Transparent Eye

A peek at the sadistic brain

A new study published in the journal Biological Psychology used fMRI scans to compare brain activity in eight unusually aggressive 16- to 18-year-old males to those of eight normal adolescent males while they watched videos of people getting hurt.

While both groups showed activity in the brain’s pain centers, the brains of aggressive males, those with conduct disorder, also showed activity in the brain’s pleasure centers, suggesting that they may have been enjoying what they were seeing. Normal males showed no such activity.

Historian Anne Harrington lectures on Eastern Brains: Probing the Partnership Between Buddhism and the Brain Sciences. She talked in particular about the involvement of scientist Richard Davidson with the Dalai Lama.

In South Korea, Buddhism has been losing out to Christian evangelism

Buddhism, with its focus on meditation and seclusion in mountain temples, increasingly struck the nation’s newer generations as esoteric and tradition-bound. To many Koreans, it was more a cultural heritage than a religion.

Now Christians have the upper hand, including the presidency, and their Christian right is more assertive than our own

Christian fundamentalists have stoked resentment by vandalizing statues of Dangun, the nation’s mythic founder. Families also have been divided as increasing numbers of Protestants have refused to take part in Confucian ancestor worship, holiday rituals that used to be performed in all families regardless of their religious affiliation.

The Buddhist furor escalated in recent weeks as videos circulated on the Internet showing zealous Protestant preachers, one of whom led his congregation in shouts for the “collapse of Buddhist temples.”

In another clip, a leading preacher, Jang Kyong Dong, says: “Buddhist monks are wasting their time. They should convert to Jesus. Is there any Buddhist country in the world that is rich?”

I think traditional Asian Buddhism, with some exceptions, may well be too disengaged from the average, non-monastic person. I’m intrigued by Buddhism, but it’s really the collision of Buddhism and modernism that interests me and may produce a fruitful fusion.

It’s worth noting that the Abrahamic religions are not the only intolerant religions.

They were ordered to get on their knees and bow before the portrait of a Hindu preacher. They were told to turn over their Bibles, hymnals and the two brightly colored calendar images of Christ that hung on their wall. Then, Mr. Digal, 45, a Christian since childhood, was forced to watch his Hindu neighbors set the items on fire.

“ ‘Embrace Hinduism, and your house will not be demolished,’ ” Mr. Digal recalled being told on that Wednesday afternoon in September. “ ‘Otherwise, you will be killed, or you will be thrown out of the village.’ ”

Hinduism has a reputation for tolerance, in that it is willing to incorporate new beliefs into its pantheon. Indeed, in the past, there was no such thing as “Hinduism” but rather a variety of beliefs on the Indian subcontinent that intertwined with each other. It seems, perhaps, that in defending its turf against the exclusivist religions of Islam and Christianity, Hinduism has absorbed some of that spirit.

The New York Times has a travel piece about Buddhist-related sites in San Francisco.

The Boston Globe has published my interview with Philip Tetlock.

Tetlock is a psychologist who has studied foreign policy experts. Over two decades, he’s asked them to make predictions, and then tracked whether their predictions were accurate.

It turns out that foreign policy is wildly unpredictable, and that people with a lot of experience do not perform significantly better than rookies.

This does NOT mean that rookies perform well. Rather, it means that mistakes are common even among “experts.”

To me, this means you have to be extremely careful before you let loose the dogs of war. They often bite their masters.

A folk art exhibition in Lexington is a reminder that the religious themes that have fallen out of favor in high art persist as inspiration for lots of folks.

Religious motifs are a staple in the Renaissance art found in major museums, but contemporary art more commonly evokes ire rather than devotion among believers. By contrast, the National Heritage Museum’s “Keepers of Tradition: Art and Folk Heritage in Massachusetts” features work from living artists who focus on preserving rather than breaking with the past.

Aside from the odd cow-shaped weather vane, many of the more than 100 pieces on display at the Lexington museum carry religious or nautical themes. Gloucester artist Marco Randazzo manages to combine the two with his rope crucifixes made from nautical knots. The appeal of Randazzo’s work is likely limited to those who share his faith, but other devotionally-inspired works on display are simply beautiful.

