By Gary Berg-Cross
In the abstract, casual
moment it’s sometimes hard to get average folks to talk about topics like
secular humanism, natural ethics and the like.
Sure these are important topics, but in the normal flow of things they
can be a heavy lift and off putting. But
since it is important we should understand natural opportunities for such
topics in the context of larger issues that ARE on the agenda to be discussed.
Following the Newtown
shootings there has been justified focus on the topic of gun safety and why such things happen. There has been just a bit of discussion of non-religious
views of the situation and the grief. It is what some call a “A teachable moment” –
a term used widely in discussing learning and education, as a time when
learning a particular topic, task or idea becomes possible or easiest for
situational or developmental reasons. The concept is ancient with common sense
predecessors like interest, motivation and ripeness. But it was popularized (and became perhaps too much of a buzz phrase) by Robert Havighurst in his 1952 book, Human
Development and Education. The concept is also widely applied to therapy as
an observation that some interventions are only successful when the “time is
right” and the patient ready and open to consider something new. Religious
messages often jump into these debates, witness the influence on healthcare
discussions.
Of course there are
other factors needed such as having the right teacher/therapist/parent/leader
at a teachable moment. A good teacher is
someone not only able to communicate knowledge, but one who is a credible source also and
one able to hold individual/group attention that goes along with learning. So in
the gun discussion good communicators identify where they are coming from, such
as, “my perspective is as a gun owner.”
Of, course this is an easier category to understand than saying “my perspective
is as a secular humanist,” so in a teachable moment we have to be ready with
some back up, non-threatening explanation that includes the idea that I don’t have
to be in the gun-owning tribe or with the religion belief crowd to have a say
on a topic of interest like the ethics of guns. That’s probably even more difficult
for people coming from the New Atheist tribe, but it is something we need to
get accepted as part of the discussion of things.
As we enter a time when
immigration, climate change, lowered defense spending and stimulating job
growth will be big topics along with gun safety it seems appropriate to
consider whether we have reachable minds.
Is the national thinking cap and cultural climate receptive and ready
for freethinker’s perspectives? Can we help make it so?
A start is to work for acceptance of
freethinkers as part of the conversation. Perhaps attention will be distracted
and go elsewhere or sideways. We’ll see if people are interested, but it is
likely to be a difficult task. In ‘Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in
Vietnam’ Nick Turse bemoans the fact that there was no
public interest in Vietnam war crimes
allegations. The public mind was largely closed and unreachable. Atrocities like the My Lai
massacre were aired, but stirred only a very brief public outrage before
subsiding into indifference as talk moved on to more acceptable topics. The
Winter Soldier hearings, which Vietnam veterans like now Senator Kerry
participated in, were largely ignored and the testifiers treated with disgust.
As John Tirman noted in a WAPO review
of Turse’s book:
Turse has the journalist’s faith that exposure will result in
justice, but in the case of war, there’s little evidence that the public wants
to know more about atrocities, much less act upon them. British scholar
Kendrick Oliver made this argument brilliantly in his book on My Lai, showing
how reactions to revealed atrocities follow a pattern that ultimately leads to
a rally-round-the-troops phenomenon. One could contend that war, by its very
nature — and not just in Vietnam and Cambodia, but in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan
— similarly leads to indifference to civilian suffering or even to blaming the
victims.
This is the type of reaction freethinkers face all the time. Revealing that one's thinking is flimsy and biased can lead to people digging in and rallying round their comfortable and unchallenged beliefs. It’s in part the problem
of minds being closed by a drive towards loyalty, stability, respect for authority
and group cohesiveness along with purity of thought. Perhaps we’ve learned a bit of lesson, but still
what is needed are teaching moments with the right voices ready to take up the
issues.
Images
Teachable Moment: http://findability.org/archives/000629.php
Good without God moment:
http://generationatheist.blogspot.com/2011/08/teachable-moment-by-shannon-b.html
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