COLLECTIVE MADNESS
“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Getting rid of Assad would be a good start.
ReplyDeleteIn reality, being an isolationist requires you to be okay with Assad slaughtering innocent civilians in Syria (and the associated refugee crisis). And Putin stealing territory in Europe (and the associated destabilization of western security).
ReplyDeleteAnd China turning the Pacific Ocean into its private fortress (and the associated threats to the global trade and energy supplies that travel through those waters). And Middle Eastern nations preferencing politicized-sectarianism (of the kind that fosters terrorism) over political and economic reform.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no neo-conservative. I do not believe that U.S. military power should be used to reshape the world in our image.
Spending More on Defense
THERE!
DeleteTake THAT, Quirk, and put it in your faux peace pipe and smoke it.
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DeleteIt can be argued that US actions in the ME have led to more deaths than Assad.
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It can be argued that US actions have not led to more deaths than Assad.
DeleteIt can be argued that O'bozo's inaction in taking the troops out of Iraq way too soon has led to more deaths than Assad.
Greg Gopman is a technology entrepreneur with a solution for San Francisco’s homelessness crisis. It is not your usual shelter or affordable housing. It is a cruise ship.
ReplyDelete...
There is a precedent for the cruise ship plan. Gopman was inspired by Art Agnos, who became mayor of San Francisco in 1988, the year before a 6.9-magnitude earthquake led to the collapse of part of the Bay Bridge.
...
Gopman, who has been on about 10 cruises, said the inspiration came to him after reading an op-ed written by Agnos and meeting with him. Gopman has his eye on a 13-deck craft that was retrofitted for use in the Mediterranean refugee crisis and is available for $13m.
Hmmmm.....
DeleteSounds problematical to me.
Nika, a young Syrian woman, was walking down the street in her hometown when she heard a loud shot.
ReplyDeleteSuddenly, a man in front of her fell to the ground with his head gaping open, exposing his brain.
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When Angela Konrad (pictured below), chair of the theatre program at Trinity Western University, first heard this story, she was at a loss for words.
“I think of all the things that I heard, the idea of that is so zombie apocalypse,” Konrad said.
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disPLACE is the first production under Konrad’s new company, Dark Glass Theatre — a passion project she has been pursing for the past year.
“I realized that what I’ve always wanted is to tell stories that I really care about. And so I started thinking about a number of different seeds that have been planted in my head about shows that I wanted to do over the last number of years.
Theatre Company
Oldest fossil ever found on Earth dating back 4.2bn years shows alien life on Mars is likely
ReplyDeleteSarah Knapton, science editor
1 MARCH 2017 • 6:54PM
It’s life, but not as we know it. The oldest fossil ever discovered on Earth shows that organisms were thriving 4.2 billion years ago, hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought.
The microscopic bacteria, which were smaller than the width of a human hair, were found in rock formations in Quebec, Canada, but would have lived in hot vents in the 140F (60C) oceans which covered the early planet.
The discovery is the strongest evidence yet that similar organisms could also have evolved on Mars, which at the time still had oceans and an atmosphere, and was being bombarded by comets which probably brought the building blocks of life to Earth.
A microscopic image of one of the earliest lifeform ever found CREDIT: DOMINIC PAPINEAU
The team who made the finding at University College London believe that looking for similar fossils on the Red Planet is the best chance of finding evidence of alien life.
“Early Mars and early Earth are very similar places, so we may expect to find life on both planets at this time,” said doctoral student Matthew Dodd, the lead author of the study which was co-funded by Nasa.
“We know that life managed to get a foothold and evolve rapidly on Earth. So if we have life evolving in hydrothermal vent systems maybe even 4.2 billion years ago when both planets had liquid water on their surface, then we would expect both planets to develop early life.
“If we do future sample returns from Mars and look at similarly old rocks and we don’t find evidence of life then this certainly may point to the fact that Earth might have been a very special exception, and life may just have arisen on Earth.”
The world's oldest fossils prove tiny microorganisms lived up to 4.2 billion years ago
The world's oldest fossils prove tiny microorganisms lived up to 4.2 billion years ago CREDIT: DOMINIC PAPINEAU
Prior to this discovery, the oldest microfossils reported were found in Western Australia and dated at 3.4 billion years ago, leading scientists to speculate that life probably started around 3.7 billion years.
But the new finding suggests life could have formed as early as 4.5 billion years, just one hundred million years after Earth formed.
