The better angels of our nature

My great-grandfather was a member of the Ku Klux Klan back in the “good ol’ days” of the 1920s.

He was a Methodist minister in North Dakota; the focus of the Klan’s ire there was Catholicism, the faith of many central European immigrants who came to the Great Plains to farm.

He came to repent (more or less) of his bigoted zeal; it was the nature of the times, you see. The spreading of Catholicism by a large wave of central and southern European immigrants was seen as a threat to the American way of life — a white and Protestant way of life.

America was undergoing tremendous change in those days. More and more people were leaving the farm to take up jobs in urban centers, whose populations were exploding due to internal migration and external immigration. Then, as now, immigration was a hot topic. Congress passed immigration restrictions in 1921 and 1924 aimed at excluding Asians and restricting those mainly-Catholic immigrants from southern Europe.

Americans of northern European, Protestant descent feared being swamped by “alien” races and religious faiths.

If all that sounds familiar, it should. We are undergoing massive demographic and socioeconomic change again. That, to me, is at the root of the controversy over the so-called “ground zero mosque” (which is neither at “ground zero” nor a mosque). Our cultural anxieties have pushed the issue to the forefront of the national discourse.

On one level, it is easy to understand the reaction of those who oppose the Park 51 project. The World Trade Center site will always have profound symbolic meaning to Americans, like Gettysburg or Pearl Harbor. People are sensitive — and should be — about such sites.

But an Islamic community center near (not at) the site is only an affront if you believe that Islam itself perpetrated the criminal acts of war that occurred there and at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

That is fundamentally false. Islam did not attack America; 19 men, mostly Saudis, poisoned by hatred and a vicious perversion of Islam, attacked America, backed by a terrorist network that has also attacked and killed thousands of other Muslims in violation of the tenets of their own faith.

Do not forget that Muslim Americans were murdered in the September 11 attacks, too.
We must allow “the better angels of our nature” (to borrow Lincoln’s phrase from another time of bitter division and anxiety) to come to the fore on this issue. As my friend Andrew Gorayeb argues in an opinion piece in next week’s Nugget, our Constitution guarantees the right of worship (I would add the protection of the right not to worship as well) to everyone. The religious freedom clauses of the first amendment are a pillar of our national faith. This is a chance to live up to our highest ideals, rather than succumbing to our lowest passions.

There will always be those who profit from stoking our fears and resentments. The 20th century was rife with demagogues who focused that fear on the “other” in order to enhance their own power. It’s happening now.

But America is great enough to change — even at the price of excrutiating pain — and be better for it. We’ve done it many times before. By the 1940s, those Catholic immigrants my great-grandfather feared were an integral part of the fabric of the nation.

The cliched platoon from countless World War II movies revealed a truth: America was, indeed, made up of the tough Italian kid from New Jersey (John Basilone anyone?), the cocky Irish kid from Hell’s Kitchen, the Pole from Chicago, the slow-talkin’, straight-shootin’ Georgia boy, the clean-cut college boy from New England.

Within a couple of decades, the black kid from Alabama was there, too, along with Latinos, Asians — even women.

The Park51 community center debate is a great opportunity to remind ourselves and the world of American exceptionalism. We made a choice more than two centuries ago to be a beacon of liberty in a dark world. We haven’t always lived up to our own standards, but always, eventually, those “better angels of our nature” have won out.

We set aside our fear and adapt to change and welcome people of all creeds and cultures to enjoy the blessings of liberty.

That’s how we roll.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Constant input cannot kill my pain*

We’re a nation of junkies, mainlining continual electronic stimulation from smart phones, computers television screens and iPads — sometimes all at once.

Over the past couple of years there has been a slew of stories about the effects of constant stimulation on our brains. Basically, we’re addicts and our brains show it.

We get that little dopamine squirt every time we check our e-mail on our phone. Something “new” might be on there and boy do our brains like “new.” If we’re forced to withdraw from technological stimulation, we get agitated, irritable.

Dopamine is responsible for the euphoria that addicts chase, whether they get it from methamphetamine, alcohol, or Internet gambling. The addict becomes conditioned to compulsively seek, crave and recreate the sense of elation while off-line or off-drug. Whether it’s knocking back a few whiskeys or betting on the horses, dopamine transmits messages to the brain’s pleasure centers causing addicts to want to repeat those actions — over and over again, even if the addict is no longer experiencing the original pleasure and is aware of negative consequences...
The mental reward stimulation of the dopamine system is a powerful pull that non-addicts feel as well. ... Even checking email can become a compulsive behavior that’s hard to stop.
— Psychology Today magazine

That helps explain why people will text while driving, even though they really know that it’s insanely dangerous — more dangerous than driving drunk. (Car and Driver Magazine).

Now, I’m no Luddite. Computer technology, e-mail, smart phones all have made it easier to do my job — and do it better. I can gather information more quickly and have it up on The Nugget Web site in seconds if need be. No question, technology has made me more productive and that’s true for many, many people. That’s pretty cool.

In my off-work life, I love having fingertip access to obscure historical information and documents. The lyrics and chords for that song you’re trying to learn are right there and if you can’t figure out a guitar lick, chances are somebody has put a demo up on Youtube.

All that is great: really enhances the quality of life.

But it’s also all to easy to go down the rabbit hole of the Internet, forgetting the purpose of that original Google query, wasting an hour, two hours clicking off into some cyber maze, distracted, unproductive and actually fatigued.

And that temptation to pull out the smart phone to fill any second of downtime is pernicious.

From The New York Times:

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”
At the University of Michigan, a study found that people learned significantly better after a walk in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment, suggesting that processing a barrage of information leaves people fatigued.
Even though people feel entertained, even relaxed, when they multitask while exercising, or pass a moment at the bus stop by catching a quick video clip, they might be taxing their brains, scientists say.
“People think they’re refreshing themselves, but they’re fatiguing themselves,” said Marc Berman, a University of Michigan neuroscientist.

I think my brain is fighting back. Lately, I’ve taken to “forgetting” my cell phone when I go out after work. I take that as a healthy sign.

I’ve always been good about getting away from the noise. I get out to the woods with the phone off (still have it; it can be a lifesaving survival tool) and I prefer to workout with no distractions. But I’m thinking seriously about expanding those “tech-free zones” — hours where the cell phone is put away, the computer is off, the TV is off.

Tech rehab: an idea whose time has come.

* Apologies to Steve Earle

Jim Cornelius, Editor