When I drove across the country a couple of weeks ago, something had changed since the last time I made the trek; what happened to all the pro-life billboards? When driving through the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin a couple of summers ago it seemed like we couldn't go a mile or two without seeing an 'Abortion is Murder' billboard with a picture of a hacked up fetus on it. And all that graphic, shock and shame-based marketing made me think of sandwiches.
Hold on, I can explain! Have you seen or heard a Subway commercial lately? The bulk of their advertising in the past few years has been focused on shaming and mocking overweight people.
OK, so it's not exactly saying, 'Have another burger, fatass!' but the implication is there: if you don't eat what we tell you to eat, you'll be fat, and if you're fat, you're miserable and unlovable. Just ask Jared. Maybe that's effective marketing, but it's also pretty slimy. Besides that, Quizno's is so much better than Subway, and Quizno's never gave me shit for going to Carl's Jr. They just told me their sandwiches tasted good. (And have you had that Batch 81 sauce? It rivals Arby's Sauce as the greatest condiment ever created.)
So Subway wants you to be ashamed of what you eat, and the Midwest wants you to hate yourself for the rest of your life if you've ever even considered an abortion, but it's not just Big Sandwich and the Religious Right who use shame to sell products and push agendas -- have a look at some animal rescue websites.
Check out Causes on Facebook, of which my organization has begun to make good use recently; the top animal rescue organizations on that site are showing you pictures of mangled fighting dogs, burned kittens, or just sad-ass puppies waiting miserably to be adopted. Don't you dare look away -- these animals need your help. And the fact that these top animal welfare organizations, including ASPCA, HSUS, and PETA, oppose the no-kill movement, meaning that in many cases they advocate the killing of the very same animals in their photos, all the while calling it 'rescue', you shouldn't be dissuaded from giving them your money, because after all, if you don't, more pit bulls will be mangled, and more kittens will be set on fire. Hell, you might as well be holding the match.
And then there's this delightful ad:
I can't tell you how many people have told me they turn the TV off when that one comes on. I'm surprised the networks will even air it. So I'd like to pose a few questions, to HSUS and the other organizations that use similar marketing strategies to raise money for their rescue (and animal killing) work -- Do you think the 'shock and shame' model changes hearts and minds? Do you think you make more money showing people disgusting images of torture, or showing them an alternative? And if you're showing people graphic images of animal suffering in order to raise money for your cause, aren't you exploiting those animals for gain, even benefiting from their pain? Is any of it really necessary?
I deal with the horror of animal abuse every day. I see the things in the HSUS ads firsthand. And I change the channel when those commercials come on. I don't deny that the ads are effective -- clearly they attract donors and volunteers, but I think it would be interesting to see psych evaluations done on the people who respond favorably to them. I can't responsibly hypothesize about what the results would indicate, but I will say that the reputation of animal rescuers for being 'crazy' isn't entirely undeserved, and furthermore, when I, who live in a kennel with a pack of feral dogs, often feel like one of the most sane people in our field, something's very wrong. I think it's entirely possible that shock and shame attract the mentally ill and repel the mentally stable. Honestly, if you think about it, how could that not be the case? If nothing else it's manipulative, and mentally stable people tend to walk away when they feel they're being manipulated.
I've stayed away from shock and shame in my own organization's website and promotional materials, preferring to show people images of healthy animals playing and having a good time. Sure, I tell their stories, but if I tell you a dog's face was torn half-off, do I really need to show you a photo of it? There's a big difference between not hiding the ugly truth from people and shoving it in their faces. Do I need to put a grotesque image in your head that haunts you for the rest of your life? Do I need to give your children nightmares? My Sanctuary may not be a multi-million dollar a year organization (yet), but for a nonprofit founded less than three years ago, I think we do pretty well. In the last five hours we've raised $150 with this photo:
It's not a ton of money, but we'll use every cent of it to save animals. Maybe we'd get more money if she was covered in wounds and lying in a pool of blood, but I'm not doing that. We'll build this organization without blood money, without shame money, without 'Please God make it stop!' money. And unlike the others, we won't be then using that money to kill healthy dogs and cats in some back room. Look -- I can be as negative and accusatory as anyone (this rant is the proof), but putting aside whatever foul mood I might be in or whatever's pissing me off today, even the very topic of this entry, 'at the end of the day' as they say, I'd rather create beauty than try to put a dent in ugliness. Sure, it's semantics, a glass half full/glass half empty kind of thing (or as my good friend Brent once said, the glass is half empty, and the other half is piss) but if I have the choice between showing you how ugly the world is or showing you another option, well, I think you know where I stand.