The tiny lifeforms were discovered in the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt in Quebec, Canada, which contains some of the oldest sedimentary rocks in the world, dating back to 4.3 billion years ago, when the area was an iron-rich ocean.
The organisms would have resembled small tubes, with a ball-like base which stuck to the ocean rocks, and a stalk suspended in the water to collect iron, on which they fed.
They are similar to iron-oxidising bacteria found near other hydrothermal vents today.
“We found the filaments and tubes inside centimetre-sized structures called concretions or nodules,” said Dr Dominic Papineau (UCL Earth Sciences and the London Centre for Nanotechnology).
The landscape of the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt (NSB), a rock formation in Quebec, Canada
“The fact we unearthed them from one of the oldest known rock formations, suggests we’ve found direct evidence of one of Earth’s oldest life forms.
“This discovery helps us piece together the history of our planet and the remarkable life on it, and will help to identify traces of life elsewhere in the universe.”
DeleteIf similar life were found earlier on Mars, it could even indicate that life may have had a Martian origin, a concept known as panspermia.
A section of the rock showing the tiny fossils inside
A section of the rock showing the tiny fossils inside CREDIT: DOMINIC PAPINEAU
Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees said it was possible that life had evolved on both planets at the same time.
“It's indeed possible that life started on Mars as well as the Earth, but then fizzled out - maybe leaving some traces that we will discover from future probes,” he said.
“It's unlikely, I think, that we are 'Martians' in the sense that life started only on Mars and then moved here via a meteorite - as some people have claimed in the past.”
Space expert Dr Dan Brown of Nottingham Trent University added: "The discovery is exciting since it demonstrates how quickly life can form if the conditions are right on a planet or moon.
"This makes it clear to me that as soon as we find conditions on an exoplanet that would favour life as we know it, the probability of finding some form of life on that planet is very high. However, we are not talking about little green aliens but about microorganisms.
"The environment in which these ancient microorganisms thrived is quite telling. These hot environments are similar to hydro thermal vents also thought to exist beneath the thick ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Again, pointing us to another place to hunt for life.
"It also becomes ever more likely, that such life must surely have had existed on early Mars. If life then spread to Earth cannot be argued with these findings which state more about how quickly life can form on a planets, just millions of years after its formation."
The research was published in the journal Nature.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/03/01/oldest-fossil-ever-found-earth-shows-alien-life-mars-likely/
"Gabbard has been consistently smeared"
ReplyDelete...by the Daily Beast, Washington Post, and other Warmongering liberal rags pushing to continue the failed polices of Obama/Clinton.
Oroville:
ReplyDeleteUsing the cleaned rock from the river up on the hill.
Big haulers look so tiny.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article135838103.html
Income inequality, a growing divide between rich and poor, is a symptom of a well known world class tech ecosytem’s success.
ReplyDeleteIt’s not the one in Waterloo, but the one in Silicon Valley where the economic divide grows between tech workers and the rest of the population.
The same thing can happen here, and a Christian group called FaithTech is trying to bridge the gap.
“For those who are successful, how can you use your gifts, your abilities and your money to help?” said James Kelly, founder of the local group.
...
Kelly said one of the developers recently told a friend about the digital suicide prevention site. Her friend started crying.
“Her friend said, ‘Last night I went online and I was ready to kill myself. I ended up on your website and it got me through my night until I could meet with my psychiatrist the next morning,’” Kelly said.
Helping Out
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ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see who supports the Gabbard bill and who doesn't, in the Congress and in the Executive Office and in the intelligence agencies.
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In the 14th century, Europe was devastated by the bubonic plague, transmitted across the continent by fleas from infected rats. Back then, Europeans could do nothing to stop it.
ReplyDeleteToday, Europe is being devastated by an immigration plague, transmitted by political correctness infecting free speech, thus banning the questioning of Islam’s motives and, consequently, doing nothing to stop it.
This infection is being spread here in the U.S. by a media irresponsibly failing to report on public dangers and by a tone-deaf anti-Trump movement refusing to listen to reality.
Immigration Plague
Bulls eye !
Delete.
DeleteSweden is a small country with a population of close to 10 million. It's about the size of California but has about 1/4 the total population.
Although it didn't invent it, it has contacted the EU disease. In 2015, it took in 160,000 refugees, the equivalent of nearly 2% of the country's total population. Unfortunately, they found they were ill-prepared to accept this deluge. Housing for that amount of people turned out to be their biggest issue but it didn't help that the majority of the refugees were young, unmarried, and unemployed males. Sweden learned a hard lesson. In 2016, they cut back on the refugees they let in and a couple months ago they were talking about deporting 80,000 of that 160,000 they let in 2015.
