
Once the springs of vitality are let loose in this way, without the burden of infinite responsibility, many experience an immense relief. Meanwhile, whatever is causing the suffering “can be tolerated for another twenty-four hours longer, if only to see what tomorrow’s newspaper will contain, or what the next postman will bring.”
Professor James believed that for some suicidal folks, once they have reached the first stage, it may be possible to incite a fighting spirit within. Identify one or more perceived evil from their perspective, and make appeals to help to overthrow it. Professor James explains,
From these words, James encourages us to use inspiring narratives of those who, through acts of courage, made a real and wonderful difference. In the essay, Professor James’s examples are very dated. Therefore, readers may prefer to turn to my 
Some promote the idea that depression is a disease with genetic factors playing an important role in its development. This line of thinking is theorized to reduce stigma because it reduces any blame for the person who is having the experience. But others say that promoting the idea that this group of people have faulty genes will actually increase stigma even if it does reduce blame.
The current study attempted to replicate the initial findings with a large sample of over 38,000 people of European ancestry, using methods that are viewed as “rigorous best practices.” The team of researchers involved in the study found that the presence of the 5-HTTLPR genotype did not increase a risk of depression, even in those who experienced significant life stressors and traumatic events. However, as expected, stress and trauma by themselves were strongly associated with the development of depression.
As we have seen above, the argument that depression is a genetic disease currently has little scientific support. Nevertheless, there are people who will continue to insist that it is due to genetics because some research indicates that if you have family members who experience depression, you are at an increased risk of also having this type of experience.
There are many examples of people who, when they become depressed, take to their beds for a period of time. And indeed, some people who become depressed, though not most, will violently end their lives.
I am not seeking to eliminate this support, though I bemoan the fact that for many the only support that is offered is a prescription for drugs which I believe in the long run leads to far more harm then good.
To counter stigmatizing these individuals, it is far better than pathologizing their experience if we focus on pointing to the numerous examples of people, such as Abraham Lincoln, who suffered deeply from depression experiences, and yet made enormous contributions to our society. Equally important is to explain that simply being at an increased risk for something doesn’t mean someone has a disease. Risk takers, such as the Wright brothers, are well known to be at an increased risk of an early death, but that characteristic allows some folks to bravely enter into a tiny capsule to explore the moon.
Currently, in many countries a wide variety of children are being classified as having ADHD and placed on a regimen of consuming psychiatric drugs. Supporters of this trend often cast a disrespectful eye toward their critics while arguing that scientific research supports their position. Meanwhile, equally scientific minded individuals who have looked at the same research come up with a completely different set of conclusions. So, about once a year I take a look at the most current research to see if I can throw some light on this topic.
Factors looked at were academic achievement and social functioning. Although the medicated ADHD students didn’t do any better or worse on these measures then the unmedicated ADHD students, they did endure many uncomfortable side effects while they were on the ADHD drugs, such as sleep problems, headaches, stomach aches, and feelings of depression each evening when the drug wore off. Thousands of dollars per child were consumed on purchasing the medications that achieved some modest short term gains but had no lasting positive effects.
“In this study, the authors pooled together MRI brain-scan data for the 3,242 participants in the study (which had been collected and archived at the 23 sites), and then calculated, for each cohort, mean intracranial volumes and mean volumes of specific brain regions. They reported the differences for each of these comparisons and the “effect size” of the differences. This is the critical aspect of the results to consider and understand: effect sizes reveal the true strength of the findings and how much overlap there is between the individual brain volumes in both groups, and thus establish the likelihood that an individual in the ADHD group has a smaller brain volume than an individual in the control group.
