HC Blog

Apparently, Lying is a Crucial Step for a Child's Development

2008-11-12T12:41:00.000-08:00

Interesting!

The ability to tell a white (or "prosocial") lie, one that benefits someone else or is told to avoid hurting someone's feelings, signals an important developmental step.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/family/11/12/why.kids.lie/index.html

Beauty: Is it cultured into us? Are we put under societal pressures to conform or is in natural?

2008-10-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

Is our culture's obsession with beauty reasonable?

Is it merely natural?

Or are we brainwashing little girls with unrealistic expectations by making them play with Barbie dolls?

This site has some insights from the field of evolutionary psychology.

http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200809/barbie-manufactured-mattel-designed-evolution-i

However I tend to disagree with their point of view.

I believe that our societal places real and definitive pressures for women to conform a certain way.

Evolutionary history doesn't explain how/why different cultures have had different standards of beauty.

My home country had a millenia of foot mutilation for the sake of "beauty."

Today in Asia, to be pale is to be beautiful, whereas in the USA you want to be tan.

In Asian cultures, the face is extremely important, while it seems that in the USA what's more important is the distribution of various lumps of fat in pleasing formations on the body.

I don't think evolutionary logic explains all of this weirdness, some of it must be cultural.

Ant commits suicide preemptively to protect colony - first observed case of this behavior

2008-09-30T16:44:00.000-07:00

Really cool article on ants! I wonder what implications it has for the study of the evolution of altruism?

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/923/1?rss=1

Woah.

2008-09-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

Check out this video. A researcher discusses the moral and ethical underpinnings of the differences between liberals and conservatives.

It's really illuminating.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

following up

2008-09-09T21:35:00.000-07:00

For those of you who were fans of my last blog about my run-in with the law, charges have been cleared and processing fees reduced significantly (though they're still pretty significant) for my rocks charge. :) to a clean record and a not as empty wallet. sam 1 law 0

Privacy Vs. Safety

2008-08-15T20:37:00.000-07:00

What's more important? Your right to privacy or peace of mind knowing that the police are better equipped to catch criminals?

Check out this article from the Washington Post.

Across the country, police are using GPS devices to snare thieves, drug dealers, sexual predators and killers, often without a warrant or court order.

Personally, I've never understood the privacy-fanatic's line of reasoning. If you haven't done anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear. Therefore, I believe that the only people who really need so-called "privacy" are criminals. If anything, removing the so-called "right to privacy" will clean our society of secret rapists and child molesters, right?

Problem: Your employees are being gang-raped and held captive, escaping only when using a cell phone to call for help. Solution: Ban cell phones

2008-08-05T16:32:00.000-07:00

I want to apologize in advance, because this story is super-depressing.

Here's a basic synopsis of the situation. Two years ago, a employee of defense contractor KBR was drugged and gang-raped by her coworkers. When she woke up, she had "severe injuries on her, including the following: (1) disfigurement of the chest, (2) bruised thighs, (3) bruised chest, (4) bleeding between legs." She went to a US Army physician and gathered evidence of the crime in a rape kit. The rape kit was then given to KBR/Halliburton security forces, and it disappeared. Immediately following that, KBR imprisoned her in a shipping container denying her food, water or medical treatment. After a day, she persuaded a sympathetic guard to let her borrow a cell phone and she called her dad. Her dad called their congressman and they were able to generate enough public attention to get her out of there.

So far, there has been no criminal prosecution of any of the rapists, or KBR, or Halliburton or anything. The rape kit "disappeared" for two years, and when it was finally recovered by the State Department, it was missing photographs, notes, and all DNA evidence.

And on top of all of this, this weekend KBR announced that it has banned the use of personal cell phones by its employees in Iraq. Maybe they think that banning cell phones will prevent any future American victims of rape and imprisonment from escaping and telling the media.

