Disconnect: Should We Burn All The Computers and Smart Phones?

By Tom Kando

The new movie “Disconnect” is impressive. It craftily weaves together three stories. Each story is tragic, realistic and an illustration of life’s miseries in the Internet Age.

One of the three tragedies involves identity theft. A decent but troubled couple falls victim to the nightmare of identity theft, and its devastating consequences. The crisis is triggered by the wife’s unwise habit of chatting online with strangers. The habit is altogether forgivable, especially for this sad and lonely wife, but it is unwise nevertheless.

A second sad tale is about television reporter Nina, who gets mixed up in the sordid teen porn business. Andrea Riseborough plays the part beautifully, as she vacillates between her Good Samaritan motives and her self-preservation instinct.

The third subplot is about two unexceptional high school kids who cyber-bully one of their classmates. The victim is nerdlike but very simpatico. The bullying has devastating consequences.

So the film is basically about malfunctioning relationships, and its point is simple: the relationships are all electronic - certainly at the outset. The movie is about the medium.



“Disconnect” confirms all the dislikes and prejudices of an old Luddite such as myself. It focuses on the horrors of the Internet Age, as opposed to its benefits. Read more...

The Ohio Kidnapings: The Roots of Anomie

Shirley Baker, Salford (1964)

By Madeleine Kando and Tom Kando

It seems scarcely believable that Ariel Castro, the man charged with kidnaping, raping and torturing three Cleveland women for over a decade, could have gotten away with such atrocities without anyone being aware of what he was doing.

The neighborhood where Ariel Castro lived is described as ‘close-knit’, with mostly Spanish speaking residents of Puerto Rican descent. How can a neighborhood be “close knit” when the sight of three naked women with chains around their necks, crawling on their hands and knees in someone's backyard only causes a mild reaction, enough to make a call to the local police, but not much more? Shouldn't the neighborhood be all up in arms about something like that? Are we living in a jungle or a civilized society?

It is clear that this monster Castro was the ultimate con artist. He fooled everyone, including the people closest to him, into thinking that he was a regular Jo. ‘Ariel Castro was always happy, nice, respectful’ says a neighbor-friend. But what does that mean, exactly? Does that mean that there was nothing seemingly wrong with the abuser, or is it possible that it's an indication of what's wrong with the concept of 'neighbor' in America? How much neighborly interaction is there in a 'close-knit' neighborhood? Read more...

The Just So Stories of Evolutionary Psychology

by Madeleine Kando

Throughout my teaching career, I have been struck by how different little boys behave from little girls. I knew in my gut that I wasn’t stereotyping. At dress-up time, boys rarely asked to wear a tutu and girls stayed away from the pirate costumes and cowboy hats. During free-play, the girls immediately made a bee-line to the beanie baby basket and the miniature tea set, while the boys congregated on the gym mats pushing and shoving each other to be first to do somersaults.

If my school had been in Sweden, I would have not been allowed to call my students ‘boys and girls’, I would have had to call everyone ‘buddies’. Sweden is in the vanguard of countries that try to create a ‘gender-equal’ society where there is no discrimination based on a person’s sex. The country even added a new gender neutral pronoun, ‘hen’ to its language. Some schools have banned ‘free play’ altogether, because that’s when hierarchy, exclusion, and the seed of bullying start. Parents and teachers try to control how children form friendships, what games they play and what songs they sing, all in the name of gene neutrality. (See Slate Magazine: ‘Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun: Hen’).

I am sure the supporters of Evolutionary Psychology would frown upon these new social developments. To them, differences between the sexes, including many behaviors, are a result of natural selection, it is encoded in our genes and trying to do away with those differences by manipulating external factors will only lead to trouble. Read more...

Modern Man's Self-Strangulation: Max Weber's Iron Cage of Bureaucracy

By Tom Kando

In his seminal “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” Max Weber spoke of the “iron cage” in which rationalization and bureaucracy increasingly trap (Western) man.