So a few weeks ago I visited a frequent flier forum to see if any of the members knew of a way for my organization to take donations in the form of air miles, as I know a lot of people travel for work and have a ton of miles but not a lot of money. For the Sanctuary, it would be helpful to use the miles for rescue trips, and I could also take miles in lieu of a paycheck, since I don't currently get paid anything. I didn't get any replies for a few days, and then this came:
"i believe that nothing is wrong by your thoughts concerning obtaining donated airmiles for charity purposes,but if i were the owner of any airline,i would insist that any or all donated airmiles do not involve charity website only,but involve having those interested to donate via your website,but your website would direct all donors out of your website linked to that airline.
That way,the airline could track each and every aspect of any donation.
the airline could ensure all miles being donated belong to those whom are donating them
i do not know anything about the process,but merely stating how i believe the process is probally maintained for the protection of all involved.
As to your mention of your own charity getting added to some list, i would tell you to telephone each and every airline to be directed to the correct department that handles those actions.
good luck, hope my thoughts enlightened you to atleast call the airlines on the phone,since that is the 1st thing i would have done,even though i know as much about the subject as you."
I know I'm being petty, but this really pissed me off. I stopped myself from blasting this guy two or three times and ended up not responding because I think he was really trying to be helpful, albeit in a really annoying, patronizing, self-indulgent way. Seriously -- what the hell? He says he knows nothing whatsoever about the process, and then states that, based on his complete lack of knowledge on the subject, he believes things to "probally" work a certain way. Then he says I should call every airline and ask them to add my tiny charity to their lists of huge nonprofits that they partner with; I may not be an expert on air miles, but I am an expert on nonprofit management, and that's about the stupidest business advice I've ever heard. I tell you what -- you call every one of the world's 120 plus airlines with frequent flier programs and see how far you get. In fact, call one of them and get back to me.
He then has the gall to suggest that his utter lack of knowledge on the subject would be enlightening to me and that he hopes I will take his advice, because, even though he knows only as much as I do on the subject, it's the course of action he would have taken, before bothering the busy, overworked frequent flier community to see if any of them might actually know something. God forbid I would try to gather information and do research before going to the airline directly -- wouldn't want to know what the hell I was talking about ahead of time, right? He says he knows as much as I do on the subject, but as it turns out, he knows quite a bit less, and that's impressive, because I know next to nothing. "If I were the owner of any airline?" Come on out of your ass some time -- it's much nicer out here. Of course, to be fair, that's an assumption, but I think it's a safer one than the ones this guy makes about how airlines handle their charity mileage programs.
Sometimes people try so hard to be helpful they end up just being a pain in the ass. 'I don't know the answer to your question, so I'll make some shit up.' Have you ever been driving on a city street and had to slam on your brakes because the person in front of you is stopping to let someone pull out of a parking lot? In being courteous to one person, he's pissing off the ten people that nearly wrecked behind him. Or what about that friend that insists that you sleep on her lumpy-ass couch instead of checking into a hotel with a nice, big bed and free HBO? She cooks you disgusting food for dinner so you don't have to spend your money at a restaurant. Thanks to her generosity you feel like a prisoner in some creepy David Lynch movie.
A few years ago I met a guy in Bangkok, and after we talked for a few minutes, I asked him if he knew where there was an Internet cafe. He said he did, and rather than give me directions, he walked there with me. The only problem was that he had no idea where there was an Internet cafe -- he was just a really helpful guy. After wandering around for nearly an hour, I told him I was hungry and wanted lunch; he showed me to a restaurant where I had the worst meal I ate my whole time in Thailand, and he told me he'd be back in half an hour to continue 'helping' me find Internet access. He was a really nice guy, and honestly, I was a bit amazed at how hard he tried to help me even when he had no actually ability to do so. And I still sneaked out the back of the restaurant and ditched his ass.