Here's the links to the stories:

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/04/after-rape-victim-used-cell-phone-to-call-for-help-kbr-bans-personal-phones-in-iraq/

http://firedoglake.com/2007/12/19/kbr-gang-rape-survivor-says-11-more-women-like-her/

http://www.examiner.com/a-1518633~Defense_contractor_KBR_bans_personal_cell_phones.html

So here's what I have to say about this, in terms of honor and ethics:

Where has America's honor and ethics gone? Where has justice gone? The rape kit just disappeared? Bullshit. First of all, the crime in itself was unspeakable. But the response from the contractors/Army was even more disgusting, which is saying something. From the people who raped her, to the people who locked her up, to the people who destroyed the evidence afterwards, to the people in power who refuse to hold any of the aforementioned groups of people responsible, all of them seem strangely complicit. I'm not one to believe in "conspiracy theories," so the only explanation that I can put forth is that we as a people have somehow managed to erode even the most basic sense of integrity and ethics. These aren't even "American values" we're talking about, these are basic human values. I simply cannot comprehend what could possibly be going through any of these people's minds.

The evolutionary origins of human morality

2008-07-31T02:39:00.000-07:00

One of the questions that I've been thinking about lately is, "Where did morality come from?" Compared to animals, humans are capable of an extreme range of moral behavior. Humans are capable of sympathy and empathy and random acts of kindness towards complete strangers, and at the same time, humans are capable of a cruelty and sadism, masked with lies and hypocrisy, unimaginable in the animal world. Regardless of ethnicity, religion, or upbringing, humans, for the most part, all have a sense of what is just. Why are we like that?

If its true that humans share an ancestry with the apes, then at some point in our evolution, there must have been some kind of selection for individuals with moral values over individuals without moral values. So, I've been theorizing to what that selection event could have been.

On an individual level, it's abundantly clear that dishonesty, used with caution, can significantly improve an individual's evolutionary fitness. We don't need Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene to tell us that. Obviously, stealing something is much easier than making something from scratch. Of course there are disadvantages to dishonesty, such as getting beat up by the guy you're stealing from or getting a bad reputation, but there are no real evolutionary disadvantages as long as no one catches you, right?

If I may, I would even go as far as to say that, on the individual level, there is no direct benefit for altruism. Of course, it's beneficial to do favors for your neighbors and various other powerful people in high places, simply because they can help you back. But that's not real altruism because you're expecting a reward. It's just reciprocity. There is little direct evolutionary benefit to helping the helpless, since they probably have little capability to help you back.

So with these factors in mind, why is morality so prevalent in humans today? Well, perhaps it's because when you look too closely at trees you can miss the forest. What I mean by that is, humans are more than just a collection of individuals. We band together to form social circles of friends, and tribes, and civilizations. At one point, Neanderthals and other human-like species roamed the earth with us, so we humans as a species were in a struggle for survival against other similar species.

On the species level and the societal level, the advantages of morality become clear. Morality enables some societies to outcompete other societies without morals. The earliest civilizations, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China were defined by their agriculture. But I believe that a system of morality also had to exist for them. A person will not work the field for a full year if he lived in fear of the fruits of his labor being stolen by burglars in the middle of the night. Another important consequence of morality and social order is that it enables the development of technology, further increasing the evolutionary advantage of that particular group of people. Just like agriculture, technology cannot develop in a society where dishonesty is commonplace, since there is so much initial investment required.

As for altruism over mere honesty, again technology plays a role. If somebody like Stephen Hawking was born in Sparta back in the day, he undoubtedly would have been one of the babies they threw off the cliff. But in a more altruistic and tolerant society, a genius like himself would create much knowledge, and thus power for his society. However, Hawking is a rare example, and there definitely aren't enough disabled geniuses to provide an evolutionary explanation for why altruism is so prevalent. Hmm... I'm having a hard time coming up with real tangible benefits of altruism. Ok, well in the movie Pay It Forward (which is an amazing movie and you all should definitely watch it) the little boy triggers a ripple of random kindness, and it picks up steam and becomes sort of a tidal wave. I think that altruism causes an important effect in a society's culture, and it increases trust and camaraderie. This probably boosts a society's productivity and synergy, which boosts its evolutionary fitness.

Simply put, a society with less morals is likely going to be militarily weak, economically weak, and technologically weak compared to societies with a strong moral values. So in the history of mankind, immorality slowly disappeared as pockets of civilizations with morals arose. However, since it still remains evolutionarily beneficial to occasionally lie, cheat and steal, that's probably why humans are also immoral to a degree.

