In a discussion with Larry King, Oprah Winfrey tells his audience that the book, The Secret, offers an essential teaching she'd known since starring in the 1985 movie, The Color Purple: You are responsible for your own life. She explains this by retelling an incident in which she was praying to be picked for the movie at the exact moment Steven Spielberg called.
Winfrey is no newcomer to magical thinking. She's long promoted it on her show, in her magazine, and with her television network. Besides being a Rhonda Byrnes acolyte, Winfrey gave a platform for Jenny McCarthy to run with disproven vaccination-autism claims and fully endorsed Dr Oz as he spread pseudoscience on her shows.
Winfrey has certainly been a strong female personality for decades, yet balancing entertainment and reality has long been challenging. Now, after an inspiring monologue at the Golden Globes, she is both being asked to and considering a presidential run in 2020.
That the cult of celebrity has overtaken the American consciousness is not surprising. The last two presidential outcomes produced considerable awe and consternation from the other side: Mitt Romney's visible shock when conceding to Obama in 2012 and, well, you know the other. Yet a basic understanding of history could have predicted the forces behind both of these elections.
Maybe it's the problem of manifest destiny: Americans believing we're endowed with a sacred duty to excel like no other nation in history has fostered all sorts of delusions. Perhaps it's the disconnect from the reality of war and authoritarianism we have long enjoyed. Our relative comfort has allowed our imaginations to run wild, so run they do. Unchecked fantasies are known to arrive with unforeseen consequences.
There is precedent to our current moment because there's always been precedent, argues Kurt Andersen in his latest book, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. The bestselling author and host of Studio 360 has written an encyclopedic entry into the mayhem of modern America, informing readers that along every step of the way it's been mayhem, beginning with the very first immigrants.
No, not the pilgrims; the Jamestown colony. The first English settlement was not in Plymouth, as popular lore goes. That distinction goes to a series of gold-seeking groups that unsuccessfully tried to settle in Virginia. Eventually abandoning their dreams of gold—the term “fool's gold" is derived from their miscalculations—the colonies did eventually thrive with a crop that plagues us to this day: tobacco.
Plymouth isn't the only myth Andersen dispels in Fantasyland. He spends chapters focused on the nineteen-sixties, an era loathed by fifties-loving conservatives and adored by progressives. Problem is, that era initiated a confluence of forces that allowed magical thinking to dominate in medicine, health, politics, and just about every other field.
This, Andersen told me, is just a continuum that began with an extreme Protestantism that America was founded on, which continues today through a “de-privileging of reason and science over magic and magical thinking and fabulism of every kind." He continues:
What I call this big bang that happened in the sixties—my argument is that it’s no coincidence that that belief in homeopathy or crystals or Carlos Castenada taking peyote to become a brujo in those best selling series of books, all of the bohemian magic and alternative health practices and so forth, which got going in nineteen-sixties, just as this incredible revival of the most magical and supernaturalist forms of Protestant Christianity came raging back.
It's not as if the sixties didn't produce positive benefits, including civil rights, feminism, and environmentalism. Yet the underlying strains of essentialism and dualism required for magical thinking reached new heights in both popular religion and on the fringes. From the looks of 2018, we're continuing to soar.
Andersen didn't set out to write Fantasyland because of Trump's victory. He never suspected it possible, even when the reality show star became the Republican nominee around the time he was finalizing edits of the book. Yet when the election was over Andersen realized he had laid out the perfect blueprint for the manifestation of the idea that a billionaire elitist could win as a populist champion of the working class.
Not that Andersen exclusively blames religion. He's more aligned with Sam Harris's evidence-backed spirituality than Richard Dawkins's hawkish atheism. During our discussion Andersen is clear to point out that freedom of religion, both as a belief system and a topic of debate, is an essential American quality. It's the extreme quality to it that's disconcerting.
In individualist-focused America the notion of many truths dominates. It was heard in the beginning of Oprah's speech: “What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have." When everyone has a truth they tend to take their truth as fact. Andersen quotes four-term US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan to me: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." Day by day that line is blurrier.
Unlike many books required by publishers today, Fantasyland does not end with a four-steps-to-overcoming-magical-thinking guide. It is a descriptive gem, not a prescriptive trope. Andersen explicitly rules out the possibility of his recommendations becoming reality. We're in too deep for a sudden reversal, he told me, using the example of the “pathological individualism" gun rights advocates have employed over the last few decades. They've gotten so drunk on self-anointed mythical heroism that comprehending data proves impossible.