Works on paper by Feridun Özgören of East Boston and his apprentice, Güliz Pamukoglu of Waltham, display the Turkish art of ebrû. The artists add pigment to a pan of water, produce swirls with a comb, and transfer the pattern onto paper to produce the illusion of marble. The works also feature flowing Islamic calligraphy.

Icons produced by Ksenia Pokrovsky of Sharon and her apprentice, Sister Faith Riccio of Orleans also show how tradition is handed over and perhaps altered in the process. To my eye, the work by the teacher, Pokrovsky’s Lifegiving Spring, is too busy, containing more than 30 figures and telling too many stories at once. Riccio’s The Holy Trinity is spare, elegant and literally illuminating in its use of gold leaf.

Other sacred expressions vary in their appeal to the non-believer. Amherst artist Carlos Santiago Arroyo’s woodcarving, The Most Powerful Hand, features colorful miniatures of saints perched like thimbles on the fingers of a crucified hand. Perhaps because of the hand’s high-five pose, the effect is strangely cheery.

But a Crown of Thorns made of dried palm fronds by former Hampden resident Lise Galarneau is unlikely to move those not already affected by the biblical story it references. Uniform in color and pattern, it appears to the particular rather than the universal. Conway artist Thomas Matsuda’s fine wood carving of a bodhisattva is lovely, and Montague Center artist Carol Kostecki Easter chicken and goose eggs are almost mesmerizing in their intricacy.

The nautical art on display is more familiar, but a narrative quilt by the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association that includes a protest against factory fishing contains surprises. A well-executed shadowbox by Rockport’s Erik Ronnberg, Jr. depicts an 1892 schooner race, and conveys a sense of motion as two three-dimensional ship’s models battle through heavy seas

Sailors with time on their hands often create art. So too, it turns out, do metal workers. Sheet Metal Workers union members created Tin Men–three metal figures that resemble not Dorothy’s expressive companion but rather the faceless robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Pittsfield’s Robert P. Langdon, a retired engineer, produced a remarkable aluminum violin.

The exhibition, which continues through Feb. 8, 2009, was organized by a state agency, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and is the product of eight years of fieldwork. More likely to uplift than offend taxpayers, it’s probably a safe application of the public’s money. My only real irritation was directed at the volume of some videos showing the artists at work. The sound of a tap dancer in the background can take away from the full contemplation of the object at hand.

What inspires folk art? For some, it’s the sea and its power. For others, it’s a vision of celestial power. For many, it’s an inner power in people who never aspired to become professional artists but find they have the time and the urge to create. In an era when anyone can become an American Idol or perhaps even vice president, it’s comforting to think that among the unheralded lay many hidden talents.

Brilliant!

This is a startlingly shallow thinker, who ought not to be one “heartbeat” away from becoming the most powerful person in the world

She continued to take a hard line on national security issues when asked whether war with Russia could be necessary if Georgia were to join NATO and Russia crossed its borders again. Palin replied, “Perhaps so.”

Perhaps if it could lead to a totally unnecessary nuclear war, we ought not invite Georgia to join NATO.

It seems unlikely that a real war between Russia and the United States could break out over South Ossetia, because no one in their right mind would deliberately choose this. But once one makes unwise commitments, one then feels its necessary to follow through on these commitments because “honor” and “credibility” will be lost. This is how stupid calamities like World War I started.

I’m glad to see that Russia is eschewing annexation of South Ossetia. Such a step, adding territory to the state by conquest, would have been a dangerous violation of the post-WWII consensus that rejects territorial changes by conquest.

Russia’s international reputation has been battered by its invasion of Georgia (which, it is true, was set off by Georgia’s attempt to conquer the secessionary South Ossetia region), so if it wanted to make amends, it could make an about-face on the use of cluster bombs, which both Russia and Georgia reportedly used in the conflict.

These little bomblets no doubt have some military advantages, but because of their small size and failure to immediately detonate, they often become the equivalent of land mines that persist after a conflict has been settled.

All wars are best avoided, of course, but if war comes, we judge the combatants by their willingness to avoid civilian casualties even at some cost to their own forces. Terrorists, of course, are the most reprehensible by this measure, since they target civilians. But legal combatants need to be mindful of the side effects of their actions on civilians.

I note that the United States has cluster bombs in its arsenal. For what it’s worth, the Defense Department plans to create more efficient cluster bombs with fewer of the duds that terrorize civilians long after the conflict is over.