So yeah, those are my thoughts and ponderings. What do you think?

unliscensed removal of rocks

2008-07-30T19:01:00.000-07:00

i am on lam. but on a side note, i cant complain, being on my way to lollapalooza (sp?) with good people and done with all work/formal schooling for about 3.5 weeks.
but nonetheless, i couldve done without sacrificing $150ish.
you see, i really like simple amusement and adventure. like all good adventurers, i am oblivious to when these two qualities get in the way of being a decent and law-abiding citizen. but enough with talk of ideals.
there is a rock quarry nearby. if youve never explored the premises around duke, id suggest getting on 40-west and taking an exit (a couple min. after getting on) to hillsborough. after that,t he locals will know what you're talking about and point you to it. park and make the hike. its beautiful and complete with a river that has one of the few legal ropeswings in north carolina. if you climb to the top, there are naturally rocks everywhere (think of that rock quarry where everyone screams in Garden State, or google map a rock quarry). so along with two friends from hillsborough, i explored the area and got to the top, where i felt the urge to push down one rock. tumble, tumble, rumble, boom. then a couple more. its really...awesome.
so along comes this park ranger from the road at the top. he starts shouting, "what on earth are you doing?" or something like that. then, he rambles on about kids coming of late and destroying the rock quarry's natural scenery. i was thus accused of being a regular destroyer who comes and knocks everything all about, throwing cigarrette butts and soda cans all over the quarry that i had just come to.
then came the pink ticket. up till then i really just was trying to be calm and politely interject that i just did a couple for fun and that i was sorry and willing to go all the way down and carry the rocks up. but the man was for real and bent on me coming to orange county courthouse. the conversation was short and we left the scene promptly, upset but more than slightly humored at the situation
next day, i call the park ranger department of the area and get this guy who was confused that there was a park ranger at hillsborough rock quarry. apparently, they only do inspections every few months or so to make sure everything is ok. he says he'll see what he can do and not to worry too much about it being that it was only a couple rocks. then three hours later, i get the original angry ranger on my cell phone and he is still...angry. no solution was going to be brought about.
so ive got this court date thing, during a weekday morning in september, the outcome of which wont matter very much as the conviction only costs $30 more than the $150 court cost. as well , i have a confusion of how to feel about my latest offense to the general welfare.
on one hand, i really saw no harm in doing what i was doing. i mean, if it was like 200 rocks, it could have caused erosion in some long boring process. but 4? seems harmless. maybe the collectivity built up makes all 50 of us contributors responsible, but it seems that i am bearing all of their weight (googling "unlicensed removal of rocks" doesnt yield any results).
moreover, i feel rebellious against injustice. i disagree, completely, with the fact that i have to pay people in court $150 and drive to chapel hill, missing class and probably some meal. this is totally ridiculous, especially considering that even on the rock quarry nature preserve signs it says nothing along the lines of "do not push rocks down the rock quarry" and so i am really uninformed.
on the other hand, i feel a little taken aback. ignorance is, constitutionally, not an excuse to break the law (and the offense is on statute, as research has shown). i am offending nature's grace, if only slightly in this instance. i also drive a lot and often forget to recycle and such. i contribute to world-scale problems and denigrate our children's land. i deserve reprimand, even if it is misplaced. erosion sucks.
but most of all, i am at least glad to get an interesting and probably funny story to tell. i hope you guys won't kick me out of honor council, though i understand if we must part ways for my evils. lastly, can one get a license to push rocks down the rock quarry? if so, sign me up.

Is Batman like George W Bush?

2008-07-27T21:47:00.000-07:00

This opinion article from the Wall Street Journal definitely captivated me. It talks about Batman and Bush, and brings up some really interesting moral questions. I think the article is well-thought out, and I believe that the article is more or less accurate when it refers to right-wing morals vs. left-wing morals as basically moral absolutism vs. moral relativism.

The author argues:

"Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They're wrong, of course, even on their own terms.

"Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don't always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless."

But although the author favors moral absolutism, he does acknowledge a sizable gray area:

"The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them -- when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love."

"When heroes arise who take those difficult duties on themselves, it is tempting for the rest of us to turn our backs on them, to vilify them in order to protect our own appearance of righteousness. We prosecute and execrate the violent soldier or the cruel interrogator in order to parade ourselves as paragons of the peaceful values they preserve."