Last year in Costa Rica my friend and I had a flat tire -- a scenario I'd dealt with plenty of times, complicated by the fact that the vehicle was parked on sand, making it tough to jack up high enough to get the spare on. I had it under control, but then another guy showed up to 'help'. He was trying to impress my friend and show that he was handy and would make her a good husband or something, so instead of getting the tire on and going home, we dicked around in the rain for an hour, it got dark, and we had to have someone else come in the morning and take care of it. Nice guy -- I thought she should have gone ahead and dated him, but I wasn't as much of a fan the first night we met.
Running a nonprofit, my whole life is about helping, so I guess that makes me somewhat of an authority on the subject. There are a lot of ways a person can help, but sometimes helping isn't helpful. Sometimes you have to let people help themselves, or get out of the way so someone who actually has something to offer can step in. A little discernment is in order. Help where you're needed, leave it alone where you're not, and learn to tell the difference.
I realize this probably makes me sound like an ungrateful jerk. I guess I'm OK with that.
In a few days I'll be heading to St. Charles, Missouri on what will probably be the last rescue trip for awhile. I thought this would be a good time to start using Twitter, so if you're interested in the play-by-play, I'm @stevemarkwell. I have no followers yet and it's embarrassing, but on the other side, I'm not following anyone. Is it bad that I don't really want to? Regardless, Twitter can be a valuable promotional tool and I felt I needed to use it, along with Facebook and blogging, to give people multiple ways to connect with my work. With the article about the Sanctuary coming out in the LA Times soon, I figured I'd better get on it quick, too. Funny about MySpace... anyone still using it?
So check me out on Twitter if you're a ... Twitterer? Tweeter? What a stupid site. But I'm still going to give it a fair chance.
It's not a typo. American culture as a whole is missing something, and those who know me are probably sick of hearing about it every Thanksgiving -- fasting. We've got the feasting part down, but what about fasting? Fasting is an exercise that helps us focus on things that really matter, and what better day of the year to be mindful of important things than Thanksgiving?
I blew it this time, because I should have written this entry a few days ago, not this morning, but next year, consider fasting for 24 hours before your Thanksgiving meal; an easy way to do it is to stop eating when it gets dark Wednesday night and make sure you don't start your family feast until after dark on Thursday. During your fast, every time you feel your hunger gnawing at you, remember the people around the world who live with that feeling every day, but who can't just walk to the refrigerator or drive to a fast food restaurant to quench it. Have you ever not known where your next meal would come from, or when? If you've ever been hungry and without money, you know that it's more than just hunger, there's also a panic that sets in, that however unpleasant, is something all of us should probably have to experience at least once to know how it feels.
I learned this principle while living in Jerusalem; Jews and Muslims alike have fasting as an integral component of their religious rituals. Think about this: if you want to be especially mindful of the things for which you're thankful, which is more conducive to that state of mind, indulging in those things, or going without them? We have so much in this country; even the poor in America live like kings compared to people in some of the places I've visited. Sure, the economy's in trouble, but you're reading this on a computer that's connected to the Internet -- over 5 billion people don't have access to this thing that we can't live without. A short fast can give us a minute insight into a fraction of their experience.
In my freshman year of college I was enrolled in an applied psychology course, which it turns out is not a psychology course at all, but rather, a course intended to show students what academic and career paths they should pursue -- sort of a 'what you should be when you grow up' class. At that time I was committed to becoming a visual artist, so I found the search for what I should be doing with my life to be a complete waste of time, but the class was an easy A, so I stuck with it. But one day, the instructor had us all take the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator test (MBTI), and she then put the students into groups, based on their results.
I pulled my desk over to the group of people that were supposedly like me, and they began to speak, while I sat and listened. They were all very excited to meet other people 'just like themselves' and went on and on about it. It didn't take long before I asked myself, if we're all the same, why am I sitting here, quietly stewing, while the rest of them won't shut he hell up? So I decided to join the conversation, and said, "I'm nothing like any of you; this is total bullshit." Then I walked to the instructor's desk, informed her that personality typing was a pseudo-science and that I was going to the registrar's office for a drop slip, which I would return with before the end of class so she could sign it. So yeah, I guess I've always been this way.
The MBTI was developed by a mother-daughter team during World War II to help women determine what type of employment to seek during the war. The two had no formal background in psychology, but the theories on which the typology was based were from a book by Carl Jung. That does make it sound more scientifically sound, but the theories in Jung's book, Psychological Types, weren't scientifically tested. Oops.