The 'canary in the coal mine'?
Only if that canary's owner is one dump fuck.
In 2016, Obama was criticized for bringing in 16,000 refugees from the ME. Hillary was vilified for saying we should bring in 100,000. 100,000 into a population of 320,000,000 in a country 21 times larger than Sweden. An increase in population of 0.03% into a country with a history of absorbing immigrant populations.
Those that would try to equate the US and Swedish experiences with regard to refugees are fools at best.
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Delete...contracted the EU disease...
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100,000 is 100,000 too many.
DeleteLet Saudi Arabia care for them.
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Delete...fools at best.
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"SMIRK Nit" of the Day: Montreal, Canada
ReplyDeleteMontreal mosque where imam prayed for Jews to be KILLED caught preaching MORE Jew-hatred
By Pamela Geller - on March 1, 2017
MONITOR THE MOSQUES
Rabbi Reuben Poupko, co-chair of the Quebec branch of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, “said he did not believe such views, as well as the ‘deeply troubling’ earlier calls to violence, were supported by the broader Muslim community.”
How does he know that? Islamic Jew-hatred – it’s in the Quran. The hatred quoted below is spoken routinely in mosques, because they preach and teach the Quran.
“Montreal mosque facing calls for investigation after imam preaches on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” by Stewart Bell, National Post, February 28, 2017:
TORONTO—A Montreal mosque where an imam had prayed for Jews to be killed “one by one” is facing fresh calls for an investigation after more videos surfaced online showing anti-Semitic preaching.
The Middle East Media Research Institute released a video on Tuesday of sermons in which an imam at the Al Andalous Islamic Centre conveyed conspiracy theories about Jews, their history and their origins.
Sheikh Wael Al-Ghitawi is shown in the video clips claiming that Jews were “people who slayed the prophets, shed their blood and cursed the Lord,” reported MEMRI, which translated the Friday sermons.
The imam went on to say Jews were the descendants of “Turkish mongols” and had been “punished by Allah,” who made them “wander in the land.” He further said that Jews had no historical ties to Jerusalem or Palestine.
The view conveyed by the imam has typically been used to deny that Jews have a connection to the land of Israel, said Rabbi Reuben Poupko, co-chair of the Quebec branch of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.
“This is a bizarre strain of radical propaganda. It appears in the writings of Hamas and other groups like it and claims to debunk Jewish history,” said the rabbi, who said it was “unseemly” to use a religious service to propagate hate.
He said he did not believe such views, as well as the “deeply troubling” earlier calls to violence, were supported by the broader Muslim community “but its presence in this mosque needs to be investigated.”
The videos were posted on YouTube in November 2014. The centre was already in the spotlight over an August 2014 video that showed an imam asking Allah to “destroy the accursed Jews,” and “kill them one by one.”
In a press release last week concerning the August 2014 video, the mosque administration blamed “clumsy and unacceptable phrasing” by a substitute imam, whose wording was “tainted by an abusive generalization.” The mosque could not be reached for comment about the most recent video.
“If you examine the annals of history you will see that the Jews do not have any historical right to Palestine,” Al-Ghitawi said in the latest video. He claimed there was “not a single Jew in Jerusalem and Palestine” for lengthy periods.
“Jerusalem is Arabic and Islamic,” he said at a separate sermon. “It is our land, the land of our fathers and forefathers. We are the people most entitled to it. We will not forsake a single inch of this land.”….
http://pamelageller.com/2017/03/montreal-mosque-jew-hatred.html/
The people trust the military, not the media -
ReplyDeleteNew Poll Reveals Americans Overwhelmingly Trust the Military, Not the Media
By Cheryl Chumley - on March 1, 2017
When it comes to showcasing what’s most and least important to Americans, nothing reveals the ranges like regard for military, versus regard for media – and according to a new poll, Americans absolutely adore the branches of services.
The pendulum swings wide the other way when it comes to America’s regard for the media, though.
Sorry, media: When it comes to favor with American voters, press members score low.
Here are the numbers, in the Fox News survey: Fully 96 percent of America voters have either a great deal or some confidence in the U.S. military.
Another 83 percent say similarly about the Supreme Court; 80 percent about the FBI; unbelievably enough, another 55 percent about the Internal Revenue Service.