The author is saying that, like Batman, our soldiers in Iraq and the prison guards at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo face a lot of resentment from the general public, despite them taking on difficult tasks for a good cause (helping America).

So I'm really confused now. Are right and wrong relative or absolute? Should I be left wing or right wing? Is it OK to torture/incarcerate indefinitely without habeas corpus in order to preserve American liberties? Is it OK to kill people to save people? Are our public villains today actually going to be remembered as our "silent, watchful guardians?"

Altruism in the Animal Kingdom

2008-07-17T00:25:00.000-07:00

I found this series of really interesting articles about altruism and selflessness studied scientifically in the animal world. Check it out, and we should have a discussion about it! Don't worry, it's all written in laymen's terms!

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/the-superorgani.html

Random Thought

2008-07-07T19:06:00.000-07:00

Hey I was just having a dinner conversation with my coworkers, and for some reason, we started talking about robots and artificial intelligence.

Let's say that hypothetically in the future, we can manufacture very human-like robots. Not only are these robots intelligent, but they can also express emotions like happiness and sadness. They can also feel pain and comfort.

Here's the ethical question we were talking about, and we didn't really have a conclusive answer. Is it wrong to keep such a robot in one's basement and torture it?

Amazing talk by author of amazing book!

2008-07-01T17:01:00.000-07:00

Today, an author came and talked to us about his new book called "Predictably Irrational." The author's name is Dan Ariely, and he teaches in the Fuqua Business School at Duke now, and he's done all these studies on behavioral economics, and also morality at MIT.

He described some of their experiments and what they've learned about human dishonesty and cheating. Basically, he said, as you would expect, everybody cheats just a little. However, the traditional 'rational' explanation for people cheating fails to explain for their behavior. The 'rational' explanation for cheating says that cheating is wholly a function of 3 primary factors. 1. How much benefit is gained? 2. What's the chance of being caught? And 3. What's the punishment for being caught? Rationally, you can predict that if the value gained by cheating is greater than the punishment multiplied by the chance of being caught, that people will cheat.

In other words, this mathematical equation describes the benefit of cheating.

If Benefit - (% of the time you're caught) x (harm from being caught) > 0 , then it's "worth it" to cheat.

However, his experiments show that this equation is not what people use at all. The experiment set up is this. Test subjects are given a 20-math question test, and not enough time to finish it. They are paid according to the number of questions they finish. On average, people can do 4-5 questions, in the control group, which means they get $4-5. Another group of people do the same test, and then are told to shred their test, and verbally report how many questions they finished. In this group, the average number of questions finished jumps to 7-8. The people aren't getting smarter all of a sudden, obviously. They are cheating, just a little. Now the next part's interesting. It turns out, it makes no difference how much money they're offered per question, whether it's 10 cents or 10 dollars, the data is the same. Even test subjects who are left in an empty room, next to a jar filled with hundreds of dollars still do the same thing. They only take credit for 7-8 questions.

It turns out, what's at play is a balancing act of two forces. One is the fact that we all want to be able to wake up and look at ourselves in the mirror and say, "I'm a good person!" Apparently, we gain "utility" out of self-respect and self-esteem. The other is that we all want the benefit of cheating. Somewhere in between total selfishness and total selflessness is the equilibrium point, where both forces are happy. So that's why we consistently see the pattern of just a tad bit of cheating, regardless.

There's more stuff I'm gonna add, but right now, I gotta go back to work.

Ethics of Tissue Engineered Burgers vs. Humanely Raised Cattle

2008-06-30T19:22:00.000-07:00

I was reading this article just now, and I think it's really thought-provoking. This isn't our typical ethics question, but I think it's an interesting question to think about.

In case you didn't know, PETA (the animal rights activism group) has publicly announced a $1 million challenge for the first person/group to make lab-grown meat a marketable and mainstream product.

There are several reasons why lab-grown meat would be ethically better than normal meat. Lab-grown meat doesn't result in the death of innocent animals, and it would be better for the environment because it probably requires less energy and resources and produce less waste products. It would be much more ecologically sustainable.