Do we not all feel Weber’s Iron Cage of Bureaucracy, increasingly strangling us, destroying common sense and humanity? Here are some examples:

1. I play in a community band. We give free concerts - in churches, in city parks, etc. So yesterday I go to my exercise fitness center with a flyer about our next concert, and I ask them to post the flyer on one of the club’s bulletin boards. Their response: “No sir, we don’t do that here.” I explain that I’m not selling anything, that our band’s performances are free, etc. The answer remains the same: “No sir, our regulations forbid this.”

2. Our doctor’s secretary Michelle calls us at home. The purpose of her call is to remind my wife Anita that she has a routine appointment tomorrow. I pick up the phone. My wife Anita isn’t home. I ask Michelle what it’s in regard to. She refuses to answer my question. She won’t give me the message to remind my wife that she has an appointment tomorrow. Privacy law prohibits her to do so, she says. She asks Anita to call her back. This will require 2 or 3 more phone calls, telephone tag, being put on hold, etc. before Anita finds out what Michelle’s call was about (a useless call to begin with, since Anita was perfectly aware of her appointment tomorrow anyway). Read more...

Israel

by Madeleine Kando

One of the many reasons I wanted to visit Israel was that I am Jewish on my mother's side and have always had many unanswered questions about my Jewish roots. I was born in Hungary in the Second World War and our family had to hide from the Germans on a farm. I don't remember any of this, but I have been told the stories many times as I was growing up. So, finally this spring, my husband and I cut the Gordian knot and bought tickets to spend a brief ten days in this small, enigmatic country.

We were looking forward to find relief from the freezing weather in Boston, but as soon as we landed in Tel Aviv, a strong wind blowing in from the desert greeted us. Like two jet-lagged zombies, we made our way to the Hertz desk on auto-pilot and only after we had driven off in an ashtray smelling, banged up rental car, did we discover that the outlet for the GPS was broken. Hoping that we were following the road signs to Jerusalem, where, according to the picture on the internet, we had booked a room on a quaint little road winding up a hill, we tried to cope with the typical disorientation of being in a foreign country, one where even the writing looks like elegant graffiti.



Upon entering Jerusalem, we learned right away that traffic lights take half a day to turn green, which gave us ample time to notice that half the city is populated by Hasidic Jews. Women in black tights pushing prams, men in long black coats and fur hats, children with long tresses and shaved foreheads.. Entering Jerusalem is like stepping into one of those faded photographs in a Jewish history book. Read more...

Overreacting to Terrorism

by Tom Kando

After the Boston Marathon bombing  I suggested - sacrilegiously - that terrorism is LESS important than we are generally made to believe. Let me  add to my argument.

(By the way, I am a criminologist and I taught the Violence and Terrorism class at Cal State for about a decade. While this does not make me  infallible, it does mean that I am at least as well informed as the next guy).

Here is my main thesis again: Terrorism has come to loom very large in modern life NOT only  because of the heinous acts that are perpetrated by heinous individuals from time to time, but also  because of our OVERREACTION to those acts.
Read more...

Boston: How Important is Terrorism?

 By Tom Kando

Since April 15, I have been wondering whether to add my voice to the cacophony about the Boston Marathon  bombing on Patriots’ Day, and if so, do I have anything original to add? Well, I have found my angle. Taking  a big risk,  I am going to argue that this terrorist attack  was less important than we are made to believe...

How dare you, Kando! You callous idiot! What if YOUR 8-year old son had died? Etc. My Dutch friends might ask, ‘Jees,  Kando do you always have to be ‘in the contramine’? (do you always have to be the devil’s advocate?) You are right. I am a terribly  insensitive person for saying this. Nevertheless, I will now plough through with my argument: You see, I am worried that once again we are going to draw  the wrong lesson from this heinous act. Heinous it was, indeed. I hope that we catch the culprits and that we punish them harshly. I also support vigorous efforts to maximize security and to fight crime and terrorism. Read more...