You would think that would be the end of it -- that educators, employers, and anyone else with an interest in people's personalities would, upon realizing that the MBTI had no basis in science, dismiss it as lacking validity. But whether due to people's bizarre desire to neatly categorize things or their need to sum each other up into known quantities, the Myers-Briggs test has remained perhaps the most common measure of personality used in America. It's also shown up as a Facebook quiz, which is what prompted me to write about it. I know my friends who took the test did so for fun, not because they needed it to tell them what kind of people they were, but the tendency to cooperate in our own categorization is still a little disturbing to me. Maybe that's just me -- any time I hear someone say, 'There are two kinds of people...' I cringe a little, and immediately begin making a mental list of all the additional kinds of people there are out there.
If the only strike against the MBTI was that it wasn't backed up by experimentation, I could still see some potential value to it, but that's not its only problem; for one, the test consists of a series of forced choice questions, meaning you're given a choice between two answers, and you have to pick one or the other. You're also supposed to be able to leave a question blank, but that option doesn't always exist on Internet-based tests. So take, for example, one of the questions from the Facebook version of the test: "Would you rather be a scientist or a senator?" For me, I was equally inclined toward each answer; I could see myself doing both of those things. If I had to pick one, I don't know which one it would be, and it might be a different answer today than it would be tomorrow.
In fact, the answers to a lot of forced choice questions could go either way depending on the mood of the person answering, or what he saw on TV last night. People can overthink their answers. They can lie in an attempt to get the result they want. They may not know themselves well enough to answer accurately, or they may answer based on value judgments that may not even apply to the topic of the question. One version of the MBTI asks the test-taker to answer yes or no to the statement, "You are consistent in your habits." Might a person answer yes, thinking that consistency is a good thing, when in fact she is anything but consistent?
Forced choice questions often, if not usually, present the test-taker with a false dilemma, which is a formal fallacy. Formal fallacies are statements, arguments, or ideas that are logically faulty by virtue of their very structure, but the false dilemma might be the most common one. We're surrounded by them every day: Coke or Pepsi, Republican or Democrat, gay or straight, dog person or cat person, pro-choice or pro-life, creation or evolution, and on, and on, and on. Frankly, the lack of any room for a third choice in our national psyche strikes me as pretty, well, stupid, but it's pretty easy for us to fall into the false dilemma trap.
Besides most of the questions on the MBTI being false dilemmas, the possible results are false dichotomies. The results of the MBTI are split into four parts, in which a person is said to exhibit one of two traits: extroversion or introversion (actually they spell it 'extraversion', but I'm not going for it), sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving. The first letter of each term is used to make up the label for the subject's personality type, except for intuition, which is represented by the letter N, so a person can be an ESTJ, and INFP, or some other combination. Saving you the math, there are sixteen possibilities. People are said to have a natural inclination toward one or the other.
Each of the dichotomies is measured by percentage, so if you answer 83% of the questions like an introvert, you're an introvert, and if you answer 52% of the questions like an introvert, you're an introvert. The test itself is designed to force respondents to fall on one side or the other by asking an odd number of questions in each category. Go back and change one answer and you're suddenly an extrovert; and they say people can't change... If you have a hard time answering a lot of the questions, finding yourself leaning only marginally one way or the other, you might get a result showing a very high percentage on one side, instead of only a slight tendency.
And what about those traits? Introversion and extroversion are pretty clearly opposites, but sensing and intuition? Thinking and feeling? I both think and feel that to be a bullshit dichotomy. I'd pick it apart bit by bit, but it's not that interesting. Let's just say that the theory gets increasingly convoluted and arbitrary the deeper into it you get, and honestly, what's the point? Do we really need to understand people based on their 'type'? Here's an idea: people are unique, they don't fit into our metaphorical boxes, and our perceptions of personality are entirely subjective anyway. Even if the four dichotomies are valid (and you know what I think), the healthy place to be is right in the middle. If the theory and structure of the MBTI were completely valid and effective, the only measurable result would be evidence of personality flaws, not type, and as a friend recently told me, no test is needed to show what mine are.
We've all told our share of lies. Some people lie more than others, and some claim not to lie at all; of course, they're lying. I try not to lie for two reasons: you don't have to worry about what other people know if you don't try to hide anything, and the truth is usually much more offensive.