However, the idea of lab-grown meat is ideologically opposite of what the organic niche market believes (such as Whole Foods). The organic philosophy is fixated on what's "natural." Their principle is to raise animals humanely, pesticide-free, hormone-free, free-range, non-GMO. Organically raised animals require more space, resources and energy than factory-farmed animals, because they are raised "naturally."

So my question is, which idea is the truly ethical one? What is the right decision? I really like the idea of this new technology allowing us to manufacture meat, but is its "unnaturalness" somehow an affront to nature?

Even at Google, Some People Abuse the Honor System

2008-06-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

To me, Google represented the epitome of honesty and purity, but like the gleam and shine of a new car, you realize there's flaws below the surface. I've now worked at Google for over a month, and the wide-eyed amazement and awe that I felt at first has worn off somewhat.

Among the benefits are free high-quality food, breakfast, lunch and dinner, free computer equipment and accessories, free books, and free fermented "refreshments" on Fridays at 4:30 PM ;) All of these things are based on the "honor system," relying on the innate goodness in human beings to function.

But even at Google, some people abuse the trust they've been given. There are people who bring their whole families to eat dinner on Google. There are people who show up at the Hardware Depot day after day to get yet another free backpack/headphones/keyboard on Google, for their family and friends. Apparently the reason why all the snacks at Google are healthy and organic is because people were taking too much of the junk snack food. Once someone was fired for stealing a whole case of Snapple.

Maybe I'm just overreacting, but I truly believed that I had finally found a system of free handouts that doesn't get abused. Oh well. Anyways, my mentor says that those people are the exception, not the rule, so that makes me feel a little better.

What are your thoughts?

My Unintentional Experiment with Extreme Poverty

2008-06-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

This week my bank account hit a new low...$-273.37. Yeah, I am flat broke. Yeah, if I asked my parents for money, they would give it to me. But this was going to be the summer that I paid for everything--class, rent, food, gas, all of life's necessities. And for the most part, save a stint at the beginning when I had not gotten paid, I have been pretty damn good at it. Using redbox for artistic entertainment, daily lunches of pb&j, no excessive spending on anything, not cutting the 7 hour day of work short. In Tupac's words, "It's hard to be legit, and still pay your rent." But I was doing it, though it certainly wasn't easy. Then came the bill for second month's rent, an invitation to go to a fancy restaurant, and the period of waiting for the next paycheck. I had set aside a lot of dough for rent, but I guess it wasn't enough because my balance bounced from that alone. Then, on expenditures of food and gas, I figured to hit about $-70.00. I knew this was doable, as I had set aside a line of credit for going into the negative. Then the fancy restaurant, $18 more. It got rough at that point, but I though I might be able to find some change for gas and live off what was in my fridge for a day and a half. But I checked the suntrust online banking and found that horrible balance of $-273.73. Shocked, I clicked on recent transactions and found $-200 for overdraw fees. Then I got mad...really mad.

Some lady at the Chapel Hill branch did not know what she was in for that day. Though I still think that this policy which I had previously agreed to in signature with my "limited" line of credit is bogus, there was nothing I could do. I had to call my parents to bail me out, or be the youngest person to declare bankruptcy ever, or be put into debtor's prison, etc. I got $800 added to my account that day, and my parents paid for my second class too (except for some loans that I had taken out).

So in reflection, I try to find the learning experience in this. 1st of all. It's better to get bailed out early than to lose $200 (with my complaining, this got reduced a little bit) and get bailed out later. Second, living independently is overrated. Third, the real world is all it's cracked up to be...The Duke campus really is a bubble. Outside, the idea of a "meal plan" or the ability to add money to your flex is ridiculous. Trying to get on with things is really stressful, and sometimes the idea of what your bank account is prevents you from really relaxing. For a lot of people placed in situations like mine...except for the ability to get bailed out, and the feeling that it will all be over with moving home in august, living from paycheck to paycheck really, really sucks.

Just thought to share. Hope everyone's doing fine and debt-free. Wear sunscreen (I didn't last weekend).

5.21.08. The Oasis: Introducing Terra Mirim

2008-05-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

Simoes Filho, Brazil. Minuska, the coordinator at Terra Mirim, perfectly sums up what the school represents for the rural communities of Simoes Filho. An oasis.