The biggest effect size that was found was .19. This was for differences in the mean volume of a region known as the accumbens for ADHD labelled children under 15 years of age. An effect size of 3, which is the largest effect size one can obtain using this type of statistic, would have suggested that pretty much all of the children in the study that were labelled as having ADHD had a distinctly smaller volume in that region than controls. An effect size of 2 would have suggested a distinctly weaker relationship and that some of the children in the ADHD group did not have smaller volumes than the control group, some in the ADHD group had larger volumes than the control group, and some of the control group had smaller than average volumes in that region and yet showed no signs of ADHD. An effect size of 1 would have indicated even a weaker relationship. The effect size of .19 is less than a fifth the size of 1, that is, about a small an effect size as you can imagine. (To learn more about what an effect size is, access this article by Robert Coe: 
Particularly troubling is the suggestion by the study’s authors that their findings will help to reduce stigma. How in the world does telling people that ADHD people have smaller brains help to reduce stigma for that group of people? Moreover, even if we found enough evidence to conclude that there are some differences in the brains of people being labelled ADHD, this would still not lead us to conclude they have a brain disorder. A difference is not automatically a disorder. Having people with different brains can be a wonderful thing. For example, it can mean that some people will prefer to work sitting all day, while others prefer to do work requiring lots of activity. We need both types of people, and other types as well, to enrich our lives.
For example, in this panel from a recent comic, we see a caricature of Trump insulting several news outlets. Whenever the president has been asked why he has been utilizing these types of insults, he claims that the other side started it. He’s just getting back at them, he explains, because they insulted him first.
In the comic, TRFF, the guy with a mustache and cigar, views himself as an authoritarian and is just delighted that he has been appointed Deputy Director of Payback. Let’s begin our exploration below the surface with a quick discussion of what it means to be an authoritarian.
“An authoritarian leadership style is being used when a leader dictates policies and procedures, decides what goals are to be achieved, and directs and controls all activities without any meaningful participation by the subordinates. This leader has full control of the team, leaving low autonomy within the group.
Perhaps one of the best known leaders who embodied the authoritative style of leadership was Nelson Mandela. After serving 27 years in jail for seeking justice for the majority of South African people, he had plenty of reasons to seek payback. But in a speech delivered to the European Parliament in 1990, he stated:
In contrast to the image that many people have of Nelson Mandela’s leadership style, take another look at the caricature in the Doonesbury comic of a authoritarian in charge of payback for the president’s administration. As a response to some guy who is disloyal to the administration, TRFF says that if it was up to him, he’d throw the guy out of a plane. TRFF is just loving the fact that he gets to demean, threaten, or fire people every day.
In the short run, there are people who are willing to Kowtow to them, but there is a spirit within that slowly begins to get riled, and danger lurks below. It is not always easy to see this in the muddy complexity of large organizations, but search your own heart and you will know of its existence.
A while back, I heard about a company that had been having a hard time getting its workers to arrive on time. The company executives had a policy of punishing those who came late by docking their pay. Not only didn’t this work well, but the workers became bitter toward the executives, and many workers, after being trained at great expense, would soon leave for employment at competing companies.
Recently, President Trump advocated that the current US health plan be replaced with a new health care law. He was unable to get enough votes for its passage. Will he now unleash the dogs of payback? Should he?
Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today we take up the question, can the science minded and religious minded legitimately take up an attitude of mutual respect?
There are, of course, people who fervently believe that opinions that do not rest firmly on the broad shoulders of scientific evidence are nothing more than superstition. Many of these individuals, as soon as they hear that a person is religious, give off vibes of disdain.
Meanwhile, there are religious folks who believe that science minded individuals have led to a world of atomic energy catastrophes, billowing coal chimneys, people with their noses in their devices while tending to their babies, etc. In their hearts, these religious folks angrily believe that the science minded are leading humanity down a filthy, destructive path.
Then there are people who richly agree with Albert Einstein when he wrote, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
“First, what is the nature of it? what is its constitution, origin, and history? And second, What is its importance, meaning, or significance, now that it is once here? The answer to the one question is given in an existential judgment or proposition. The answer to the other is a proposition of value…. Neither judgment can be deduced immediately from the other. They proceed from diverse intellectual preoccupations, and the mind combines them only by making them first separately, and then adding them together.”
Religion, in contrast, seeks to deliberately nurture the moral sense. For Einstein, “A person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value.”