Once we go down these various paths of creating reality television or whatever it is, of turning pieces of our cities into little Disney Worlds, we can't turn it back except in our individual lives. In terms of the American life being what I call the fantasy-industrial complex, I'm not without hope, but once this set of boxes is open it's hard to imagine a future where we return to the previous version of normalcy.
In her book, The Human Advantage, Brazilian neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel reminds readers that “evolution is not progress, but simply change over time." America has experienced a variety of changes, yet as Andersen shows the country has long been rooted in mindsets separate from the facts of reality.
Oprah's Golden Globes moment is a long overdue and beautiful expression of the #metoo movement, uncomfortable and provocative at a time when her industry needs such provoking. It provides a wonderful template for using media to promote a social agenda, which is political in its own right. But that does not make a celebrity qualified to be a politician. As Andersen writes on the last page of Fantasyland,
Remember when viral was a bad thing, referring only to the spread of disease? The same goes for what you read and watch and believe.
Fantasyland won't instruct you on what to watch and believe. What it does is educate on how we've arrived here. Where we evolve next is anybody's guess, yet without an understanding of where we've been one thing is certain: we're going to repeat our mistakes. Then we'll be doomed to buy into the fantasyland-industrial complex once again.
--
Derek Beres is the author of Whole Motion: Training Your Brain and Body For Optimal Health. Based in Los Angeles, he is working on a new book about spiritual consumerism. Stay in touch on Facebook and Twitter.
Winter in the Ural Mountains
In February 1959, a group of nine hikers crossed through Russia's Ural Mountains as part of a skiing expedition. The experienced trekkers, all employed at the Ural Polytechnical Institute, were led by Igor Dyatlov. On the evening of February 1, all nine appear to have fled their tents into the Arctic temperatures, for which they were unprepared. None survived.
Six of the members died of hypothermia; three suffered from physical trauma. Some members were missing body parts—a tongue here, a few eyes there, a pair of eyebrows for good measure. According to reports, no hiker appears to have struggled or panicked. They were likely too quickly overtaken by the hostile environment in Western Russia.
All the members were young, mostly in their early twenties; one member, Semyon Zolotaryov, was 38. Good health didn't matter. Given the uncertain circumstances—what made them flee into the bitter cold?—the incident known as Dyatlov Pass has long been the type of Area 51-conspiracy theory that some people love to speculate about. A vicious animal attack? Infrasound-induced panic? Was the Soviet military involved? Maybe it was the katabatic winds that did them in. Local tribesmen might not have liked the intrusion.
Or perhaps it was aliens. Or a Yeti. Have we talked about Yeti aliens yet?
These theories and more have been floated for decades.
a: Last picture of the Dyatlov group taken before sunset, while making a cut in the slope to install the tent. b: Broken tent covered with snow as it was found during the search 26 days after the event.
Photographs courtesy of the Dyatlov Memorial Foundation.
Finally, a new study, published in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment, has put the case to rest: it was a slab avalanche.
This theory isn't exactly new either. Researchers have long been skeptical about the avalanche notion, however, due to the grade of the hill. Slab avalanches don't need a steep slope to get started. Crown or flank fractures can quickly release as little as a few centimeters of earth (or snow) sliding down a hill (or mountain).
As researchers Johan Gaume (Switzerland's WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF) and Alexander Puzrin (Switzerland's Institute for Geotechnical Engineering) write, it was "a combination of irregular topography, a cut made in the slope to install the tent and the subsequent deposition of snow induced by strong katabatic winds contributed after a suitable time to the slab release, which caused severe non-fatal injuries, in agreement with the autopsy results."
Conspiracy theories abound when evidence is lacking. Twenty-six days after the incident, a team showed up to investigate. They didn't find any obvious sounds of an avalanche; the slope angle was below 30 degrees, ruling out (to them) the possibility of a landslide. Plus, the head injuries suffered were not typical of avalanche victims. Inject doubt and crazy theories will flourish.
Configuration of the Dyatlov tent installed on a flat surface after making a cut in the slope below a small shoulder. Snow deposition above the tent is due to wind transport of snow (with deposition flux Q).
Photo courtesy of Communications Earth & Environment.
Add to this Russian leadership's longstanding battle with (or against) the truth. In 2015 the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation decided to reopen this case. Four years later the agency concluded it was indeed a snow avalanche—an assertion immediately challenged within the Russian Federation. The oppositional agency eventually agreed as well. The problem was neither really provided conclusive scientific evidence.