With its wide-open spaces, natural and architectural, Terra Mirim easily looks the part. The school comprises an assortment of modest but beautifully well-kept buildings scattered about lush green grounds. The main building where classes are held is wall-less along two edges; the hallway wraps around with rooms on one side and functions as a terrace on the other. Upstairs, balmy air floats through the one-room loft where students learn Capoeira and take turns enacting stories using the standing puppet showcase.

Minuska is taking us on the grand tour, and Ian, a German volunteer living at Terra Mirim for the year, is busy translating Portuguese into English for the team’s comprehension. We have just introduced ourselves to Olva Maria, the dreamer and founder of Terra Mirim, who sits in front of a little cottage where pocket-sized treats are sold. We are still standing somewhere in the expansive backyard when our suspicions are confirmed: the school’s mission is primarily an ecological one. A meter away from us, the unidentifiable fowl that roam these parts wobble past in ones and twos.

Why ecology, we want to know. Why the bee-saving and the river-maintaining, on top of the already immense challenge of educating some of Brazil’s poorest children on the outskirts of Salvadore?

Or as we more tactfully put it, during my brief interview with Minuska: how does giving students access to digital technology, for example, fit in with the school’s ecological mission?

At Terra Mirim, the ecological focus promotes not just natural living but rather holistic learning. It is not about the happiness of plants but rather harmony among plants and animals, humans and machines. Holistic learning is the key to human freedom. Digital inclusion is ultimately about social inclusion and granting everyone that freedom.

My paraphrasing does Minuska’s words little justice. Even with my limited understanding of Portuguese and only brief approximations from the translator, I sense immediately during our session how eloquently Minuksa describes the nuances of Terra Mirim’s unique educational approach, and how powerfully she sketches a portrait of daily life in Simoes Filho.

In the village, she says, young girls let men touch them for pocket money, ten réis (US $6). They do not understand what sexuality really means, nor do they grasp their own self-worth.

I ask what changes she sees in the students who finish school here. She tells me that at Terra Mirim, they experience the self-empowerment that underlies true citizenship –those students who are initially too timid to talk are eventually able to take part in the circle of sharing. They graduate with a newfound belief in themselves and what they can do for their community.

From what I can observe in a single day, part of the philosophical consistency of Terra Mirim’s emphasis on citizenship and sharing lies in its practical applications. At the school, self-sustainability is a way of life. Students help raise vegetables in a small plot in the backyard to supplement the lunches that are made here. Separate sinks are set up with hot soapy water and clear water so that they can wash their own plates right after they finish eating.

The meals are not a luxury but a necessity. The children depend on the school for their two meals a day; to go home hungry means to stay hungry. Terra Mirim’s task is great and its means too small. The government lends Terra Mirim no support –a small Italian group donated the money used to build up the physical infrastructure, and the school relies on private donations from NGOs like CDI and revenues from its own little bakery and trinkets shop to keep food on the table and electricity running.

As it is, the school is stretching money enough for 60 students to cover the 120 currently enrolled. The children come to school in shifts, only three days a week so that the school can afford to feed them all.

Today, it is time that is tight; Minuska and I are forced to wrap up our session early. Her eyes are trained on me, as per pre-interview instructions, but like Dona Anna at CEACA and Marion at ICP, Minuska is making her appeal to the camera, to whoever may be watching and listening in the future.

An oasis is a paradise by virtue of the fact that it offers in abundance what the desert around it lacks. Terra Mirim is poor, yet it gives the people of Simoes Filho the hope that they so desperately need. The clock runs out on us before I can ask Minuska if she has any last words to share, but I can’t help but feel I hear her silent response, itself a question: Who will give Terra Mirim the aid it so desperately needs to continue being that well of hope?

-Travel Journal, Entry 6

05.14.08. Into the Favela.

2008-05-25T14:45:00.000-07:00

Morro dos Macacos, Rio de Janeiro. The streets and alleyways are a place for transactions. It is not entirely accurate to describe these transactions as the illegal kind. Because here, the drug lords whose soldiers stand by on 24/7 watch – binoculars peering down onto the main street from somewhere up high, from anywhere up high among the hundreds of concrete shacks rising out of the steep hills –they make the laws that are obeyed. The laws that are enforced.