The media, though?
Only 44 percent of voters say they have a great deal or soe confidence in the media. Fifty-five percent express little confidence in the media; 36 percent have zero confidence.
What’s more, this lack of liking of the media is hardly new.
From the Daily Caller:
“However, this lack of confidence is not new, but rather a holdover from 2014. Nevertheless, confidence in the media is in general decline, having dropped by 19 percentage points since 2002.
“In 2016, Gallup conducted a survey of Americans’ trust in key institutions and found the military ranked in first place, with 73 percent of American saying they had either a ‘great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in the institution.
“Gallup also found that only 8 percent of the public had a ‘great deal’ of confidence in the media.
“The Fox poll was conducted from Feb. 11-13 based on phone interviews and has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.”
http://pamelageller.com/2017/03/new-poll-reveals-americans-overwhelmingly-trust-military-not-media.html/
A NEW GENOCIDE FOR EGYPT’S CHRISTIANS?
ReplyDeleteThe recent burning to death of a Copt in Sinai is only the tip of the iceberg.
March 2, 2017 Raymond Ibrahim
Yet another murderous wave is taking Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority by storm, leading to yet another exodus from their homes.
Last week in al-Arish, Sinai, Islamic State affiliates killed a 65-year-old Christian man by shooting him in the head; they then abducted and tortured his 45-year-old son, before burning him alive and dumping his charred remains near a schoolyard.
Perhaps because of its sensationalist nature—burning a human alive—this story was reported by some Western media. Yet the atrocities hardly begin or end there. Below is a list of Christians murdered in al-Arish in recent days and weeks:
January 30: A 35-year-old Christian was in his small shop working with his wife and young son when three masked men walked in, opened fire on him, instantly killing the Copt. The murderers then sat around his table, eating chips and drinking soda, while the body lay in a pool of blood before the terrified wife and child.
February 13: A 57-year-old Christian laborer was shot and killed as he tried to fight off masked men trying to kidnap his young son from off a crowded street in broad daylight. After murdering the father, they seized his young son and took him to an unknown location (where, per precedent, he is likely being tortured, possibly already killed, if a hefty ransom was not already paid).
February 16: A 45-year-old Christian schoolteacher was moonlighting at his shoe shop with his wife, when masked men walked in the crowded shop and shot him dead.
February 17: A 40-year-old medical doctor was killed by masked men who, after forcing him to stop his car, opened fire on and killed him. He too leaves a widow and two children.
It is likely that more Christians have been slain recently in Sinai; because they are being killed in quick succession, it is not clear if ongoing reports are documenting the same or new incidences.
For instance, a recent February 24 report says “On Thursday [February 23], a [Christian] plumber in the city was shot dead in front of his wife and children at their home....
A day earlier [February 22], gunmen killed another [Christian] man before his pregnant wife, then calmly drank a bottle of Pepsi before taking off, witnesses told aid workers in Ismailia.” Is the February 22 Pepsi drinking incident the same as the one reported above as occurring on January 30, or a different one?
This recent uptick in Christian persecution is believed to be in response to a video earlier released by the Islamic State in Sinai. In it, masked militants promise more attacks on the “worshipers of the cross,” a reference to the Copts of Egypt, whom they also referred to as their “favorite prey” and the “infidels who are empowering the West against Muslim nations.”
As a result of the recent slayings and threats of more to come, at least 300 Christians living in al-Arish have fled their homes, with nothing but their clothes on their backs and their children in their hands. Most have congregated in a Coptic church compound in neighboring Ismailia by the Suez Canal. (Note: Donations that go directly to the dislocated Christians of al-Arish can be made here).
In a video of these destitute Copts, one man can be heard saying “They are burning us alive! They seek to exterminate Christians altogether! Where’s the [Egyptian] military?” Another woman yells at the camera, “Tell the whole world, look—we’ve left our homes, and why? Because they kill our children, they kill our women, they kill our innocent people! Why! Our children are terrified to go to schools. Why? Why all this injustice! Why doesn’t the president move and do something for us? We can’t even answer our doors without being terrified!”
For his part, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered military and security forces to “completely eradicate terrorism” in North Sinai. Such a response might be reassuring to al-Arish’s Christians—if it wasn’t also dejavu. Back in 2012, and in response to what Islamists perceived as widespread Christian support for Sisi’s military coup of then president Morsi—Copts in Sinai were heavily plummeted: one priest, Fr. Mina Cherubim, was shot dead in front of his church; a 65-year- old Christian trader was beheaded; several other Christians, including youths, were kidnapped, held for ransom, and later executed when the exorbitant ransoms could not be met. Two churches were attacked, one burned.