Working in animal welfare bears a similarity to being a social worker or a police officer in that you spend a lot of time being lied to, usually by people who would benefit if they just told the truth. At the very least, it would make my job easier if I didn't have to scrutinize every word spoken to me, and while I'm on the subject of making my job easier, I wouldn't mind not dealing with rednecks anymore.
There are people I like dealing with - usually people from other rescue organizations who understand what I do and are serious about helping me do it more effectively. They've read the placement guidelines on my website, which include things like "Please don't try to entice us by telling us how wonderful the dog is, or how much money it is worth - if it was so wonderful, you'd be keeping it, and if it was so valuable, you'd be able to sell it." Or this one: "We're very good at figuring out the truth, and you'll only end up being caught in your lie - that doesn't mean we won't take the dog, it just means we'll think you're an idiot."
Unfortunately, the locals I deal with don't get online much, and they haven't read my guidelines. They think they're dealing with the same kind of naïve, trusting person they've met at other rescues. They're morons. On rare occasions, an individual places a dog with me and I'm not completely repulsed; I've even liked a few of them. But most of them make me physically ill. Whenever I take in a dog, I try to spend some time talking to the person placing the animal with me, despite my overwhelming urge not to do so. The longer I talk to them, the more they slip up, and the more I find out.
One trick to knowing when people are lying is to pay attention to the choices they make; I don't ask people if they beat their dogs, but if they make a point of telling me they don't, I know they probably do. I let them decide what I need to know about the animals they're handing over to me, and that gives me a list of doubts to work from before I've even seen the dog's behavior - it's very helpful, even if it's not as helpful as the truth would have been.
It's also good to see the person interact with the dog; a few weeks ago a local couple brought a dog to the Sanctuary, and instead of taking him right away, I sat and talked to them for about ten minutes while the woman held the dog's leash. At one point, out of nowhere, she started screaming at the dog to sit, and jerking as hard as she could on his leash. That was all I needed to know, so I took the leash and sent the people on their way, with instructions to drop off a copy of his rabies certificate; they said they would, but I knew they were lying. Today I saw them at the grocery store and asked them again for the rabies certificate; the woman's daughter was there as well - apparently it was her dog. She didn't know who I was or that I had taken the dog, and when she found out, she said, "I want to see him before he goes to Alaska." I asked, "Who's going to Alaska?" The girl turned to her mom and yelled, "You lied to me!" What a surprise.
There are those who pass themselves off as intelligent human beings by creating seemingly clever bits of wordplay that we all take as fact because they sound so good. I really hate that crap. There are numerous instances of this in religion, most of them so heavily dependent upon metaphors that when said metaphors are stripped away, not only is there no truth to the sayings, but there is no substance, either. Take this one from modern Christianity: "When God closes a door, he opens a window." What does that even mean? Does God want me to jump out the window, or does he just want me to have some fresh air? Or am I outside, and I'm supposed to be breaking into the place? And if the doors and windows are all on the same building, am I not going to end up in the exact same place, regardless of which one I pass through? Strip away the metaphors and the saying essentially suggests that all opportunities come directly from God, and that when he takes one away, he always provides a less ideal one in its place. Is that in the Bible? I don't remember ever reading that. The problem with these little, pet sayings is that even though they are not found in the scriptures and have no foundation in the canon of Christian tradition, they are still held to be the word of God, and that's a little scary, especially when the clever saying is a little less benign, like that whole 'Adam and Steve' thing, or various slogans that insensitively bash the beliefs held by the billions of other people in the world.
But perhaps nowhere has the power of superficially clever rhetoric been more effective in the war on intelligence than in the pseudopatriotism of the post-9/11 era, and none of these statements makes my blood boil more than "Freedom isn't Free." When did freedom become a commodity with a price tag? Are we really accepting that we have to pay a price for our freedom? Isn't that, well, not freedom? The Declaration of Independence says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Liberty, for those who don't know, is a synonym for Freedom, and a synonym is a word that means the same thing as another word. So according to our nation's founding document, freedom is an unalienable right that all people are born with, making it, by definition, free. Unfortunately, 'Freedom is an Unalienable Right and is therefore Free by Definition' doesn't make a very catchy bumper sticker. Well, maybe it'll catch on.