But we are not in the favela yet. Our seven-member Students of the World team, one translator and one driver –we are bumping along in our clearly marked CDI (NGO -Citizens for Democracy in Information Technology) van, cameras clicking. Outside, despite the chaos that typifies city transit, this particular street is in a crucial sense the very picture of order. It boasts distinct governmental presence, state and federal acknowledgement: buses with designated routes plow past, plastered on either side with ads for Kuat, the omnipresent, Coca-Cola-owned Brazilian soda; every thirty feet, green signs overhead remind us exactly where we are and where we are going. They are so well-integrated into the zigzag of cars and pedestrians, we hardly take notice of these standard features of centralized, organized city life.

Then we make a sharp right, and they are gone. The landscape changes, and we begin to climb.

Possibly, the changes are too subtle to inform the lost tourist with only guidebook in hand that he is in danger of violating its only hard and fast rule: Never enter a favela. But this street is narrow and winding, and the dusty huts lined up along the side appear abandoned, the handwritten door signs offering manicures unconvincing. The semi-sensible tourist would turn back in search of another safe green sign, intuiting the difference despite not knowing it. That this is no place for tourists.

It is our third day here, so the nine of us do know that this tiny street eventually straightens and opens up to the incredible sight that is Morro dos Macacos. Literal translation: Monkey Hills. Sure enough, a minute later the high wall and stunted shops have fallen away to reveal hills that rise before us to the height of small mountains, crammed with shacks of one shape (or so it seems) and every color (and so it is). The sun rests high and hot at the very top of this sloping urban jungle (literally part city sprawl, part palm tree), glaring down at us as we travel further up the relatively level initial stretch of the favela. From down here on the street, the hills are a heady maze of painted concrete and laundry strung up on rooftops. We ride on, knowing that from up in the hills, the opposite is true: the street is a straight shot, impossible to miss.

Reputedly one of the most dangerous favelas in all of Rio, Morro dos Macacos shares with the other six hundred the criminal activity that is partly a function of its geography. The police have only one way up the hills, and that is through the clearly visible street below. It is no coincidence that the favelas are not only crime-ridden and drug-laden but also provide an ideal hideout, complete with ideal lookout.

We do not travel very far; CEACA, the school we are visiting, is strategically located relatively close to the mouth of the street that threads up through the favela. We do not have authorization to film the street today. We take our camera equipment into the school under wraps. We can record freely within the school grounds –so long as we keep our cameras away from the windows and the main gate.

The streets are dangerous. Children as young as four years old wander through them as though they are not. The crianças do not seem out of place because these dangerous streets also teem with life. Men stand around in groups, bare-chested, reassembling a car engine. A woman sits on a step breast-feeding her infant. More tiny children pass by in ones and twos, on bikes, in makeshift soccer jerseys.

Futebol! It’s one of the ten words that make up our Portuguese vocabulary, so we use it often and often inappropriately. Our first words to the highly excitable seven and eight-year-olds we meet are “Bom dia” (good day) and our next words, inevitably, “Gusta futebol?”

The children are very forgiving. We take a picture of Lilo, a shy soccer fanatic with an earring in the shape of a pawprint in his right ear. I tell him I like his earring. He pulls it off to show me it is only a sticker. Our translator is busy aiding another one of the seven helpless Americans in the room; my accent is too poor for me to learn Lilo’s age. The fact that we have his picture does little to make up for this. His image, his bright eyes and lopsided dimples, these are already seared into my brain. So, too, is the memory of his soccer buddies jostling on the steps inside the dining area in the next minute, competing to get in our next shot. The shutter clicks, and the children are gone, back outside to play in the street.

The gangs have no reason to hurt them. That is part of what makes the death of a child frightening here. Often the reason is accident. The coordinator of CEACA tells me that they close the gates when shoot-outs happen outside the school. They don’t happen everyday; sometimes as many as four months pass by without incident near the grounds during the school day.

Four is not a comforting number. There is no comforting number. We have finished our interviews, finished touring the classrooms, finished rolling tape. We are helping ourselves to some delicious end-of-day Brazilian coffee and freshly baked bread when we see the children running past on the other side of the gate. They seem to have already forgotten us and our inessential, albeit interesting foreign presence. Just as they assume we will forget them.
-Travel Journal, Entry 2

Success!