DeleteJust as now, hundreds of Christians fled their homes; and, just as now, Sisi vowed to root out the jihadi nests in Sinai.
Incidentally, it should not be imagined that Christians in Sinai are only murdered when ISIS or other jihadis have a special reason (such as 2012’s “revenge” spree against pro-Sisi Christians) or when a video inciting violence against Christians is released (as in the recent cases). For instance, in June 2016, Fr Raphael Moussa 46, was randomly shot dead in “a hail of bullets” outside the Church of the Martyr of St George in Sinai. In January 2015, masked gunmen stormed the home of a Christian man residing in al-Arish. After robbing him and his family at gunpoint, they shot him several times in the head, instantly killing him. According to the slain man’s wife, her husband was murdered “only because he was a Copt [i.e., Christian].” She pointed out that the masked intruders robbed everything in sight—including the money in his pockets, the jewelry she was wearing, her handbag, cell phones, and even a Bible. Then, after stealing everything they could, and for no practical purpose, they shot the Christian “infidel” in the head. A month later, another Christian man in al-Arish was randomly and fatally shot.
Nor, it should be noted, is the slaughter of Egypt’s Christians limited to Sinai, which some downplay by pointing out that the peninsula is an already acknowledged hotbed of jihadi activity. Last month, few Western media reported on any of four separate murders of Christians that took place over the course of just ten days—murders that occurred all around Egypt proper, not Sinai: in Alexandria (where a Muslim man crept up behind a Christian shopkeeper and slit his throat, murdering him); in Lower Egypt (where a Christian man, 62, and his wife, 55, were found slaughtered, with numerous stab wounds, in their home); in Upper Egypt (where a young and well liked Christian surgeon known for offering free services to the poor, was also found slaughtered with many stab wounds in his apartment). And of course there was Cairo—the nation’s capital—where, two months ago, an Islamic suicide bomber entered St. Peter’s Cathedral and killed nearly 30 Christians, mostly women and children.
In short, a new genocide appears to be unfolding—the Obama administration itself admitted that ISIS is committing “genocide” against Christians and other minorities—even as an old indifference looks the other way.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265971/new-genocide-egypts-christians-raymond-ibrahim
White House Options on North Korea Include Use of Military Force
ReplyDeleteThe strategy review comes as recent events have strained stability in Asia
https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-explores-options-including-use-of-military-force-to-counter-north-korean-threat-1488407444
And, last but not least -
ReplyDeleteMoral Outrage Is Self-Serving, Say Psychologists
Perpetually raging about the world's injustices? You're probably overcompensating.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown|Mar. 1, 2017 8:45 am
akg-images/Newscom
When people publicly rage about perceived injustices that don't affect them personally, we tend to assume this expression is rooted in altruism—a "disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others." But new research suggests that professing such third-party concern—what social scientists refer to as "moral outrage"—is often a function of self-interest, wielded to assuage feelings of personal culpability for societal harms or reinforce (to the self and others) one's own status as a Very Good Person.
Outrage expressed "on behalf of the victim of [a perceived] moral violation" is often thought of as "a prosocial emotion" rooted in "a desire to restore justice by fighting on behalf of the victimized," explain Bowdoin psychology professor Zachary Rothschild and University of Southern Mississippi psychology professor Lucas A. Keefer in the latest edition of Motivation and Emotion. Yet this conventional construction—moral outrage as the purview of the especially righteous—is "called into question" by research on guilt, they say.
Feelings of guilt are a direct threat to one's sense that they are a moral person and, accordingly, research on guilt finds that this emotion elicits strategies aimed at alleviating guilt that do not always involve undoing one's actions. Furthermore, research shows that individuals respond to reminders of their group's moral culpability with feelings of outrage at third-party harm-doing. These findings suggest that feelings of moral outrage, long thought to be grounded solely in concerns with maintaining justice, may sometimes reflect efforts to maintain a moral identity.
To test this guilt-to-outrage-to-moral-reaffirmation premise, Rothschild and Keefer conducted five separate studies assessing the relationships between anger, empathy, identity, individual and collective guilt, self perception, and the expression of moral outrage.