Gaume and Puzrin went to work. They provided four critical factors that confirmed the avalanche:
- The location of the tent under a shoulder in a locally steeper slope to protect them from the wind
- A buried weak snow layer parallel to the locally steeper terrain, which resulted in an upward-thinning snow slab
- The cut in the snow slab made by the group to install the tent
- Strong katabatic winds that led to progressive snow accumulation due to the local topography (shoulder above the tent) causing a delayed failure
Case closed? It appears so, though don't expect conspiracy theories to abate. Good research takes time—sometimes generations. We're constantly learning about our environment and then applying those lessons to the past. While we can't expect every skeptic to accept the findings, from the looks of this study, a 62-year-old case is now closed.
--
Stay in touch with Derek on Twitter and Facebook. His most recent book is "Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy."
If brute force doesn't work, then look into the peculiarities of nothingness. This may sound like a Zen koan, but it's actually the strategy that particle physicists are using to find physics beyond the Standard Model, the current registry of all known particles and their interactions. Instead of the usual colliding experiments that smash particles against one another, exciting new results indicate that new vistas into exotic kinds of matter may be glimpsed by carefully measuring the properties of the quantum vacuum. There's a lot to unpack here, so let's go piecemeal.
It is fitting that the first question asked in Western philosophy concerned the material composition of the world. Writing around 350 BCE, Aristotle credited Thales of Miletus (circa 600 BCE) with the honor of being the first Western philosopher when he asked the question, "What is the world made of?" What modern high energy physicists do, albeit with very different methodology and equipment, is to follow along the same philosophical tradition of trying to answer this question, assuming that there are indivisible bricks of matter called elementary particles.
Deficits in the Standard Model
Jumping thousands of years of spectacular discoveries, we now have a very neat understanding of the material composition of the world at the subatomic level: a total of 12 particles and the Higgs boson. The 12 particles of matter are divided into two groups, six leptons and six quarks. The six quarks comprise all particles that interact via the strong nuclear force, like protons and neutrons. The leptons include the familiar electron and its two heavier cousins, the muon and the tau. The muon is the star of the new experiments.
For all its glory, the Standard Model described above is incomplete. The goal of fundamental physics is to answer the most questions with the least number of assumptions. As it stands, the values of the masses of all particles are parameters that we measure in the laboratory, related to how strongly they interact with the Higgs. We don't know why some interact much stronger than others (and, as a consequence, have larger masses), why there is a prevalence of matter over antimatter, or why the universe seems to be dominated by dark matter — a kind of matter we know nothing about, apart from the fact that it's not part of the recipe included in the Standard Model. We know dark matter has mass since its gravitational effects are felt in familiar matter, the matter that makes up galaxies and stars. But we don't know what it is.
Whatever happens, new science will be learned.
Physicists had hoped that the powerful Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland would shed light on the nature of dark matter, but nothing has come up there or in many direct searches, where detectors were mounted to collect dark matter that presumably would rain down from the skies and hit particles of ordinary matter.
Could muons fill in the gaps?
Enter the muons. The hope that these particles can help solve the shortcomings of the Standard Model has two parts to it. The first is that every particle, like a muon, that has an electric charge can be pictured simplistically as a spinning sphere. Spinning spheres and disks of charge create a magnetic field perpendicular to the direction of the spin. Picture the muon as a tiny spinning top. If it's rotating counterclockwise, its magnetic field would point vertically up. (Grab a glass of water with your right hand and turn it counterclockwise. Your thumb will be pointing up, the direction of the magnetic field.) The spinning muons will be placed into a doughnut-shaped tunnel and forced to go around and around. The tunnel will have its own magnetic field that will interact with the tiny magnetic field of the muons. As the muons circle the doughnut, they will wobble about, just like spinning-tops wobble on the ground due to their interaction with Earth's gravity. The amount of wobbling depends on the magnetic properties of the muon which, in turn, depend on what's going on with the muon in space.
This is where the second idea comes in, the quantum vacuum. In physics, there is no empty space. The so-called vacuum is actually a bubbling soup of particles that appear and disappear in fractions of a second. Everything fluctuates, as encapsulated in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Energy fluctuates too, what we call zero-point energy. Since energy and mass are interconvertible (E=mc2, remember?), these tiny fluctuations of energy can be momentarily converted into particles that pop out and back into the busy nothingness of the quantum vacuum. Every particle of matter is cloaked with these particles emerging from vacuum fluctuations. Thus, a muon is not only a muon, but a muon dressed with these extra fleeting bits of stuff. That being the case, these extra particles affect a muon's magnetic field, and thus, its wobbling properties.
About 20 years ago, physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory detected anomalies in the muon's magnetic properties, larger than what theory predicted. This would mean that the quantum vacuum produces particles not accounted for by the Standard Model: new physics! Fast forward to 2017, and the experiment, at four times higher sensitivity, was repeated at the Fermi National Laboratory, where yours truly was a postdoctoral fellow a while back. The first results of the Muon g-2 experiment were unveiled on 7-April-2021 and not only confirmed the existence of a magnetic moment anomaly but greatly amplified it.