2008-05-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

The HC Blog is now indexed on Google's search engine!

Like all new websites, at first this blog couldn't be found by Google searches. Search engines can only find new websites by links from existing websites, so I posted up several links on different websites to try to get Google to see our site and index it. And behold! Just search "duke honor council blog" and our site pops up 3rd on the list.

Kevin

The Ethics of Free Handouts

2008-05-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

I am writing this while munching on my free bag of kettle-cooked chips and my free chicken caesar salad at my first day at Google, and I can't help but want to explore the ethical issues surrounding free handouts. As some of you may know, Google is a company that exceedingly pampers its employees. We get free, unlimited, high-quality, chef prepared food. Our tour guide told us about the 150 foot rule. A person cannot walk 150 feet without encountering a cafe. There are "Hardware Depots" scattered all over. But they don't "sell" hardware. You just go and take whatever hardware (mice, monitors, headphones, etc) you want. Today, they gave us access to free books about computers, and the guy told us "take about 3 books that you think you need most, but don't worry, no one's watching." At first I took 3 books, then I saw 4 more books that I wanted, so I took those too. Then I felt bad, so I put back 3 books, leaving me with a total of 4 books. I took one more book than I was supposed to. Does this make me a bad person? I feel guilty, but no one else seemed to care.

This dilemma really boils down to the honor system. My question is this: Where does the honor system belong in a capitalistic society? What they have at Google is similar to the Duke Community Standard, but there's really no threat of punishment (unlike the threat of expulsion at Duke). I don't even think it's socially unacceptable to take a few extra fruit smoothies or a few extra sandwiches, so there's not even "peer pressure" kinds of things! If no one's keeping score, and no one's enforcing, what's keeping people from abusing the trust they've been given? Isn't that the natural egoistic tendency? Opponents of socialized medicine argue that anything that's free WILL be abused. However, if one considers Google to be successful, maybe it proves that the honor system (and socialized medicine) isn't as intrinsically flawed as rugged-individualism capitalists would like to believe.

2008-05-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

yay for being a contributor.

i just thought that i would share my first ethical dilemma over the summer.

see, i worked at this place helping someone move furniture for two days, with precisely the same schedule for each. on saturday (the first day), as i was coming into the parking lot, perhaps slightly behind time or at least in a hurry, a man pulled up and took the place which i was going for. in fact, i had just stopped to pull into it as he drove up. i went to the next lot, found a place, and everything was fine. but the next day, i found myself in a situation to be friendly and "let him out." but seeing the now-familiar yellow mustang and accompanying man in tacky sunglasses made me pause before doing a fairly simple deed. without giving it too much thought, i didnt let him out and gave myself the fast road.

now the dilemma i had, after the act, was the obligation to act... was i giving the man a moral reprimand for poor parking lot courtesy, or was i just getting revenge on what seemed like a (fill in the blank)? at the brief moment of decision, i liked to think that i was in the former position, acting selflessly but benefiting myself on the side. however, a brief moment of introspection makes me see that regardless of the man's driving attitude, i was probably just in a mild fit of road anxiousness and wanted to get a bit of revenge and save a few seconds myself in the situation.

now, i dont think there was much harm in this circumstance, granted that i probably won't remember the man for very long, no matter how tacky his sunglasesses and mustang were. but it does illustrate a predicament that anyone claiming ethical responsibility must face--am i truly acting on ethical principles, or am i deceiving myself with self-serving yet empty rhetoric.

Let's get this party started!

2008-05-12T17:38:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share this great article I just read from this self-help site called lifehack.org. It gives advice on how to stop procrastinating, and it covers the subject pretty thoroughly. Although this is not directly related to "Honor," I think that if people were able to stop procrastinating, then they wouldn't have so much pressure to cheat, right?

Kevin

How to become a contributor

2008-05-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Honor Councilors,

woo! It's summer!

If you would like to be a contributor to this blog, just email me with your email address. I will then send you an invitation to be a contributor. :)

Kevin Tao
kevintoaster@gmail.com