Did Laura and Harry make the right decision? The question may seem easy if they had a great time and came back uninjured. But what if they had had a terrible accident? Would this require that they conclude that they had made the wrong decision? Can science answer this question?
Now, some science minded folks well recognize that some decisions must be made before the availability of sufficient scientific evidence. They argue that in such cases, they don’t need any religion to tell them what is right and what is wrong, they can decide that perfectly well on their own. I, for one, am on friendly terms with these people. I am not seeking to force religion on them. At the same time, I know there are people who choose to participate in a religion, valuing the stirring lessons from their clergy, the social connections, and the community support for worthy causes. They choose to use some of what they experience by being a member of their religion to make some of their decisions. I, for one, am on friendly terms with them. I don’t see the sense of automatically disdaining either the science minded or religious minded.
Some people in the science camp like to point to several religious related incidents, such as planes crashing into the World Trade buildings, in order to condemn all religion. But there were people in the science camp during the religious hating Soviet Revolution that participated in the slaughter of millions. Moreover, during the Nazi regime, Hitler found plenty of science minded people willing to aid in the carrying out of atrocities.
Perhaps the greatest difficulty science minded people have with religion is that it promotes magical thinking. I hasten to point out that not all religions do so. For example, the Transcendentalists, with Ralph Waldo Emerson as one of their most eloquent writers, embraced principles of science. The Dalai Lama, as well, presents us a religion very open to what science can teach us.
Let me add as well, with regards to this magical thinking issue, that many people who view themselves as religious, well recognize the magical thinking that appears in their scriptures, but do not accept them. Instead, they view them as comforting to those who don’t have a scientific mind, then they slip by those sections of scripture to those that they more highly value. We can liken it to a guy who recognizes that his mother holds some beliefs with which he completely disagrees, but he continues to love her for all the other aspects of her life that so beautifully nourishes his existence.
This one has to do with the wisdom of remaining skeptical until we have sound science evidence to support our position. I can see some merit in that. At the same time, in real life circumstances, a question comes up regarding just what is the point at which our opinion should be coerced by the existence of sound science? Bear in mind that there was not so very long ago a procedure known as lobotomies. This brain surgical procedure was viewed as being backed by such solid scientific evidence that powerful people were able to involuntarily subject less powerful folks to the scalpel. It didn’t turn out well, at least not for those who had part of their brains gouged out.
So, there are good people who are hesitant to accept what science folks tell us. Is it wise to treat them with disdain, or to remain on friendly terms with them while respectfully disagreeing?
James points out that in most areas of human life, science simply has not come far enough to determine with any great precision what is the most favorable road to travel. The variables that in a controlled lab seem somewhat predictable frequently become entangled in so many other variables out in the more natural world that we must make decisions as best that we can, guided by nonscientific lights. Having some faith, even without sufficient scientific evidence, may be helpful.
For James, some people possess a strong religious sense, others less so, and others find a void in that section of their brain. Where is the evidence that any one of these types are somewhat less human, or less worthy of respect? Perhaps there is some value in having some diversity within the human species.
One day I was watching Donald Trump’s first news conference since he became president. There, the remarks that I found most interesting had to do with his expressed outrage about how hateful the press has been toward him. The first time it came up, he was asked the following question by a reporter:
“Well, the leaks are real. You’re the one that wrote about them and reported them, I mean the leaks are real. You know what they said, you saw it and the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake. So one thing that I felt it was very important to do — and I hope we can correct it. Because there’s nobody I have more respect for — well, maybe a little bit but the reporters, good reporters.
“And if I may follow up on that, just something that Jonathan Karl was asking you about. You said that the leaks are real, but the news is fake. I guess I don’t understand. It seems that there’s a disconnect there. If the information coming from those leaks is real, then how can the stories be fake?”
A great model to consider as an alternative to Trump’s style is that of John F. Kennedy’s. Over the whole of his presidency, Kennedy averaged a 70.1 percent approval rating, comfortably the highest of any post-World War II president. By comparison, the average for all presidents between 1938 and 2012 is 54 percent. Trump, last I looked, was at about 40 percent.