For each study, a new group of respondents (solicited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk program) were presented with a fabricated news article about either labor exploitation in developing countries or climate change. For studies using the climate-change article, half of participants read that the biggest driver of man-made climate change was American consumers, while the others read that Chinese consumers were most to blame.
With the labor exploitation article, participants in one study were primed to think about small ways in which they might be contributing to child labor, labor trafficking, and poor working conditions in "sweatshops"; in another, they learned about poor conditions in factories making Apple products and the company's failure to stop this. After exposure to their respective articles, study participants were given a series of short surveys and exercises to assess their levels of things like personal guilt, collective guilt, anger at third parties ("multinational corporations," "international oil companies") involved in the environmental destruction/labor exploitation, desire to see someone punished, and belief in personal moral standing, as well as baseline beliefs about the topics in question and positive or negative affect. Here's the gist of Rothschild and Keefer's findings:
Triggering feelings of personal culpability for a problem increases moral outrage at a third-party target. For instance, respondents who read that Americans are the biggest consumer drivers of climate change "reported significantly higher levels of outrage at the environmental destruction" caused by "multinational oil corporations" than did the respondents who read that Chinese consumers were most to blame.
DeleteThe more guilt over one's own potential complicity, the more desire "to punish a third-party through increased moral outrage at that target." For instance, participants in study one read about sweatshop labor exploitation, rated their own identification with common consumer practices that allegedly contribute, then rated their level of anger at "international corporations" who perpetuate the exploitative system and desire to punish these entities. The results showed that increased guilt "predicted increased punitiveness toward a third-party harm-doer due to increased moral outrage at the target."
Having the opportunity to express outrage at a third-party decreased guilt in people threatened through "ingroup immorality." Study participants who read that Americans were the biggest drivers of man-made climate change showed significantly higher guilt scores than those who read the blame-China article when they weren't given an opportunity to express anger at or assign blame to a third-party. However, having this opportunity to rage against hypothetical corporations led respondents who read the blame-America story to express significantly lower levels of guilt than the China group. Respondents who read that Chinese consumers were to blame had similar guilt levels regardless of whether they had the opportunity to express moral outrage.
"The opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doers" inflated participants perception of personal morality. Asked to rate their own moral character after reading the article blaming Americans for climate change, respondents saw themselves as having "significantly lower personal moral character" than those who read the blame-China article—that is, when they weren't given an out in the form of third-party blame. Respondents in the America-shaming group wound up with similar levels of moral pride as the China control group when they were first asked to rate the level of blame deserved by various corporate actors and their personal level of anger at these groups. In both this and a similar study using the labor-exploitation article, "the opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doing (vs. not) led to significantly higher personal moral character ratings," the authors found.
Guilt-induced moral outrage was lessened when people could assert their goodness through alternative means, "even in an unrelated context." Study five used the labor exploitation article, asked all participants questions to assess their level of "collective guilt" (i.e., "feelings of guilt for the harm caused by one's own group") about the situation, then gave them an article about horrific conditions at Apple product factories. After that, a control group was given a neutral exercise, while others were asked to briefly describe what made them a good and decent person; both exercises were followed by an assessment of empathy and moral outrage. The researchers found that for those with high collective-guilt levels, having the chance to assert their moral goodness first led to less moral outrage at corporations. But when the high-collective-guilt folks were given the neutral exercise and couldn't assert they were good people, they wound up with more moral outrage at third parties. Meanwhile, for those low in collective guilt, affirming their own moral goodness first led to marginally more moral outrage at corporations.
DeleteThese findings held true even accounting for things such as respondents political ideology, general affect, and background feelings about the issues.
Ultimately, the results of Rothschild and Keefer's five studies were "consistent with recent research showing that outgroup-directed moral outrage can be elicited in response to perceived threats to the ingroup's moral status," write the authors. The findings also suggest that "outrage driven by moral identity concerns serves to compensate for the threat of personal or collective immorality" and the cognitive dissonance that it might elicit, and expose a "link between guilt and self-serving expressions of outrage that reflect a kind of 'moral hypocrisy,' or at least a non-moral form of anger with a moral facade."
Photo Credit: DHF/Dinendra Haria/WENN/Newscom
http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/01/moral-outrage-is-self-serving
Establishment media ignores key facts in trying to discredit Muslim Brotherhood document vowing to destroy US from within
ReplyDeleteMARCH 1, 2017 1:37 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/03/establishment-media-ignores-key-facts-in-trying-to-discredit-muslim-brotherhood-document-vowing-to-destroy-us-from-within