To most people, the official results, published recently, don't seem so exciting: a "tension between theory and experiment of 4.2 standard deviations." The gold standard for a new discovery in particle physics is a 5-sigma variation, or one part in 3.5 million. (That is, running the experiment 3.5 million times and only observing the anomaly once.) However, that's enough for plenty of excitement in the particle physics community, given the remarkable precision of the experimental measurements.
A time for excitement?
Now, results must be reanalyzed very carefully to make sure that (1) there are no hidden experimental errors; and (2) the theoretical calculations are not off. There will be a frenzy of calculations and papers in the coming months, all trying to make sense of the results, both on the experimental and theoretical fronts. And this is exactly how it should be. Science is a community-based effort, and the work of many compete with and complete each other.
Whatever happens, new science will be learned, even if less exciting than new particles. Or maybe, new particles have been there all along, blipping in and out of existence from the quantum vacuum, waiting to be pulled out of this busy nothingness by our tenacious efforts to find out what the world is made of.
Think of the nicest person you know. The person who would fit into any group configuration, who no one can dislike, or who makes a room warmer and happier just by being there.
What makes them this way? Why are they so amiable, likeable, or good-natured? What is it, you think, that makes a person good company?
There are really only two things that make someone likable.
This is the kind of advice that comes from one of history's most famously good-natured thinkers: Benjamin Franklin. His essay "On Conversation" is full of practical, surprisingly modern tips about how to be a nice person.
Franklin begins by arguing that there are really only two things that make someone likable. First, they have to be genuinely interested in what others say. Second, they have to be willing "to overlook or excuse Foibles." In other words, being good company means listening to people and ignoring their faults. Being witty, well-read, intelligent, or incredibly handsome can all make a good impression, but they're nothing without these two simple rules.
The sort of person nobody likes
From here, Franklin goes on to give a list of the common errors people tend to make while in company. These are the things people do that makes us dislike them. We might even find, with a sinking feeling in our stomach, that we do some of these ourselves.
1) Talking too much and becoming a "chaos of noise and nonsense." These people invariably talk about themselves, but even if "they speak beautifully," it's still ultimately more a soliloquy than a real conversation. Franklin mentions how funny it can be to see these kinds of people come together. They "neither hear nor care what the other says; but both talk on at any rate, and never fail to part highly disgusted with each other."
2) Asking too many questions. Interrogators are those people who have an "impertinent Inquisitiveness… of ten thousand questions," and it can feel like you're caught between a psychoanalyst and a lawyer. In itself, this might not be a bad thing, but Franklin notes it's usually just from a sense of nosiness and gossip. The questions are only designed to "discover secrets…and expose the mistakes of others."
3) Storytelling. You know those people who always have a scripted story they tell at every single gathering? Utterly painful. They'll either be entirely oblivious to how little others care for their story, or they'll be aware and carry on regardless. Franklin notes, "Old Folks are most subject to this Error," which we might think is perhaps harsh, or comically honest, depending on our age.
4) Debating. Some people are always itching for a fight or debate. The "Wrangling and Disputing" types inevitably make everyone else feel like they need to watch what they say. If you give even the lightest or most modest opinion on something, "you throw them into Rage and Passion." For them, the conversation is a boxing fight, and words are punches to be thrown.
5) Misjudging. Ribbing or mocking someone should be a careful business. We must never mock "Misfortunes, Defects, or Deformities of any kind", and should always be 100% sure we won't upset anyone. If there's any doubt about how a "joke" will be taken, don't say it. Offense is easily taken and hard to forget.
On practical philosophy
Franklin's essay is a trove of great advice, and this article only touches on the major themes. It really is worth your time to read it in its entirety. As you do, it's hard not to smile along or to think, "Yes! I've been in that situation." Though the world has changed dramatically in the 300 years since Franklin's essay, much is exactly the same. Basic etiquette doesn't change.
If there's only one thing to take away from Franklin's essay, it comes at the end, where he revises his simple recipe for being nice:
"Be ever ready to hear what others say… and do not censure others, nor expose their Failings, but kindly excuse or hide them"
So, all it takes to be good company is to listen and accept someone for who they are.
Philosophy doesn't always have to be about huge questions of truth, beauty, morality, art, or meaning. Sometimes it can teach us simply how to not be a jerk.
Jonny Thomson teaches philosophy in Oxford. He runs a popular Instagram account called Mini Philosophy (@philosophyminis). His first book is Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas.
