I have a few idea in my notes that aren’t quite big enough for a whole article, so I thought I would deal with them tonight.

The Emotional Roots of Heroism

People often wonder what makes a person into a hero. What causes a perfectly normal human being to spring into action when danger knocks on their door and do the sort of things that we normally only see in movies? What motivates these ordinary citizens?

And while what pulls the hero forward is things like courage and compassion, I think the wind that pushes them from the back is something a lot more like terror : the terror of being witness to a tragedy, and all the harm it would do to said witness.

Call it empathic horror. We know deep down that seeing something horrible happen to someone will be extremely damaging to us. That alone would be a large enough trauma to seem unthinkable. The sort of trauma that destroys people.

But then add in the possibility of feeling like you could have prevented it, and you can see how an ordinary (but caring) person would be willing to take all kinds of heroic risks in order to prevent their own psychological annihilation.

That’s why, in tales of real life heroism, the hero or heroine often replies to questions about the dangers they faced with something like “I wasn’t thinking about that. ” The real danger, in their minds, was failure. If they failed to save the person or people, that would have been a trauma so large that it might as well have been death.

Note that this is an inherently empathic operation. Not only does the fear of empathic death drive the hero, but it is the hero’s empathic nature that makes them feel “involved” in the situation and act as though he was saving someone they knew and loved, even though they are actually saving total strangers.

When danger threatens one of us, we are all of the same tribe.

The Nature Of Faith

Faith is, at its heart, chosen belief. It is belief chosen completely independent of evidence or reason. Its origin is in emotional need, not careful examination of the evidence. It is born of unmet human needs and takes the form of whatever will fulfill those needs. Like a child’s imaginary friend (the prototype of all faith), the chosen belief(s) will fill the gaps in the human soul, and when something does that for a person, they become ferociously attached to it even if the outside world does not agree. They will defend this belief till their dying breath because said belief fixed them when they were broken and, in the case of religious faith, filled a whole host of emotional needs all at once.

There is no point in trying to argue with someone whose chosen beliefs have become such a fundamental part of their psyche that they could not function without it. These people know what it was like before the faith came to restore them, and they will never, ever go back to that state. You might as well be trying to talk them out of their arms and legs.

To clarify, this is true of all forms of faith, most of which are not, in fact, religious. Most people have their own set of things they will keep believing till the day they die because these things have become part of them. It might be belief in a person, a news channel, a political movement, a religious practice, or even a television show.

But we are born to believe.

Hence the resistance to science. Science does not concern itself with the emotional need for belief. It finds the objective truth, without concern with people’s subjective realities. Hence, to some, it seems cold, and even cruel. And by extension, those who practice it and promote it are cold and cruel as well.

It’s easy for us rational science types to say “Well then, don’t emotionally invest in things that can be disproven”, but are we so sure of our own innocence in that matter that we are willing to throw that stone?

The Value of Diversity

Modern democratic societies have, as one of their strongest cultural values, the treasuring of diversity. From cradle to grave, society tells us how important it is to embrace diversity and eschew divisiveness, bigotry, and intolerance.

And most people have a basic, gut-level understanding of why this is a good thing. You mind your business, and I will mind mine. My freedom to be who I want to be requires others to show tolerance to me, and in return, I show tolerance to them. We all benefit from a diversity rich system that practices tolerance and respect for all.

But this sometimes seems to fly in the face of our judgment. Surely we can’t tolerate everything. Some things are just plain wrong, and should be stopped and/or punished. Right?

This arises because we have lost sight of the roots of diversity, which lay deep in the foundations of the humanism that founded all of our great democracies. At the heart of this humanism is the understanding that, as diverse as the human race is, below the surface we have far, far more in common with one another than we have in difference.

This is the counter-argument to the seeming anarchy of total tolerance. We embrace all the wonderful ways in which people are different from one another because we know that, deep down, we are all the same, and all those differences are merely ripples on the surface of a very deep pond.

It is also wise to understand that a tolerant society does not judge the contents of someone’s skull. In a tolerant society, what is between your ears is your own business. That is the ultimate privacy and it is vitally important.

Only your actions are judged. So yes, it’s fine to be a criminal, or evil, or a pervert, or even a racist, as long as you do not break the law.

That is hard for some to believe, paradoxically especially amongst the supposed “law and order” crowd. Human beings inherently want to judge one another’s characters, and the short-sighted think this judgement should, at least in some ways, be reflected by society and its laws.

But you are free to be whatever you want to be, and the law is and should be completely indifferent to your character, your beliefs, and your personality. Only actions matter.

And when we lose sight of that, we lose our grasp on democracy and freedom themselves.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.